What am I doing here ?

What am I doing here ? It's a long story which began over 20 years ago when the organisation I worked for was taken over. The new bosses soon began a clear-out, offering most people over 50 a redundancy package. It soon became apparent that this was to be a continuing process and both my late wife, who also worked there, and me might be living on borrowed time !

We had 3 years in which to prepare for a work less future, and decided we would make a complete break and explore the feasibility of living abroad; so we spent our holidays looking at various European countries, quickly settling on France.

When our turns did in fact come in 1990 we had settled on the Perigord region (which is next to that much beloved by Brits.-Dordogne). I was pretty pissed at being thrown on the scrapheap at 50 but knowing that pensioners are secured creditors and frozen pension holders weren't, I decided to take an early retirement and redundancy offer. As did the wife.

In those days the take-over merchants were known as "Asset Strippers", then came "Pension Raiders" and now we have "Venture Capital", different labels but it all boils down to the same thing- to make a quick killing at the expense of other (usually little)peoples lives. Still we had a choice,which we both took and I have to concede neither of us ever regretted it.

We set off armed with a wedge of redundancy money and my French "O" level (circa 1956)arriving in Perigeaux, the capital of the region, on our late spring bank holiday (which isn't a french hol.). We went into an estate agent to find ourselves at the back of a queue of 5 English couples. Having friends in Spain, who live in a sort of English enclave, we didn't fancy the idea of living in a Little England, so we jumped in the car and drove 200 miles South towards the foothills of the Pyrenees.

During the journey we passed from the area where the purchaser pays the estate agents fees into that where the vendor pays the agents commission, saving 10% for the cost of half a tank of petrol. As I continue this occaisional series I intend to offer advice to potential purchasers in France on the pitfalls in the system and thats a good one i.e. check who pays the fees