Carte de Séjour

I lived in France for a little while.  Well, a little over a year and I'm not even sure if it qualifies as "living" as I was a five-day-commuter - I stayed in a flat in France Monday-Friday and came home at weekends.   It's not an ideal lifestyle but you might be surprised how many people do it in Europe, both within their own countries and between two others.

So, though I may not have thought this arrangement made me a permanent resident of France, the French state - in all its gloire - certainly did.  Which meant that I had to have a Titre de Séjour, a foreigner's ID card - special version for EU citizens.  

My employer in France wasn't used to having expats (which is what what white middle class immigrants are called to distinguish them from, well, immigrants) and wasn't much help about how to go about getting such a thing.  

- "You get it from the police",  said the HR lady confidently

- "Which police, France has three different police forces, or is it four?"

Eyebrows rise in exasperation - "Well, not the Gendarmerie, obviously, because they're the Ministry of Defence and of course not the Police Municipale because they are, obviously, not a national force so don't deal with such matters.  Logically, that means the Police Nationale whose HQ you will find at your local Préfecture.  But perhaps your first enquiry should be your local Mairie anyway, they will know." 

Obviously, obviously, logically - welcome to France, the land of evident truth and undeniable logic, as long as you understand the French version of life's universal rules which are, obviously, the only ones worthy of the name.

I went to the Mairie the next morning in the small town where I lived weekdays and in mangled French asked how I got a Carte de Séjour.  

It isn't true that all French bureaucrats are bloody-minded and xenophobic, just many of them.  Fortunately the nice middle-aged lady on the Mairie desk was not one of them and was clearly entertained by a foreigner providing a diversion from the daily routine of complaints about planning decisions, bin collections and dogs fouling the streets, which on the abundant evidence must take up a lot of time in France. 

She didn't know, but she wanted to help.  She asked her colleagues, who clucked sympathetically ("Ah, le pauvre!" - "Poor soul!") and they engaged in a debate (possibly involving philosophy but they lost me) which came to the conclusion that it was indeed the Préfecture.  

Great, and where is that exactly? 

Ah, the poor soul doesn't know where the Préfecture is! What a shame!  (Another discussion that may have involved Sartre, who knows).  It is of course in the main town of the department!

Which is?

Eventually I got the address of the Préfecture, in a town not far away which was a bit of a dump - much like many similar ones in a nearly every country in Europe, formerly industrial and now specialising in closed shops, haggard girls pushing buggies, kebab shops and blokes in track suits and beanie hats waiting for the pubs and bookies to open.
Though often in France the pub and the bookie ("PMU") are conveniently located in the same place and open at breakfast time to enable you to bet and then drink to forget your losses as soon as possible  - and all without having to get up from the bar.

I also established that it was indeed the local HQ of the Police Nationale, whose responsibilities included making sure that France knew exactly how many foreigners it had, where they come from, where they lived and just about everything else about them.  If you are British this is a strange idea, but not if you come from nearly every other European country where ID cards and population registration are the norm.

But it wasn't there.  Or rather, it was there, but as lady who was much closer to the stereotype of a French bureaucrat told me, the correct branch office of the Préfecture was "of course" called the Bureau des Étrangers ("Office of Foreigners" - welcome to France!) and was "of course" on the edge of town.  "Edge of town" has a meaning in French towns that it might not have in other countries.  

Suburb is an innocuous word and "banlieue" is on one level just the French version, but whereas "suburb" in anglophone countries may conjure up images of law-abiding, middling-prosperous dullness, well kept lawns and car-washing on Sundays  - that is not necessarily the case in France.  Yes there are suburbs like that, but there are also huge estates of tower blocks, ringing many cities, where the disciples of Le Corbusier inflicted their worst on people who couldn't afford a choice; where there is often high unemployment and large minority populations who can be forgiven for thinking they have been dumped out of sight.

The Bureau des Étrangers was in the town's miniature equivalent.  A collection of hideous 
cubes of cheap, damp-stain-marked 1960s concrete worthy of a Moscow ring-road, liberally decorated with graffiti and discarded furniture which at least brightened the place up a bit.  At the centre of this labyrinth was a parade of run-down shops, all with grills on every glass surface. In the middle of this parade was - Le Bureau - a small, utilitarian office consisting of a frosted, wired glass frontage, a three-window counter and grey lino waiting area with a couple of plastic chairs.

The location spoke volumes about who the French state thought were likely to be its biggest customers - the "étrangers" they had in mind when they opened this office were not middle class white people from other EU countries.  And they were right, judging from the sample of other supplicants when I entered the office and joined the queue of what appeared to be mainly Senegalese and Ivorians, and mainly women.  

It was a colourful, noisy and jolly gathering - much high volume chatter and ribald cackling from the brightly dressed ladies though not at my expense - though I certainly attracted some attention as probably the first grey-haired northern European in a blue suit they had seen in there in a little while.  One of them asked me if I was really in the right place and was intrigued by the idea that Europeans needed "papiers" too.

I had prepared myself for this visit with multiple copies of required documents - in other words, absolutely everything that linked me to France - my passport, my employment contract, my rental agreement and even the medical certificate of fitness which must be issued by a state-appointed doctor before you start work, plus six passport photos from the booth in Carrefour.  

The fonctionnaire behind the grilled counter was himself of North African extraction.  However it must have been several generations as he was fully acculturated in the obduracy of his species.  He was a guardian of the integrity of the French state, a builder of hurdles, a raiser of eyebrows and sucker of teeth, a scrutineer of dossiers - par excellence, as we say in English.  This was to be no formality.  The Carte de Séjour was a singular honour which he could bestow upon me only if I proved worthy.

The forms were scanned for even the slightest error or correction.  The employment contract was read in detail, I was asked to confirm that this was indeed my salary - no secrets to be withheld from Marianne - eyebrows were raised.  The tenancy agreement. This is your address?  This is your landlord and his address?  You are registered with the tax authorities?

Clearing the last hurdle I unwisely smiled and said "Wow (spelled Ouaou, of course) c'est compliqué, non?"  Eyebrows raised, no smile. "Non, monsieur, c'est pas compliqué, c'est correct."  I don't care what you do in your country, in France we do things the right way - as everyone should, but few are wise enough to follow our example.  

Another scan of the contents of my dossier, another count of the photographs to make sure one hadn't disappeared in the last 30 seconds to provide an opportunity to deny my application. Grudgingly he had to concede that all was in order.  Maybe later he would bully some poor unsuspecting Malian lady who had mis-spelled her address, to make up for his disappointment.

Foolishly, I had expected this office to actually issue me with a card but it turned out that its function was merely to accept applications or, probably more accurately, to act as a barrier to limit the number of applications that were accepted.   So I hovered at the counter, evidently not dismissed by the fonctionnaire, not confident enough of my French to find the equivalent of "Is that it then?" in case I said it in such a familiar manner that Rachid took it as a mortal insult to the honour of the Republic, wondering if he would just feed the data into his computer, upload a scan of the photo and crank out an ID card.  

I began wondering what the French for "Kafka-esque" was.  It's probably Kafka-esque.
I didn't move, he didn't move.  A long look, eyebrows raised, "Monsieur?"  Deep breath, hope it's not an insult, "Et, um, qu'est-ce qui se passe, um, ensuite"  A little smile, then, in English, "In ze post, sair, two weeks." 

Speeding in South Africa

On a previous visit to South Africa I had been warned of creeping police corruption, usually low-level stuff but disheartening for anyone who knows the country, and was alert to the possibility.  Maybe too alert.

Early in 2014 we were driving a section of the Johannesburg-Durban road, near Swaziland, that has frequent changes of speed limit as it passes between open country and small but scattered local communities surrounded by commercial forestry plantations.

A traffic cop appeared on the road.  “Hello, sir! Oh, you are in trouble here!” he said cheerfully, showing me the reading on the radar gun – 97 in an 80km limit. “You must cross the road to see my sergeant.”

A large sergeant sat in a picnic chair by the car - well-pressed uniform, gun, shiny shaved head. 

 - “Eh, this is very bad for you, my friend.  The fine is 500 Rand.”

 - “I’m very sorry, I’m not South African and I’m not used to the roads.  No excuse, I know.” (a bit of a fib as I have been to SA many times and used to live there).

 - “Oh, a visitor? Let me see your license and passport, - ah, British, eh? I should take you to the police station and fill in many forms, it could take a long time.”

(‘should’? ‘could’? - conditional, need not happen?)

 - “That sounds complicated.  Is there no other way?”

Narrowed eyes. 

 - “What do you suggest?”

(Uh-oh, attempting to bribe a policeman is certainly a worse offence than speeding).

 - “Ooh, I don’t know how stuff works here, I’m just a tourist.”

 - “Maybe I should just fine you here, eh?” Enigmatic smile.

A long pause – maybe he is also wondering who is going to initiate something we both know neither of us should be doing.  Should I get my wallet out?   Then,

 - “Tch. This is all too much trouble just for a tourist.  Just go, but slow down man, hey?”

 - “That’s very kind of you, thank you very much.”

 - “I’m a very kind sort of guy, sir, welcome to South Africa.”

I May Be Talking To Myself

I have mixed feelings about the title of this blog.  

On the one hand astonishment that it had not already been taken and on the other trepidation that by borrowing the title from the work of one of the greatest British writers of modern times I risk setting myself up for a fall.

In the end the availability of a catchy name overcame both risk aversion and admiration for Orwell's skill, which I'm afraid sounds a lot shallower than I would like to think I am.

Anyway just to give the great man full credit, if you are interested in the original and infinitely superior version of As I Please, it was a series of articles which appeared in "Tribune" between 1943 and 1947 which, according to the wikipedia entry,

"...allowed Orwell to digress freely over whatever topics came into his mind, including reminiscences, nature observations, gleanings from books and thoughts on the political situation. Each article roamed from one theme to another without any need for formal continuity but had no title indicating the content"

You can find the As I Please articles in the Collected Essays, Letters and Journalism.  Even if you don't agree with his politics, or if the subject matter seems distant in place and time from your experience, I promise you will enjoy the clarity of expression.

My reasons for writing the blog are necessarily more humble.  I aspire to write and am engaged in a course to teach me.  My tutor tells me I should write every day and that a good way of doing that is to write a blog.  So here we are.

Whereas I am only quite new to writing, the technology and tools of blogging have hitherto been a completely closed book.  So it will be a while no doubt before this is embellished with whizzy links, photos and clips.  Meanwhile just words on a page.

But the title is apt because if I am to write daily then at the current state of skill I am going to need to "digress freely over whatever topics" etc. So sometimes a diary, sometimes stories, sometimes commentary.  And I will try to stick to Orwell's rules of writing:

• Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
• Never use a long word where a short one will do.
• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
• Never use the passive where you can use the active.
• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous

I have probably already broken several of them above.  Give me a break, I'm learning.

Until later.