marie-alice

The hardest thing about living in France is the bread the following morning

Hello, my name is Marie. I’ve just joined and thought I’d join in the fun. This is my first post. I’m newt othis sort of thing. Anyway, I want to share with your readers my new experiences with bartering and skill-swapping (I think that’s the correct term)   A couple of months ago now I read a fascinating article in an expat French paper in which a young lady had her computer mended in exchange for a chocolate cake. A few days before I chanced on this article, I had paid a man 80 euros to fix my computer. At the time I didn’t think this to be an unreasonable sum to fork out for what I consider to be an essential householditem.. After all, I reasoned, the promised service was provided satisfactorily. Furthermore this man has to provide for his family. Having read the piece though, I began to wonder if I hadn’t been taken for a bit of a ride. It seems to me that every Tom, Dick and harry nowadays sees fit to pass himself off as a ‘computer expert’ and I wonder now whether a chocolate cake would  not have been adequate enough recompense for his time.   With this in mind I have now negotiated with a nice man from up north – Yorkshire, I think – to re-tile the stable block in exchange for a dundee cake ( he doesn’t like chocolate would you believe!) I’m also having a new kitchen and bathroom fitted for a tray of scones and a summer pudding. On top of this, a woman with impeccable taste has agreed to furnish the upholstery and matching curtains for our ‘sunny’ room for a pineapple upside-down cake.   All in all, I applaud this new system of bartering and have to say that it’s working wonders for me. At the end of the day, whacked out after a couple of hours of baking, I can sit back with my useless husband, Albert, watching the sun set over the gatehouse, sipping a passable claret, and, if I wonder, ever so briefly, how these poor people manage to feed their families, I can always console myself with the thought that fair exchange is no robbery. Let them eat cake!