les Davey de France

Patricia and I went to the Alliance Française today to collect her results from her TCF ANF examination. She passed, with level B1 in one skill and B2 (higher than B1) in the other, so plenty good enough to submit to the préfecture along with lots of other documents for consideration for French nationality. Now to amass the documents necessary, get some translated, and submit all to the préfecture.

I have made no progress with our administration at all. No progress with requesting the final refund for Pat's cataract operation. No progress with Acts29. No progress with French nationality (DEntry). Two weeks ago I spent lots of time helping a friend in a pickle with their administrative problems, which left no time for mine. This week I had three wonderful days off. So tomorrow I must do at least something! I'll go to the insurance office, if it isn't closed... Then Tuesday forge ahead with Acts29 and with DEntry.

I was relieved to have passed comfortably, even the part with the letter complaining about the cow. I got 91%. My lowest mark was 21/25, which corresponds to 84%, for the letter about the cow. My highest mark was 25/25 for the oral. How can anyone award 100% in a language exam? Especially for an oral? Anyway, I feel stupid for having got so worked up about the exam, I feel encouraged to have a French certificate of competence in French, and I feel thankful for the encouragement. The last time I had a result like this was my A levels, in 2003 or thereabouts, where I got 94% overall and 100% in my AS exams. Again I don't quite see how that's possible, but hey... That was when we were in that awful time of working through leaving our church, which we love, to come and serve in France. We needed encouragement. Now we're in this messy time of church planting. It's so ... untidy. In church life there's rules, there's a team, there's people who take deci...

Pat had her post-op examination in the centre of Bordeaux today. The chap said that the operation was very good, excellent, but that she must clean her eyelids and put some cream near her eyelashes to prevent any possibility of infection. Jolly good! Then we called on the way home at the DEFLE university language school, where a list had been posted of the people who had succeeded in the DELF B2 exam. My name was on the list. Phew! They did not get put off by the cow. Jolly good!

Well we have 5 years' worth of Electricity bills, all printed out and ready. We will need to get our birth certificates translated into French. And on Wednesday 7th September I should find out if I passed the DELF B2 exam I took in July. Then we plan Pat's exam (and mine if necessary) and get the show on the road. Catrin also wants to apply for Frenchness, but she will not need to take an exam since she has done her bac in French as well as all her other schooling since 2005.

The 15 days were up last Thursday, and today is the deadline for enrolling for the next TCF-ANF exam in October, so I emailed my old phonetics teacher and asked if I had passed. The answer came back straight away. Because the exam took place on the last day of term, the deliberations will not take place until September. Oh well. I reckon I will have passed. Even with the cow in the apartment, they'd have to give me 20% for my effort, surely. And the other testes were OK.

Funny dream time. We were living in the MOST ENORMOUS HOUSE, which was ours, we owned it and it had a huge kitchen with a massive bay window in which could be seen an old-fashioned butler's sink, and we were in the garden which consisted of rolling lawns ending in a haha which led to the cornfields beyond. I had no idea where it was but it looked to me like Oxfordshire. Into this impressive idyll interjected the terrible news that I had failed my French exam - miserably. I was understandably perturbed because academic success and godliness are almost synonymous, of course.  I tried to understand what had gone wrong, but instead woke up into the much happier real world where we live in a modest rented flat and where the results of my exam will not be published for two weeks.

I have five years' worth of taxe foncière and taxe d'habitation I can show, that's for sure. But you have to pay those even if you are not really living in a property and they want you to show continual residency in France with no break longer then, I think, 6 months. What they really want is five years' worth of justficatifs de domicile - utility bills. Gas bills. Electricity bills. They're the best. And thankfully it is now supremely easy to get at five years' worth of electricity bills. Just log on to your personal space on the EDF website and, hey presto! What!?!? There's only one bill showing! But I've been paying for eleven years, and always with the same customer number and everything! I went to the electricity office in Pessac. I had been there to arrange the house move and they were very glad to see me and very helpful. "Oh yes. I don't know why they aren't showing. The best thing to do is write a letter and ask for you...