Paying the bills

We got back to our house in the Dordogne last week to find that our electrician and his team had finished rewiring throughout and had left the place surprisingly clean and tidy. There was very little dust considering the amount of walls through which they had to chase cables and wires.

That’s the good news. On the downside the work took a month longer than anticipated and the final bill, the electrician tells me, is likely to be considerably more than the original devis. This apparently was due to us insisting that the wiring was chased into the walls rather than boxed along the side of them.

Still on the subject of electricity, yesterday we had a third rendez vous with the EDF who agreed to change our 60-year-old fuse box. They came the first time in February and said they didn’t have the equipment. The second time they turned up unannounced, checked the existing fuse box, were unaware of a previous visit and went way again saying they needed to check back with head office. Luckily another EDF man arrived the following morning just before we were about to leave the house with no knowledge of the previous EDF visits. This time he had the right equipment and we now have a brand new white,state of the art comptoir in our hall. The whole saga reminded me of the story of a British journalist I knew who moved to Prague shortly after the Iron curtain had been lifted in the 80s. He asked for a telephone to be installed in his apartment but the telephone engineer turned up when he was out. He was subsequently told he would have to wait another year for the next appointment.

The extra cost of the rewiring and the estimates for other renovation projects has concentrated my mind on how to earn extra cash to pay for all this. The French Paper a new monthly newspaper for British expats may have come to the rescue. In the Work and Money section of the paper there’s a feature article about letting your house out to numerous film companies who are looking for locations all over France. Apparently you don’t have to own a chateau or Manoir – notwithstanding if you do own one you could earn between 3000-4000 euros a day. Film companies are apparently looking for all kinds of properties both modern and old to shoot low budget films on location. There’s a big market for old farm houses which can be used for everything from feature films and photographic shoots to adverts.

Let’s hope our place meets the criteria. I would describe it a something between a farm house and a Maison de Maitre. It has several dependences in need of restoration which include a ruined cottage. The latter could be good for maybe a crime thriller where mutilated bodies are found buried beneath its walls or the property could suit something like a French version of the English property programme Location, Location. The house has a classic, tall, sloping Perigordine tiled roof, hexagonal stone pillars at the front of the house, a fan window above the front door and it sits amongst rolling Bergerac vines. Come on Ridley Scott make us an offer.