Category Archives: Health and Well-Being

What Flavourful Goodness in France!

I have only ever seen peaches growing on a tree. But when we arrived at this tiny cafe in a tiny village off the main road in the Bethmal Valley, a man and a woman were sitting at a table nearby under the veranda overhang cutting apart the tiniest of peaches as an ingredient for one of the sorbets they made in their organic shop.

The smiling man handed each of us a piece and said, “They are wild peaches. They grow on a vine.” And our mouths were filled with the most delicate of flavours. The menu board across from us was equally tantalising since everything was made on the premises from organic ingredients.

The parfums — the flavours? Menthe, origan, framboise, mure, prunelle, coing — mint, oregano, raspberry, blackberry, wild plum, quince. Yum! We had one each of the framboise (soooo soft and sweet!) and the prunelle (and Mark said it was quite mouth-puckery but lovely).

Another slice of life in France!

A board inside a cafe in the South of France listing their organic sorbet selection for the day.

Boxes, HEAT, & A Bit Of This & That

A bit of personal and non-travel related commentary today. And no, I didn’t drop off the face of the planet and all is well in our world. But we’re still wading through the boxes that were delivered from Australia via ship to England and then delivery truck here to France.

When we were ‘back home’ in Australia on our 7 and 1/2 acre rural property, we had a studio space/storage area in a separate building from our cottage. And that studio space was bigger than this entire small apartment in France!

Let’s just say we are a little challenged space-wise right now. So a second culling of our possessions is under way. And the apartment is a &*^%$£! disaster zone as a result. We sold off 99.99% of our furniture, donated or sold hundreds of books and movies, pared down the clothes, and then stored the rest (including Mark’s rather massive collection of tools!) for 20 months. 21 months later, they have all arrived and in spite of what we thought was a serious purge back in Oz, we have too much stuff.

I have thinned out the books and music cds and movies (again!) and am donating them to a Cancer Support France group here in the South of France that helps English speaking expats who have relocated to France deal with cancer issues. It’s probably a god-send for them to have such a group since I can honestly tell you that if French is not your native language, being ill in a foreign country can occasionally be a very unsettling experience. So this felt like just the right place to send all of these lovely books and media items.

Our other ‘challenge’ for the last few weeks has been the intense heat and staggering humidity — and it isn’t just here. Huge swathes of France have been on alert due to the high temperatures that soared upward and then stayed there. The last time that this kind of heat arrived in France was in the 2003 heatwave when almost 15,000 people died in France alone. This a country where fans are the norm for coping with summer, air conditioning is a rarity, and along with the many other French businesses that close down for a month, a large number of medical practitioners go on holiday for the month of August.

We’ve also been making a concerted effort to drink huge amounts of water every day to avoid dehydration or heat-exhaustion. Just walking those few blocks to the Saturday market this past weekend (with a hat on and smeared in sun block) saw me returning home dripping wet and weak at the knees from the heat. I was weak and nauseous for the entire rest of the day along with some other rather unpleasant symptoms.

And did I mention that I have been living in a sarong for most of the last 2 weeks? Other than unpacking and sorting, this has not been the most productive period I’ve had since arriving in St. Girons and it is all down to the nauseating heat which has left me, and tens of thousands of other people, feeling quite incapacitated.

I still have the last 2 slideshows to post from 2 weekends ago when the Autrefois was in St. Girons, but for now there may not be any new photo ops until I feel that it’s safe to walk around outside for more than half an hour without feeling like I am going to collapse. Don’t I wish for (and remember fondly!) the body-resiliency of my 20s and 30s — a physical state that I unfortunately no longer have.

Ah well — until the next time — stay cool wherever you are!

Unseen Forces At Work To Keep Me Safe From Harm

It didn’t take long after yesterday’s “Debacle In Toulouse” at the Hôpital Rangueil for me to realise that unseen forces had been at work to keep me safe from harm. I’ve named the hospital today because they really should be ashamed of treating anyone in that manner and they do need to clean up their act!

But as we exited the building and began to walk to the car, I told Mark that none of it had been right and I felt like we were leaving for a very good reason — not simply because it had been a farce from beginning to end and I was angry.

Mark was just a smidge grumpy about losing a full day of paid work when we’ve had so many unexpected settling-in expenses this month, but he too recognised that it was all far too not-quite-right. And having had those dreams ahead of time that I’m about to relate to you and which Mark was already aware of meant he laughed with good nature as we ate lunch and smirked, “Why, you’re positively psychic!” and I laughed back, “Yes, I actually am! And it serves me well.”

Any time I have ever had to have surgery or a complicated medical procedure in the past, I have taken the time the night before to do a longish session of meditation and guided imagery to smooth the way. I sat on the bed on Sunday night, did all of that, felt a glowing and twinkly light wrap around me, sensed the presence of several spiritual beings or now-departed people around me including my mother, and then off to sleep I went. But I awakened again and again throughout the night and each time it was from a vivid dream that was a different version of why the next day was not going to go well.

In the first dream, I saw us explaining to someone in charge that we had left far enough in advance, but we’d gotten behind an accident on the motorway and the delay was not our fault. The drive to Toulouse takes just over one hour, but we left here yesterday morning 2 hours and 5 minutes ahead of time. And yes, we did get into gridlock commuting-to-work traffic AND see an accident that was slowing things down even further.

In the second dream, we went to the wrong office after arriving and were then directed to another incorrect office. That is exactly what happened! We arrived early with my appointment sheet, went to the building, wing, floor, and office that were listed and the woman who told me “you don’t conform to our schedule” then let us know we were in the right building and wing, but on the wrong floor of the same department. So she walked us down to the correct place where the further unravelling of our day began.

In the third dream, we drove into a vast medical complex of buildings and were caught up in some round-and-round you go set of roads that led us everywhere except to the door of the correct building. That did happen! And Mark ended up dropping me off in front of a large central building, going down the hill to park the car, and then when he returned we walked through endless connecting passageways until we were in the correct building and wing.

In the fourth and final dream, a group of departed relatives were standing in a long white hallway leading to a set of double doors and they were all shaking their heads silently as if to indicate no-no-no. But in the dream I walked past them, waved at all those familiar faces, and went through the doors only to be confronted by someone with the body of a woman, the head of a dog, and a barking voice. Trust me, I met that woman too. She was the one who shrugged, told me the wrong time to come back, and told me to take another pill.

Let’s be truthful, I’d certainly received lots of psychic warning in advance. But I did the right thing, went to the appointment as scheduled, and watched as it all unfolded in spectacularly unprofessional fashion.

But what if that unfolding farce kept me from harm? What if all of those loving faces in my visions, meditations, and dreams were there because I summoned them and they made certain that no one did their job badly, harmed me, or gave me incorrect treatment or results afterward? That is the strong and very peaceful conclusion that I have come to. And everything will probably go well when I am rescheduled.

And if it doesn’t? I’ll be right back here reporting to you, faithful readers, on my impressions of the true state of medical affairs in France!

When In France, Patience Pays

Deciding to stop travelling, pick one country out of several options, and settle in the south of France has been an interesting proposition on a variety of levels — so I thought I would share a bit of that with you. The Midi-Pyrenees is a stunning part of this beautiful country and after much consideration, we believe that we have made a good choice. So we’re taking that leap of faith and staying!

St. Girons from the Avenue Francois Camel bridge

If you read the previous post, you will know that I have some additional freedom again now that I have my own little Peugeot to zip around in. However, it took TWO DAYS of hanging on the phone, leaving the car firmly parked because it was uninsured, and then wading through my kinda-sorta ok-ish French to get a new insurance policy. But as of Saturday afternoon, that’s all sorted and I’ve been out and about already doing essential errands and tracking down the correct government offices for each task.

A bit of freedom courtesy of a new-old Peugeot for Deborah

Yes, the updates on the site have been a bit thin for the last couple of weeks, but we’re fine and still doing the settling-in thing. That means lots and lots of paperwork from government departments that never seems to end. Mark’s life is a bit more straightforward than mine is right now — he gets up in the morning and goes off to work at various astonishingly scenic places as he renovates French houses. I am here in my home office, making endless copies, sourcing more government information, sending flurries of emails, and then waiting, waiting, waiting for things to get done by whatever French government department I am currently dealing with.

Getting registered in the health care system is still ongoing and that has, I must admit, been ridiculously time consuming. But I feel confident that my own paperwork will be completed this week. And I’ll be very happy once I see two copies of the laminated Carte Vitale, the essential item that gives us full access to all of the French healthcare system.

Things came to a grinding halt recently when I had to get an official French form to then obtain an official French translation of our birth certificates from English into French — and then the official French translation form had to be stamped and signed by an official French Civil Authority in a government office. That finally happened yesterday, but not easily!

After getting the translation completed last week, I took all of the correct paperwork to the Marie (the mayor’s office) in St. Girons yesterday and was directed to the office for Civil Registry. There I found a woman behind a desk with rather a lot of stamps and pens on her desk. Good — I must be at the correct place — right? Perhaps not since she looked rather alarmed when she realised that I wanted her to put her stamp on the official translation of (shock-gasp!) a British birth certificate and an American birth certificate. Seriously, she looked at me like the sky was falling!

Shaking her head and repeating, “Non, non, non!” several times, she pulled out an instruction sheet for what she could sign off on and waved one finger at it saying that her office was for people from France, not “etrangers” — strangers (which is what they actually do call anyone who isn’t French). I just stood there and waited with a calm expression. She went off in a huff to talk to the woman in the office next door, her supervisor, and came back with a very thin smile on her face. She had just been corrected by the supervisor (lovely woman!) who told her that since we were registered to live and work in France, she was required to copy and stamp all of our documents.

Kachink-kachink went the stamps, 2 on each form plus a date and signature, and finally I was handed 8 “official French” forms. I kept a pleasant look on my face, thanked her very sincerely, and suppressed the urge to dance down the hall outside her office and whoop out loud once I reached the parking lot!

I have no idea why, but for some reason I have rather a lot of patience with this unfolding process. Maybe it’s because this place feels so right. And for a change, Mark isn’t neutral, he really LOVES it (in all capital letters!) here in this part of France! That’s an important change because he’s always liked the places where we lived in the past two decades in Australia, England, and even those brief few years in the USA — but he hasn’t LOVED them. Nice, eh?

Getting new passwords for our online account required a trip to the bank to meet with our account manager — and as I was walking through St. Girons yesterday, I was smiling. It was interesting to see how many people turned and smiled back because I was walking around feeling like a lightbulb was on inside my face. St. Girons is just lovely in that picturesque faded-French-beauty way that makes my heart happy. The photo below is of Rue Gambetta and my bank is underneath those arches at the end of the curve, just before the parking lot in the square beyond. Now seriously, if you looked at your local business district each day and saw this kind of charming view, wouldn’t it make your own heart sing?

In the larger view, we are both quite happy that we waited, that we had patience about making a decision about where to stop and where to settle down again. We enjoyed our time over the last 18 months immensely as we travelled and worked in England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Germany, and France. And we met lovely people in each and every place that would have introduced us to the right people, helped us with our language issues in the non-English countries, and generally assisted us in negotiating through the ever-present paperwork in the EU.

The place that we have finally chosen, France, seems to be particularly attached to ‘les papiers’ and, in direct contrast to the way things are done in the UK or Australia, online processing of forms is practically non-existent. So everything moves at a snail’s pace. If you do choose France, you must know that ahead of time and accommodate yourself to their pace

Time to stop for today and get back to work. My next challenge is getting quotes to have our household goods delivered to us here in France. We had the very happy news from our shipping company in Australia that they had mistakenly quoted us for a larger amount than we actually had in storage. Once they picked it up last Friday from our storage unit, compacted it, and measured it on Monday, they sent us the actual figure which was approximately one third less than what the quote was based on. So we are saving a little bit of money off the sticker-shock prices that we were dealing with up until yesterday. Our boxes will arrive in the UK in a few months and then be trucked down here to France, a process that is (rather oddly!) cheaper than having them sent directly to France or even to Spain which is only one hour south of us.

Ah well — c’est la vie!

Piles of Paper For A New Life In The South Of France

In a previous post — Giving France A Chance — I discussed the small mountain of paperwork required for me, the non EU citizen of the two of us, to get residency in France. That all went swimmingly and I am now in possession of my Carte de Sejour — the French residency card (with all registry numbers removed) that you see below.

French residency card

That was so smooth that I was positive and upbeat about the speed of all other French paperwork requirements. Ahem! (cough-cough!) I now have to downgrade that optimism quite a bit.

I am quite pleased that Mark has happily settled into his new work routine and he happily buzzes off down the road with a smile on his face to work each day in one stunning mountain location or another (photos of those in posts in the coming week!!), but I do get stuck with the drudge work of ‘les papiers’ and that isn’t exactly thrilling.

The next bit of plastic that you are meant to have with you here in France is the Carte Vitale — another credit card style card with your photo on it that gives you access to the French health care system. This is one of the big pluses for people who want to change their lifestyle and move to a very civilised and amenity-abundant country in Europe — the quality of the health care system which always ranks either #1 or #2 in the world. For a very tiny co-payment of about €24, you can see the doctor of your choice who will then refer you on to specialists as needed. And there is an income-tiered system in place that also means that in some cases, you pay nothing whatsoever for doctors, medicines, or hospital stays.

The first stage is receiving your Attestation which shows that you are actively registered in the health system and have the right to use the subsidised French medical care. Mark qualified on the very first day that he registered as an Auto Entrepreneur in the building trades — a freelance, self-employed building tradesman who either sub-contracts his skills to other builders or works independently on individual commissions.

Part of that registration included selecting your mandatory insurance agency — the people you pay your quarterly contributions to and they, in turn, maintain all of your records and assure that you get the full French social benefits including health care. We chose RAM which is under the umbrella of the RSI — the insurance branch for people who work as Auto Entrepreneurs or Artisans.

Having Mark instantly covered was all well and good, but getting me covered has been another kettle of fish altogether! We’ve frankly been agog at how complicated it is and we still haven’t resolved everything.

We had a time delay in receiving some of our mail from Normandy, but once everything arrived we went promptly to the office in St. Girons where everyone had told us to go and register. And from doing my research online about the paperwork required, we went armed with originals of everything from Mark’s work registry to my residency card, our original birth certificates, our marriage license, our proof of solvency, copies of our lease and mobile phone bills to show where we lived, and other assorted documents with photocopies galore of all of that.

The French just love paper copies! They do not reside in the digital world yet (I am quite serious about that statement!) and you go up a notch or three in their eyes if you arrive for an appointment with your own photocopies so they don’t have to be bothered walking to the machine.

Into the office we went, down we sat, and Madame behind the desk immediately began shaking her head back and forth saying, “Non, non, non! RSI! RSI!” as she pointed to the header on one of our documents. What she was referring to was the name of the umbrella agency that covers Mark’s particular employment subset and we had mistakenly gone to the office that oversaw people who received regular salaries (not the self-employed) or who were on government subsidies.

That was certainly a wasted afternoon off of work for Mark! And we were just beginning to understand how many different offices of government there are in France for every single aspect of life.

NONE of it is centralised and, in our opinion, it makes for rather a lot of chaos. Trust me, it isn’t just ex-pats who move here who think this either. We’ve met French people who think that it all needs to be sorted out, centralised, and made a bit more uniform instead of having changeable and varying requirements according to what region of France you are living in or even what district of a region you reside in.

The rules and regulations are not uniformly applied from area to area and things can either go as smooth as silk like they did in Normandy, or they can be a quagmire like the situations that several online friends I have in Paris have revealed. We seem to be a bit in-between those two extremes here in the Midi-Pyrenees.

Our next trip was an hour drive in each direction to the large and traffic-clogged city of Toulouse for an appointment at our insurance coverage company RAM. Did I mention that outside of Paris, people do not routinely speak any English at all? Thus we are not only climbing mountains, we are dragging our French speaking skills up by our fingernails as we maneuver through government offices!

The lovely woman at the RAM office was soothing and gently (but all in French!) gave us the shocker that I had to get our birth certificates translated into an official French document which then had to be notarised or stamped as official by some government agency BEFORE we could submit them, along with a list of other paperwork, to a SECOND French government office to get the ball rolling for our French health care cards. Aaaaarrrrrggggghhhhhh!!!!

That is my task this week while Mark goes off to work every day. I have to get translations on an official government form and then find someone at the local Marie (mayor’s office) or the Sub-Prefecture (local branch of government for this section of the Midi-Pyrenees) to stamp it as a genuine and acceptable translation. Then and only then can we send another wad of paperwork off by courier to at least get the paper Attestation for me. And then and only then will we be allowed to have the form in our hot little hands to attach our passport sized photos to, send them off to yet another government agency, and wait for an average of 3-4 months for their return.

Do I sound like I’m having fun right now? (sigh!)

Note to self — it’s a learning curve in every new country. Patience, patience, patience…

Full Body Scanners Coming To Australia with only No-Scan-No-Fly Available!

I normally write very calm and measured or funny and informative travel articles on this website. I have avoided political statements and since they weren’t particularly relevant to the theme I had established, it hadn’t occurred to me to use this as avenue for a rant. But I have just discovered some news from ‘back home’ in Australia that has alarm bells clanging in my head.

It is, in my opinion, simply appalling that the Australian government has decided that it is wise, safe, or admirable to introduce Full Body Scanners to Australia. This will leave the travelling public over there with no option but to drive or take a train within the country or simply not travel overseas at all if you object to being scanned and having your body dosed with radiation.

The media reports that I have read thus far are simply not mentioning the cumulative health effects of radiation and the studies that have been done in both the USA and Europe that show that this is an unknown and potentially dangerous path to be heading down. Doctors in many countries have told their patients that if they have damaged immune systems, have just had chemotherapy or radiation for cancer, have devices implanted internally that could be damaged by the radiation, or who are already at risk for the cumulative effects of radiation to simply opt-out of full body scans.

This proposed roll-out of these machines in Australia doesn’t even give the travelling public the option of the humiliating but less health-damaging pat down that they do in the USA unless they have what is deemed to be a very serious health condition. This is plainly not a well thought out plan and I am shocked that this is being foisted on the Australian public and international travellers under the guise of the so-called ‘war on terrorism.’

I am complete unconvinced of the truthfulness of the quotes in this article in The Australian.

“The “no scan, no fly” amendment closes a loophole in the legislation, which allows passengers to request a pat-down instead of having to pass through a metal detector.

Transport Minister Anthony Albanese said mandatory body scans were necessary to ensure the safety of airports.

“I think the public understands that we live in a world where there are threats to our security and experience shows they want the peace of mind that comes with knowing government is doing all it can,” he said.

The Government has compared the strength of the radio waves emitted from the body scanners as the same as those from a regular mobile phone used several metres away.”

This is simply ludicrous to make these claims when the EU is banning, removing, or cancelling the installation of these same machines. This November 2011 article in a British newspaper details the concerns that are being addressed in Europe. So why is there so little regard for the health and welfare of the Australian travelling public or for international travellers who come and go on holidays or business?

If you too are concerned about the long term effects of radiation when you travel and you don’t qualify for the exemption-via-doctor’s-note option, take a few minutes from your busy day and write to…
1. The Parliament of Australia regarding Aviation Transport Security Amendment (Air Cargo) Bill 2011 at the contact links for the (a) MP list or the (b) Senator list.
2. Contact GetUp: Action For Australia and urge them to QUICKLY begin one of their very successful online campaigns to contest this legislation.
3. Make online comments in the COMMENTS BOX of articles such as this one in The Australian.
4. TWITTER your objections to all of your followers.
5. FACEBOOK your objections to all of your followers.
6. Forward this page with all of the links to your own private email list.

Let’s hope that we can stop this dead in its tracks before it is too late!

The Gratitude List

We are a mere few days from the end of the year, and it feels like an appropriate time to revisit some life improvement ideas that I used to share with people on a much more regular basis. This is a departure from my normal travel writing, so I hope that my readers will bear with me as I digress a bit.

In a previous chapter of my life, I gave monthly talks that, amongst other things, embraced concepts of transformation and empowerment. I would say to my audience, “Why would the Universe want to grant you all of those wishes, dreams, and gifts that you have come to expect if you forget to do something as simple as remembering to say thank you for those things? If you aren’t displaying any gratitude for what you have already received, why should the Universe continue to provide? It’s a reciprocal process!”

I have recently been tweeting this very thing to my readers on Twitter at @deborahharmes — and my online friend in London, the astrologer Shelley Von Strunckel, has been spreading the word to her readers as well after I mentioned Gratitude Lists to her.

When I was a practicing therapist, list-writing was one of the many ‘focusing tools’ that I used to employ with my clients. I saw major transformations occur in people’s lives when they began to implement this tool. The act of writing down goals or dreams caused a shift in their consciousness which put the inactive gears of their ‘manifestation engine’ into a state of movement. And when those people were open-minded and open-hearted, an even faster transformation occurred.

I have long held a bit of wrinkle-nosed disregard for the tradition of writing down New Year’s resolutions. This is a personal opinion, but I believe that it sets you up for failure and disappointment because those lists are regarded as a ‘must do’ thing that is not necessarily created with the right set of motivational factors. In many cases, there is social, familial, or peer pressure to write down what someone ELSE wants you to be or do in the coming year.

A far more gentle method of transformation is a Gratitude List. The very act of saying thank you in written form sets up a dialogue with the Universe that is softer and more authentic. In an act of self-reflection that doesn’t necessarily need to take a very long period of time, you release the need to create an artificial set of expectations/resolutions. Instead, you quietly, softly, purposefully write down a list of the things that you are thankful for.

This may seem silly or simplistic to some people, but trust me, it does improve your life. It removes or reduces the competitive edginess of resolutions, moves you beyond the negativity of complaining, and allows you to open your heart and mind to even more goodness and more blessings. In a very personal choice, I create these gratitude lists more frequently and keep the spirit of joyfulness more alive and fresh by this method.

Every month on the New Moon, I quietly sit for a few minutes and make a short list of the things that I am grateful for which have happened during the last 30 or 31 days. My husband does the same thing and then we read them aloud to one another. We repeat this in a slightly longer version at the end of the year as we sum up the events of the previous 12 months. And what I have noticed is that these episodes of list-making help to keep our attention tuned to the many types of goodness that flow into our lives from all sorts of sources.

In my own life, I am grateful for more than 12 months of travel and the amazing variety of people we have met in various countries, wonderful new career opportunities, the excellent medical care that I have received in 3 different countries that allowed potentially scary medical problems to be diffused rather quickly, the blessing (scary though it may have been at the time!) of being on-the-spot not once but twice when a fire in someone’s home could have turned into a life-altering disaster, and many other events and items that are personal and private. Your own list will reflect your own ideas of what was important along the way.

As we prepare to close out the year 2011, perhaps Gratitude Lists are an idea that you can embrace — an idea which will assist you in your own personal transformation.

Many blessings to all of you in the year ahead!

A Wanderful Life

The Neverending Journey