Bournagain

It’s not that often that I get really frustrated, but this week dealing with the public service just about sent me into orbit. I needed to register a car – should have been a simple enough procedure. My expectations have been honed after 10 years of playing “the France game”. I know the rules, and not a few little techniques to help you get ahead a few squares. I know that there are a number of absolutes that cannot be avoided: such as the fact that the number of supporting documents your application is missing is inversely proportional to the amount of time you spend studying the list. There is ALWAYS at least one missing. The other absolute is that deciding when to turn up to hand in your application is rather like Russian roulette – you seem to have about one chance in five that the service will be closed without any forewarning on the day you take time off work, pay for a carpark (miles away) and show up. There is an even higher likelihood that the day before the mysterious closure it will be totally impossible to connect with a person on the telephone who is able to tell you the opening hours for the week when you sensibly phone ahead to make sure you don’t get caught out. I know how it works – and I know that there is absolutely no point getting frustrated, it’s just the way it is.

But my stoicism seemed to have left me when I most needed it this week. I had prepared everything carefully, went into town by car because I had another appointment afterward (always a bad idea), found an expensive carpark, and walked to the Prefecture. The usual building was still closed for renovations (which seem to have been going on so long I foolishly thought they must have finished by now…). So I retraced my steps and wandered around looking for the temporary shelter of our local outpost of the Republic. I went in, obediently took a ticket, looked up at the screen and discovered that my number was not the radar – not even on the far distant horizon. So I hunkered down thinking I would get a bit of work done on my smart phone. Smart phones are very useful insofar as their owners are smart enough to have charged them up before leaving home, which sadly was not the case that day.

So I sat, surveying the crowded room and the curious dance of people craning their necks, eyes fixed on the numbers flashing on the screen, until all of a sudden someone bolts up and hurries through a dark passageway into the unknown. Gradually the numbers began resembling my own, until my own bingo moment came a full one and a half hours later. I sat down at my booth, handed over my dossier which had been checked and rechecked for the required papers. Exactly 37 seconds later my little pile was handed back to me, incomplete. I had forgotten to enclose a photocopy of my wife’s ID card. My head nearly hit the desk … Il y a TOUJOURS quelque chose qui manque! Without the slightest sympathy I was informed that it was impossible for me to leave the application and just drop off the wretched photocopy later on. I would have to come back and go through the whole rigmarole again.

As I stomped back to my car my mind was full of the lamentations of the righteously indignant. I was internally shaking my fist at the universe – it just seemed so inhumane, that we are imprisoned in the web of a faceless, robotic, all-imposing administration and can’t get out. It was as if my whole life was being reduced to a pile of paper destined for the shredder. It was just so wrong, yada yada yada.

I was still steaming as I was driving through our neighbourhood later in the afternoon, when I saw a sight that put everything in perspective. As I turned the corner a woman raised her head and looked straight at me. As I drove past in my nice new car (the reason for the afore-mentioned visit to the Prefecture) I just had the time to notice that she was a Rom, with a huge blue plastic jerry-can at her feet, struggling to fill it at a fire hydrant. She would then have to lug her precious water several hundred metres back to the camp where she lives in a caravan, probably with 4 or 5 children, in the former carpark of an abandoned warehouse. This place is reputed as an eyesore, rubbish and graffitti everywhere – a piece of land that has been tied up in some legal dispute for at least 10 years, and left to go to ruin.

I know that living this way is part of their culture and identity, and that pity is an emotion that can be patronising. These people live off the grid, and it is sometimes tempting to think how nice it would be to avoid the endless paperwork required to live legally in this country.

But I couldn’t help comparing my life with the life of this woman, thinking of her daily existence (subsistence?) and I heard a still small voice speak to my heart: Have you any right to be angry?