Soft fruit and doctors

I wasn’t sure what title to put on this as there’s no single theme to this post – it’s more of a diary update. The settled weather (cold and frost overnight, sunny and pleasant during the day) continues along with my digging programme and I have now planted all the soft fruit (petit fruit) so raspberries, blackberries, redcurrants, blackcurrants, white currants (groseilles) and gooseberries (groseilles a macqeraux) are all safely in. The apples (pommier), fig and grape vine are soaking ready to go into the ground today.

Working in the area that will be the potager at the front of the house is a good place for exchanging conversation with people as they walk past on the road. A neighbour (well, a kilometre away – which passes as a neighbour here) came in to see me this week, she introduced herself as Sue, is English and with her husband Steve and Stanley the dog she lives in a house that we have cycled past many times.  They have been here for eleven years and have three gîtes.

My licence has been approved by Féderation Français Hockey and I was asked to play in La Baule’s next fixture on Sunday provided I could get a medical certificate. One thing I’ve been slow on is transferring into the French Health system (been saying “I must do that next week” since August) so I went to the Caisse Primaire Assurance Maladies (CPAM) in Vannes first thing to register – it was all very efficient and took about a minute; 45 seconds of which was trying to get a good photocopy of my birth certificate. I’ll receive my Carte Vitale (health card) by post. Then I went into the doctors to get an appointment for 17:45. The maison medicale is very new and next to the Mairie – I think the floor tiles are the same make as ours but all one size. When I went back for my appointment there was no receptionist and only one doctor left who was seeing patients and answering the phone at the same time – everything was very relaxed and very different to the manic Fleet surgery I’ve been used to. I saw Dr. Ambroselli (she is the third and newest doctor in the practice starting in September 2010) and she was kind enough to allow me to speak in French right until the end when she said: “Vous parlez Français bien. It’s a pity, I was hoping to practice my English!” she has very little accent, has friends in Southampton and knows Hampshire. Anyway, after rechecking my blood pressure twice she’s given me a certificate for hockey, tennis and cycling (but not competition cycling – I need a different certificate for that) so that should cover most things I choose to do. €23 for fifteen minutes and I’ll get 70% back when I get my Carte Vitale which I thought was a bargain and about a third the charging rate of my dentist in the UK.

Over the years we’ve made a little use of the French health service; Trégunc when Adam had a sickness bug (very good); St. Nazaire when Adam had viral meningitis (excellent) and Vannes for Barbara’s head injury and helicopter evacuation (emergency response good but hospital poor). Our surgery in Fleet had six doctors, various nurses and clinics and always reminded me of a busy London station. Maybe it’s just a numbers game, Fleet had six doctors’ surgeries, maybe thirty GPs in all serving a population of 20,000, Noyal Muzillac has two doctors’ surgeries and four GPs serving a population of 1200.

Our friends Kevan and Gloria who run the chambres d’hôtes in the village have sold up and are moving to rented accommodation up the road in Limerzel while they get pet passports for their family of four cats and work out where their future will be; in France or the UK. I’ll be helping them on Tuesday to move their big items with a van from Intermarché.