I had to reregister Guy’s scooter yesterday and I wasn’t looking forward to it – one little bit!
I set off on my Honda scooter mid-morning, dropping Guy off at the train station so he could work in his dad’s office for the afternoon and then set about trying to find the Centre Administratif by the back roads – scooters with an engine slightly larger than a lawn mower are not allowed anywhere near the motorway. After a few u-turns I managed to find it and headed into the section which deals with all things to do with foreigners and vehicles.
The campus looks like the Drumchapel housing estate in Glasgow, which Billy Connelly once described as ‘a desert with windows’. It’s all anonymous, soulless, concrete blocks and it must be one of the worst postings for a French civil servant.
I’d last visited it six years ago to register my Alfa and on that occasion, it took some three hours to complete the process which was an improvement on the time I had to get a work permit, which took 3 visits totalling some 6 hours! C’est la vie en France!
It was noon when I arrived and any hope that all the Frenchies would be having lunch was misplaced when I got to the ‘Carte Grise’ section (grey card – registration document). Thankfully, they have the first booth manned (or even ladied) by a person who checks that you have the right paperwork – not that it’s completed correctly – just that you have the prerequisite number of documents. A quick glance at mine and all was in order – I was given my queue ticket. Number 607.
I rushed into the communal waiting area, looked at the electronic queue board and saw they were at number 571 – I was 36th in the queue! Being a nerd, I worked out that the seven booths were handling cases at the rate of one every 10 minutes or so which meant about a 50 minute wait!
I wandered outside to see if I could have a quick lunch but apart from a coffee machine dispensing cups the size of a thimble, there was nothing – not even a chocolate vending machine. Billy Connelly was right – it was a desert! This wouldn’t do.
I wandered from office block to office block looking for the staff canteen (or restaurant as they call them in France) and found it in the 3rd building. I got as far as the entrance, looked at the menu and was heading towards the stack of trays when I noticed that everybody was swinging their ID badges – foiled! I suppose that even if I’d got in, ordering my steak ‘bien cuit’ (well cooked) would have given the game away, so I trudged despondently back to the Carte Grise section.
A look at the queue board – number 577! They’d managed to process precisely six people in the 15 minutes I’d been away looking for some grub.
I managed to find a seat and started reading the registration documents and then I read them again and again. I studied my water bill (you need a utility bill to prove your address) and then my mobile telephone bill (just in case they didn’t believe the water bill). I was just about to start reading my UK driving licence when the TV in the room burst into life. But why start it half way through a film?
It didn’t need sound. It was obviously about a bank robber who had managed to escape from a prison van and who had taken a female hostage in her own home. He then ‘persuaded’ her to drive him through the police cordons but as he hid in the back seats with a gun pointed at her and she winked vigorously and nodded backwards when the police stopped her, they obviously thought she had a severe case of Tourrettes syndrome and waved her through.
It was just getting to the exciting part when my number flashed up – booth number three.
Well – the face on the woman could have stopped a runaway bus but she had the most enormous pair of boob-a-loobs (just in case the kids read this) and the lowest neckline I’ve seen for years. Where to look? Look at her face and she’d be upset. Look at her chest and she’d be even more upset so I handed my sheaf of papers over and looked at the ceiling.
After a few minutes she handed me a slip of paper which said ‘bon operation’ which means everything was in order and ordered me to the ‘caisse’ – the payment desk.
Off I went and was called up almost immediately. 30 seconds passed and the lady burst into a monologue, not a word of which I understood. She saw my puzzlement and asked if I understood. I said, ‘a little’. So she started again – same words only slower this time. It was something about the new Carte Grise being in the reservoir (printing queue maybe?) and said it would be posted to me. I offered her the requisite 22 euros and she replied that it was free and wished me a good day.
Now at this point, I got a trifle worried. You are supposed to get a new carte grise on the day. In my blog of 24th April, I told the story of buying Guy’s scooter in what appeared to be a rather shady deal and said it ‘was all too good to be true’. At that precise moment I could see me wandering outside, being surrounded by gun-wielding riot police, thrown to the ground, handcuffed and dragged off to Grasse prison for possessing a less than legal PGO Big Max.
No sooner had I reached home and told J the story and said the police were no doubt on their way, a police siren sounded on the road below.
Watch this space!
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