The Infamous "Carte Grise"

There's things you know. And there's things you don't know. And then there are things you don't even know that you don't know. 

When you move to a new country, particularly one in which they speak a different language, a lot of your life tends to fall into this third category. You live your life in blissful ignorance until your hand is forced by a situation and you're suddenly aware of something that you didn't know existed and that you now need to deal with. Pronto. 

Let me try to explain using our car as the perfect analogy:

(Some) Things I/we know:

1. We know how to drive and we know we need to drive on the right in France. 

2. We know we will get a car provided by the club. 

3. We know that we really actually need a second car. 

4. We know we have some savings from NZ that will allow us to purchase a second car in France. 

5. We know that going to a dealership is always a bit more expensive but that it does provide extra peace of mind as you get guarantees etc. 

^^ These are all things we know!

So, 

*We buy a car* 

We actually bought the car in the second week that we lived in France. June 2017. You can read all about it, here. 

(Some) Things I/we don't know:

1. We don't know how to insure our car. We rope in Nigel, Iain's agent to help us. We get it sorted. 

2. After owning the car for a wee while I realise we've not put a WOF / MOT on it. We don't know how the MOT / WOF equivalent system works in France so we do some research and see that due to the age of our car, it is only required every two years. We forget about it for another year. June 2019 rolls around and we start to enquire into getting a "Contrôle Techinique" as that's us had the car for two years. 

A (major) thing I / we don't know that we don't know:

1. That we don't actually have the official documentation stating that we own the car. The ownership papers. The "Carte Grise" as it's known in France. We only have the old one from the previous owner which was given up when he sold the car to the dealership. 

As we run all the paperwork that we do have through Google Translate and begin to understand what we do and don't have, a mighty weight begins to descend upon us. We know this weight. We've felt it before. It's the weight of French Bureaucracy. We cast our minds back to everything we were trying to do on those early days when we moved here and remember that when we bought the car, we had it registered / insured at Roxy's place as we didn't have an address yet. It's likely that mail has come through and, with no CLELAND or McAVOY on any of the post boxes in Roxy's building, the postie has either left it sitting to the side or sent it back. Whatever's happened, we don't have this essential piece of paper. And we're now in a tricky position. We need a CT for the car but we can't get one without the Carte Grise. 

This is going to be a long road to getting this fixed. 

LM :-(