France has changed

This is a Blog. I am not sure what a Blog is but Heather and Trevor say it is a bit like a diary. Heather and Trevor were respectively my director and producer for the time I worked in TV. They must be right because they always have been.
“ Tell them about your life, now” they said “ people want know what has happened to you. Tell them about France.” Because, you see, in early ’05, after nearly 40 years of Journalism, my last newspaper (The Newcastle Journal) breathed a deep sigh and defenestrated me. I became ‘retired’; sold my little farm and went to live in France. Was that a good idea? Well, yes and no – it is not like Powburn and,, thanks be to God., it is nothing like Alnwick. I first came to France in 1987. I had just become a columnist for the Daily Telegraph – a happy situation that lasted me for 17 years. The DT sent me to France to write 2,000 words on French Hunting, so I had cause to be fond of France. So when I became a retread, France seemed an obvious place for it to happen. The trouble is that over 30 - places and people have a habit of changing.
France has changed. It had a reputation for supplying punters with absolutely spiffing browsing and sluicing. It is now all too easy to eat very badly in France. The problem is the demise of the old style, family run, cafés - these have been rapidly replaced by pizzerias and ‘snak bars’.
The thing that has not changed is the French appetite for bureaucracy and form filling. This python like process strangles even the most simple seeming matters. An example is required – let me give you a 'Storm'. We get lot of storms that gather in the Atlantic, then wind up into an 'Orage' with thunder, rain and wind. They tend to be full of noise and dury, but fairly local in effect – very gallic. We had a bad one the other night – Thunder rolled, roof tiles crashed, roads were blocked and big straw bales rolled about. There was an unfortunate lady nearby whose chimney collapsed through the roof. She rang the insurance company to send someone to fix it.
'We would do this with pleasure said the charming French man, 'but the records show that there was no storm at La Tillier'
.Roads Blocked, trees uprooted, roofs smashed.... what was it then; a military training exercise?'
“Ahha!” replied M.Lassurance; “we have consulted the Bureau du Meteo and it has assured us that there has been no storm at La Tilliers and that is official, so we deeply regret....” or in other words – get stuffed – we don't know what caused your problem, but it was nothing insured with us.