I'm lucky enough to have been pretty busy recently (and picked up another mandate from a lovely couple in Dubai last night) and popped down to Jarnac first thing to do some banking.
Sadly I usually do this online but I had some cheques to pay in the old fashioned way. I'm glad I did as the welcome I get from the staff at BNP Paribas is heart warming. As soon as I walked in the door I was greeted by name by Sylvie the counter clerk and the manager stopped what he was doing to come out, shake my hand and chew the cud for five minutes. I remember it was like this when I first opened a bank account in 1978 in rural Surrey too.
Anyway, I popped into the market for some bread and fresh fruit & veg before deciding to play hookie and have a sneaky coffee in my favourite bar. I wasn't being too naughty as my phone is now a mobile office and vibrates discreetly every couple of minutes as emails come in. It's incredible how quickly this is changing the way we live & work but that's for another time.
The point is that it's a scorcher here today and I plonked myself down on the shady terrace watching the world go by. Every now and then someone I know would pass by and we would chat about the weather, Euro 2012, the weather, a house that is shortly coming to market, our respective vegetable patches, the weather and the fate of the euro.
I stayed for about an hour and a half - read the Charente Libre, responded to emails from a couple of clients and put the world to rights with Maurice & Martine, the owners. I could have stayed all morning but had to go into a local mairie to check up on a planning issue.
The bill for my truant morning.....one euro. Yup, my colleagues in other parts of France will now be going green with envy, the Café du Theatre in Jarnac charge one measly euro (and not a centime more) for the most perfect cup of coffee served on the terrace in one of the prettiest towns of SW France. Local networking comes free.
Now that's good value!
www.cognacproperty.com
