Having got back from 2 weeks away of conference and holiday I actually thought I'd struggle to find something to write about this week. I got back to BRIF on Monday evening, caught up with work etc. on Tuesday and have been merrily ticking over ever since. Then I finally got to the Internet and discovered a gapping hole in my French bank account.

The culprits of what is, as far as I'm concerned, the theft of nearly 2000 Euros are the French tax authorities. These are the nice and efficient people I spent considerable time with last summer to correctly calculate then pay my outstanding taxes prior to leaving the country. The procedure, as I then understood it, was that I would receive about now a final 2003 tax return form which would take into account any monies I'd received after the calculation. I would then pay the difference (if any) and that would be that until I decided to take up fiscal residence in France again. To my immense pain, but not to any great surprise, I found that this was an overly optimistic view of how things actually work. The French tax authorities, or "le fisc" as they are locally known, still apparently believe that I live in France and should continue to pay taxes. It's nice to know that the different departments talk to each other and don't just randomly fleese honest ex-residents like yours truly willy-nilly.

This rather sizable issue is not the first I've had with the fisc. Last year, after paying what they agreed was the best estimate they could make, I received a message asking for an additional 5 euros as there had been a mistake in calculating my habitation tax. They sent me bank details and I paid the 5 euros over the Internet within a week. 3 weeks later they took a further 5 euros as apparently the department that takes money doesn't talk to the department that asks for more money or even the department that receives money. I'm being generous in assuming there are 3 departments and that the problems come from an excessive segregation of duties as there may well be just 3 muppets sitting in the same room making a complete hash of this on their own. Maybe it's just one bloke who spends his days either on strike or scratching his arse because he knows he'll never be sacked due to gross incompetence. Ah the joys of the French civil service eh?

Naturally I complained about the 5 euros they'd taken and received an entirely satisfactory response from a woman assuring me that they would be paid back in January. Well, January came and went, and so did February for that matter. As I started to reach for my laptop to send a caustic enquiry my Mum sends me an e-mail this week in which she'd attached a letter from the fisc explaining the situation. Apparently, and I can even quote the tax instruction that defines this, the fisc does not reimburse amounts less than 8 euros regardless of where the discrepancy might come from in the first place. Let's think about that for a moment. According to this law the fisc can quite happily, and in all legality, take up to 8 euros from each French tax payer (presuming they pay by direct debit) and then say they can't pay them back. That can't be right can it? Furthermore, if everyone complained like me I'm fairly sure it would cost them more to respond to them than the money they'd stolen in the first place.

So maybe the point of the law is not to generate extra tax revenues after all. Maybe it's a cunning ploy to generate extra work for civil servants and so justify the excessive staff levels these departments have. Either way I've sent in my complaint complete with numbers and dates, asking for all the money to be given back (including the initial 5 euros seeing as they now owe me more than 8 euros) as well as 5.60 euros to cover the bank charges I paid for an unexpected and large overdraft. Naturally the letter was written in rather a stroppy and sarcastic tone, if only to see if these cretins are capable of understanding the subtleties of their own language.

I had another encounter of the blood-sucking variety this week. When I got back to my room on Monday I turned on the light (for twas dark) and started to unpack. After a few minutes I glanced around the room and was overwhelmed by the number of insects that had gathered around the light and on the walls. I'm not talking about a few daft moths and the odd mosquito either as there were hundreds if not thousands of the buggers. I then noticed that various spiders had been quite industrious in my absence and had enough food to see them through to next winter. It wasn't a pretty sight, and I had neither the energy nor the tools to deal with it on the spot. In the end I just got into bed under my mosquito net and hoped things would be better in the morning.

Usually I don't believe in adopting an ostrich mentality when it comes to problems, so imagine my pleasant surprise the following evening when there were significantly less insects about. Sadly, the biggest difference concerned the tiny midge-like things and not the mosquitos but you can't have everything. Luckily the latter aren't too bright and haven't found the 2 gaping holes in my mosquito net to be really annoying at night. My nocturnal ritual is now to kill any mosquitos in my net when I go to bed. This isn't that easy as they're a lot quicker at night compared to morning when they are sluggish and weighed down with all the blood they've managed to drink. So far I've done a pretty good job but I do have permantly itchy feet as they are never covered and have some really attractive veins just gagging to be bitten. The way forward is, surprise surprise, one of those plug-in repellants but I'll have to go to a neighbouring town to buy one. In the meantime, my collection of dead mosquitos on top of the net is growing, and my resident lizard is growing fat on all the insects hanging around for him (or her) to eat. And no, I don't really need to know what sex it is so spare me your ideas on how to find out.