French Letter: Citizens’ Advice for August, with or without the circumflex

This week I was contacted on the phone by a government official from Le Bercy, the French finance ministry, wanting to know the exact size, in square metres, of our home, including the extension we had built four years ago. This was for tax purposes. I thought I had supplied  the necessary information online some months back, and the fonctionnaire – who was perfectly nice – appeared to agree. 

Be that as it may, he still required to know if our home, less the extension, was more than or less than one hundred square metres. Off-hand, I wasn’t sure, but I thought it was probably under. “So less than one hundred square metres? Hmm. Very well. But what about your central heating? What type do you operate.” Electric, I said. “What sort of electric?” I couldn’t think of the French for overnight storage heaters and blustered something that made him laugh. “It really doesn’t matter, Monsieur,” he said, guffawing. “It is not important. Désolé.” And that was that. He rang off. 

Now I have to hope that I haven’t landed myself in the soup. But I don’t think so. To switch metaphors, the bark of the Bercy is often worse than its bite. The problem these days is that everything is done online, so that the paper trail I used to stuff in a drawer has been replaced by my virtual archive, to which I do not possess a reliable key. 

A clue to how things might work out came the following day when I was thanked online for my cooperation and invited to receive each Thursday by email a newsletter listing public information relevant to my activities. Would I care to participate? 

I said I would, and the first newsletter has since landed in my inbox. Item one was a reminder that from August 1, receipts for goods bought in supermarkets and stores across France would only be provided to shoppers on demand. Another triumph for Net Zero, I have to assume, though, to be honest, I have never worked out what I am supposed to do with the slips of paper listing off my purchases. Ought I, scrooge-like, to have checked what was printed out against what I took away in my shopping bags, or should I have pressed them into an album, like postage stamps? Either way, that burden of choice has now been lifted from me. I am relieved. 

Item two informed me that if I was a home-owner I should have informed the ministry by August 1 of the names of everybody living under my roof. Again, I thought I had already done this. But it’s hard to be sure. Given that I may have missed the deadline, I was left wondering what the next step might be. Should I expect the midnight knock? 

“Vos papiers, Monsieur! S’il vous plait.” 

Less discommoding was the discovery that I have “rights” when I check into a French hotel, which is good to know. I have the right under the Penal Code to cancel a reservation, subject to the contract entered into, and I cannot be denied a room on the basis of gender, physical handicap, national origin, weight (too fat?), physical appearance (too ugly?) or sexual orientation. 

The same applies to travelling by coach. Woe betide the bus company that refuses to issue a ticket to anyone who is not a white, heterosexual man, in perfect health wearing a blue two-piece suit and dark blue tie. 

“À Bercy, on agit!” the newsletter informs me – Bercy gets things done. Thus, I am informed that if my car was set alight during the recent riots and I did not have the requisite level of insurance, I can be compensated by the personal order of Bruno Le Maire, the finance minister, and justice minister Éric Dupond Moretti. Terms and conditions apply. Payouts are capped at €4,601, subject, as I understand it, to the claimant having a taxable income not exceeding €27,606. 

And finally … “Have you thought about online platforms to plan your holidays?” If so, Le Bercy recommends that you compare prices shown on the various platforms and that you check any offers made against the price offered directly by the hotel. Punters are warned to beware of quotes that encourage them to decide too quickly. 

Quite so. 

I will end with a piece of information of my own, for which I am indebted to my friend and sometime colleague, Anne-Elisabeth Moutet. I had wondered why August (the month) is easily understood in German (August), Dutch (Augustus), Spanish and Italian (Agosto), but comes out as Aout (Oot) in French. As I should have guessed, our little friend, the circumflex, over the “u”, used to be there to indicate a missing letter, in this case the “g”, giving us (I think) Aogut. Yes, but why remove the “g” in the first place? Why not make it Auguste, like the name? And why did the Académie française remove the circumflex as part of a language reform ordinance in 2016? Who are these people and what was the point? Clearly, I still have a lot to learn. 

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