Big Red Bus to Roma

Princess 1 has now returned to Chateau Coldspot courtesy of Eurostar, Second Class, arriving at Avignon yesterday evening. Apparently she went backwards for half the way but le Comte and I were unable to conjure up much in the way of sympathy. Staying at her Grandma’s an extra couple of days hardly counted as being stranded, we felt. Now if she had been forced to walk to Dover and follow it up with a bracing cross Channel swim, then we would have been impressed. In fact le Comte is struggling to believe she went to dear old Angleterre at all and maintains she was holed up in her boudoir the entire week bribing Princess 2 to take her up biscuits and lemonade.


This afternoon Princess 2 together with several teachers and 42 fellow Latinists have departed on a big red bus for Rome. They are to travel overnight and then are expected to be sufficiently awake to appreciate their first historic monument – the Sistine Chapel. Michael Angelo could have hoped for better one feels.

The trip has required the usual plethora of documents. The first is a European Health Insurance card. In theory this is now obtainable via the internet. I found the site easily enough and then spent half an hour looking for the password. Slowly it dawned on me that this password was not to be found in my filing in cabinet or on the website and nor would it arrive via my email address. Instead, it would arrive by post at some unspecified later date. This is obviously another department charged with funding the French postal service.
I waited passwordless two weeks and then paid a visit to the local Health Insurance office where the gentleman in charge explained that there was a problem with passwords (quelle surprise!) and in less than thirty seconds had ticked the necessary box and ordered the card. Last Tuesday both the card and a temporary password arrived in the post under separate cover. A temporary password??

The other essential document, in addition to a passport or ID card, of course, is the Sortie de Territoire. This piece of French bureaucracy leaves Anglo-Saxons speechless, but the French genuinely can’t understand how other countries function without it. The SdT is required before a French child can leave French territory without her parents. It has to be signed by both mother and father (unless one party can prove they have sole custody of the child) and is only issued for a specific period. I have taken several French children to dear old Angleterre and can confirm that the S d T is always very carefully scrutinised at the airport.
So Princess 2 required one for the Latin trip.
The vexed question was which territoire was she leaving, since her passport stated quite clearly ‘British?. In reality the French state does not care one atom if she leaves its territory. But the school could not quite believe this, so my conversation at the Mairie proceeded as follows:
‘Bonjour Madame.’
‘Bonjour. I would like an S d T please.’
‘Très bien, you will need to bring in your Livret de Famille.’ (this is a family record book cataloguing all changes to the family – birth, divorce, change in custody rights etc.,).
‘No, I’m sorry, nothing like that exists in England. I don’t have one.’
‘Ah. Oh.’ (pause)
‘Passports?’ I suggest brightly, having done this before.
(Relieved) ‘Yes passports. And this form, signed by the Princess’s father.’ (hands me form)
‘Who lives in England.’
‘Ah. A custody paper then, showing that you have full custody of the Princess.’
‘Sorry, I don’t have one. It’s all very amicable. He knows they are here.’
‘Ah, vraiment?’
‘Yes, they are not absolutely necessary in England unless custody is disputed.’
‘Mon Dieu!’ (aka: ‘Is your country truly civilised?’) ‘I’m sorry but her father will have to sign it. The Mayor can’t falsify documents, you know.’
I knew. Unless, of course, it suited him.
So I sent the piece of paper to her father, who sent it back signed and with a copy of his passport, as requested. And the SdT was issued with a beaming smile. We had ticked all the boxes. No matter that the document was for a child that did not actually exist. That is, a French child. To allow her to cross the border between France and Italy unaccompanied by her parents. That is, thanks to the Schengen agreement, a non-existent border.
C’est comme ça, la France.

I explained this to Princess 2 over the dinner table.
‘So I don’t exist,’ she concluded glumly. ‘Great.’
‘It’s not exactly that you don’t exist,’ I reassured her. ‘It’s more that you’re, well, fictional. The Sortie de Territoire has made you up so you can cross an imaginary border.’
‘Even better,’ grumbled the youngest Princess.
‘Never mind, Sis,’ Princess 1 laughed. ‘There are worse things than being fictional, You’re right up there with Harry Potter.
‘Spose.’