If none of us has any money, we can’t employ or buy services from each other

Editor's January blog

This should be a cheery column about all those jolly resolutions we make and break at this time of year. But I think we’re all a bit jaded, this January, for such nonsense?

Most of us are vacillating between stiff upper lip, we’ll get through it, heroism and explosions of blinding panic.

The speed of devastation has been breathtaking. One minute we were tittering over the names of US sub-prime mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae - who sounded like a pimp and his hooker. It was all happening an ocean and a channel away. Then suddenly, even here in Normandy, we’re heading for the promo shelves, switching off the heating and living on vegetable soup.

There may be a clutch of lucky readers out there with plenty of money, safely stashed in euros, and good luck to you.

But few of us are immune. A huge service industry here in Normandy depends on a fresh supply of British incomers and the financial stability of the already-resident and second home-owners. Others earn a sterling income or pension which has gone into free-fall, reducing their spending power.

If none of us has any money we can’t employ or buy services from each other, can we?
And spare a thought for the British estate agents - their French bosses can’t offload them fast enough.

Then there are all the French businesses, the food shops, restaurants, supermarkets, garages, DIY stores, garden centres who have benefited from the incomer spending power. They are the next dominoes to fall.

The tentacles of Mac and Mae are long indeed. A recession only reminds us that clever people choose Teflon careers like dentistry, debt-collection and undertaking.

The usual recession advice is stuff like: give up that (second) foreign holiday, don’t replace the car this year, put off up-sizing your house, don’t buy designer clothes etc.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not acquainted with an awful lot of expats who take multiple foreign holidays, drive spanking new cars, lust after a bigger house or even remember what a designer garment feels like.

As the two families on pages 4-5 demonstrate, most of us have already downsized our lifestyle since moving to Normandy and don’t have have much slack left in the family budget.

So, while we may have managed to plaster the traditional smile across our faces for Christmas Day, it’s hard to keep it in place as we contemplate 2009.

But let’s try. Some of us do have mortgages, but probably a good 70% of British incomers do not, so won’t be facing home repossessions. Even if the value of your sterling pension has plummeted - it is still an income. Many of us have already withdrawn from full-on, must-have, consumer culture and learned to live with less. Our gardens are big enough to have a go at veg-growing (see the potager guide on the gardening pages). Trips to the UK are cheap and it’s a good time to move back if that’s what you want.

OK, we’re clutching at straws here and it’s tough to be cheerful when you’re waking up sweating at 3 am. But we (Brits) are supposed to be good at this kind of Blitz-mentality thing and it won’t go on forever. (How long, exactly, my daughter keeps asking? When are you going to stop giving me pocket money in IOUs?)

People will go bust. While some dance a jig when a competitor goes under, others feel a frisson of fear: there but for the grace of God...

So, whilst fighting for our own survival, we should also be kind in 2009. When it comes, recovery will be swift and sweet. Let’s hope that it’s not too far away. In the meantime: as Happy as possible New Year to All.

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2008 ended with sad news in our household: the children’s wonderful Russian great-grandmother died, just short of 100 years old. Baba Valia’s life spanned modern history: born into Imperial Russia, she lived through the Bolshevik revolution. In Siberia, in labour with my husband’s mother, she trudged through frozen wastes to reach a maternity hospital. Having moved to Moscow, she survived Stalin’s purges and during WW2 watched her children run along the rooftops catching Nazi incendiary bombs and burying them in buckets of sand. When I first met her, the country she had lived almost her entire life in, the Soviet Union, was collapsing and her grandson married (me) a foreigner; her grandchildren are scattered across the globe. Throughout this incredible journey she remained calm, strong, kind - and always cheerful.