The French

Last week we went to France for a few days to complete on the purchase of a small house . People in the UK are generally quite rude about the French saying they are slow, bureauocratic and arrogant. All of this may be true but, conversely, it was very refreshing to deal with real people, rather than computers, throughout the process. It made me realise how automated, computerised and depersonalised many of the services we use have become in the UK. When we signed the contract we sat with the seller and the estate agent as the notaire read through the contract in detail. We have lost something over here in our relentless drive for efficiencies and cost-reduction...and what's more we probably haven't noticed we have done so.