The tyranny of French bureaucracy

Applying for a French bank account is like trying for a permit to open a Christian bookshop in North Korea. Failing twice, I thought I’d try instead for a post office account. I went for an interview armed with passport, proofs of address, pay slips, old school reports and my inside-leg measurement. But it wasn’t enough.

I was shown into a booth and sat facing a masked woman name of Maud. Maud and I were separated by a clear Perspex divide. ‘I’m listening,’ said Maud. I slid my shiny new passport through a slot in the screen. ‘I would like to open a post office current account,’ I said.

Maud glanced at the passport’s identification page. ‘What else have you got?’ she said. I pushed through my ‘Attestation d’hérbergement’ form, signed and dated by Catriona, affirming that I resided at the address given. Maud skimmed it with a professional eye while her hand turned an imaginary crank. I shovelled in the rest of my paperwork: pay slips, bank statements, an electricity bill, a medical bill addressed to me. ‘What is your occupation?’ said Maud as she studied these. I described myself as an auto-entrepreneur magazine columnist.

Maud then sat back and released a fast-flowing torrent of momentous, heavily accented French, none of which I understood. ‘Could you say that again, only a bit more slowly?’ I said. If mutual comprehension was the first man down in this encounter; the second man, goodwill, now pitched forward face first into the mud. In a hardboiled manner Maud repeated the speech, then sat back in her chair and folded her arms in a gesture of ineluctable finality. Yes, the primrose path to a post office account was, I gathered, barred.

‘I take it that’s a no,’ I said.