Flush

It’s human nature not to dwell on the less attractive, but nevertheless unavoidable aspects of existence - death, taxes, politicians, that stupid background music as you scroll through the sky tv listings – and drains. Given that only larger French villages are blessed with the luxury of mains sewers, your choice to live out in the sticks means a previous blissful ignorance of where your effluent ends up is about to change.

And it's all a damn site more complicated than you'd imagine. A simple pipe to a covered hole in the ground (above which the grass is suspiciously green) is, je le regrette monsieur, pas acceptable. Not only is the size of the fosse now dictated by how many bedrooms and bathrooms you have, the filtration from it is governed by the steepness of its site and the permeability of the soil. And how well you get on with the marie / guy from the local water company (either or both of which can make the process plus facile, so keep a smile on your face and couple of bottles of red to hand).

It's likely though that unless you're building something from scratch or have decided to convert a barn, you'll inherit an existing system - which probably won't meet the current (and constantly changing) regulations - but works just fine. You'll be told that you have to deal with this non conformance in your first year of ownership or (supposedly) the might of the state will fall upon thine shoulders. But instead of getting worked up about poo related issues (life's way too short), you immerse yourself instead in your new French life, make friends with just about everyone in your little commune, discover that almost no one's fosse is up to scratch , join the local chasse and become friends with the mayor. Which is handy, given that enforcement of the drainage regs is down to him, and he's got enough going on without getting embroiled in merde (figuratively and literally). All that's left then is to organise the bi annual emptying by the guy with the honey wagon – and to wonder where he puts it all.