Stéphane
Stéphane is the builder that every home make-over junkie dreams of meeting.
Creative, thoughtful, thorough, and with an instinct for how a room should look and feel, he has saved me from quite a few questionable design decisions.
There's invariably a kind of dance involved. I'll make a proposal and sketch out some drawings that Stéphane will price. Then he'll start work, and halfway through I'll realise that things look a little different from how I'd imagined. I'll remonstrate with him, he'll insist that his way is better, I'll think about it overnight and most often agree.
At Christmas time, Stéphane will appear at my house laden with gifts; bottles of wine, home-made conserves, and treats that his glamourous wife Stéphanie baked that day.
It's not all joy and light of course; creative people are often sensitive souls. I'm guessing things haven't always been easy for him.
Certainly, as is the way with many French artisans I've met, he has much to say about the working conditions for men (and women) in his line of business.
A heavy tax burden and social charges have made it increasingly difficult and less rewarding to be an entrepreneur in France. Taking on staff is expensive and high-risk; workers are well protected by strict labour laws. As a result, many traders work long hours and solely with family. For a while, Stéphane worked alongside Stéphanie; currently, he's in business with his brother.
Emanuèle Macron has plans to reduce red-tape for entrepreneurs like Stéphane, but for many it will be too late. Decades of experience have been lost as seasoned builders gave up and retired.
At the other end of the labour market, apprenticeships seem rare, and I worry that substantial practical knowledge and understanding of France's vernacular architecture has been lost, to the future detriment of the French and Francophiles alike.
For a tradesman, Stéphane is somewhat of a renaissance man. Growing his own organic fruit and vegetables, his family lives on a smallholding lower down the Cotentin peninsula.
Plagued by builders' aches and pains, he's a fan of complementary medicine and spent four months in Thailand last summer on a Buddhist retreat. He returned a much slimmer man, and says his lifestyle has been transformed - cleaner eating is clearly working for him.
His professional brilliance aside though, what I most like about him is his steadfastness and centred-ness; "on est bien ici" he says, "life is good here", and I believe him.
