Administrative harassment is ongoing, probably worse than ever. While I’m still fighting to get my one-person’s company postal address changed, a quest that’s ongoing since summer 2023 and which cost me countless hours and headaches, I now have some additional troubles brought to me by our public service. It’s day number ten with a blocked personal bank account, triggered by SIE PANTIN (France’s corporate tax office)’s claim of over ten thousand euros, which I didn’t have. There’s no reason why they hit my personal bank account, it’s actually not even on file. More logically, the same amount has been withdrawn by the same entity a couple of days later, this time from my company’s account. That’s better, but still there’s a major problem: the withdrawal of this bi-annual VAT pre-payment shouldn’t have taken place at all since my accountant closely followed that SIE‘s requests to declare and transfer value added tax money on a monthly bases. Anyway, not only this whole amount shouldn’t be due at all (and is now missing on my account, probably leading to not being able to pay my salary at the end of the month), furthermore I have an unusable personal bank account until that mess is cleared. Unfortunately there’s no functional means to get in contact with this surely lovely tax office in Pantin, impossible to call and still no response to an email request to fix the situation from over a week ago. So hello welcome from chaos land where you should never even think about creating a company, even a simple one like mine. Apparently there’s not much I can do, other than wait. I did manage to schedule a phone meeting after days of waiting, and even if it got postponed by a couple of days I had a human on the line, who unfortunately could only explain what happened but had no authority to look into the real issue. I did learn that I got a letter, claiming those twelve thousand plus euros including the fine, to my old postal address… which I failed to change myself despite trying for over a year, counting (now with true and legit Frenchmanwoman Mathilde, who has the necessary authority to sign documents online, we still keep hitting other walls for now over six months). To be continued.

Back from a good and intense week at the cottage, working every day on the Tischtennis-Raum with dad. Max turned ten in the meanwhile, and returned stronger than ever from his cycling club’s one week training camp in the Alsace. Good that I will be kicking some pedals with the Gleïzes brothers in two weeks in the Basque Country—my alternative to the World Beach Championships in Portugal that I’m not competing with France GMO—to push the day a little farther where Max will finally out-pedal me.

Routine is at full swing, and my chronic lateness on adding pictures to this page remains unsolved. It takes me around 6 months to bring photos to the blog, a delay that I’ve never managed to really reduce. Ten days ago we’ve been once in Arles for their Rencontres de la Photographie which are now calles Les Rencontres d’Arles. Pictures to come in around six months. Spring 2026.

Summer and the sun are gone, Autumn and the rain is here. Routine too, which is not too bad. Tomorrow it’s only three more month until Christmas, this should be celebrated.

France has a new Prime Minister, again. The country is on strike, again. And I just finished the setup of my new Macbook (it’s already number 4, in ten years), since the old had heat sensor problems that would have required replacing the motherboard (i.e. the engine).