From Reporter Issue 93

CALL ME ANYTIME... 

It was just about the time Margaret Thatcher took over in Britain. Mairead Barley—“I feel Irish and I’ve an Irish name but I was born in Wolverhampton”— was running a restaurant in London. “Frankly, living and working there was getting me down. I’d been on holiday to the Côte d’Azur and like a lot of people before and since I decided I’d spend some time here. Somehow I became a fixture and this is—what?—my twenty-fourth year.”

Mairead did all sorts of things. “I worked on yachts, I ran a household in Monaco, I looked after villas. Jill of all trades, you say, and mistress of none? Actually, that’s not quite true. I became very well informed about the sort of problems people have here and the solutions. Not just from my own experience but from listening to many other incomers I came across in my work. About four years ago I decided to go into the advice business in a serious way and I set up Mairead Information Services (see Pink Pages ad). I knew that other people were doing something similar but quite often they were themselves relatively new to the area and their advice wasn’t all that reliable. The blind leading the blind, you might say. I started with twenty years of Riviera living behind me….”

So what sort of service does Mairead actually provide? “Well, my clients are usually people who’ve come to live here, either full-time or for a significant part of the year. I say to them whenever they have a problem to call me. Some of the requests I get are very routine—how to obtain a carte de séjour, for example, or the ins and outs of renting and buying property. Then there are practical things like finding a good plumber or an English-speaking dentist or—to cite a recent enquiry—a garagiste who can deal efficiently with a Ducati motor-bike.” Some situations can be delicate as when she’s been asked to talk to a “difficult” neighbour.

Has she ever had to admit defeat? “Not really. In the spring I was asked to organise a wedding and some of the details were a bit special but it finally went off really well. I suppose the only time I can’t deliver is when people with no evident qualifications and no French ask me to find them a good job. The kindest thing is to tell them to go back home…”

Mairead Information Services - Tel/Fax:  04 93 65 10 09
Mairead Information Services - Mobile:  06 86 50 75 25

© Patrick Middleton 

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