Three days to go

About once a month a helicopter flies over the chateau and surrounding area, Jean-Pierre our loyal retainer tells me its doing an observation run on behalf of the departments tax authorities.
I ask him to elaborate
“well” he says, “you know how you have to fill in a form at the Marie (town hall) and wait for three months if you want to do any alterations to your house” “Yes” I say “these days” he continues “folk just please themselves and don’t go through the normal channels, its also becoming harder to find tradesmen to do the work for you even when you do get permission, so as a result people are having the work done on the black by immigrant workers from Portugal and Poland and the like”
“ok” I say “so where does the helicopter come in”
“Ahh, well, they’re checking to see if they can see any unauthorized work being done, they also take photos and some little bloke in an office compares them with last months pictures, if they see anything they think is suspicious the gendarmes pay you a friendly visit”
They’ve been doing this for the last two years now and to my knowledge have caught no-one