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Tom 58

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Everything posted by Tom 58

  1. Théière wrote... "They are aluminium and don't rust, apart from the chassis. but I get what you mean, have a worse car than theirs" Worse is a relative term. As a long standing Voiture de Collection Landy keeper I can confirm that many oncoming drivers do tend to stick well to their own side and tailgaters usually maintain a relatively respectful distance. Perhaps lack of visibility has something to do with it because the old girl can chuck out a smidgen of black smoke if she is working hard. But at just 145k kilometers the vehicle is barely run in; insurance is ludicrously cheap; parts are inexpensive and widely available; everything is extremely easy to repair with basic tools (hammer and crowbar for many jobs) and she's appreciating in value year on year. If that's worse, what can possibly be better?
  2. Because huge swathes of the population of many so called Francophone countries can't speak French.
  3. Feathering paint is also called 'faking it in' around Nottingham. I don't know whether it's just a local expression or if it's more widely used. Any road (that is pure Nottingham), properly applied it can be very effective.
  4. KIS that cajal recommends are good and I've used them but unfortunately they don't do Apple White.
  5. What AnO says exactly echoes my experience. FT don't like you going into their external box and when they discovered my soldered connections they made a big song and dance about it. They replaced my efforts with snap on connecters which are absolutely impossible to open and fitted a new junction box inside. Made absolutely no difference. The line is still corrupted between the house and the exchange so have swapped over to Wimax whilst waiting for G4 to arrive.
  6. Going off track slightly, if you want to slow night traffic down, limit the brightness of headlamps, Bright headlamps are not such a problem in this relatively poor rural area, where the vehicles are mostly not very new but the amount of people driving around with only one headlamp alight occurs with frightening frequency. If you are not familiar with this practise you could, in murky conditions, easily mistake the oncoming light for a motorbike.
  7. Roads are dangerous places and I never intended to suggest they weren't. As albf rightly says, fatalities on French roads in the early seventies were around 30,000 pa but it must be remembered that there was no maximum speed limit on many open roads then. Today the fatalities have tumbled to less than 4,000, which is significant progress. However, every death is, of course, one too many.
  8. I am rather biased in this respect, as I was first taught to drive a tractor, then an Austin 7, together with the friend who owned it, by an A7 enthusiast. That sort of rings a bell... my first was a Dennis ride-behind mower and my second car, after a Ford model Y, an A7 with a driver's seat which had an inflatable cushion.
  9. I'm really puzzled by the extreme criticism of drivers in France expressed by many on this thread because that has not been my experience at all. For the first five years I used to drive practically every working day in and around Paris with many long trips into the country at weekends, looking for a retirement property. Latterly I drive less but on a wider variety of mainly relatively narrow roads and with a greater range of hazards. Perhaps more by luck than by judgement I have managed to avoid any accidents or fines over the past seventeen years and it's certainly not because I always scrupulously obey every rule. I do like to 'make progress' when on a journey. I feel comfortable and confident driving in France and find the vast majority of other drivers are generally predictable and competent. The few who aren't are usually fairly easy to spot and to avoid.
  10. Like you Chessie I was an IAM member (car) and wish there was something similar in France. There is Prévention Routière but that is more a movement to encourage good behaviour on the road. Has anyone tried finding a retired driving instructor or examiner for on the road lessons?
  11. What is the Bullington club?
  12. "Electronic brakes and stop start. Two things that did not need to be invented." Rather like push button hand brakes or numeric speedos in the centre of the dash, where everyone can witness your slightest transgression.
  13. FC online seems almost designed to be difficult to use.... maybe they still want you to telephone them and speak to one of their dealers. But a good rate of currency exchange, especially for relatively small amounts, is surely only viable if it's totally automated. So that's why I now feel uneasy about dealing with FC.
  14. FC Exch were good and I used them last year instead of Currency Fair, who were my previous choice. However, i now use Transferwise, https://transferwise.com/user/account who are by far the best to date. Example; five minutes ago the inter-bank rate was €1.1357. If you had transferred £1,000 their total charges would have been £4,29, so you would have received €1,130.83 in your French bank, most likely later this afternoon.
  15. As albf says you can get systems just to treat 'grey' water. Look up 'traitements des eaux ménagères' and http://www.eautarcie.org/04a.html
  16. There are different sorts of putty and this one is outstandingly good... make absolutely sure you get the white one. https://www.toupret.com/enduit-professionnels/enduit-specialisees/mastic-blanc-lsmabla05.html
  17. I was trying to be diplomatic rather than trying to be disingenuous. One never knows the situation of other people and as lindal 1000 has pointed out there will be those who have separate accounts.
  18. Our mutuelle payments and refunds are relatively simple to organize because they all come from or go into our one joint account at our French bank.
  19. That is exactly our situation; our mutuelle refunds me for my wife's expenses and we sort it out amongst ourselves. Or is it that your mutuelle gives no refunds at all for your own expenses?
  20. The Rocket fizzled out today unfortunately because he can be so entertaining to watch. Looks like Mark Allen, who beat him, is now the odds on favourite
  21. Good luck Evianers. If you become French citizens you will also be able to vote for as long as you live, which is something denied to UK citizens who have been abroad for more than fifteen years.
  22. Ronnie might get Trumped but my money would still be on the Rocket. It was a super match yesterday between the two Marks, especially when it reached five frames each and both with 45 points. Talking of really boring programmes, how about Bargain Hunt? Two teams chasing tat that they almost always manage to sell at a loss. Money for Nothing is almost as bad.
  23. Needed new wiper blades for my Mondeo and I like Bosch blades so I searched in Germany naturally, France and the UK. No great surprise when the UK was the cheapest but what I'd stupidly forgotten was wiper arms pivot differently on LHD and RHD vehicles. As a result UK Mondeo windscreen blades, although exactly the same lengths, don't fit European Mondeos. Fortunately it was possible to trim the mounting blocks at an angle so that the blades would eventually snap into their holders and click tight... but it was a very close shave!
  24. "Tom you must be rather old to remember 1600ff to the pound." Old is a rather relative term but I bought my first handful of ffs during a school exchange in 1954. Tom
  25. "I remember 10 francs to the pound " I remember circa1,600 francs to the pound!! Tom
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