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chessfou2

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Everything posted by chessfou2

  1. Yes, it's a fashion trend. When we moved here in 2006 none of our neighbours had heard of panais (although it was common here several hundred years ago). Gradually, they started to appear in the shops - first the 'grandes surfaces' then the smaller shops (or was it the other way round?). Then they started to appear on restaurant menus and that launched an explosion of panais. Great, because we love roast parsnips with shoulder of lamb or roast beef.
  2. They also have to be registered in the EU. So, UK charities OK for 2019-20, but I don't know what happens next year (1/12??) and presumably not at all 2021-2022. It was interesting that this year there was a separate line for our Notre Dame don as against the others.
  3. Yesterday I went to my podologue. First time in more than 3 months. Bliss! Next Thursday it's my coiffeuse for first time in 4 months.
  4. Technically, we should use the daily rate. It does not take much longer, not least because I have to do that for some of my invoices & URSSAF returns, but in total we have no more than about 60 items that are not already n €..
  5. Tarn, Lot & Dordogne now changed to green*. Surprised to see Cantal orange and L'Hérault & Gard green - maybe they will be next to change. *http://www.leparisien.fr/societe/sante/deconfinement-votre-departement-est-il-en-vert-orange-ou-rouge-voici-la-deuxieme-carte-provisoire-01-05-2020-8309385.php
  6. UK stats count only deaths in hospital (except, I think, ScotGov includes care homes). Therefore, I think to get a roughly equivalent approximation of UK-FR deaths, add 50-60% to UK number. Insee provides interesting stats of 'surmortalité' (excess deaths 2020 compared with 2018/19), e.g. Haut-Rhin +120%, '93' +70+%. My neck of the woods +8%. Also very interesting to compare UK & Ireland - similar countries, each with poor levels of ventilators (well below EU average) at start of pandemic, now with a Covid-19 death rate in England 2.5x that of Ireland.
  7. Depends on age. You probably mean this Green Goddess: https://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/green-goddess-diana-moran-80-14209060 but when I hear Green Goddess I always think of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Goddess but Diana Moran definitely looked 'looked better (and probably still does https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_Moran)
  8. Oof! €10+/day (+ about €0.60/day gas and a stère or two of wood /year NOT day!).
  9. Michael D Higgins, elected 2011, re-elected (by landslide) in 2018 for another 7 years. A really nice man.
  10. I also remember PatF posting good sense (unlike some!). I am especially sympathetic, having had a similar problem on more than one occasion (I've been working with computers for more than 50 years, but they always find a way to get you).
  11. Hmm, less than 6g cheese/habitant (17kg/3115), hardly a gueuleton!
  12. To find a mairie that can (should?) help: https://passeport.ants.gouv.fr/Services-associes/Ou-faire-ma-demande-de-passeport-CNI More here, especially about the pré-demande: https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F1341
  13. As I understand it, the procedure is meant to be (at least largely) dématérialisé. I think that the link I gave has (somewhere!) a description of the procedure, starting with ANTS (https://passeport.ants.gouv.fr/Services-associes/Realiser-une-pre-demande-de-carte-nationale-d-identite-CNI) and what to do when your Mairie says "not here mate". From memory, the recommendation was then go to a different Mairie, since many are not up to speed with the dematerialised system.
  14. NH, you don't (or should not) need to wait. Once (or about 2 weeks after) appearance in JO you should be able to proceed. Since I'm not quite there yet, I'm not really au fait with all the details, but these people are: https://www.easytrangers.com/t/forum-2-naturalisation-par-decret-etapes-adn-cni-passeport-ceremonie-apres-publication-jo/6331
  15. Via Toulouse ('décret), I needed to give my birth cert, birth cert of each of my parents, their marriage cert and my marriage cert. Double check the list on your préfecture's web site. Nothing for our children, just their details on the CERFA form. On the CERFA form, against my parents details, I marked 'décédé(e)'. Death certificates were not needed. However, if there is one thing of which you can be certain it is that you can never have too much documentation!
  16. Not at all "bit" is a huitième of an octet. Obviously, ALBF is no great expert in computer science. Then again, not sure what the French would make of Norman Hunter & "Norman bites yer legs". Although I do know that many of our French friends were amused to hear about England's grass verges and soft verges.
  17. "The businesses are Chinese run". Distinctly racist comment, no? Are those people citizens of the PRC? If they are, they are indeed Chinese. Or are they French (mostly 2nd, 3rd generation)? Oh, and are they all carriers of coronavirus? As for gite ownership in Dordogne, I, like you, have no idea. Just to whet your appetite; I have been to the Dordogne about 5 times, all but once for work (Is this what Trolls like to eat?).
  18. "how do Americans, Australians, Chinese, Japanese...well anyone across the world for that matter able to live and work in the EU ?" [ALBF] With difficulty, with uncertainty, with substantial annual costs, without FOM, and ... they're NOT European (unlike us)!!
  19. Lots of reports from 'Dordoyneshire' and nothing from Vosges - suggests you limit your viewing to France 3 Nouvelle-Aquitaine rather than France 3 Grand Est. btw, here's a recent one (albeit paywalled): https://www.vosgesmatin.fr/france-monde/2020/01/30/les-adieux-britanniques-entre-amertume-et-joie
  20. Mint, they do indeed. They must pass a B1 level English language test, they must pass the (really stupid) Life in the UK test (£50) https://www.thelifeinuktest.co.uk/uk-citizenship-test.php, provide all sorts of documents and pay a fee (in advance) of £1330. In France it is B1 language, several kg of papers (not sure it's actually any more than in UK) and a fee of €55.
  21. Not ours. The 'big' one down the road does.
  22. Ah, things change. Everything towards centralisation and 'simplification' (i.e. reduction in number of fontionnaires). In 2006 our little Mairie (commune of 500+) handled everything for us. 2011 & 2016 it was the préfecture, especially now (since at least 2016) fingerprints have to be taken. Like nationality. It used to be handled by the préfecture départementale. Now, it all goes through a regional centre (for Occitanie there are 2 - Toulouse for old Midi-Pyrénées and Montpellier for old Languedoc-Roussillon). For Midi-Pyrénées, except Haute-Garonne, there used to be about 14 fonctionnaires working on naturalisation (roughly 2 per dept.), now there are just 3, all in Toulouse.
  23. Queues at préfectures can be impressively long. Going by my own experience (Aveyron & Toulouse) they are beginning to be reduced by the requirement to take RDV on line for more and more things. So, Aveyron used to have queues of maybe 30 or so trying to get a Titre de sésour (mostly East Europeans and Maghrébins). Now the online RDV system seems (my wife was there last year) to have 'dematerialised' the long lines. When I was last at the préfecture in Toulouse (Jan 2019), they still had a huge queue every day taking the place "d'assaut" first thing in the morning (which I avoided by obtaining an RDV mid morning). The assault is by people with no RDV (all naturalisations are by RDV) who have to 'clock in' to the system, once inside the building, taking a numbered ticket for titre de séjour, asylum or whatever else (there are something like 6-8 categories). They then find a place in one of the waiting rooms and hope that their number is called before closing time. From TV reports, the queues at Toulouse are nothing compared with those in Bobigny, Lyon, Marseille, ...! By the way, the naturalisation process mostly takes 2-3 years (4 in Lyon, 5 in Grenoble) and is very much a 'parcours du combattant'. Currently about 1/3 of applicants are turned down, mostly within a year-18 months. Amusingly(?) there is a big anglophone (primarily English) Facebook group about applying for French nationality where many of the posters are complaining about the slight tightening up of regulations later this year such that all applicants will actually have to be able to speak, read and write French to a rather minimal level (previously only oral, the interview, usually 90 minutes - obviously in French -sifting out those whose French language or values are not up to scratch).
  24. Félicitations! So, a bit over 3 years start to finish? It seems that the average is 2-3. There was one poor guy (décret 4 of 2019) who was série 24 of 2013!! So his dossier had been at SDANF for 5.5 years!
  25. 'Triple' nationality (for which I am waiting - likely in May-June) is possible, or even more, depending which other nationalities you have - in some cases you have to give them op. France is among the many that do not require you to give up another nationality. That's lucky for me because one of my current two is UK and in 2018 the Home Office was charging £372+ to give it up.
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