soupagirl

Definitely in Grand Frais, they sell small bags if you only want a few, or large bags (kg?) both for the same price, 1.50€-ish. The big supermarkets sometimes have them in the packets-of-salad section, but I find them more expensive.

Thanks for the replies, they cheered me up! And yes, Richard 51, a couple of hours away from OH isn't the end of the world...I just feel sorry for the poor souls sitting next to him when he starts to snore.

We're flying to Rome this week with Ryanair, and online check-in time was 9.45am today. OH had his finger poised on the button bang on time. Guess what? No possibility of sitting together, the seats allocated are several rows apart. Fair enough, if all available pairs of seats were spoken for. But oh no.......you can only select two seats together if you pay an extra 8€, and basically it seems that if you are not prepared to pay up, you can go whistle for your seats together even though there are some available. Now I know 8€ isn't a lot, but there's be another 8€ for the return flight, and, it's the principle of the thing. Next thing will be they'll install rows of those ceiling straps found in buses, and you'll have to stand up holding onto one of these for the duration of the flight, unless you cough up 20€ for the privilege of sitting in a seat. Will be avoiding them if at all possible in the future.

I reckon 'online shopping' is a concept that is so much taken for granted in the UK but here in France it just doesn't happen. I can't see the point of the 'Drive' at the big supermarkets...I mean if you've got to drive to the supermarket to pick up your shopping you may as well go and push the trolley round yourself too and choose your own stuff. I agree, it would be wonderful if online grocery shopping & home delivery ever took off, especially for people in rural areas with no transport, but I can't see it happening. Not just groceries either. We ordered a new fridge online it took 5 weeks to be delivered to a transport depot in a town 30km away and we were told it would be delivered last Tuesday. Didn't arrive. Rang them up. 'Demain' they said.Same happened next day. Thursday afternoon we rang the depot and told them enough was enough, and we went on Friday morning to pick up the fridge ourselves. In contrast, in England my daughter's washing machine finally gave up on Friday morning. She ordered a new one online which was delivered and fitted next day.

In the UK houses seem to be 'tarted up' for sale and presented in the most flattering way in photos in estate agents' windows and on websites. Here in France this is only just starting to happen. I remember 20-odd years ago people were quite happy to have their homes advertised for sale using photos of living rooms with saggy sofa beds/ piles of toys/ clothes airers, and it was rare to see a photo of a property showing the exterior view. When we bought our house here we were shown it, along with several other properties, by an estate agent without having seen the photo of it in their window.....if we'd seen it there we probably wouldn't have gone in to ask about it, as it was just a photo of a wall.

The first daffodils are out...and we're having a BBQ this afternoon! Shall I put the liberty bodice back in its mothballs?

Oh that reminded me of one of the time some French friends asked what we'd had to eat at a village fête the previous evening. I told them 'aiguilles' and only when they'd finished rolling around laughing like Smash Martians I realised my mistake. It was 'anguilles persillées' on the menu.

Loved it! 'Whisht, garçons, haad yer gobs' made me laugh. But I still prefer 'Git big teeth And git big gob And git big googly eyes' in the original!

You can always hear a pin drop during the Voeux du Maire at the beginning of every year, and there's always standing room only. Could that be because as soon as the Maire has finished his speech, the doors of the adjoining sports hall are flung open and in come a dozen or so people pushing supermarket trolleys full bottles of aperos, eagerly quaffed by the assembled, and trays of nibbles are passed around ?

Netto Shampooing Laine et Soie. No it's not shampoo!

Hello Mint, I mentioned (page 5) that we were trying to sign up with Sosh but couldn't because they wouldn't accept our credit card for the 1€ sim card. I tried the 'help' line but they put the phone down on me. Eventually and with much deliberation we have gone for the SFR offer you just mentioned, and having read the rest of this thread I'm pleased that we have avoided the trauma and stress of changing operators! Hope you get sorted.

We are also attempting to sign up for the 29.99€ sosh deal but have encountered a problem - they ask for 1€ for the mobile phone sim card, which must be paid by credit card. Unfortunately the site will not accept any of our credit cards ( and it says to choose an alternative payment method, but no alternative is given). As we have to give them bank details as part of the application you would have thought they could take the single euro out with the first month's payment, but as it is unless we can find a solution they have lost a potential customer for the sake of 1€. Any ideas anyone?

Hannah St.Vincent-Petch. That's a corker.

I found this thread interesting. A couple of months ago we went to our local Carrefour, bought stuff in the store and fuel from the garage, using our credit card. A couple of days later, checking the card statement, we discovered that we had been charged twice for both transactions. A phone call to the bank and a visit to the store brought about a speedy refund. But this was obviously not a one-off with Carrefour and we will be checking our statements very carefully from now on.

Him Indoors is bereft. He would like nothing better than an earnest manly discussion about the flat-pack-four and the back-side rule, but here deep in rugby land if he so much as mentions the football they look at him as if he has lost the plot. So all he's got is me, and because we are originally from deepest football land I have to confess to a bit of interest but this wall-to-wall every day football is driving me to distraction.

We also had problems with SFR in November last year. The internet and phone all went off, we went to our nearest SFR shop where we were told to ring 1023 despite not having a telephone to do so. Two mobile phones were drained of credit in the following days trying to get someone to come out and look at the problem and being foisted from one department to another. Eventually someone did come out and tested the line and the box, agreed it was knackered and told us SRF would be in touch by text to organise collecting a replacement box. Then we heard nothing for a week. Eventually on the advice of our French neighbour we unplugged the box and took it, all its connections and paperwork to another SFR shop, plonked it on the counter of their 'customer services' and told them that the box was not fit for purpose, it was no use to us, they could have it back and we wanted the promised replacement. Now. The flustered lady got on the phone to someone 'on high' and after a lengthy conversation she eventually emerged with a new neufbox. As we were driving home, I received the long-awaited text from SFR telling me that the new neufbox was ready to be picked up that day. Coincidence? I think not. Anyway the thing has been working well since then but there was no mention of reimbursement following our fortnight without internet or phone, and the monthly charge seems to be constantly rising without notice, so we are looking to change provider though it appears that they are all as bad as each other in the customer service area.

Got the 2047 this morning, I agree it's a bit daunting when things have changed when you just seem to have got used to the old forms. I reckon I'm going to wait till I get the 2042 and see if anything there's changed, before I put pen to paper, and keep my fingers crossed that someone like Parsnips will be along soon to point us in the right direction.

I have to confess to a guilty addiction to this type of programme. Most people on them seem to have such a serious case of rose-coloured specs that I want to give them a good shake. You hear so much about the gite / B&B business being all but saturated, and see restaurants and bars closing down all over the place, yet still they come. But of course good luck to them all. And wouldn't it be a good idea if someone actually made a programme about the pitfalls of moving to a new country, the administration and bureaucracy it entails ? No matter where you move to I doubt very much whether it's simply a case of upping sticks and plonking yourself in another culture and another language, opening a bottle and happily watching the sunset. For example, a lady on last night's programme, hoping to run a B&B, seemed flabbergasted to receive a large volume of rules and regulations detailing the legal requirements of such a business. I don't think I've seen one programme, whether it be the house-search Place in the Sun variety or the present new life one, showing a 'warts and all' picture of making such a move. But then it wouldn't make such good TV would it?

We have just had exactly the same experience this week, a 49€ unauthorised payment to Amazon on a credit card, when we hadn't bought anything. Wanting to find out what was going on we did a bit of internet research and found many sites dedicated to this, an awful lot of people have had unauthorised payments taken by Amazon as their ' annual subscription' to Amazon Premium. We rang the bank who told us they are getting more and more calls about this. It's all very well saying 'surely it is up to the customer to read before clicking' but surely it's up to Amazon to sort out this rather devious method of relieving people of 49€. It was easily sorted by going onto the Amazon site and cancelling the subscription, the whole amount was refunded to our bank today. After cancelling I immediately received an email from Amazon confirming the cancellation. It's strange that they didn't send me a 'welcome to Amazon Prime' email when I allegedly signed up for it a month ago.......do you think they were reluctant to let me know what was going on? Next time you are on your Amazon site, have a look in the top left hand corner. If, beside the logo, you see 'try prime' (or premium, depending which country) then you're OK. On the other hand, if it says 'Amazon Prime' then somewhere along the line you have inadvertently clicked something to subscribe to this.....expect an unexpected withdrawal of 49€ from your bank account soon.

OOOOOOh - 'all of a sudden' ! OH and I were having a discussion about this phrase just yesterday, we both remember being in trouble at school for using 'all of a sudden' instead of 'suddenly' .

This site is interesting, it's not just slang but idioms etc. http://www.languagerealm.com/french/frenchslang.php

My Collins Robert dictionary says yomp. It also says bonk as in 'faire l'amour'. You might get more than you bargained for!

That's brilliant. It just sums up the whole situation.

McVities digestives (plain or chocolate) and Philadelphia from Carrefour, Intermarché, LeClerc. Just in the ordinary biscuit and cheese aisles, not the one set aside for 'strange foreign stuff'.

Hi Mrs Trellis. This is a late reply, I'm sorry but it may be useful for another time. This recipe is so simple and always impresses, I found it somewhere on t'internet ages ago. For the cream cheese I use plain Philadelphia which is widely available, for double cream I use 'crème entière de Normandie'. Plonk any fruit on the top- the recipe says strawberries but obviously any fruit will do. Sorry it's come out as all one paragraph, I cut and pasted the whole of the original and I can't seem to be able to edit it to look right. "Cheesecake in a glass: This is the perfect end to a midweek dinner party, the kind you didn't know you were giving until presented with a guest list mid-afternoon. You simply chop strawberries, crush digestive biscuits and whip cream cheese and cream, then layer up quickly in some waiting glasses. Like this, they can stand for about an hour, so you can make them up just before you sit down for supper. If you want to make this in advance – and it's a versatile recipe that doesn't need to be made last minute – simply leave the glasses in the fridge, layered up with the digestive crumbs and cream cheese mixture and covered with clingfilm. Top with strawberries on serving. Serves four. 200g strawberries(or 1 big punnet) 1 tsp caster sugar 4 digestive biscuits 100g cream cheese, at room temperature 2 tbsp icing sugar 125ml double cream 1 tbsp lemon juice ½ tsp vanilla extract 4 small glasses (of about 150ml capacity; I find a small martini glass looks prettiest) Quarter the strawberries, then cut in half again, to give pretty small dice. Put into a bowl, sprinkle with caster sugar, cover with clingfilm and shake the bowl once or twice. Leave the berries to macerate while you put the biscuits into a freezer bag and bash with a rolling pin until you have a sandy bag of crumbs. Measure the cream cheese and icing sugar into a bowl and whisk by hand. Add the cream, lemon juice and vanilla, and whisk gently to combine. Divide the biscuit crumbs equally between your four glasses, and arrange in the bottom of each one. Spoon the cream cheese mix on top, dividing it equally between the glasses and covering the biscuits. Divide the sugar-shiny strawberries between the glasses, to give a glossy, red-berried layer on each glass."