soupagirl
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Posts posted by soupagirl
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Thank you very much to those who replied. You have put my mind at rest. As always, excellent and speedy advice from this forum.
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I'd be grateful for some advice. My mother (UK resident) died in July this year and her estate will be divided between my sister (UK) and myself (French resident) . The total estate is way, way beneath the £350,000 UK inheritance tax threshold. I need to know what to do as regards French tax regulations, I've tried to search the internet but can't find anything relevant to the situation. Will I be liable for French inheritance tax on my share of the estate, and have to make a separate declaration for the impots ,or will it be a case of declaring the interest from my UK bank account (where the funds will be transferred) as normal on my French tax return next year? Thank you very much to anyone who can help.
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A couple of years ago I accompanied my mam to the funeral of a gentleman who had been one of her bowling friends for many years. The crematorium was full of ladies and gentlemen most of whom were in their 80s and 90s. It was announced, '"We will now listen Bill's favourite song." Was it 'My Way'? 'What a wonderful world'? No it was Erasure's ' I love to hate you.' And nobody batted an eyelid!My mam died this July just before her 92nd birthday. And her song? Perry Como's 'Catch a falling star'. Lovely.
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In addition to all the sensible advice above - put down mouse traps. The little dears will always find a way of getting in and it's not very pleasant to arrive at your holiday home in the springtime to find all the surfaces of your property covered in their 'calling cards'. (On that particularly memorable visit we found a dessicated mouse corpse on the pillow of my daughter's bed, and a squirrel hibernating in the kitchen sink).
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My newly acquired useful phrase - last night at the village fete I went off to the loo (I know, too much information) and the very strong water pressure in the very small sink resulted in me going back into the salle des fetes looking as if I'd been out in the rain.'T'es pas sortable!' declared my friend. I can't take you anywhere? I like it.
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Here in the Landes planting of a mai is very common. Yes they are planted outside the mairie celebrate the new maire/conseil municipal. But they are put up for birthdays, retirements, new neighbours, all sorts. Last month it was our neighbour's 60th, sadly we weren't there as we were in England for a funeral, but her friends turned up with the mai, decorated it and put it up (after digging the hole for it while she was out at work), she didn't know anything about it until the knock on her door. They'd brought tables and set them up in her garden laden with all sorts of yummy stuff, loads of bottles of aperitifs and wine. The mai will stay in place till she invites all the people who originally erected it to take it down, and then puts on a meal for them to celebrate. Pine trees were always traditionally used for the mais here, the region being until a few years ago a healthy thriving forested area. But Tempete Klaus followed rapidly by an epidemic of parasites decimated the forests, and cutting down a pine to make a mai is now illegal. Now they are more usually made of very tall bamboos. We've had two mais put up for us, one in 2004 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of our buying the house, and the second was waiting for us four years ago when we finally left England and came to live here permanently. I think it's a brilliant custom.
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It seems as if everyone has a different experience in the exchange of licences depending upon where you live, and we were among the lucky ones. We took our dossiers to the sous-prefecture in Dax at the beginning of January and all the documents were accepted with no translation required. Nor were we asked to provide stamped envelopes. Contrary to what we had expected we did not need to hand over our UK licences,which did not expire till March, and be given a temporary attestation. We were told it would take three months before we received the new licences, and when we had not heard anything by the beginning of March and were starting to panic we went back to the sous-prefecture, where OH's new licence had arrived that morning so he handed over his UK one in exchange. As mine had not yet arrived I was given a licence number to track its progress on the internet, and a week later I was back at the sous-prefecture for my own little exchange ceremony. It was all straight-forward and stress free, unlike most encounters with beaurocracy here. Just be aware that there might be a three month wait, and plan accordingly.
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Update: After Saturday's little miracle (ITVHD) everything went off again. However, yesterday Himself was back up his ladder a-tweakin' and a-faffin', can't say he's not a tryer. And this time he re-tried giving the LNB a tweak, as suggested by Martin many pages back in this thread. And this time- success! Not perfect of course. Some regional BBCs now with strong signals. BBC2 NI/Wales. No BBCHDs but ITVHD strong. All Channel 5s but no 4s. Definitely weather conditions are playing a big part in this, as over the course of yesterday it was showery and signals started to break up. And at about 11pm last night (clear and calm) we were back to receiving all the channels that we could receive pre-satellite switch. So now we are convinced that given the right conditions we can actually receive them, but a larger dish is required to make the reception more consistent. I hope that more people are finding that things are improving. And thanks again to our experts on here!
PS Rumours that putting in a Scottish postcode would improve things proved in our case to be without foundation. Yes it gave us STV, but everything else remained unavailable. But it was worth a try.
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After a week of no BBC/ITV, this afternoon we managed to get ITVHD. It did break up a bit, but Himself is over the moon as he is currently watching Man City v Chelsea. Not a perfect picture, but a step in the right direction. We also now have all the Channel 5 channels. Still no BBC though (apart from RB2), and no other ITV apart from HD. Think we still need a bigger dish. Thanks to everyone posting on this thread, it's been very helpful.
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I think maybe you can have ours as a wok. Lost EVERY channel this morning ( apart from QVC!) up till then we had all ITV and C4.
On second thoughtsI think I will keep it and turn it into a water feature. I'm going to do a bit of homework and catch up on Plus Belle La Vie.
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Signal strength/ quality 90% / 85% respectively, best we usually can achieve, after yesterday's tweaking. In the southern half of Landes, between Mont de Marsan and Dax.
Have all ITV channels, Ch 4 lot too. Oh and of course Al Jezera and the Bollywood channels. Not sure whether we had Channel 5 to start with - I think it was on the Humax channel list but don't think we watched it......but we definitely don't have it now. But we do have BBC RB2 which I don't think we had before.....so we CAN watch some of the winter olympics!
Sounds like a dish the size of the face of Big Ben may be the only solution.
Thanks for the reply, keep up the good work!
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Just like to say thank you to Sweet 17 for initiating this thread, and I hope it continues to be prominent in the listings for some time to come. I've been following it with interest and it's now providing an interesting and informative contrast to other threads I'm watching at the moment - the 'how to get BBC back' ones!
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Lost all BBC as of Thursday night, we thought it was due to high winds. Himself was on the roof all day yesterday tweaking the satellite but to no avail. then I looked on the forum and found this thread.
We are in the Landes, with a 1m dish.
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I do appreciate the replies, and thank you to all forum members who have taken the time to contribute.
I don't know whether I am any further forward, but it was worth a try....I have faith in the people on this forum, who have done a lot to help me in the past, and I try to reciprocate/contribute when I can, or feel I can offer something to a thread.
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Thanks for the reply woolybanana, it's much appreciated. However we've not had a lot of dealings with a notaire apart from the house purchase 20 years ago and a 'donation entre epoux', so he doesn't really know us at all. Which is why we are going to the bank, where I will explain what they are signing, as you suggest.
Unfortunately when we rang the shares people in question they said it's not acceptable for the maire of our village to sign, which is a shame because he does know who we are and has helped in such situations in the past.
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We are in the process of transferring some UK shares from just in my OH's name to joint names, and have been asked to send documents proving my identity. I need to get the documents verified by Financial Advisor/Solicitor or Lawyer/Bank or Building Society Official/Embassy or Consular Official. So I am considering a visit to our bank for the purpose. The problem is that we have been provided with a very specific statement which needs to be written and signed by the bank official. In English obviously. And no-one in our bank speaks English. I want to provide them with an accurate French translation of the statement, so that they know exactly what they are signing, and I don't have a great deal of faith in Google Translate for this sort of official documentation. So please, is there any expert in 'legalese' English out there that could help me out?
The statement:
" I,(name of certifier), certify that this is an authentic copy of ( full name of investor)'s ( full description of document), as witnessed by me on (date of certification)."
The certifier must sign the copy, stating their job title and professional address or their contact telephone number.
I know I could have a fair stab at it but I really need this to be spot on .
Many thanks in anticipation .
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Cheers Chancer, will try it. Thanks.
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This has been an interesting post, especially the bit about blocking numbers by using *351#. Does that work with SRF too? And (sorry if this sounds a bit thick ) do you tap in the code immediately after you put the phone down?
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Hi DD
I was in the same position as you last year, my S1 ran out January 2013. MrC has health cover as he has worked here in France. Like you I wanted to put things in motion to make sure I didn't have a gap in cover, and went to CPAM at the end of November with the completed ayant droit form plus the usual wheelbarrow full of documents, but was told it was too early, and to come back in January. We went again on January 2nd, handed over the forms and were told all was OK, and we received a letter from CPAM two weeks later confirming my cover as ayant droit. My new CV came soon after. So it was sorted out quickly and there was no gap in cover. Don't forget to inform your mutuelle, if you have one, of the change to your status, send them a copy of your new attestation.
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Chevaux/ cheveux is my 'thing' I know exactly which one I mean but always end up saying the wrong one and getting my horse cut. My most recent one was a corker though - when asked what we had eaten at a local fête meal I said 'aiguilles' instead of 'anguilles' and only realised my mistake when my friends had picked themselves up off the floor after rolling around like Smash Martians. Just as you say, it's a good job we can have a laugh with friends!
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I would have thought it would have been easier just not to answer any calls with 'secret' or whatever on the display, let the phone go to answering machine. Anyone really needing to speak to you would identify themselves and leave a message. We changed our phone last year to one with a caller display. Since then, not once has a caller displayed as 'secret' even let the phone ring long enough for the answerphone to kick in, let alone leave a message.
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Thanks again CeeJay. Your seeds arrived yesterday, were sown by lunchtime and I now have my fingers firmly crossed! Thanks again.
(tried to PM you but had trouble sending it)
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No it's not free. It's £10.99. Only free on Kindle. Unless I'm looking in the wrong place. Never mind.
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I took my France Individual form in to our local French tax office 2 years ago at the same time as I handed in our first French tax return. I left it with them, but I don't think they knew what to do with it, and I suspect it was filed in the bin, as I heard nothing more and calls to HMRC confirmed that they had not received it. So last year I filled another one out and repeated the process, but this time asked the officer to stamp the form for me, and pointed out the bit on the form asking French tax offices to forward it to Paris for processing. The lady duly stamped the form, and handed it back to me..."Oh,no, you'll have to send it off to Paris yourself." Which I did ( with a covering letter explaining that this is what I had been advised to do by my tax office) and received confirmation from HMRC within a month or so. I reckon it's better that way, at least you don't worry about an important bit of paper going missing in the ether of beaurocracy, and you are responsible for sending it on.
Hav'nt a clue
in The Lighter Side
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