Owens88

youi can sign up to villarenters.com who will promote you anyway. You can route credit card payments through them for a small fee. John

Retricted - is a little narrow, may widen it, just wanted something different with no drivvel. Sleeps 6 - gives a better idea as to the size I think Yours, no comment on the site but v pricey! You obviously must get bookings for high season   Yes I should have said narrow. I did like the effect but it was perhaps too narrow. I also like no drivel. Our pricing is right for the area and property, though we have a 'no hidden extras' policy (apart from bedlinen alas) whereas some of our competitors build up the cos significantly from the headline price. And yes August is full !   Good luck

I like the honesty, sleeps 6 but more comfortable for 4.   Otherwise I wonder whey you have restricted the width of the page so much.   Feel free to critique ours. Good luck.   John

>Have a good look around the checkout and make sure there are no items lurking about, say a bottle of wine, the assistant just adds it to everyones shopping until someone notices and then they point to the bottle of wine and say they thought it was yours. An old fiddle.   The trouble I have with that statement is that the supermarket is complicit in the fiddle. How does the operator benefit without the supremarket tacitly accepting overcharging? 

As far as I can tell/ - If you re-locate to another country and participate economically - immigrant - If you are visiting - either a temporary worker or tourist -If you are rtired and not economically engaged with the system  - LUCKY so and so's. Ex-pat is a terrible term carrying implications of 'above it all', not quite colonial but in that direction.   

You might try looking in http://www.franglo.com/   (I have no connection whatsoever !) Good luck   John

Do describe the house in very good detail. Sizes of rooms heating and condition.  (To me decor is transient anyway.) View, aspect and outdoor areas. Any quaint french features (a garden 200 yds away, you can park but not at weekends etc.) AND   Describe the village /town in great detail. Facilities within walking distance. Any life ? How far to travel for facilities ? Give a postcode and they can google earth to their own hearts content. Its the selling info that would draw real buyers (as opposed to browsers).  Most agents will happily drag you to a visit then drop a bombshell like 'no shops for 5 miles' or ' the garage is actually shared' only after you have arrived.  They don't mind wasting buyers' time.

[quote user="Frederick"] It seems Portsmouth have indroduced a 20 mph limit to many of their roads and plan to spread it over the city....other  UK cities are to watch this with a view to setting 20 mph limits . The  reasoning is it will reduce the chance of serious injury....less speed  less chance of really hurting sombody in an accident ... you cant argue with that ...makes sense... why not 10mph ....you might get away with a bruise if run over....  that make more sense .....but ....Has anybody realised just how many extra hours a week on the road its going to mean to people like me  who have to spend their days driving round town visiting homes . [/quote]   Can we really calculate the amount you or anyone will be 'delayed'. The areas this will affect will be relatively small pockets not dual carriageways etc. For example I regularly witness cars hurtling down a road near me which has a 'stop' point at a T junction at the bottom. Perhaps a half  kilometer from the 50 mph limit to the stop point, and half a kilometer from there to the other end of the village (another T junction). Even assuming there is no traffic or other reason like a pedestrian to slow you down just what is the ACTUAL time difference over half kilometer run? Route A Start speed 50mph , end speed zero. Length 0.5 kilometre. Max burst speed either a) 20mph, b) 30mph c) 50 mph cos no-ones checking anyway Route B Start speed zero, End Speed zero (another T Junction). Max burst speed either a) 20mph, b) 30mph c) 50 mph cos no-ones checking anyway  

[quote user="Frederick"] ...If it means crawling about in 3rd gear terrified of going through a camera set at 25 ..and  they could  be as this will be a money spinner .....and...   watching the fuel guage dropping  as my car wont like doing 20 in top gear ... I shall be packing it in  and spending more time in France ..........[/quote]   I was caught speeding. I went on a seminar in lieu of points. One memorable point from the lesson. 'A modern car is NOT designed to be happy or optimum in 4th gear at 30mph... so in 30 mph limit drop to 3rd.'.      

Hmm.   We bought in france and inherited a jumble sale full of clothes and furniture. We were so shocked we rang the previous oners and were told something to eth effect of 'sorry. anything you want keep, anyhting you don't dump'   THEN followed by phone calls (to a brit mobile costing us money). 'Oh Mr. so and so's jacket is nearly new. Could we save that for him' (and yes I fancied it). Then 'Oh there is a futon we borrowed from Mmme... she will collect it next week' (and it was in a right sorry state - beneath what would go to my local jumble sale.) - grossly irritating and shameful. # BUT especially beware the estate agent. The property was described as having central heating. The agent proudly showed my missus the radiators and alluded to some form of under-floor system as well. He avoided showing her the cave with the boiler in bits. The boiler had NEVER worked for the vendors, they eventually admitted that they had been sold a pup by an estate agent and felt they could do the same. Luckily we caught that before completion (but not the missing oven or.. or..) At least in Britain I could have 'had' the agent under the property misdescriptions act.   p.s. the vendors were not French they were Scots living in France.      

Surely the ideal for the region would be a competitor to Ryanair ?   a) Competition is a good thing (and I am not just thinking price here but also service) b) If Ryanair serve too many airports then some will have to go, so the net increase in utility might be nothing.   In fact the net increase might be negative for us but positive for Mr Ryanair as they all underbid for his attention.   AND for me. I would like it to fly from somewher other than Stanstead !   John

I am not a lawyer but I wonder if the situation could have been prevented had the proprty been a)initially bought 'in common' b) half gifted to t'other half. Other than that I doubt it it politoical in a labour/Conservative way. It is opportunist. 500,000 families affected. A dot on the sea of pixels, however vociferous.  It took a lot more to overturn poll tax.  

[quote user="powerdesal"] Oh, and don't have kids- or have them when you are young, then they become your best friends and you all enjoy things together. [/quote]   We had ours late. I value the freedoms we had before kids.  We still share avidly experiences with our teenagers. In fact they dominate our lives. John

        Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection:          Connection-specific DNS Suffix  . :         Description . . . . . . . . . . . : SiS 900-Based PCI Fast Ethernet A ter         Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-01-6C-ED-6B-D4         Dhcp Enabled. . . . . . . . . . . : Yes         Autoconfiguration Enabled . . . . : Yes         IP Address. . . . . . . . . . . . : 192.168.2.2 etc.   --- This reads to me like you have a wired (ethernet) connection to the router. Are you running wired and wireless ?  

[quote user="miaviv"] Taxe d'habitation takes into account the people living in the house (number of children etc) [/quote]   We pay taxe d'hab and nobody lives there. Our understanding was that taxe d'hab is like old rates; related to a notional 'value' and you cannot avoid it unless the place is uninhabitable (unfurnished ?) on Jan 1st.. There may well be 'discounts' for having kids though.  Warning. I may be wrong, and from the sound of it I hope I am.

[quote user="Russethouse"] I am literally next door to the router - I can see it as I type, while she is downstairs. [/quote] But is there any wall (or window) between you and it ? Some windows have a metallic element which acts as a good filter.

Just butting in while the other guys are having a coffee.   1) Are all your connections wireless ? Or are some wired into the router (if you are just 'next door to it...') . A wired connection would be worth trying if you can, if only to establish a baseline. 2) Is the router using some security ? If not then 3 of the 5 connections listed might be your neighbours ! If it is using security is it a) WEP or B) MAC authorisation (nothing to do with apple macs) I find that a) WEP slows things down so marginal connections don't work. I use MAC which basically means you tell the router who it can connect to AND NOBODY ELSE UNLESS I SAY SO.  Sorry for the caps but dealing with computers is like dealing with kids, unfathomable.   3) I had to set Zone Alarm up to see the router & the wirelss card in the pc as 'trusted'. Have you done that ?   Good luck. Sorry if any of the above is a red herring.   John

And look here, even post a wanted message.   http://www.franglo.com/

A surveyor friend of ours visitted and commented that french electricity must be different than UK as there were sockets in the bathroom and outside. But is all legal.   p.s. momentarily more serious. I would tend to buy locally in France as well, echoing Dick. And many of the stores / manuacturers have web-sites for you to browse beforehand.

[quote user="Russethouse"]  I've never read Harry Potter or been to a film either - [/quote] You've not missed much IMHO. Though I do believe the Dark Materials Books by Philip Pullman  to be well worth a read. WARNING. Do not attempt the third one first.  (I know that sometimes one does enter a trilogy at odd points, then back track. It doesn't work well in this instance).   As for never finishing. Sorry but the stuff by Salman Rushdie is nice wordflow but takes me nowhere. Certainly I never reach an end.

A mucky treat for the onion gourmets http://www.telegraph.co.uk/global/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/global/2007/03/07/exonion.xml   Enjoy

Its not all the same.  FWIW I have found that big stores less good than UK, small ones a lot better, often fantastic. There is also a rural/urban divide in attitide to cust service, I think.  

[quote user="BJSLIV"]I cannot see the point of heating water by electricity to run radiators. it would seem to be far more controllable to run individual electric radiators, especially if running costs are of no concern. You can get good programmers that will control the radiators at least as effectively as your average wet system.[/quote] I cannot yet comment on efficiency/cost but...   I had a wet  rad CHsystem in my gite and a dead oil boiler. Options: 1) replace oil boiler 2) Individual electric heaters option 3) elec boiler to feed wet rad CH system. 1) was ridiculously expensive. 2) required a combination of Convevtors and Radiators to achieve a sensible balance of comfort and speed and space heating. If living there full time I would have had a storage heater or two as well. 3) was slightly less expensive than 2) and seemed to offer a 'sweeter' heat. Comfort and programmability.   In a brand new installation 2) would probably win my vote with some of these air conditioning/air heat source 'splits'      

Firstly. yes we do have a dishwasher in our gite. A family/group gite needs it.  Loading the dishwasher in the evening interrupts the flow of 'conversation' a lot less than half an hour with Marigolds. But. If the kitchen isn't big enough... well the gite may be for smaller groups anyway. And when I am on my own I may well wash up by hand for economy.

'Just checked with my card issuer (NatWest) and although it provides an excellent level of travel insurance Excess CDW is not covered so I too would be interested to learn of issuers who do provide this.'   B**um. I have been travelling with nat west travel insursance for years and presumed it does.  Oh dear yet another job/task/argument for next week.