Fay

At the auto check-ins, if you arrive early and there is room on an earlier train, when you bung in your card does it offer you the chance of paying the extra and travelling earlier? As I'm travelling with my cat I prefer not to hang about and would pay more if I could catch the first available train. Thanks! PS sorry this in the wrong place - tried to delete it and re-post in the forum above but it wouldn't let me!

Summer - Lightly poached wild salmon with roasted asparagus and rocket; fresh white peach bellini. Winter - Tartiflette, charcuterie and salad at the Chalet de Bachais at the top of the white chair lift in Combloux; 1er cru Meursault. Latter would be last-meal-on-earth choice/venue. Hungry now!

Financial commentators on the Today prog this morning said it is a very different situation from going bankrupt and that services will not be affected. It's more like what they do in the US in invoking Chapter 11 and has no effect on trading. I remember Macy's doing this in the late 1980s or early 90s and carrying on totally as normal for years until they got themselves sorted financially. I wouldn't get on the wrong side of probably very hacked off staff right now, though!

Meant in the most affectionate way (vaguely thinking of the scenes in the movie) - it was the one thing that made me smile and for that I was extremely grateful! Plus an element of wry metaphor - Aer Arann = Titanic; Luton passengers got lifeboat; Kerry passengers left aboard sinking ship!

Travelled with this bunch to/from Luton-Lorient last weekend. On the way back, we arrived at Lorient airport at 9pm Monday for the 10.20pm flight. At this point the AA flight to Kerry, due to leave at 5.25pm, still hadn't left as there was a technical fault and they were having to fetch an engineer from Dinard. This flight would then have to go to Kerry, pick up passengers for Lorient, fly back to Lorient and then take us to Luton. There was no-one from Aer Arann on site, just two very harrassed Air France ladies (and a dog!) trying to cope with everything but with no information. We were variously told a) to wait b) to find a hotel c) a flight would leave the next day d) there would be no Luton flight til the next scheduled one on Wednesday. No one could get hold of anyone from Aer Arann til about 10.30pm. Emergency contact numbers were unanswered. Finally the Air France people got hold of someone from AA and I think bullied them into covering our taxi and hotel costs. Thanks to the AF people we were put in a very nice Best Western hotel at about 11pm. God knows what time the Kerry contingent left. Someone had a fiddle and they were singing "Irish Rover" and "Wild Mountain Thyme" when we left. It was like steerage on the Titanic! We flew home at 6pm the following day. The thing is that Aer Arann had our mobile numbers. They must have known quite early on (mid-afternoon latest) that no way was a flight leaving for Luton that day so why on earth didn't they send a blanket text to everyone to tell them to stay put and come the next day, thus saving themselves a lot of hotel bills and giving people time to make alternative arrangements or stay where they were? Any why didn't they have someone on site to deal with the problem or at least liaise with the Air France team? Further to the horror story of the chap taking 3 days to get home from Angers and my own experience, I for one will never be flying Aer Arann again!

Oh blast I just logged back on and it's gone again. Just a blank 'internet zone'....

Hooray it's working now (I feel like Nikki in BB with her ipod, if anyone else is as pathetic as me and still watching). Tea (or stronger) any time you are passing - so long as I'm there of course!Having said that, the zoom-in bit of the map has me living in quite another part of the forest....

It tells me I've added myself but as I can't see the map I can't see for myself! I'm on a Mac so perhaps this a Mac thing?

Hi I no longer get an email to tell me if there has been a reply to a post, though I tick the box... Any thoughts?

Very ,very sorry to hear your sad news, Val.

I think you can also key in your booking number as an alternative (but maybe the card is how they check that the cardholder is in the car...)

He was 16 so he'd had a pretty good 'walkies'. Loved him too (but not as much as I did Niles!).

Walking Dude, your name kept reminding me of The Stand - isn't Flagg referred to as the Walking Man in that? Re the Straub collaboration(s) I really loved the Talisman when I read it ages ago. I remember trying to get off the train at St Pancras while reading Wolf's death - practically fell off because of the floods of tears obscuring my vision! I thought the Dead Zone was terrific - and the film adaptation was superb. A question re Shawshank... who was there to put the Rita Hayworth poster neatly back up on the wall after Andy had escaped down the tunnel???!

I've just got back from a few days away and have been having a great time looking through all the gorgeous (and sometimes hilarious) photos! I would add a pic of Pyewacket as she is now, but will have to work out how to do so.... It took me long enough to add her as my avatar!

Does anyone know if one can pick up UK digital radio stations on a DAB radio in our neck of the woods? I'm slap bang on the Channel coast, maybe 30 or so miles from the English coastline. Does DAB 'leak' over that far? Thanks!

Apologies to new arrivals, this is continuing a thread from the Pets section (to do with poisonous plants) that was going a tad off-topic and turning into a feline love-fest! Catalpa, you could fit about 3 of my Pyewacket into your one! As mine (weighing about 6lb) manages to push me half out of bed every night I can't imagine how you manage with Maine Coons! On the subject of the name - apparently from the Witchfinder connection, do you also know the film Bell, Book and Candle, in which Pyewacket is the familiar of a modern Manhatten witch (Kim Novak) who sets her sights on Jimmy Stewart? That Pye is a very chunky Siamese. Also (and where we first found the name) there's a wonderful book by Robert Westall, called "Devil on the Road" which brings in another of the feline 'imps' - Newes. Oh the tears at the end. It had the Hopkins pic at the back of the book. It's a sort of 'time slip' story, supposedly for young adults, but highly recommended for adult adults too. Devons, too, are chirrupy chatty cats, and stay kitteny-playful all their lives. Love to ride on shoulders and will simply shin up you to get there. Not such a problem given their size but any Devon owner has a range of scratches and scars on their shoulders as a badge of honour!

They're all scrummy - such a variety but each one perfect in his/her own way! (We are terribly off topic now - should we take this to the Lounge? I could start a thread there just called Cats?)

The mnemonic I've been given for adjectives before the noun is BAGS: Beauty Age Good (and bad) Size Not strictly adjectives but you could add Numbers to this (BANGS?!). There are some adjectives that are considered 'qualities' of the noun, eg: mes sincere condoleances les vagues promesses. Lots of cases similar to 'un homme grand'/un grand homme', eg: Un voisin curieux (a nosy neighbour) Un curieux voisin (a bizarre neighbour) ... I expect we've all encountered both (sometimes in the same person! Oh sorry, this one just mentioned by Ronan) Une femme seule (woman with no friends) Une seule femme (just the one woman). For the Etre verbs, my tutor gave me a little drawing of a climber arriving at the foot of a mountain, climbing it, going into, staying in and then coming out of a little hut on top, etc, etc - laborious to describe but it sticks very effectively in the mind (especially the gravestone at the bottom for the born and died bit!). All the verbs 'composed' of the 14* get the same treatment (eg revenir, rentrer). * My coursework book says 14 not 13- which is the extra one? Passer?

I agree that cats wouldn't tend to tuck into most plants (it's hard enough to get them to eat cheap catfood!) and pollen, being 'gathered' unknowingly and then licked off, is probably more of hazard... And at the risk of going off topic - hurrah for Pyewackets! Pye is sometimes Wacket too. Was yours named for the cat in Bell, Book and Candle or the list of 'imps' in the Matthew Hopkins illustration (or both)? A search on the net shows it to be a surprisingly frequent name - for cats, race horses, restaurants and even Walt Disney's brother's yacht!

Good grief, my garden is a deathtrap! Thanks for the good wishes for Pye, who is curled up happily on my lap as I type.

Not strictly France-related but important for people to know. Pyewacket, my avatar, has just spend 48 hours in the vets having her kidneys flushed out after having got lily pollen on her head. Apparently lilies (leaves, flowers and pollen) are highly toxic to cats, causing kidney failure and death if ingested and not treated within 24 hours. Lots of cats die particularly as a result of chewing the leaves. I'm not sure why I decided to check with the vet - just glad I did!

Does the following scenario give anyone else the hump: Someone posts asking for advice, recommendation of somewhere to stay, eat, etc. Lots of helpful replies, often with a cheery 'let us know how you got on!' at the end. Zip, nada, not a peep in reply.... It seems so strange to me, not to post again saying thanks or even to say what a terrible recommendation they were given - plus I hate not knowing the end of a story! (I must be Mrs Grumpy today, no doubt because my avatar is in the vet's having her kidneys flushed for 48 hours due to having got lily pollen on her head - it's apparently terribly toxic!)

I didn't know about Daisy and am very sad to hear the news. I remember you all planning to meet up all those years ago at the VLF exhibition and being very disappointed that it was in the week of Simon's and my annual ski trip to Comboux. At the time we were getting a lot of encouragement and advice from everyone in our dream of buying a house in France (now a lovely reality though sadly not the dream as I knew it). But, through the forum, Pagnol was instrumental in us finding the 'dream home' and Mrs and Mr P are now near and very delightful neighbours!

Oh dear, I normally manage to avoid these threads. I'm frankly appalled by a 'my grief is worse than your grief' attitude; your loved ones deserve better than that. Never thought I'd say this but please, moderators, remove this sad, sad thread asap.

Thanks Hagar I'm sure that explains a lot. I'll give it another try in that case.