vivienz

One of the things that I've noticed about the 'voice' of Le Figaro is how much they look down upon and/or dislike Americans.  The Figaro Madame section is particularly bitchy and amusing about it all; terribly snooty and Parisienne and all the more funny because much of it isn't meant to be. I mentioned this at my French class and our teacher immediately launched into her reasons for hating the American accent and saying that she could hardly bare to listen to it.  She's not a Parisienne, but it would seem that this sentiment goes well beyond the environs of Paris. Wooly - I don't know about your mornings being busy, but it would take me all day to read that lot!  I hope you give the paperboy a tip at Christmas.

When I came back from my brief trip to France earlier this month, BF put a couple of newspapers in the cabin - the Independent and Le Figaro.  I don't normally have access to French newspapers and found Le Figaro to be quite a good read; it was very interesting to get a French perspective on current affairs.  I followed this up by having a look at the website and found that you can subscribe to the digital edition for 1 euro for the first month, then 15 euro per month thereafter.  I have subscribed and I'm really enjoying it so far; I'm sure I'll get bored with it as I do with most newspapers after a while, but I think the challenge of understanding the language increases my interest significantly.  The language is also much broader and more up to date than what we tend to use in French conversation classes.  In the edition I picked up on the boat (19th January) there was an article about the torrid legal separation between the French state and the catholic church in the early 1900s; it was prompted by the recent events in Paris and pointed out that France has been just as strict with Christian religions in the past as with Islam, etc, in more recent time.  I confess that I had no idea about this period in French history and it was very enlightening. Does anyone else subscribe to or regularly buy other publications?  Would you recommend any?

What an excellent tradition - I'll have to suggest it to my husband, mint. Every year he works right up until the last minute, so Christmas is very nearly a single-person effort in our house.  It's just 5 of us for Christmas day, but there always seems a lot to do and takes a couple of weeks to fully recover from.  Also, Mr Vivienz invariably fails to buy sufficient Christmas cards for his meagre needs and leaves me short.  Matters are exacerbated by having a few 'old school' friends and aunties who send 'thank you' cards for presents, resulting in not just the pre-requisite Christmas card but also January 'thank you' cards in return!  Being able to postpone the whole card thing until January (which will give Mr V more than adequate time to buy sufficient of his own cards) would make things much easier.

We've travelled on the Pont Aven for a couple of return journeys - Portsmouth/St Malo and Plymouth/Santander.  It's an absolutely huge ship (for a ferry) and really feels more like a cruise ship.  It's progress through the water does feel different to the other ferries we've been on in that it feels more like a corkscrew motion when the swell is up.  Not bad, just different.  The main thing that we didn't like is the very noticeable smell of diesel fumes on the lower decks, including where the cabins are.  It was a very nice boat and up to the usual standard of BF service and food.  I agree with the other comments about getting the best cabin you can for what you want to pay.

When we arrived, the water was turned off at the mains (it took us a good 20 mins to locate the stopcock as it wasn't where the immo had said!), so we reckoned it would be good practice to follow this and turned off when we left.  The water there is very soft - as evidenced by super fluffy hair and only needing half the amount of shampoo as back at home where we have very hard water.

Neither, really, Gardian.  I just thought it might be a useful snippet of information for anyone who was looking for this kind of thing.  Certainly not a recommendation as I have no experience of EDF in France or using these phone numbers.

In doing my utility research, I've come across the following page on the EDF site that lists dedicated English-speaking phone numbers for the various departments in France. http://residential.edf.com/customer-services/contact/contact-us-by-phone-208807.html

Thank, Gardian.  That's just the sort of thing I'm after.  The previous owners only used the property once in the last 12 months and that was in the summer, I understand, so I've no fear of a tariff being based on a previous one. There will be a very low constant use with brief periods of not-so-low use, so I'll look into the tempo one. Thanks again.

Thanks, everyone. I've just trawled through an email exchange between the immo and the notaire. It looks as though the immo did take readings, etc. but hasn't informed me of them! As usual, she was more vexed about making sure she received her commission and that the notaire had received her invoice, but I'll chase her up for the information now.

We've just returned from a visit to our new (to us) house in Brittany and everything is in order.  The house only has 2 utilities as far as I can see - water and electricity.  The previous owner has given me the details of the suppliers and I will contact them shortly to advise the change of ownership on the property.  The current suppliers are EDF for electricity and SAUR for water/waste.  Are there any pitfalls I should be aware of?  At the moment, I anticipate that the house will be used for a maximum of 8 weeks throughout the year (probably less than this, but I'll go for the higher figure) and most of this will be in warmer weather.  We do have a dehumidifier running constantly. As we can't predict what the bills are likely to be due to the sporadic use of the property, I don't want to pay anything by direct debit as this could lead to all sorts of complications of over/underpayment.  We will be setting up a French bank account in the next few weeks and so will be able to pay any bills by direct bank transfer.  I need our billing address to be a UK one as we can't guarantee being at the property in time to pick up any bills that might arrive there, but I presume that on-line billing and access to statements and account information is available as it would be in the UK. Any advice would be, as ever, most appreciated. Vivien

We have a nice cabin booked, so it will be a light supper and bed for me, assuming the crossing is on.  If necessary, I'll take the knock-out drops, to.  I know the Bay of Biscay route - we encountered a force 8 on our way back from Spain a few years ago now, and that was quite brutal.  We were fortunate to have a cabin near the centre of the ship; some chaps nearer to the front had to strap themselves into their bunks!  We thought it was a bad sign when we boarded and there were no glasses out at any of the bars. The tunnel isn't that convenient for us - it would be a 2 1/2 to 3 hour drive on this side, and at least the same again in France.  Portsmouth is only about 40 mins away, then the house is 30 minutes from St Malo, so driving is minimal and bulk of the travelling out is done overnight.

All eyes in our house are glued to the weather forecast at the moment.  Wouldn't you know it, the evening we're due to sail over France (Portsmouth - St Malo) and collect the keys to our house, 41 mph winds are coming in from the south west.  Brittany Ferries say that they've only cancelled the Spanish sailing on Wednesday for the time being, but I'm out to get some sea sickness pills tomorrow as if it goes ahead, it'll be an interesting ride.  Fun, fun, fun!

I'm philosophical about my old oven, mint. It's given me 15 years of good, reliable service and has always cooked consistently. The fact that it doesn't get to the temperature it says it does, in truth, doesn't trouble me that much as I can cook pretty much anything I want in it with good results, whereas I've known plenty of people whose ovens got to a higher temperature, were newer, etc. only to have them break down for one thing or another in far less time. People have baked things for a couple of millennia without knowing the exact temperature in their oven according to some scale or other, but by knowing how to use that particular bit of equipment. Besides, my friend managed to put on nearly a stone in 12 months due to scoffing all that lovely sourdough bread she was making, so I'm rather glad my oven isn't as good as hers for bread. She's lost all the weight again, but the enforced abstinence wasn't fun and I've yet to find a reliable method of resisting a gorgeous warm loaf of freshly baked, crusty bread other than running away at speed and staying away until someone else has eaten most of it!

A good friend of mine bakes her own bread on a pizza stone in her oven and gets great results. Unfortunately, my oven doesn't get hot enough to make it worthwhile - I was suspicious that the actual temperature was different to what the dial said and I was right. Pre-heated to its maximum temperature, my oven should get to around 250C, but in fact only reaches 230C at most.

I use one of those ridged griddle pans to cook flat bread in - much better than in my standard electric fan oven.  The griddle pan gets much hotter and you get those lovely little charred bits around the edges.  Very nice.  We're fortunate to have a couple of good places for pizza near us, but I usually make my own on Saturday nights.  I cook the pizza in the oven, but mainly because I'd never get it into a pan once it has all the topping on it; a wood fired oven would be tremendous but I'd never have the space for it and it would be a huge extravagance for this once a week treat.

Skidding in sideways and making it by the skin of our teeth, our property purchase on St Jacut in Brittany completed on New Year's Eve.  We had a last minute glitch with our bank delaying the transfer of the purchase price as they ignored their own notes about their security callback following our transfer request, but the monies got to the notaire on the final date.  Phew! It's been an interesting and relatively simple process, but then the property is so small and in an area that doesn't change much, so we'd have been surprised if there were any hitches.  We had a power of attorney in place for the final signature on the acte, so we didn't have to make any last minute dashes over, which would have been very difficult at this time of year.  The notaire didn't seem to hang around - we reckon from when they got the draft documents to when everything was ready for signing, only took them about 6 weeks which is good going, by our reckoning. We're off to pick up the keys and have our first long weekend there in just under a couple of weeks - a very pleasant, post Christmas break.[:)]

Miettes! Sorry, crumbs!  There was me thinking that there was some sort of in-joke subtext running through this thread.  My mistake - I didn't realise it was just seasonally induced grumpiness.  I'm a relatively new poster and don't find a bit of franglais in the slightest bit off-putting.  In fact, it's quite inspiring because I just had to go and find the word for 'crumbs' with which to start this post.  Still, each to their own.  I'm off to watch Mapp & Lucia now, so 'au reservoir'!

It may be that 'nappe' is closer in meaning to the English word 'nap', as in the nap of the cloth. This applies to both fabrics that have an obvious pile, e.g. velvet, and ones such as some wool coatings that don't have a pile but do have enough surface fuzz to make the cloth one directional. If you hold two runs of the cloth in opposite directions to each other, one will be lighter/darker than the other - this is the nap. Coats can be tricky things to get if you want a style that you're happy enough to knock around in (walking the dog) and also wear for smarter occasions as they do tend to be very different in their cut. A detachable fur collar can make a big difference to the look of wool coat.

Standard wool coating is often called melton.  It is like a thick wool flannel, with a bit of a pile so that you can't really see the weave of the threads, but not so much that it's full-on fluffy.  Melton can be 100% wool, but you often see it in a mix of fibres that can include polyester (this makes the fabric weigh less and is less prone to creasing) or, going up the scale, mixed with cashmere.  Cashmere makes it delectably soft but is less hard wearing than normal wool or other mixtures. I recently made myself a knock-off of a bright red Burberry duffle coat that I took a bit of a shine too, but used a different lining (I know Burberry are very expensive, but I still associate their signature check pattern with a bit of a chavvy look!).  The fabric I used was a wool mix melton and it's perfect for the job.

We'll make the transfer as soon as we need to - currency trading has never been my thing!

Very helpful - thanks, all. We haven't had to pay a deposit at all in this instance; we waited for a request to come through but none did, so I guess the seller was reasonably relaxed about things. I guess that we will transfer funds a few days in advance as I know that even with a TT or SWIFT transfer, there can be a delay of a day or two before funds are guaranteed as cleared due to the ability of the originating bank to recall funds, but I'll check. I'm sure that the notaire will advise on what is required.

That's interesting, NormanH. I should have said 'draft copy' of the Acte as that's all it can be before it is signed and registered, I guess. Re. the payment to the notaire, what will this include? I'm working on the assumption that it will have any apportionment of taxes, notaire fees and the estate agent fee (I'm not sure about the latter, though, and whether the notaire distributes this). If the final bill doesn't arrive for some months after the date of purchase, does this mean that there may be more to pay or a reimbursement at that time?

Just an update on our property purchase on St Jacut. I had an email from the notaire on Friday (whoa, yes, a notaire sending an email!) to advise me that they had that day completed their file on our prospective purchase.  Neither hubby nor I can get over to France before early January now, so we'll ask our friends to sign on our behalf with a suitable power of attorney so that everything can go through as soon as possible. It's been an interesting experience and far, far more straightforward than I thought it would be, but I suspect a large part of that is due to the tiny size of the property and it being empty, etc.  Once we signed the compromis, everything went into a period of complete radio silence until last Friday.  Hubby and I took the view that the vendor is French and so was far better positioned to chivvy the notaire along and we would hear from them, one way or another, once things had moved on.  I don't think we anticipated it being in quite such large steps, but all to the good. The notaire still hasn't sent bank details, so I've requested these along with a breakdown of all fees and charges and a copy of the Acte to make sure everything is in order.  They seem to have been efficient in dealing with it, I estimate a total of 8 weeks, which is good going. So fingers crossed now that the final stages are as trouble free as the previous ones and then we can have a post Christmas break on St Jacut.  Very exciting!

Under UK law, if you die before you have done anything with your funds then the whole of the fund will pass to your chosen beneficiary, free of any tax of any kind.  I can't say how the money received by your beneficiary would be treated by any other country, but there is no issue from a UK point of view. The earliest age that you can draw your pension (in most cases) under UK law is 55 so you have a few years to check out your options.  If the proposed pension changes come fully into force next spring in the way that they are drawn up at the moment, you will be able to do as you please with the pots, including drawing the whole lot out in one go.  The major downside to this is that HMRC will let you have 25% of it tax free and the rest will be subject to income tax and added on to any other income that you have for that year and taxed accordingly.  Again, I don't know how the tax system in Luxembourg works and they may treat pension withdrawals differently. Between now and age 55, the main things are to ensure that your expression of wish is lodged with the pension providers (as previously stated), to make sure that the funds are invested appropriately for the timescale that you have planned and to make sure that you aren't paying through the nose for the plans that you have. QROPS are very expensive to put in place and gain advice on; you have to ask whether the advantages of moving the fund to a different jurisdiction would offer a large enough reward to make it worth your while.  One of the rules of QROPS is that whatever overseas scheme you move to should have similar restrictions to UK pensions - you may be taking options away from yourself in light of the changes coming in next year if you transferred.

I remember seeing a photo on t'internet a couple of years ago of Nigella Lawson.  She was on holiday in Dubai and the photo showed her frolicking in the surf wearing.........a burkhini (sp?).  Her face wasn't covered (otherwise, how we have known it was her?) but just about everything else other than her hands was.  Some while later, hubby had too much fun frolicking in the French surf at Cap Ferret and nearly turned himself into a pork scratching - I suggested a male version of the burkhini to him.  He didn't take it well, but I'm sure it was just down to the heatstroke and the offense to his fashion sense.