ssomon

Then he went to the local, put the centipede on the bar and asked the barman "What do you think of this?" "Sorry sir, we get a few of those in here" said the barman as he squashed it flat.

So if you are take care to buy your house where there is very small risk of catastrophies you will pay a premium on your insurance to compensate those who are less careful.

But, judging from TV Police programmes, the average UK cop would spend half an hour or so arguing with them.

Everything was fine years ago; every town had its own time. Then the railways messed things up with their idea of a standard time. Afghanistan has the best setup. GMT plus 4 1/2 hours - and back 600 years.

I'm not completely sure, but I think birds are excused from summer time changes.

Words to dislike? ....... Just about anything said/screamed by Alex Jacques on Channel 4's Formula 1 coverage. His idiotic non-stop gibberish is almost destroying any enjoyment of the programme.

In January I replaced our old Sky digibox with a Manhattan SX Freesat HD Box from Amazon, being the cheapest replacement I could find. We gave up our Sky subscriptions through a third party years ago. The box works very well with our existing 95cm dish, but we find the Menu and programme booking systems confusing and clumsy compared with the Sky box. It also turns itself off when not being used and has to re-initiate when the TV is switched on again, which is annoying. Can someone tell me if the current Sky HD digibox uses a similar system to that of the old non-HD one, or recommend a better box for receiving UK Freesat programmes?

You can use any Notaire you wish. Not necessarily one local to the house you're buying.

Pattes d'araignées - Nose hair

I invariably put "Regards" in English, "Cordialement" in French.

Did you know that jerusalem artichokes are the roots of a type of sunflower. The English name s a corruption of the Italian name "girasole" They are not very exciting to eat, but taste better parboiled and fried. The French seem to associate them with poverty and wartime, along with parsnips, other cheap root vegetables, and chestnut flour. You can make an acceptable briam without peppers. Just use a few whole cherry tomatoes instead.

You have been cooking it wrongly, probably stewing it. Try it like this https://www.mygreekdish.com/recipe/briam-recipe-greek-mixed-roasted-vegetables/

You can use lamb or beef

Moussaka

We have an 8.7kW Canadian made pellet stove which I bought on UK Ebay in 2008, and moved from our previous house in 2012. It is installed in the main living room in the centre of the house, the other rooms being adequately heated by normal air circulation. I have maintained it fairly easily at reasonable cost, using parts sourced from both France and Canada. Our average consumption of pellets was 35 x 15kg bags per year. We used it as our main heating source once the outside temperature dropped below about 7C, when the air/air heat pumps became less efficient, until the winter of 2022, when the price of pellets soared from around 4€50 to almost 10€ per bag. We managed to get through the winter on 8 new bags plus 2 left from the previous winter by running the heat pumps longer and lowering the temperature in the house. A quick calculation showed that pellets are no longer economical, besides needing more cleaning and maintenance, so I bought and installed new, larger and more efficient air/air heat pumps. These have kept the house at 20C in the daytime, 18C at night, and we have only used about 1 1/2 bags of pellets when using the stove for a quick temperature boost on very cold evenings. Our electricity bill is manageable at about 1600€ for the last year, we save over 200€ a year for pellets, and no longer have the weekly cleaning and hassle of the stove, and shopping around to find acceptable prices.