Loiseau

My brother has just got hit with two £80 fines after coming to visit in my area of London that has recently become an Ultra Low Émissions Zone. He travelled in a 2013 Vw Golf diesel, and forgot to check its status beforehand on the Transport for London website. ( Even for considerably older cars, a petrol version would have been ok. )

I have the same problem; when i click on those three dots, the only options I get are Report or Share.

Cyclohexane, I think if there is no will, then the French rules are pretty cut and dried. As this official website https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/vosdroits/F2529 says, the children of the deceased are the priority inheritors. So the notaire should divide up the estate (and its liabilities) equally between and your brother and any other siblings. If any siblings are deceased, their children would take their parent's share.

Yes, I have been to that Merlimont one on the sand! It's greqt...

Just to be a bit "tatillonne" here: it’s FOIE gras...

Oh where’s the bl**dy link? https://www.gouvernement.fr/sites/default/files/dp-covid_frontieres_021221_3ep_0.pdf

I have just been reading this press release from the French government. ( link )If you look at the orange chart on page 4, it shows that vaccinated travellers from the UK to France have to show either a PCR or antigen (lateral flow) test max 48 hours before DEPARTURE from the U.K.If you are not vaccinated, that period is reduced to 24 hours before embarquement.

The buyer will have had to transfer the money to the notaire's account before the signing. The notaire then deducts taxes etc due, and pays the vendor a few days later. This article might help understand the few cases where the buyer has any come-back: https://www.completefrance.com/french-property/legal/vices-caches-explained-8351650

So yes, the money is not transferred to you on the date of signing/ handing over of keys, but a few days later.

Welcome back, idun. I am so sorry about your ongoing problems, but it’s really good you feel able to post again.

Chris, do you manage to get to Nice in a day from the UK? if you have an overnight stop somewhere, could you not go into a small local alimentation to at least buy some milk, bread, cold ham etc to start you off when you arrive? Everyone will be masked, as mentioned above.

I think French supermarkets more tend to provide a pick-up service (sometimes misleadingly called "Drive"), rather than offering the doorstep delivery service we are used to in the UK. But that’s probably an easier option for flat-dwellers, as long as you have access to a car.

I thoroughly recommend "Les Croix de Bois”, by Roland Dorgeles - a writer who served as a "poilu" during WWI. You really feel the terrible conditions the infantry endured.

Re the necessary Day 2 test on return to UK : my London neighbour reports today that they used TestingforAll to come back from a weekend in Paris, and the cost was £19 per person.

Ken, this link might enable you to speak to someone about your circumstances: https://contact-tracing.phe.gov.uk

EDIT From the UK Citizens, Advice website ”... The government have said that from 16 August 2021, you won’t have to self-isolate if you’re fully vaccinated and you don’t have symptoms or a positive test result.”

That’s a tricky one, Ken. I was pinged by the NHS recently, after a trip to Scotland, saying that on 21 Sept (a week earlier) I was in proximity to someone who had since tested positive. I can only think it was the (unmasked) man sitting next to me on the train between London and Edinburgh. I was not told to isolate (I presume the time elapsed constituted the usual incubation period), but was instructed to go to an official NHS testing centre and get a PCR test asap which, as I live in the U.K., was easy to do. Result came speedily back, negative, and it now appears on my NHS app along with my first two vaccinations. Of course, you are absolutely right to get a French PCR test done, but it's mystifying how you can officially inform the NHS about the French test result. Also, as they have asked you to self-isolate, will someone be knocking on the door of your UK home to check that you are complying?

I have come across more than one Chaussée Brunehaut in northern France. Arras-Thérouanne-Boulogne springs to mind; a fabulous drive across country, skirting the mining town of Bruay. Here is more than you ever wanted to know about them: https://fr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaussée_Brunehaut

Me too

Saw a bit of the Brits in France programme tonight. What IS this notion that you have to take the Maire (or the Mairie, as the pink-haired woman insisted on calling him) a present? I remember my husband and me trying to give a small contribution towards the costs of a concert we had organised in the village church, and the mayor making a big thing about how it had to be above board, and forms filled in, so no one could think he was getting any backhanders.

As the banana says, there is a lot more self-testing in England than in France. With the home kits of 7 tests that we can pick up from the chemist's (now you have to register online to pick one up, rather than just grab a couple of boxes) it is a matter of moments to test yourself before going to a big family gathering, or to meet a friend that you think might be especially vulnerable. I test myself at least twice a week, sometimes more depending on my social life. Yet on a recent visit to friends in western France, I had the impression that almost nobody had tested at all. So I am guessing that, inevitably, more early cases must be "depisté" in England.

I see your mayor is trying to get Zemmour and LePen onto the same ticket, Norman... Here. (hope the link works)

That's a fascinating chart, Norman. I have only skimmed it so far, but see that Zemmour wants to do away with the 35 heures, and that he wants to stop non-Europeans having dual nationality. Would that last affect you?

NB faux-ami alert! "inhabitable" in French means UNinhabitable in English (“habitable” in French means INhabitable in English)

Fascinating. I had no idea that there were so many British settled in Germany.