hoverfrog

when I learnt to read (oh so many moons ago!) we were expected to learn my memorising - which is no different in my view to the flash cards they use (or is that used? I can't keep up!) in English schools. My kids are between 2 and 22, and the fashions have come and gone. All I can say is that the phonetically taught ones spell less well than the others! (and on an different subject, the fashions in UK for what you should and shouldn't do when pregnant / with a neo-natal have also gone round and round like the clothes fashions!)

I'd be interested in any replies as my 13-yr old hasn't has a BCG yet but I thought it was mandatory to get into a french school? Our (almost) 3yr-old has only had diptheriia and tetanus (we decided against the MMR) - will that be a problem?

I know this has been done to death here before, but I've been trawling through all the posts and need a quick answer! 1/ If I do part-time work (min of 4 days a month), probably using a portage company, for a non-french employer will I need to have a SIRET number? Computer programming so I guess I don't need to register with the Chambre de metiers. 2/ If I'm doing freeelance what I was doing (fulltime) in the Uk for the same company is there a possibility of being classed as a subsidiary company?(with all the overheads and paperwork that entails ) As far as tax is concerned that would be covered by the portage company - and I'd pay in France, so I'd obviously expect a higher hourly rate than I was getting in the UK as an employee. 3/ Are there any other pitfals with this arrangement? .

Thank-you for the kind words! well it's all the OH's 'fault' - he's not as good at french, so I sent him the URL for the rules to numbers and he said I'd have to write all the cheques! He then decided to write a program. He's the low level / systems programmer, and I'm high level / GUI, so I decided to put a GUI on his commandline application! Cocoa first, but probably Java next...

with all the complexities of adding 's' '-' 'et un' etc, the OH and I have produced a small computer application that you enter a number and it gives you the french text. Only available for OS X at the moment, but if there's any interest we can port it to other platforms! you can download it from the link at the bottom of this page: http://homepage.mac.com/the.sanctuary It's amazing what you can do when you're waiting for PlatformBuilder to build

thanks for the replies OH is more interested in teaching other than schools, so doesn't look too bad a situation!

the OH has recently done a TEFL course, as part of the 'expanding skill set' brief prior to getting a job when we migrate. As he enjoyed it so much, he was wondering what the qualifications needed were to teach this sort of thing in France - probably at the level of businesses / tech colleges / what ever! - I'm not sure extra curricular studies for 'priviledged' schoolkids would quite be his thing!

I think they get away with it because it's the sort of program you'd like your kids to watch - and if it's on then they are more likely to do their homework!! Bit like wanting healthy options on the menu but still only buying chips I must admit we turned it off - not because the 13 yr-old had done her homework, but because we felt embarrased by not being able to spell the final round! Mind you, we do know where the dictionary is, which is more than the present UK education system seems to impart to the youngsters of today! Who remembers the advert campaign - "so how are we going to get Gerald (the giraffe) to the zoo??" "I don't know, but I know a man who does" ???

argh! We could be in the market for some of these shortly

I've been reading avidly all the posts about portage, and apart from paying approx 10% of your hard earned earnings to them what are the disadvantages? I'm looking at working a minimum of 4 days a month as a contractor (IT) for a Canadian company - would the client being out of the EU make a difference? What happens if I take up other paid employment at the same time? (yes, I know, I should be so lucky in rural Limousin!!) Is there a maximum you can earn where it's not feasible? I can see the advantages, but there must be another side

my 'question' regarding discount if we provided the wood was intended as tongue in cheek. Wood does seem to be very plentiful round us in 87!

not in a position to buy anything yet - still waiting for the date for the Acte de Vente Love the furniture, please do publish a price list - if we need an ébéniste you're at the top of the list! Can we get a discount if we provide the wood???

most solicitor firms also advertise themselves as commissioners for oaths. Contact yours!

you are right about under-reporting or ignoring of certain problems - my friend is a vet and the head of her practice is invoved in the european body responsible for BSE management. According to him, the french vets routinely record death from BSE as from other causes which of course skews all the statistics for the disease... although this is probably not surprising when you realise that until recent legislation most of the 'old' milkers (i.e 3 yrs+) were sold within the EU! Hmm, let's see, cows don't exhibit any signs of BSE until over a certain age... and we've been selling off all our old cows to our neighbouring countries!

in the Uk my Apple connects fine to a genenric (SMC Barricade 7404) - all you need to do is correctly configure a combined ADSl modem/router/firewall (all-in-one-box). Other options are available but this is the easiest. Wireless / WIFI / 802.11b/g are standards and often ISPs don't go to the expense of training their staff to support Macs & PCs. As long as the ISP will support a generic box (i.e. doesn't insist on their own ADSL hardware) it's just a matter of configuring it - you should be OK. [from the horse's mouth - the OH is sooo much better at hardware than me!!]

I realise from other peole's experiences that we got off lightly, but all we needed were our passports and driving licences. Speaking french is a great help - however rusty, and Credit Agricole took our word for it that we'd just signed the Compromis de vente although we offered the immoblier's phone number if they wanted to check! If you're planning to cycle to the bank that must mean that you're already resident in France, so it seems that the EDF bill is always a winner

while on the subject of books, there appears to be a publisher called La Veytizou in La Veytisou (Neuvic Entier) but I can't find anyone that sells any of their books! As they will be in the same village as us from january I was hoping to get ahead of the game and read something, but although there are numerous hits with google no-one sells the things - and some of them look really interseting! Anyone got any ideas?

I'd hate to put a wet blanket on the dinde, but isn't the compromis only the 1st bit? We did that at half term, and are still waiting for the date of the acte de vente...

2+2=5 for large values of 2 This is something we have been telling the kids for a long time (both being computer programmers)

I'd second the point about the Intellimouse - I have a USB one that I use with Win2K and XP as well as with OS X and it's great! Apple copes wonderfully with the 3 buttons and the wheel - one wonders why they still ship with a one button mouse when all the underlying tech is there

depends what operating system you are running, but on win32 I tend to use Micrographix and on OS X I use Goldberg if all I want to do is scale an image to a smaller size. I think M$Paint does a quick-and-dirty scale, if you select all and copy, then resize the image through the image menu, then paste, then click on the pasted image and drag the corner. Not very satisfactory unless it's not too drastic a scale, but sometimes needs must!

just found the following on a french blog site: 'fanboys' - not stictly an english word, but definitely not a french one! to put in context, the sentence was: "des hordes de fanboys ne nous cassent les couilles sur les prochaines cinq années..." but I leave it as an exercise to the reader to put it into babelfish, as the reult would probably be censored

I must admit to browsing the forums at work too - and if anyone comes near me I just press 'build' - which takes near-on 1/2 hour for the application I'm working on!

where did you advertise? This may have a bearing Most people use a webmail account for replying to ads/posting to public forums so they don't get their addresses harvested by spam bots, so the fact that they are yahoo mails doesn't necessarily mean they're not bone-fide. I expect that if you were to send an email to yourself using your yahoo account it would also have the yahoo advert on the bottom - you don't see it when you compose the email though.

nifty trick! I've been programming these things for years now and never knew that