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Suandpete

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Everything posted by Suandpete

  1.     We have received what sounds like the same letter today - totally different from previous years and quoting 2007 legislation.  "votre dossier doit faire l'objet d'un nouvel examen par nos services".... "vous devez, en effet, justifier d'une résidence stable et régulière sur la territoire français" etc.  It is quite precise in what is required : les documents attestant de la régularité de votre séjour (carte de séjour, récépissé en cours de validité, convocation, rendez-vous en préfecture...).   Certainly we have never been asked for this before - does this sound similar to your letter Cooperlola?    We actually have Titres de Séjour but they run out next month so we will be visiting our Mairie tomorrow morning to find out whether or not they are going to renew them.  I understand that while Titre de Séjour's are no longer required they can be provided if requested.  So I guess like many other things a lot depends on the local attitude.
  2.     That is one of the things that we need to ask about - it is relatively low and is ignored for tax reasons but I guess a percentage of it may be included in the RFR.  We will go and ask next week when they are back to normal after this "pont" week - or as normal as it gets in August!
  3.     But the RFR is actually 171 euro higher than our combined pensions??????
  4.     I have one too - see my posting about Revenu fiscal de reference.  The figure half way down is the one that CPAM need in order to calculate the cost of your contribution towards your health care costs.  They will shortly send their forms out so that they can assess the amount owing.
  5.     We have been filing tax returns every year since we arrived here in 2002 - our main income consists of 2 government pensions which are taxed in UK but are declared on our tax form here and for the last few years a small income from our gite which is also declared.    I have never understood how the Revenu Fiscal de Reference (shown on the Avis d'Impot form no 1534 is calculated - but in the past it has been significantly lower than the amount we have declared as pension income - I assumed that we were given some sort of allowance.  This figure (Revenu fiscal de reference) is of course the figure used as a base for calculating the cost of our health care. This year however the figure is marginally higher than our decalred pension income.   Does anyone know why?  If this is correct it will have quite an impact on our health costs.  We will go along to the Tax Office to speak to them about it but I just wondered if anyone was aware of any changes to the way it is calculated
  6.     Info about some routes here - but no mention of Rodez...    http://www.ryanair.com/site/EN/news.php?yr=07&month=jul&story=rte-en-190707  (sorry - for some reason the link won't work, I'm afraid you'll have to copy and paste) Edited to make link work - A mod
  7.     I think it may be a carpenter bee- we have them in our log pile and they make holes exactly like that: http://www.kendall-bioresearch.co.uk/solbee.htm#carpenter The hole is quite long - about a foot sometimes.....   They are solitary bees though so should be fairly easy to get rid of if that is what they are.
  8.     I'm sure others will say the same - but as I understand it you don't have a choice - if you are resident in France you must put your car on to French plates.
  9.     They are our main source - but we have a self-catering cottage, not a B&B.   We have been with them for 5 years and have found them fine up to now.  I would have thought that most people looking for somewhere in their brochure or on their website would be self-catering customers though.
  10.     Just PM'd you with some info I found on line.
  11.     It's a hoopoe!   We are in 79 too and have just started seeing them regularly in our garden.   They are fairly rare in UK - in our British bird book which is probably about 15 years old it says there are only 30 nesting pairs in UK....   Much more common here; they look very exotic don't they!
  12.     Power Supply Unit - apparently it is a common problem with some Grundigs.
  13.     We currently have a Grundig Sky Digibox which has a failing PSU and we can no longer recive BBC radio - we are considering buying a replacemnt and will obviously steer clear of Grundig (even though newer different models are probably fine - once bitten etc).  Does anyone have any advice on what model we should be looking at?  I appreciate that a standard Free to Air Box would give us most channels but we have a viewing card and would like to keep Channel 4 and the Sky system of planning what you want to watch is quite useful, so we are thinking of a Sky digibox of some description.
  14.     And me - I have just had to have my password reset to get back in..
  15.     We lost ours again yesterday - presumably because of the failing PSU in our Grundig digibox.  Those parameters don't work for us Timco.  Many thanks Martinwatkins for giving us a few extra weeks of  BBC Radio 2!
  16.     It's very easy to clean the inside of the door if it gets brown/black - I do it each morning and it only takes a couple of minutes.  Get a piece of damp kitchen roll or an old damp rag, dip it in the ash from the fire and rub across the glass, then polish up with a clean dry piece of kitchen roll or rag - easy peasy, no need to use chemicals and best of all you can see the fire!
  17.     We decided to give potatoes a miss this year because of the problems we had last year - so instead we have them all over the aubergines!  Next door to the tomatoes so I am keeping my fingers crossed 'cos they are the same family as the aubergines and potatoes aren't they.  We drown them in about an inch of parafin in a plastic ice cream box.......
  18.     They are going to seed.  You need to cut those stalks off or all the goodness will go into the seed heads instead of into forming the onions.
  19.     Just a word of warning.  I have no experience of this Agency, however we did use a few which had properties on the internet which we were interested in.  Despite a phone call the day before we left UK to ensure that one particular property was still available and being told that it was; when we arrived we found it had actually been sold 6 months before.  Indeed it was still on their internet site 6 months later.  I have heard this about several different agencies from a range of people.  We also found that although we were looking in a fairly small area the number of properties you can actually see in a day is quite low - due to the distances between them and the fact that there will probably be a 2 hour lunch break.  You will probably be lucky if you manage to see a total oif 4 or 5. Bon courage!
  20.     I don't think you should make the assumption that gites are normally occupied by about 10 people - particularly around this area (and we are the next department to Haute Vienne)  groups are much smaller - although ours is theoretically capable of 7 plus a baby in practice it is more often occupied by couples.  This would obviously make a difference to the viability of your idea.
  21.   Here in Deux-Sèvres (79) it's raining lots - and squally winds and more showers forecast for later on (75kph winds) so you're not missing a great deal weatherwise!
  22.     Thanks very much for your help - I guess nothing lasts forever - particularly when it has dodgy components!  It's still okay at the moment so I have bookmarked the relevant site aboiut repairing the digibox and when push comes to shove we'll have a go.
  23.     Of course it depends how much outside stuff they do as well - do they cut grass, sweep pool terrace etc?   We have a 2 bedroom house (although the rooms are quite big) and I normally take around 6 hours on a changeover day to do the house (husband does the outside) - can be more but seldom less because if it's not too bad I do things I don't do each time like all the lamp shades etc.  It can't take any longer cos in theory is only empty from 10am until 4pm so you need to develop a routine.
  24.     Thanks for that WJT, it is a difficult situation.  I was just hoping that someone knew of some sort of plant or herb that hedgehogs find really distasteful...........
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