Jill<br><br>Jill (99)

It's the first I've heard about International Day for the Elderly! The only thing I heard on television today was that it was Fish Week! I haven't been near any shops for weeks, so, are they actually selling "Happy Elderly Person Day" cards then? What will they think of next? They introduced Grandparents day, but I haven't a clue when it is, and I certainly wouldn't encourage my children to send cards to their grandparents (who don't even know about it, I think). We told our kids not to bother with Mother's Day and Father's Day. I'd quite like to cancel Christmas. I enjoy giving to my children, although it's harder as they get older, but I'd really rather not receive gifts and cards because if people appreciate me, I'd rather they showed it in other ways. So, I assume they don't and so I'd rather not have duty presents. A letter, e.mail or phone call from a friend at any time of year is far more welcome.

[quote]>But what I don't understand is, if people don't like this site for whatever reason, why bother looking in? So if the slow decline and death of this site is due to the slowness of the forum softwa...[/quote] "But what I don't understand is, if people don't like this site for whatever reason, why bother looking in. So if the slow decline and death of this site is due to the slowness of the forum software, that is a BAD thing." YES IF THE SLOWNESS OF THE FORUM SOFTWARE IS DRIVING PEOPLE AWAY, THAT IS A BAD THING. BUT ON THE OTHER HAND, THERE ARE A LOT OF ENTHUSIASTIC PEOPLE TRYING TO KEEP IT GOING IN THE HOPE THAT THE SOFTWARE WILL BE REPLACED (SORRY ABOUT THE CAPITALS, I'M ONE OF THE PEOPLE WHO DOES HAVE A CONTROL PANEL BUT IT DOESN'T GIVE ME THE ABILITY TO CHANGE FONT. "But if it is due to the tone of the forum changing due to a takeover by a small clique of vocal whiners, depressives and hangers-on who feel they own the place, that is FINE and the rest of us who don't like what we see should just p**s off?" THE PERSON WHO SEEMS TO BE WHINING HERE, IS YOU. IF PEOPLE TELL IT AS THEY SEE IT - IT DOESN'T MAKE IT WHINING. LIFE CAN BE DEPRESSING WHEREVER YOU ARE. YOU ONLY HAVE TO LOOK AT THE NEWS. LIFE IS LIKE THAT. THE FORUM HASN'T CHANGED IN RESPECT OF THE PEOPLE WHO USE IT - THE TOPICS ARE THE SAME, THE PEOPLE ARE THE SAME. (EXCEPT THAT WE HAVE LOST SOME GOOD FRIENDS DUE TO THE CHANGE OF FORMAT, BUT GAINED SOME NEW ONES WHO HAVE CHOSEN TO DISCUSS THINGS WITH EVERYONE ELSE) IT TAKES ALL TYPES TO MAKE A WORLD, AND THEY ARE ALL HERE TOO. AS FOR CLIQUES - I'VE SAID THIS MANY A TIME BEFORE - I'M NOT AWARE OF ANY CLIQUES - CLIQUES ARE CREATED BY THE PEOPLE WHO JUST WANT TO HAVE A GO AT PEOPLE WHO ARE ENJOYING COMMUNICATING WITH EACH OTHER. IF YOU STOP CRITICISING PEOPLE, YOU MAY HAVE A CHANCE OF BECOMING PART OF THE COMMUNITY. I'M SURE THAT ANYONE WHO FIRST JOINS FEELS LIKE A STRANGER, AS DOES SOMEONE WHO DOESN'T VISIT REGULARLY. THE ONLY WAY TO GET TO KNOW PEOPLE IS TO BECOME INVOLVED. "Please THINK before you start typing." WELL, YES, WHY DON'T YOU! THERE IS NO NEED TO GO ON AND ON ACCUSING PEOPLE OF BEING IN CLIQUES. JUST JOIN IN LIKE ANYONE ELSE AND ENJOY YOURSELF.

So do I, but it still looks disjointed.

"I would add, I can't believe anyone would give a job to someone who was not the best candidate." I agree with you, but I do believe that positive discrimination does happen. Look how in the Police they dropped the qualifications needed for Black and Asians about 20 years ago. Yet there was no need to do it. Black and Asians are just as capable of getting the same qualifications as white people and many do, just as many white people don't. You only have to look at the mix of doctors. "What equal opps practices hope to encourage, is that suitably talented, qualified people from all 'sectors' of society will apply." Exactly. The only problem that sometimes happens is that if they don't get the job, they have sometimes sued - just as disabled people can and probably do when they don't get jobs. I would like to see everyone treated alike, but unfortunately there are too many racist people about. Oh, and SB - I think it might be Sir Trevor actually! Perhaps Moira will become a Dame!

Jumping back to a couple of posts above here.. Regarding Message in your In box - this isn't necessary with the new forum as you receive an e.mail telling you there is one. Well, unless you don't check your e.mails, that is. Regarding the meaning of "In my humble opinion" how do you all receive that comment - do you feel that it takes on the same meaning as "with respect" i.e. "what a load of old c*******s"? Of course, that's just my humble opinion with regard to "with respect". Or is it because when people use it, they are scared someone is going to shout at them for having a different opinion? "To be fair" - I think that tends to be used when someone has criticised someone, but is then saying they can't really help what they have been criticised for. For example they have done something badly, but to be fair, they did have a lot of things happening to interrupt them. I think that is a more genuine one.

[quote]Found this on TF... > My first post, I have viewed postings in the OTHER site and have to say how much I prefer the enthusiasm I find here. I personally think a lot of people have got fed up of ...[/quote] I can only say that that person must be blind to enthusiasm on LF then. I find most people are enthusiastic on LF, but at the moment, it is easy to understand why there is a lot of whinging about the forum problems. When I've visited TF I always felt as though everyone was on something very strong. It's just not the real world over there.

I have no problem finding the Control Panel, but the Forum Settings bit doesn't seem to work. I can't change font or get smilies. The slowness is the biggest problem for me. And the inability to post direct replies to other peoples posts unless you follow them on. Disjointed, having an unconnected reply 3 pages later - especially when people have been waffling on about nothing to do with the subject. I sometimes wonder if it is deliberate to prove the point that this forum no longer flow.

Since I made the original posting, my friend in Le Havre sent me this message. This seems different to the information I heard on British television yesterday. voici un article d'hier sur les liaisons transmanches , ce ne serait plus P0 mais Brittanny FERRIES Je vous mets le lien GOOGLE actualités le HAVRE vous avez tous les articles concernant la région Cliquez ici : Recherche Google : le havre bon mercredi CHRISTINE AFP 28 SEPT 2004 La ligne P and O Le Havre-Porstmouth cédée à Brittany Ferries La ligne P and O Le Havre-Portmouth sera cédée à la compagnie française Brittany Ferries dans le cadre de la restructuration annoncée mardi par le groupe britannique qui prévoit la suppression de 1.200 emplois, a-t-on affirmé de source syndicale au Havre. Cette cession a été annoncée au cours d'une réunion du Comité central d'entreprise (CCE) de P and O France consacrée à cette restructuration qui s'est tenue au Havre. "Le transfert de cette ligne et de ses deux bateaux à Brittany ferries se fera sous réserves de l'accord des autorités administratives compétentes", a précisé Didier Coury, secrétaire CGT du CCE. La compagnie Brittanny Ferries dont le siège est à Roscoff (Finistère) n'est jusqu'alors pas présente en Haute-Normandie. Elle exploite six lignes régulières avec la Grande-Bretagne au départ de la Basse-Normandie et de la Bretagne, en Manche ouest. Au cours de cette réunion, la direction a confirmé la fermeture des lignes au départ de Cherbourg et Caen et le nombre global de 1.200 emplois supprimés sur 5.500 dans la branche transmanche du groupe en Europe . "Pour la France où près de 400 salariés travaillent pour P and O, les informations qui nous ont été données ne nous permettent pas de dire combien d'emplois vont être supprimés", a précisé Didier Coury.

There are definately some people who have actually given up on LF, because they told me so - because the new format doesn't flow and other reasons for not liking it. I was going to leave as I do find it frustrating, but I didn't want to lose the contact. I have found though, that the only way to make sense of the current format is to make sure you visit it every day. If you miss a day or two, it becomes impossible to follow. I've found the best policy is to have 3 windows open at the same time so that you can start reading another window while the previous one moves onto the next page. I tried it with only 2 windows yesterday, but that still meant a lot of waiting around. So today I've had 3 windows open and it meant no waiting as I flicked from one to the other. I'm dreading what it will be like when I do miss a few days, and if I go on holiday, it doesn't bear thinking about! It will be really tedious to catch up. I also think that a lot of you who are still posting are possibly posting far less than previously. Why is that? Is it because if you are tempted to post, your posting would be totally out of context before it appeared at the bottom of the list?

I don't know why people say IMHO, but even in speech people do say things like that. There are lots of superfluous phrases in speech generally. You would hope that people were giving their honest opinion but you never can tell. The one that gets me is when people start saying "with respect......" and you know that they really mean that the person they are speaking to is speaking a load of twaddle!

No, I don't even know who Jose Garcia is - although I seem to have heard the name. I can't get French television though and only have 4 terrestial British ones. I don't find Antoine de Caulnes at all entertaining - just his accent! Mmm! How old is he anyway? I've always wondered - is he an absolute perv or is he gay or what?

On British television this morning they were saying that P & O is making a loss of a million a week and they are closing down their channel crossings to Le Havre, Cherbourg and Calais. But I e.mailed a friend in Le Havre and she believes they are not discontinuing Le Havre. As my son is going to be going to stay with them in Le Havre, we had been looking on this as a convenience. What surprised me though was that they said that a crossing which cost £300 a few years ago, now only costs £96! Perhaps they do they occasional special offer, but surely they are comparing their regular prices to special offers and not realistically. I've not come across such a cheap crossing, and I'd hope that £300 was one of the longer crossings and not Dover to Calais. I do find that the crossings have come down in price and it does vary as to which company is the cheapest, but as I've found P & O to be more expensive on the Calais crossing, it does make you wonder how Hoverspeed and SeaFrance are doing, since those are the ones we have used in the last few years.

[quote]Over on TF a lot of posters have their own picture as their avatar (like me). Does that help or hinder? If help - how about it some of you?I know I bang on about this a lot, but I also find it difficu...[/quote] I don't think you really want to see what I look like! I have given some members my website address in case they want to see what I look like, but I don't feel inclined to publish that knowing of problems that other people have had before. I don't think I have a photo of me that I would want anyone to see! I don't fancy the thought of ME looming up every time I post on LF. Anyway, you can have a description - dark brown curly hair, collar length (well longer if it wasn't curly), female, specs, overweightish, over 40, mother of 2 teenagers, not trendy, not traditional, yet traditional (work that one out), bit of a non-conformist (don't mean religiously), stickler for maintaining cultural values, but not square. In fact I'm an odd mixture, as you may have noticed. Don't look like anyone famous.

[quote]Jill Did you watch or listen to Bragg's series on the English language? I was particularly interested to learn that many expressions and words in common usage in English English, orginated outside B...[/quote] "Did you watch or listen to Bragg's series on the English language? I was particularly interested to learn that many expressions and words in common usage in English English, orginated outside Britain and, in particular, that lots of expression I took to be British English were in fact from abroad (especially America)." Yes, I did watch (and videoed) "The Adventure of English" and I have the book too, most of which I have read. I agree with much of what you say, ie. that foreign words enrich the language - many do, but what I really cannot bear is the simplification of the language that seems to be happening so much and I don't like the way American spellings are creeping in more and more, nor the fact that it is trendy to mis-spell things. Of course it is all a matter of opinion what enriches a language. Personally, I like the use of Pied-a-terre and fait accompli etc in English as I do find it enriching, but the continued use of "cool" drives me crazy! I had someone phone me to enquire about the classes I teach and in 5 minutes she must have said "cool" at least 20 times! I support anything that enriches a language, but sadly the English language is being damaged by simplification. Now to bring the thread back to France - the same thing is happening in France with words like "cool". But you are just not "cool" if you don't speak that way. So, I'm not "cool"! Tant pis!

No, I didn't see it and I can't stand Eurotrash, but I love to hear Antoine de Caulnes speaking English! Is that accent for rrreal or whaet? It is verry sexeee!

Mm! After what you've said, I certainly don't think I'll be going out of my way to try them. I've always said I would draw the line at sheep's eye balls and calves testicles! But then I stood outside a charcuterie a few years ago daring myself to by bouches with sweetbreads, but chickened out. So, can anyone recommend these? I tried gizzards a few years ago and found them quite acceptable, but bought a tin of them to do a salad and found the rest of the family weren't keen. So, what about sweetbreads?

I can't stand this innit business either and another thing which really irritates me is when people say "enjoy". I just feel that enjoy needs an "it" or a noun after it e.g. enjoy your meal. I can't stand text speak either. When people respond to my website in text speak, it makes them sound really stupid. My daughter had some information come from Connexions (I can't stand incorrect spellings of things either - don't some people have enough problems?) the career people and she wrote to them stating that she couldn't possibly take them seriously if they were going to be so patronising using text speak on teenagers. I've actually told my children that if I find them using text speak in e.mails, I'll ban them from using the e.mail! Also, no offence intended to Americans here present, but it really does annoy me how American expressions have infiltrated English. Call me old fashioned if you like, but I'd still rather hear the English of Olivier or even Lawrence or Sillitoe in local slang, but English is English and I'd like to hear it stay the way it has been for a long time.

It irritates me when people say they are planning to move to France and have never been to France and then ask for suggestions where they should go. I can't see how they know they want to move there, and I don't think decisions can be made on other people's opinions, because we all react differently to different places. It also irritates me when people move to France without learning the language first.

I had some at a degustation about 6 years ago, and thought it was nothing special - certainly not worth buying. Last year when we went away for our 25th WA to a posh hotel (way beyond our normal thing as we usually camp) foie gras appeared several times on the menu and I got quite hooked and ordered it again at a restaurant in France this summer. I do think it's expensive though, so I probably wouldn't buy it to serve at a meal at home. But when it's part of a menu in a French restaurant, I don't feel I am then paying over the odds for it as it's in the set price of the meal that I would pay whether I had it or not. It's not that fantastic though. I do have a tin of a sort of pate made with fois gras and other things which I bought from a producer in the Dordogne this year though - I'm looking forward to eating that. I still haven't tried truffles though, except for some little slivers which were in a jar of some sort of spread that an Italian friend gave to me. There were just four of these slivers stuck to the inside of the jar and they were pretty tasteless. So, I don't know whether they are worth buying - what do they taste like?

A few people have commented on the speed of solicitors. They seem to take ages - perhaps to justify their charges. But we found that they could really move when they had to. We passed this house one day and saw it was for sale and unoccupied, and that part exchange was available. We had no plans to move, but were inspired by the idea of moving to a bigger house without all the hassle of putting our house on the market. A few days later we viewed the house and it was arranged for the builders involved in the chain of part exchange to look at our house to make an offer. We agreed the offer on a Thursday, and two weeks and one day later we moved in! I can only assume it was the builders who had built the house at the top of the exchange chain who had the clout to get things moving. In fact, on that Thursday, my Mum went on holiday, so we told her nothing. 3 days after we had moved, we held a barbecue at the house and my sister pretended to take a wrong turn and arrived on the drive of our new home. The bewildered photo of my Mum was so funny. We also didn't tell our friends who were coming to stay for the weekend - they arrived at an empty house! It had all happened so quickly! So - how do you get solicitors to get things moving? They clearly can do it!

So are you seeing these posts crammed over to one side and blank boxes and crosses on the first of my two earlier posts? Is it scrambled on other peoples computers too? Your post has got squashed up too! Most peculiar!

Is it possible that you could all stop talking in code and use the full name for things please - so I have some idea of what you are talking about. I use computers, I leave all the setting up to my husband. Thanks.

[quote]I hope somebody can guide me through this problem. Whenever I enter this site I go to "Posts since last visit" If I decide to post a reply before looking at them all and after posting try to go back t...[/quote] I've mentioned that problem more than once since we got the new forum. Every time you post, the system thinks you are making a new visit to the forum. Asking for posts since your last visit only works if you don't post. Thank goodness a few more have noticed this! Incidentally, was it you, Will, that said that the reason this forum had been chosen was because it fitted in with Archant's server - well, has it crossed anyone's mind that their server might be the problem? Perhaps they need a new server, and donc they might have a better choice of forum!???!

Just copied this below from the Control Panel. I've got mine set on All Options - so officially I should be able to use all stuff listed at the top, but I can't - as far as I can see, anyway. I'm in Microsoft Internet Explorer and I'm fairly certain I'm on Windows 98. "Options. Emoticons, colorpickers, table editor + all other options. Standard Options. Colorpickers, table editor + all other options. Basic Options. Font formatting, bullets, alignments, cut copy & paste. Minimal Options. Font formatting with cut copy & paste. Disable WYSIWYG. Replaces editor with a standard HTML TextArea"

Having been to evening classes myself (not for French, but for other languages) the beginners classes were generally geared to those wanting to holiday abroad. This may be OK, but if you are wanting to get there faster, it may be a bit slow and you may not be taught much grammar. Unless you are at a standard where you can jump to Level 3/GCSE,(at least at the college I used), it will be a slow process. When we decided to learn Italian many years ago, we bought the Linguaphone course. That is very good learning the way people speak, idioms etc, but we found it wasn't clear enough on the grammar side. So we bought (Living Italian) and used that to work on the grammar. Either one on it's own wouldn't have been enough. Modern language learning doesn't go in much for grammer - but - grammar is essential. It is no good learning set phrases - only learning the grammar will teach you how to put sentences together. My daughter has just done GCSE German and did French the year before. She was taught German by modern methods, but was taught French privately with a French woman who also had experience of teaching GCSE. In French, she covered grammar and has been able to put sentences together herself. In German, she was taught very little grammar and feels very frustrated that she was only taught set phrases and cannot put things together herself - even though she got A* in both subjects. She is now doing AS in both and feels very frustrated with German because her grammar is lacking. So, whatever you do, back it up with something that will teach you good grammar. Good Luck. For the children, Le Club Francais and La jolie ronde is good, but only if you have time to wait. If you want to do it quickly, get private lessons. GAY - or anyone in England - can you get French radio in your car? I can only get it when stationary. As soon as I start the engine, there is interference - having said this, I got a new car yesterday and haven't tried it out on the radio yet. The only time I use radio is when driving.