Clarkkent

[quote user="pachapapa"]   And when you hear the dulcet tones of a well modulated female voice with remarkable elocution. Open your eyes! And behold a polite lady of Indian extraction. [/quote] Quite probably born in England of parents who have spent most or all of their lives in England. She is English - so why should anyone be surprised?

Thank you for that piece of information. It surprises me that in our Health and Safety conscious world that such Victorian labelling is still permitted. You're precautions are absolutely necessary. (I am in deepest France at the moment with only dial-up to access the internet. Any reply to any post is subject to extreme delay! The alternative is go down to Macdonalds and sit in the car park. In this weather? Not on your Nellie!)

[quote user="Russethouse"]   In  absolute extremis only, spirit of salts  [/quote]   Why don't you use its proper name - hydrochloric acid? Then people would know what they were dealing with ...  

Very interesting, Norman. Do you think that there might be a tenuous link to the problems being experienced by, and attibuted to, the Murdoch empire? Since "newspapers" like the Sun and NoW have been instrumental in dumbing down people's expectations and moral values, promoting celebrity and yob culture, chavism and instant gratification?

[quote user="pachapapa"]Scummy Brummy.[/quote] Is this a subject on which you an expert? Birmingham is quite an attractive city now. The rioters on TV were shown in the city centre. Why are authorities in Britain reluctant to use water cannons? Loaded with flourescent dye so that perpetrators can be readily identified. EDIT They used kettling on unarmed, peaceful protesters, are they frightened to use it on yobs?

Thak you, JohnM. I do recall both crashes but had clearly confused them in my recollections. The Beaune crash resulted in the French government taking powers to ban the coach journeys for children when appropriate. The Auxerre crash reported the existence of a sleeping compartment for the off duty driver next to the baggage hold.

[quote user="pachapapa"] Accident de Beaune, Côte d'Or, 1982. [/quote] Thank you, pachapapa. So it was actually 30 years ago. No wonder I was hazy on detail.

[quote user="Pierre ZFP"]I heard on the radio this morning that in response to the lage number of accidents on the roads, a ban has been imposed on coaches carrying schoolchildren.  It wasn't clear (to me anyway) if this is permanent or just for the summer but they said the power to do this had been in place for 30 years.  I don't recall it happening before though.[/quote] There was a very bad coach accident involving children near (I think ) Auxerre 15 or 20 years ago, and a ban was introduced then. IIRC there were two drivers and the off-duty driver slept in a kind of bed space in a drawer in the luggage compartment.   EDIT I'm not certain but I think it may have involved British children.

[quote user="Albert the InfoGipsy"] On the subject of the thread as a whole, for most people there's no point in going back to film. If you're one of the keen types with access to a darkroom and enjoy sploshing about in hypo then it's a different matter. For anyone who's intending to send their films off for printing I'd say 'don't bother' because the overall cost is high and there is practically zero chance that the results from commercial D&P will look better than digital prints. I strongly suspect that the few people who believe that film gives a different 'look' from digital could actually achieve the same result with a bit of prodding around in something like lightroom. It would be interesting to do the equivalent of a blind tasting to see how many can pick out film-based images from digital. [/quote] I have a few thousand colour slides accumulated over the decades so I bought a Minolta scanner to digitise them. I now have a few thousand digital images and the main problem is cataloguing them ... but that's another story. My wife and children didn't like slides, they wanted prints that could be carried around and showed to friends. Occasionally I find an unprocessed negative film which I take to my local Jessops. They have a processing machine in the shop and I ask them to just process the film and not supply prints. I then scan the negatives and get inverted images. In almost every case I find that it is necessary to tweak the results using Photoshop. It may be that the film gives a "truer" image and that I have been conditioned by the brighter, more vibrant images that my Lumix FZ50 provides. But film is now old technology, using it is expensive, laborious, complex and subject to catastrophe. I'm more than happy to allow others to sing its praises ... but nostalgia isn't what it used to be ...

My daughter is flying to Bordeaux in a few days time to pay me a visit. She was going to use Flybe but checked with BA ... and BA was cheaper. She will come into the main terminal. I wonder what sort of deal was done with the lo-costs for them to agree to using a cattle shed?

Oh dear. That one fell flat on its face, didn't it! I think I shall have to give up the comedy.  [:(] However, I did come across a contribution to some forum or other where an American woman admitted to giving herself an enema before going on a date ...  [8-)]

[quote user="sweet 17"][Mind you, in those days you had to have a pubic shave AND an enema and they were the difficult bits to explain if your Urdu is not up to scratch.....[:D][/quote] And if what I have been told is true, these are now a part of any young woman's normal preparation for a night out on the town!

Could that be "1000 Years of Annoying the French" by Stephen Clarke? (Black Swan, £8.99) If not, it certainly highlights some of the perceptions that French people have of the English.

I had my vasectomy in 1986. It was done by a member of the GP practice and cost about £60 (including inspection of two samples after the event). I took the afternoon off for the procedure, which took about 30 minutes, and went back to work the following day. I was fine, very little discomfort (even though a couple of days later my left one would have won prizes in the aubergine section at the local produce show) and there was only one of my regular activities which I could not immediately continue. What never fails to amaze me is the French are even squeamish about having their male pets done!

[quote user="idun"] Yes, the alarm was raised, the politicians told him to get on with his job and shut up. Laurent Fabius was questioned? arrested? but like most slippery politicans, I cannot remember anything happening to him. [/quote] Be careful what you say. At the time of the last presidential contest Laurent Fabius came third in the Socialist campaign behind Sego and ... wait for it ... DSK. Fabius is still a relatively young man. [6] I seem to recall that the disgraced (and possibly fitted-up) Blood Transfusion Service director left France to work in England.

DONT DIE OF IGNORANCE intoned John Hurt in sepulchral tones over a black and white image of a tombstone. But I don't actually recall the reason for death being mentioned. (I may be wrong.) But I do recall a small child, when asked if he could name some diseases included ignorance in his list. He stated, quite reasonably, that people died from ignorance so it must be a disease. And the moral righteous declared AIDS to be God's punishment for practising unnatural acts - which must have been of great comfort for those who were infected by contaminated blood supplies. The conspiracy theorists maintained that AIDS had been manufactured in a secret US laboratory and had been a weapon intended to be used against the Soviet Union, but it "got out". If I recall correctly, the director of the French national blood transfusion service was jailed for allowing contaminated supplied to be used, but it was believed that his protestations had been overruled by politicians who used him as a scapegoat.

[quote user="frexpt"] We've been back and forth to France for holidays since 1995 and this is our third summer here more permanently.  We are well used to appalling summers in the UK, but we can't remember a previous July in France as disappointing as this one from a weather point of view.......pretty cool and wet here since the beginning of the month[:(][:(] Is this unusual? [/quote] Form 2 Geography The British Isles and the European coastal mainland from Norway to the Iberian peninsular are all subject to a maritime climate, characterised by mild winters and cool summers with precipitation at all times of the year. Deux-Sevres is on the western side of France not far from the Atlantic coast. It suffers the same kind of weather as the British Isles, but being further south solar radiation is stronger so that when the sun shines it will be warmer. But the grass is always green - made possible by frequent rain. Unpredictability in European weather can be caused by the polar jet stream, which, despite its name, can meander quite a long way south. If you want more certainty in weather, you have to move further east into the Mediterranean climate zone.

You may find this of interest: http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/2294587/ShowPost.aspx

Does she qualify for UK citizenship?

Oh dear! Who can you believe here, Piers Morgan or Louise Mensch? Mr Morgan is known to many as the arch-enemy of Ian Hislop, editor of Private Eye. Mrs Mensch is also known as Louise Bagshawe, author of about a dozen chick-lit bonkbusters.

[quote user="Gardener"]Thanks for the advice. The computer is old and very shabby looking so I wasn't looking at spending a lot of money on it. I am quite keen to have a go at building one though, I will keep googling and see if it is a feasible winter project for a computer numpty.[/quote] For another £20 Dabs will sell you a new case and PSU!

It is now a new day and the information coming from Oslo is dreadful. My heart goes out to all those who lost loved ones. I think that everyone's initial reaction was that it must be another attack by fundamentalist islamics. It is an terrible thing to have to admit but I felt almost relieved when I learned that the attack was not by islamists but apparently by a neo Na_zi. But the tragedy is the same irrespective of the motives of the murderer. And for Norwegians, the tragedy is greater because the alleged perpetrator was one of them. I am trying to understand the paradox of a far-right assassin attacking his own people - children at that - because of his hatred of other cultures. EDIT The paradox becomes even greater now - it seems the man is a Christian fundamentalist. Perhaps he thinks that the "Rapture" has begun!

[quote user="Gardener"]So do I need to ( or can I ) change the motherboard?[/quote] Buy a motherboard/processor/memory bundle from a firm such as Dabs  - you shouldn't need to pay more than about £150 or so. So long as you are reasonably methodical it is not a particularly difficult job. You can upgrade storage and optical drives later. If I can do this anyone can!

This is an interesting problem you are raising. However, I wonder whether you are approaching it from the right direction. The important thing, surely, is that your intentions and thoughts are accurately presented rather than that every word is rendered in the translation. For instance, your example "They will be crossing the equator on Tuesday." How, in every essential, does that differ from "They will cross the equator on Tuesday"? English is a largely uninflected language, instead of having word endings to convey meanings as French does, English uses additional words. This is due to English's germanic origins. The arrival of the Normans added different structures. In consequence, by mixing the two language systems, English sometimes presents a flexibility which French does not possess. Rather than translating the words, why don't you translate the idea? I'm sorry if this sounds like preaching, that's not my intention, I'm just suggesting a different approach to your problem.

I note that Cressida Dick is being named in the press as a possible replacement for Sir Paul Stephenson. It will probably depend how she gets on with Boris Johnson. Has anyone else noticed how Boris has turned into a latter day Blind Pew? He delivered the Black Spot to Ian Blair and then a couple of years later to Stephenson. And he has delivered a warning  to Cameron ...