Le Petomane

What about their pharmacies? In UK, if you've got spots on your bottom you can go into the chemists and all the bottomspots medicines are there on open display. You can read the info and choose which one you want. Here all the medicines are all locked away in drawers, guarded by white-coated dragons. The public area of the shop is filled with beautifully arranged displays of dogworming pills and breath-fresheners. Let's get Boots over here.

I have just been fined for speeding and been told I have 1 point on my licence. However, I have a UK licence. How will this work, if at all?

I hear rumours that a low-cost carrier is going to start flights from the UK to Beziers. Any one know any more?

Are you using Wanadoo? They will sell you a spamfilter, or Macafee will, or Norton, but the easiest thing to do is set up an account (it's free) with a provider like Yahoo who have a spam filter at the server so they don't get through to your computer.

It's actually the time when the parent moth will lay the eggs in their cocoon. The grubs will fatten during the winter and process in the spring. Here in our area (Herault) they use helicopters to spray pine trees. Every October one comes terrifyingly low over my house to spray. But I was still killing the things last spring, so the spray must miss some of the moths.

My wife and I were invited to the officers' mess aboard a French naval ship in Varna in 1978.  It was all jackets-off and informal. And they gave us a side of beef from the ship's freezer to take home with us, as meat was virtually unobtainable at the time in Bulgaria.(Now there's plenty, but nobody can afford it. Some political point to be made there...)

Thread worms just want a night on the piles.

This is something between myself and the memsahib. Performances twice nightly, and sometimes more often.

I've seen exactly the same, but with George Bush instead of the girl. Even more possibilities for fun.

I like France and I speak quite good French, so this is not another case of Whinging Brit complaining because France isn't Britain, but the truth is that the French have a competely different idea of service. The attitude of most traders is not that you're doing them a favour by giving them your custom, but that they are doing you a favour by serving you. This indifference occasionally borders on rudeness, and it extends from small shopkeepers to France Telecom and SNCF. There are, happily, lots of exceptions, and once they get to know you their attitude is often different.

It probably is aoutats. Pharmacists will sell you a special spray against them, but it's quite expensive and a drag to have to put on every time you go into your garden. I'm afraid you'll just have to keep out of the garden, especially long-grassed areas. Stick to paved areas, terraces, etc. They can't fly, and they get onto you by crawling on from grass, woodpiles etc. If you have to go in the garden, shower thoroughly when you come in and put fresh clothes on. They take a while to get to the spot on your body where they want to bite, and they're not tough, soap and water will get rid of them. You have my sympathy. I've suffered terribly from them in the past.

Your chaps are not termites. You will never see termites, unless you go determinedly digging for them. They avoid light. You will only ever see their effects, when your house collapses.

Why can't you get man-size tissues in France? C'est bizarre, n'est-ce pas, when you consider that two of the greatest Frenchmen of modern times, General de G. and Gerard Depardieu were/are both well-endowed in the hooter department?

I live in Herault. Anytime I do any work in the garden I get eaten alive by things I never see. I cover myself in anti-insect stuff and spray more on my clothes, and I still get bitten. It's too early in the year for aoutats. What's biting me?

Does everyone know the correct cheese-eating etiquette in France? You have to slice the cheese according to its shape; cheese in a wedge has to be sliced parallel to the longest side of the wedge, circular cheeses have to be sectioned from the middle. To do otherwise is a gross breach of etiquette. I found this out only last night. I must have been offending my French hosts for years.

These have started hatching out down here in the Languedoc. I caught a line of them (seconds before the cat got to them), put them in the garden incinerator, sprinkled them liberally with barbecue lighting fluid, set fire to them, and for good measure shoved in a lot of dry grass and twigs. After twenty minutes the incinerator was hot enough to bake bread. Then I caught four of them escaping through a hole in the side. I returned them to the heat. One of them escaped again. The sportsman in me wanted to let him go, but then I remembered that if the cat got one in her mouth it would be the end for her. These things really are nasty, and Rasputin-like when it comes to destroying them. I have read that there is a beetle called a sycophanta which feeds on them. If I can get hold of any they can live in my garden rent free, with free drinks, shagpile carpets, and a Filipino maid of their own. Is there anywhere that might supply them?

Oh dear, Zeb. "Green hilly countryside." We had that in the Limousin next door, and it's a result of endless heavy rain. The other abomination to come out of the Charente is a sickly aperitif called Pineau de Charentes, one glass of which will remove any appetite you may have had. Maybe that's the point if it, like starting a meal with Yorkshire pudding. Charentais slippers are fine, so long as I can wear them in the Langeudoc.

What's the point of living in Northern France? As far as I can see, it's for Brits who like their rain a bit warmer. I once lived in the Limousin, because a company which flogged French homes told me that "south of the Loire the weather changes." Like a fool, I believed them. Now I am snug and smug in Herault, and I feel sorry for people in Normandy, and, even worse, Brittany, which is full of faux-Celts and awful cider. Today (March 3rd) I sat out on my terrace drinking the village wine in the warm Languedoc sun and feeling sorry for all those poor Brits north of the Loire. Just though I'd like to share this.

Yes, Niemoller was right, but you speak out against the idea, not the man. Arguments ad hominem will always fail, partly because the idea outlives its advocates. Although the world rose up and stopped the bastard, the bitch that bore him is in heat again. (Brecht).(I've just noticed that this ultra-sensitive chatroom has censored Brecht's words. The first word rhymes with plastered and the second with hitch).

Dicksmith, you won't change le Bouffon's views by abusing him/her.  Nick Griffin is a Cambridge graduate and well able to look after himself, but he forms a focus for people like le Bouffon who see in him a spokesman for all their pent-up grievances, which probably range from immigrants to welfare-scroungers to flogging thugs. Other people's views won't go away because you(or I) sneer at them. Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l'admire. As a teacher you should know that any classroom proves this.

I am coming up to 60. Are there any goodies I shall be entitled to in France in the way of bus fares, train fares, getting into smutty films half-price, etc etc?

I keep getting conflicting advice on this one. I bought a house in France nearly seven years ago. At the time I was working in the Middle East, living in job-related housing. My French house was the only house I owned. Am I liable to CGT if I were to sell it now, and what would the rate be?

As these are no longer required, it can be difficult proving your arrival in France as a resident. I had a problem at the CPAM last Jan trying to persuade them that I had taken up residence when I actually did. If you're an EC citizen, there's no passport stamp. In the end I showed them the counterfoil of my boarding pass! It might be a good idea (as well as a courtesy) to go to your local mairie on arrival and say "I'm here".