Martin963
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Posts posted by Martin963
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Actually I wonder if I've misled you a bit over card freezing. You can do it from the Barclays app, but having looked at the Barclays on line banking system (ie from a computer rather than a phone) I'm not sure it's possible.
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PS Have to add this: my parents, whilst searching for somewhere in 05, drove down a couple of times with a caravan. My father would always wax lyrical about how good the French were at building roads, (to hear him swanking about the marvels of the Bouleveard Peripherique you'd honestly believe he'd built the entire thing himself single-handed). Anyway, their journey used to take them to Grenoble, but before the A48 had been entirely completed. On one occasion my father was rabbiting on about how wonderful this new motorway was, how the French anticipated traffic levels so early, and even my mother had to admit that there didn't seem to be a single other vehicle on either carriageway. They did a happy five miles or so totally on their own, before hearing "Ni-nah ni-nah ni-nah" becoming audible behind them. A police car overtook them, and signalled for them to stop. It turned out that my father had got the wrong side of some cones (he was colour blind, which didn't help, and French signage wasn't as comprehensive as it is now) and he'd managed several miles on an unopened section of the A48. Had he carried on another couple of miles he and the caravan would have ended up in a large hole. They were escorted back the wrong way (my father got in a total panic and it was the gendarmes who had to disconnect the caravan, turn the vehicles round, and reconnect them).
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Reminds me of my parents. In my teens we went to France three times a year, and my father seemed to be under the impression that it was akin to going to the south pole. Apart from loading the car with butter and coffee and tinned ham, he himself would wrap himself in multiple layers, thick winter jerseys, sports jacket, raincoat, heavy winter overcoat.
We'd scarcely be on the road before he'd yell "Ye Gods, the passports". If he was driving he would have to be persuaded to stop, as the search would entail going through the fifteen or so pockets of his sartorial over-complications. Eventually the passports would be found, a few miles would be achieved, then "Ye Gods, the ferry tickets". You can imagine, and this would go on throughout the entire journey to Southampton or Dover.
Famously later on they managed to leave their picnic for the journey in the fridge at home; another time when they'd just bought a little chalet in 05 they managed to leave a cardboard box full of mugs, plates, chocolate etc in a layby on the N75 south of Grenoble (a little layby off the road and très delaissé), only to be able to pick it up three weeks later on the way home (and demolishing the chocolate there and then they were so pleased to see it, having no doubt left the picnic for the return journey behind; the box eeventually got the the chalet on the next run!). As my mother observed, France was still in back then like England in the 1930s, where you could leave your luggage on a station platform and it would be left undisturbed for as long as you liked.......
Eventually they DID - on one of their last trips - lose their ferry tickets whilst in France in the eighties, and also managed to lose track of which day of the week it was, this was of course long before mobiles, and they weren't sure if the copies of the papers in the Librairies were today's or yesterdays. They eventually turned up at the wrong time at the wrong port on the wrong day to catch the wrong boat.As a result of such chaotic moments in my childhood I am boringly pretty well organised, but of course one never sees one's parents' good points, many of which I more than suspect that I am entirely lacking.
Good luck finding another bank. They're all pretty useless, although generally I find Nationwide (and, suprrisingly, Tesco) quite good at picking up the phone. Opinions may differ of course. FWIW had you been able to log in to Barclays Banking you could have "frozen" your card, most of the banks allow you to freeze them until you find it again.
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Just now, menthe said:
Lucky you! I'd have given anything to have met Claire IRL but I did meet Coops and I spoke on the phone with a couple of others.
Gosh yes, Claire, she was such a brilliant mod, but whose patience (which appeared to be inexhaustible) suddenly gave out I seem to remember. I think it was her that we nearly once went to see - she was en route from us to one of the TV transmitters in the Auvergne that I periodically made a pilgrimage to see. But sadly she was away the one time we might have managed it.
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4 hours ago, Le Petomane said:
Anyone remember chris pp? He was the forum's David Attenborough. If something bizarre with six legs appeared in your home he could identify it.
Was it chris pp who had a lot of run ins with his local hunters?
Lovely to hear from AnOther/Ernie. Glad you're OK. We had some fun on the satellite section I seem to remember, you with your fleet of Sky boxes!
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I'm fairly sure I was posting in late 1998, having joined in the summer when we started looking for a house. As others have said, famous names from the past include Coco (who used to get into terrible scrapes on here), mazan, Teamedup (who of course until recently was still posting on here under a different name), Anton Redman, Ron in the Aveyron, SwissBarry, etc etc. And a special mention for Cooperlola, one of the nicest people on the planet. I felt I was quite an old hand by 2001, when I was regularly advising (along with Mazan) folk on getting British TV in France, and occasionally on how to get French TV in England, and why the fact the French used SECAM/System L for TV transmission back then made things so difficult!
Sadly the decay of the forum hasn't been pretty as it's turned in on itself. I suppose everyone looks at Facebook nowadays.... Sadly I'm not sure it serves much of a function now....
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Yes, I can see it's a casse-tête for you. As I say, I'd just be very wary of anything with the Nordnet name in it, of course they may have turned over a new leaf, but.....
When we were in 24 we had the same problem as you, ie our village was not scheduled for fibre (as far as I know they still haven't got it). Hence we went down the 4G mains-router boulevard (in fact we pioneered it locally, and by the time we left I'd advised/installed it in a dozen French foyers (some friends, some via word of mouth from friends to their friends I'd never met!). We found the SOSH offres quite good enough (as they ride on Orange's network the coverage was the best overall) but we also used SFR which in our case had a weaker signal but greater allowance. For €20 odd and only monthly contract it worked very well in a dedicated 4G mains router.
I'm no particular fan of Musk, but I wish him well in this particular instance. as anyone who throws sand at the French and the EU regulations gets my support.
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Mon cher Harnser, it's clear you don't know this bit of Devon (and a large surrounding area). EVERYTHING is on poles here too, in fact more so than in 24 where we had our house for twenty years, during which time EDF/Enedis buried most of the local 3 phase distribution - none of our low tension stuff is buried. We too have falling trees and outages, and lorries that take out the phone lines/fibre connection, although my generator admittedly has been put to one side in the last two years as we now have a Tesla house-battery, but I am indeed aware of the sort of problems you face, as we face them here too. And no 5G before you ask, France is miles ahead with 5G coverage.
Like you I would find financial operations difficult after perhaps two weeks, but a few days? I'm not familiar with email card transaction, but our basic bills would still be paid internet or no internet. I can see though that if your mobile signal went down 2 weeks before the storm then it did make life extremely difficult, was this weather related or just the most appalling concatenation of technical failure?
We had a lot of trees round us in 24, and indeed do here in Devon. The main problem though is finding a path for the satellite signals to come through, particularly as I need the arc from 28E through to 5W.
Like you I don't know how well Starlink performs with obstructions, friends near here have it as they don't have the same fibre connection that most of us have, and I know that they were muttering that they needed to find a better position for the dish as the house was partially obstructing their signal. That said they were getting speeds of 70 Mbps by just plonking their Starlink dish on the ground. And here in Britain it's £75 a month, whereas in France you can I believe get it for €49. How can they justify such a difference?
I'll try and find out how our friends are getting on and what sort of installation they have.
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Of course if it's genuinely a new and better service from a new satellite then it might be worth trying. But over the years of reading nordnet reviews I'd be very careful about using them, I don't know if it's still the case but for ages there was a clear pattern that new customers got an excellent service for the first three months (which was the period where you could wriggle out) and then the speeds would collapse, leaving you locked into a contract that had another 21 months to run.
Is the internet really that important? Are storms on this scale going to happen so frequently that your life is going to be constantly and completely disrupted?
I must admit that *some* backup is comforting, here in Devon we have a couple of 4G routers, and when the fibre to our village was cut off by a lorry (that was too high and which stripped the fibre from the poles) we were glad to have an alternative, as it took BT nearly two weeks to repair things (not their fault, the road had to be closed and it's an A road).
A 4G (or 5G) router is far more reliable than tethering to a phone, although of course if the base station is deprived of power it's not going to function.
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Interesting - I checked the French price and as you say €40 a month which is very competitive. Put my address in in Britain and it's still £75 a month. Quelle arnaque!
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Interesting that it was used dans la langue de Shakespeare as well, thanks for that. As I said, it just wasn't a phrase I'd heard in use on French news reports until this summer, maybe the French have borrowed it back!
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Actually I think it was the Delphine Jubillar case where I first started noticing that they kept having to add that her companion was "innocent until proven otherwise".
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Used to be called "under-tow" in my young days, on holiday in Dorset as a child.
But I don't remember until this year or last the phenomenon being so widely and universally called "baïnes" on French TV reports.
Another new phrase on TV reports this year seems to be "sur le quivive" with regard to the pompiers and the forest fires, again in more than 24 years of daily watching of French TV news I don't remember that phrase cropping up.
(And another thing, French TV have suddenly started making a point of ending reports on suspected criminals with the reminder that they are innocent until proven guilty. My guess is that someone somewhere high up made a formal complaint about the way hitherto French TV reports could sully the name of a suspect with no stated presumption of innocence).
I digress.......
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12 hours ago, DaveLister said:
Ahh the old jackfield. Those were the days. I learnt my trade in radio before moving into television. Funnily enough my left handedness was one of the reasons I took very early retirement. More and more companies succumbed to windows based systems with their infuriating two button mice. I could only operate one quickly enough in a live broadcast if I converted it for the left hand. No problem for me but the 'normals' had a fit.😀
Also annoying (at least to me) was the BBC Radio capitulating - in the early 1990s - on the question of which way faders should fade, trashing decades of BBC exceptionalism, (of which I was proud).
Oh well, keep polishing those double enders!
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Why make it so "ciblé"? Why not allow an option to look at the national picture? Why restrict an app so tightly? Why should the app be entitled to check my geoloaction, some people (although I'm not that bothered about it) don't want snooping of this sort?
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Frustratingly - and perhaps typical of "the French attitude" - I finally got it (the app) to admit (after several attempts) that I am not entitled to download or use the app as I am not resident in France. In other words it's geo-blocked.
I do honestly wonder what goes on in the heads of some of these people......
And it's a stupid stupid restriction as I can still look at the info on the RTE website, it's just less easy to access quickly.
I was amused to see that traffic lights won't be exempted from power-cuts in France, that should be good for a laugh as a spectator sport.....
I might add that even on this very cold morning here in Britain (-5 deg C in Devon) we're still exporting power to France to keep their lights on.......
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I expect Hidalgo is planning at this moment how to tax the poor little beasts......
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Sadly it seems that Boursorama only offer bank accounts for people abroad provided they are French:
""La sélection d'un pays de résidence autre que France est réservée aux ressortissants français à l'étranger.""(I'd got some way through the process before it came up with that message, it's not clear when you start the sign up process). -
Just answered my own question - the application form seems to allow one to choose Royaume Uni. I shall investigate further - thanks for the tip off NormanH.
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But does Boursourama allow people who no longer have a French address to open an account?
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Truly awful, there are some sick people around.
Watching French TV though one sees more and more incidents of this sort where Mayors are attacked, often in public places with apparently no concern or worry on the part of the perpetrator about being witnessed or even filmed. One gets the impression that the increase in hassle - from low level insults and incivilités right through to being <<grièvement blessé>> is putting a lot of current Mayors off seeking re-election when the time comes. One can't blame them.
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Thanks NormanH. Interesting idea about "virtual cards", I saw mention of them but thought "too complicated for me", as would be linking my phone to the account. But I'll investigate further, it's a fascinating idea.
Sadly LCL are refusing to budge from these eye-watering charges (in spite of which they said they'd like to speak to me on the phone, but when they tried they then claimed that they weren't allowed to ring numbers in Britain, which seems a bit ironic when they're trousering €60 a quarter from me henceforth). Talking to French friends the reputation of LCL is at rock bottom, slow, blundering, out of date and expensive. It'll take a couple of months to empty the account but I shall consider myself well out of their grasp.
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I get the impression that this problem hasn't affected anyone on here, tant mieux, but an agreement has now been concluded and the TF1 stable will be back with all five channels on TNTsat and Canalsat as of Monday 7th Nov.
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Thanks Lehaut. From what I can gather the "no limits" ties in with what you've found. I did enquire yesterday both from Wise and Revolut as to how they treat larger sums coming in - forcement the money from the sale of our house in 2019 is not an insignificant sum. I offered to send a pdf of the sale agreement to them in advance, but they seemed happy to review any incoming payments on an as-and-when basis and ask questions on legitimacy as they arise.
What a day I have had and its only lunch time
in The Complete France Post Bag
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Well not entirely happy, and my parents were capable of embarrassing beyond belief. But the country would not be in such a mess with more of their sort still around....
As to long journeys I'm with you Lori and menthe. Where we are in Devon is very very rural, and I think we've only set foot outside the county a couple of times in the last four years. Heaven forbid that I should ever have to go anywhere by plane - I haven't flown since 1997 - but I'd need someone with me to show me how all the new e-tickets etc work, and I have no idea what one is now allowed to take with one, or baggage excesses etc. TBH I don't *want* to know, I've never been further than Austria and 99% of my abroad time has been in France, as I failed ever to see the point of going any further than that beautiful country, with its (mainly) lovely people.
Sadly since we sold the house in 24 we've not been back - in nearly five years now. It's not helped by the fact that we both still have paper driving licences, and part of the Brexit punishment beating has been that France no longer recognises them. And that makes me feel no longer welcome, or inclined to trouble myself to regularise my position. I'm afraid I feel that if they don't want me I'm not going to make the effort, particularly as I was one of the "victims" of Sarkozy's (illegal) policy of refusing residency to anyone below retirement age with a pre-existing medical condition (totally minor in my case).