Cat

Some nice french rhymes too devenez fou sur votre cul (well it rhymes for me, but then I always did have a slight problem telling my a*se from my neck in french).  

Or you could ask for a quote from HIFX http://www.hifx.co.uk/pservices/insurance_info.asp The policy is in english, and is competetively priced. I use them and have found them to be very helpful. Hope this helps.  

You probably want freesat from Sky, if they have left the digi-box you'll only need to buy a card, costs £20 for all the standard UK terrrestial channels (unless they were nice enough to have left the card as well).  Remember though that you'll need to phone from a UK phone number and give a UK delivery address for the card, or get some friends in the UK to do that for you.  You'll also need to phone Sky when  the card is delivered to get it activated, again from a UK phone number. http://www.freesatfromsky.co.uk/?pID=6 If you need to buy a digibox you could try looking on ebay, as a secondhand box will do the job nicely. Hope this helps.  

Not a good couple of weeks for me either, was back in the UK to sell my house there, so ended up meeting up with all my old friends and eating out nearly every night. Have put on half a pound since my last weigh-in, so I must re-double my efforts next week. Doesn't help that today was a friend's birthday, so there were lots of champagne and nibbly things at the local auberge lunchtime, what's a person to do? For everyone that put on the odd pound after a blow-out the night before, remember that the contents of your stomach after a big meal weigh much the same as that big meal did on the plate, weigh yourselves again after a couple of days, don't be disheartened.  Even skinny minnies would suffer the same temporary consequences.    

I have heard others say that it's necessary to provide translations of birth/marriage/divorce certificates and the like, but I think that this must differ from region to region (or maybe even vary depending on the individual person dealing with claim).  I have never been asked for a translation of any document in my dealings with CPAM, but perhaps I have just been lucky. It is, as others have said, worth checking with your local CPAM office as to what exactly are their own particular requirements.      

Christine, that one always had me puzzled too, something I always meant to check up on and never got round to, but now I have.  I found this http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=004TYQ I always took it as I love you, me no longer (it's you I love now, not myself), rather than I love you, me neither . I think I can see now what he may have meant, a play on words, the man's view of things.  Louche, now that would be the word to describe Serge, lovely word [;)]    

I think a blog is an excellent idea.   The great thing about blogs, outcast, is that you need only read them if you are interested in the story and the outcome.  So if it's not your cup of tea you can completely ignore it.  

I lost a pound too, but as that is twice what I was aiming to lose this week (and as I have really been quite naughty in the food department) I am fairly pleased to have dropped below the 10st 7lb mark. Well done all you big losers, and even if the weight-loss is slow for some of us, as long as the general movement is in a downward direction, we're doing fine.  And if there is a bit of an upward blip now and again, well, we're only human aren't we, and there's always next week [:#] Good luck with the op Gay!    

Rob, Yep, battery is now back where it will do the most good (like telling me when I have burnt the toast) whilst scales await the next shopping trip, so can't tell me that I have eaten too much toast [:#] I too succumbed this lunchtime to a slice of galette des rois and a glass or two of champers at the local auberge, so it'll be healthy, homemade veggie soup tonight (again, sigh). Good luck everyone.

[quote user="Suze"]I have been very good and have been drinking loads of water, though probably not as much as two litres per day.  Of course, if you're drinking loads of water you have to visit the littlest room more often... Last night I had to go to my son's Collège for a meeting about his forthcoming ski trip, after an hour an a half I just couldn't squirm about any longer, I was really desperate, some of the other parents were asking really dumb questions which were already answered in the feuilles we had been given [:#], I had to slip out of the meeting otherwise something very embarrassing would have happened [:$] Moral: if going to a meeting - hold off the water during the day. [/quote] Don't worry Suze, I started drinking lots of water a while ago, and although it does at first make you feel like you spend most of the day in the littlest room, your kidneys eventually adjust to accepting it as "normal", and those little trips become less frequent. I weighed in this morning... eventually.  When I first stepped onto the scales the digital read-out read "Lo", which I kind of hoped referred to my weight, but was actually a warning that the battery had run out [:$] So, after "borrowing" the battery from the smoke alarm, I'm weighing in at 10st 7.5lbs, a tiny bit heavier than before Christmas, but really not as horrific as I had feared.  I aim to lose a pound a fortnight, to get me to my target of 10st nothing by the start of May.  

Hi Hazel There's been a fair bit of stuff on the french news in the last few days showing eager-beavers snapping up bargains in places like Jersey and Monaco, where the sales have already started.  I'm pretty sure that they also said that the sales in France don't start until the 11th January.  

I know that someone a while ago mentioned the word reference website as a really good online French/English dictionary.  Whilst using it today I discovered their translation toolbar, which I have now downloaded.  But even better than that is a little utility that you can download to allow you to double click on any word on any website for an instant translation, along with usage and related references. Try it yourself, you can pick several different language options (I chose French and then English) the link is below. Superb[:D] http://www.wordreference.com/english/Right-click_Menu.htm  

Just to make the whole thing a bit clearer, the icons you can see below  the reply window  ([:#] [:)][:|] etc) are the icons that will show at the side of a new subject in a forum, and not in the body of the mail itself.  If you hover over any of them you will find that they each have a name, "Zip it!" being the first one. To insert that icon into a post, as admin says, you need to use the "Insert Smiley" drop down list above the reply window.  You can hover over the icons below the reply window first to give you the name of the icon you need to pick from the list, although annoyingly these are not alphabetically sorted. Hope that helps, I'll say no more [:#]  

Hazel, I just did a quick google and found this, don't know if it helps.   In anatomy, a sesamoid bone is a bone embedded within a tendon. Sesamoid bones are typically found in locations where a tendon passes over a joint. Functionally, they act to protect the tendon and to increase its mechanical effect. The presence of the sesamoid bone holds the tendon slightly further away from the center of the joint and thus increases its moment arm. The sesamoid prevents the tendon from flattening into the joint as the tendon tension increases, and therefore also maintains a more consistent moment arm through a variety of possible tendon loads. Examples in human anatomy include: The patella, a bone at the front of the knee. The sesamoid bones of the first metatarsal of the foot. This area is beneath the pad on the foot just proximal to the big toe. These two bones serve to protect the tendon that flexes the toe, by protecting it from the body's weight. The pisiform, a carpal bone of the hand.

Didn't Ryanair also say recently that they intended charging for checked-in luggage, whilst increasing the carry-on allowance? In a way I can see that this makes sense, as it is the loading and unloading of baggage that takes the majority of ground-time for aircraft.  If they can stick to a tight turn-around schedule they get more use from their planes, and can continue to offer cut-price flights. Given the choice I would always opt to carry hand-luggage only, on airlines like BA this is never a problem as they have a generous hand-baggage allowance, but in the past my hand baggage has been judged excessive by Ryaniar and I have had to check it in. Sounds like good news to me.    

I've been trying to find out how to paste a passage into a new post. Does anybody know how to do that??? It used to be easy but now its seems impossible Or you could just select the passage with you mouse and then use the Edit...copy and then Edit...paste browser menu. Or CONTROL+C followed by CONTROL+V, or even CONTROL+INS followed by SHIFT+INS (old DOS habits die hard [:$] )  

Colin, you were right in thinking that this may have been discussed before (no apology needed though).  You could try reading through this  http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/585657/ShowPost.aspx  as I think it covers your questions. If you do return to the UK to work and to sell your house I think you might well compromise your status as non-UK residents, although the current wording of the new UK France double tax treaty does not make it clear  [*-)]  You can have a look at the document if you like, it may help  http://www.sykesanderson.com/articles/tax_treaty.htm Or you might like to read this http://www.frenchentree.com/fe-legal/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=842 as it contains the same facts, but in much more understandable, condensed fashion. In the end though, it would pay to take proffessional advice, especially as there is a substantial sum involved. Hope this helps        

Hi Jan Let's go for it!  Someone mentioned yoga as a gentle form of exercise, I don't know about all areas, by my village has a weekly yoga class at the salle des fetes.  Admittedly yoga doesn't burn many that many calories (although some of the moves really leave my heart pounding) but it is a good way of improving muscle tone and flexiblity, and quite good fun to boot. Classes run by trimestre, and so will be starting up again in January.  It's about 60 euros for the term, so not too expensive, and the feel-good factor afterwards is tremendous. For those (like me [sn]) who can't bear the thought of a pounding at the gym (even supposing there were one locally) it does ensure a once-weekly gentle work-out.  I'll be signing up again in January, so if anyone else is thinking of yoga I'd be interested to hear what they make of it.    

Count me in too. I'd been watching your progress when you were all at it before, but never plucked up the courage to join you.  I've managed to lose half a stone since August (sorry, can't picture that in kilos) but would still like to lose the other half to make it a stone by the time summer arrives. It's been very, very gradual and slow, mainly I think due to not really dieting but just changing my eating and drinking habits a bit. I absolutely refuse to buy new jeans in a bigger size when I already have plenty that oh-so-nearly fit  me, and want to be able to wear my bikini next summer without having to suck in my belly and clench my bum [:$]      

Harvey, I used to use a Dell, but had no problems opening Hotmail attachments. Is Hotmail blocking the attachments because the inbuilt Trend Virus scan suspects a problem, or because the mail comes from an unknown source and you need to verify that you trust the sender? Usually I would open the mail, then click on the blue hyperlink at the top of the mail and that would open another window giving the name of the file and the results of the inbuild virus scan.  I would then click on the "Download File" link on  the top left hand side (just below the MSN butterfly logo). For a photo this would open another window displaying the photo, for some file types (mpeg movie files for example) there can be a bit of a delay depending on the file size, but eventually a dialog box opens asking if you want to open or save the file.  It may be that you are experiencing a longer than average delay, and are being fooled into thinking that nothing is happening? Or perhaps the dialog window is being hidden behind another window, and you need to ALT-TAB around to find it? Hope this helps.    

I've noticed that internet links inserted into forum posts actually open using the same browser window, taking me away from the Living France forums [:'(]  With the old software the Living France browser window stayed open and the links were opened in a new browser window. Is this deliberate, or is it something that could easily be rectified?  

I'd noticed that too Debra, if the posts are not sorted by date it makes it really hard to find what you're looking for. I think at the results need to be sorted by date by default, with the newest posts coming up first. It would also be useful to have the option to search for posts within a given period (last week, last month, last quarter, last year, older than one year) as we had before in the old forum. I also find having to add the 'AND' 'OR' operators manually a bit clumsy, it's not very user-friendly and is not what you would expect from brand new software. I expect the developers have quite a list of "things to do", but I'm not having a pop as generally the new forum is remarkably bug-free. I think it might be a good idea if all posts dealing with improvements/problems were posted in the same area, as this would make it much easier for the developers to keep track of things, and at the moment there are posts of this sort in at least two different areas.  Could admin perhaps create one specific area for bug-reports/improvement requests? That way we could be more sure we weren't reporting something that had already been spotted. (Can you tell yet that I used to be a software QA manager?) [:$]

I don't know if this helps, but the pm and email buttons are only enabled to registered users who are logged onto the forums. Try logging out using http://completefrance.com/cs/logout.aspx  and then viewing one of your posts. It is a little odd that the language option when editing your details does not include french, but it could be that this is not so much a language thing as a foreign character support issue. Most browsers will support Unicode double-byte character sets such as Japanese and Thai, or non-latin scripts, but these languages will not be viewable on your PC if you do not have this set up within your operating system.  Or at least, that's the way I remember it from my software testing days. I'm sure that someone directly linked to the development of the new forum will be able to provide a much better explanation [*-)]

So that's twice (to my knowledge) that threads that spoke in less than glowing terms of a certain British_agency_that_cannot_be_named have been pulled. Just a guess, but do they by any chance advertise heavily in Living France Magazine?  Do they have the clout to demand that unflattering references to their business are removed from the forum? It certainly wouldn't be the first time that a threat to withdraw advertising has been used in the media to control "free speech".  Maybe I'm being overly cynical, I hope I'm wrong, I really do. I'm not knocking the mods, I can fully understand that the decision to remove threads or posts is usually based on the forum code of conduct, but was there actually anything in these threads that broke this code (name and shame perhaps)?  

Hello and welcome to the forum The answer to the question you ask is no, as long as you are a citizen of one of he EU states already.  As the carte de sejours is no longer mandatory, you have the right to live here in france without proof of income. However, you will still need some kind of income or capital in order to survive here (as anywhere).  The actual amount will obviously depend on your expectations and life-style, but it would pay to start seriously researching the cost of life and quality of life you could expect here in france.  Healthcare, utility bills, property taxes, renovation costs etc may be higher than you thought.