Missy

Just done the various tests and .... to my shame not scoring that high... average 63% ... Moi!! ...Well.... it's nigh on 30 years that I don't use the language that regularly...... and beside I was never good at it when at school anyway.... what a thing to admit to.... I have copied that link in my favourites to go back to it and see if I can do it again with a better result!....   Incidently it is grammAr ..... [;-)]  

[quote user="Tresco"] This is the outside of my house, and the picture was taken last Spring, hence all the pots and stuff.. As you can see the outside is a bit of a shambles, and yes it needs painting, but I do love my house. [IMG]http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i76/twinm/PICT0015-1.jpg[/IMG] [/quote]   Oh! Tresco!!... Seeing your lovely home I have a serious homesick pang  in my stomach and a lump in my throat [:(] .... Your home looks exactly liked my Gran's did... Her house was near Melle in Deux-Sèvres.... She died some 30 years ago and the house had to be sold but the holidays we had there as kids are very memorable indeed...... She had one of these big stone trough which you filled with plants. Hers was filled with water and we would be using it as our 'jaccuzi' tub!.... There was an apple tree, a fig tree and a plum one, and the chicken would run free range around the place. The cockerel was a real *ugger! ... My brothers had countless plans to dispatch him to the kitchen!... Memories......... 

[quote user="TWINKLE"] At last someone who understands me!!! From the day my daughter was born up until she was about 61/2 years old (she's nearly 8 now) I spoke only English to her.  Not a single French word - my husband's French, and he spoke no English at all to her so as not to confuse her.   When she started CP class at school (standard 1 in Britain I think)  she started asking me to stop speaking English to her,  when I'd reply that it was important  that she didn't forget how to speak it, she'd just say that she was fine and didn't need to learn anymore.  Her school friends were coming to play and  sleep over at the weekends and it was getting a bit unnatural.  The reason I first spoke English to her in the first place was because it felt like the most perfectly natural thing to do - even though I'd already been living here and speaking French fluently for 10 years.  It didn't feel natural anymore and I could feel her really starting to resent it - so I stopped. I researched it a bit and apparently it's a natural process concerning mixed languages parents and their bi-lingual children.  We talked about it in depth here on another thread not long ago. [/quote] I had the same problem but in reverse ! I spoke French to my kids when small, their English father and all his family spoke in English. Then they started school and that was in Welsh!.... No one in this household knows a word of Welsh despite having lived here since 1850!! I learnt some to be able to understand my neighbours and some of my colleagues at work but nothing fluent just pidgin.... Son developped a mild form of dislexia then on.... fortunately caught on time and has the odd 'failure' but doing OK in his field of work and has to learn Russian and Armenian for his work. He admits that it is a struggle at times for the written stuff but speech wise he is doing fine.... Daughter point blank refused to speak to the French side of the family for a very long time to the point of being rude to my parents. They would engaged conversation with her in simple French with a few words of English they gathered (My father walks around with a mini French-English dictionary in his pockets) Daughter would charge at them in Welsh! .... We would get these long welsh tirades out of that little mouth and my Mother's face!!!  I have to this day not decided if it was sadeness, amazement, amusement or anger! that her grand-daughter would behave so........   Now this little monster, armed with her French GCSE, few more lessons here and there and my occasional help,  is about to go to France next month and teach in a primary school!! for 5 weeks.... and I don't think that it will be in English or in Welsh that she will conduct her classes..... I would love to be a map/picture/poster on the classroom wall......  and my mobile will be red hot! for the panic 'Mummy help! How do you say this or that!' cries ..... Remind me to switch it off!....

All these cars !.... Was all this scrolling down ever going to end.... I wonder if this place is anything to do with what I had heard sometime last weekend on FranceInter in one of their news bulletins. This particular well off chap in Lisbon was not in good health and his doctors advised him to make his will etc... As he had no relatives to leave his wealth and chattels to, he went to his solicitor and with him as a witness, he opened the Lisbon phonebook and plonked his finger at random. Whichever name was under it at the time, that person was to receive a percent of his wealth free of all the usual incumbrance. This way some 70 random names were fortunate enough to collect something..... Some very lucky sods in the world..... 

[quote user="Will"] They had to be Welsh sheep, didn't they? Now we know why the former Pope used to lick the tarmac when he got off a plane. [/quote]   Good old Welsh sheep! Nice, tender and sweet on the plate! [:D] Do you think that Pope had a sweet tooth?... or was he a vegetarian and the airline didn't gave him a proper breakfast.....[Www]

[quote user="Cassis"]I've just read an interesting potted early history of Normandy on a travel website.  Here is what they had to say: Joy-riding Vikings arrived in northwestern Nomandy (sic) 1,000 years ago with plans to lay siege to the area, but remained to begin new lives abroad. One, William the Conquerer, expertly staved off attacks from the ever-present English, and his body was consecrated at the Abbaye aux Hommes in coastal Caen, the seat of his government. Later, and along the Seine, a square in Rouen is where Joan of Arc, declared a heretic, was burned at the stake, and the Musee Jeanne-d'Arc commemorates her short but influential life. There's something nagging, but I just can't put my finger on what is missing from this account ... I'm sure there are one or two details missing. [Www] [/quote]   I know what's missing !!! The Americans won the war and told Adolph to go home..... then they asked that Tom Hank geezer to go and save one of their soldiers... I think his name was Private Ryan ...... [;-)][Www]

I was going to ask the question but someone's pipped me at the post!. My daughter is going to France next month for 5 weeks on a teaching placement via the university of Canterbury and St Etienne. She is taking her laptop with her and wants to know if she needs any special adaptors re: the actual internet wiring from the machine to the wall. Are plugs different to the UK one... Where would she find such an adaptor?....  She know that it will need an adaptor for the actual powering of the machine and has one for that.... She is quite worried about having the right equipment straight away, as there is a lot of work to be done when she is away, relating to her placement and most of it is on the internet with her tutors back in UK... So if anyone could let me know that I can put her mind at rest... Thank you all! [:D]

Wowee! La Rousille !... It certainly has changed!.... I remember it for being just a small nothing place which happened to be one of the many schoolbus stops on the way to the CES..... A couple of my friends lived nearby and got on there and that's it !  ... we were gassin' till the return journey... in between lessons that is .... Wonder if they still live around there......

If not in Niort, you could go a little south to Beauvoir-sur-Niort at the Auberge des Voyageurs. I loved it when I worked there MANY moons ago! It is still the same people running it so the food should be just as good as then these many moons ago..... Don't know if they have a website, could google it I suppose.....

[quote user="Deb19"]We are bringing our grandchildren to Paris - ages 6 1/2 and 8. Suggestions please on different and/or unique things to do/see/attend etc.[/quote]   Here some websites to do with kids and visiting Paris http://www.forbeginners.info/paris/visiting-with-kids/ http://www.forbeginners.info/paris/visiting-with-kids2/ http://travelwithkids.about.com/od/paris/Paris_With_Kids.htm http://www.travelforkids.com/Travelessentials/parisrestaurants.htm and of course the ubiquitous  Disneyworld .......  

[quote user="Dago"] http://www.24dash.com/showbiz_slapdash/15040.htm Can this be true?[:D] [IMG]http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g130/dago49/Dago3.jpg[/IMG] [/quote]   [:-))] !!    I'd better lock up my daughter then ! [Www] or tell her not to come back to Wales ever! ... just in case ....[8-)]

[quote user="TWINKLE"]Have you all got your candles ready for to-night?[/quote] Had candles for a couple of nights now on account that OH has decided that the new cooker I ordered from Father Xmas has at last been delivered, unfortunately I was at work when it happened and don't know if it was Father Xmas himself that delivered it!... [Www] where was I [8-)]?... Ah! yes ... OH decided that the kitchen could do with some revamping, meaning rip the old out and botch up the new... whilst all of that is going on the more important thing is that the 6 Nations tournament is starting soon and the old TV is ... well had seen better days!... so OH gets himself a new irish flat screen+cinema sound surround monster...! and THAT has priority over everything else in the 'what-is-urgently-needed-to-be-done-around-the-house' department..... I am filing for divorce tonight if the electric is not back on in the rest of the house (other than OH's den and his TV!) and MY kitchen IN ORDER [:@]!!!! Thanks all the divinities of the world that the 10th of March [:D] is here soon !!

I took this photo in Laos in Dec. 2004. [IMG]http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r116/Missyesbut/Thailand2004part2023.jpg[/IMG] The whole thing was about 2 and 1/2 feet tall by 2 ft in diameter, perched in the tree some 8 feet above my head. It looked abandonned as no bees were flying around. Certaintly evidence (the string to tie up branches) that humans would have 'set up' the site, for bees to settle and prosper, so they could collect the honey....  I was amazed that such a tiny creature can build such a big structure ....

I wondered for a long time how many responses your posting will have had.... since you wrote most of the postings anyway...[;-)] You see ... amongst French people there is a general joke about the département of La Creuse (No 23) .... " La Creuse c'est creux...   Comme c'est creux y a rien du tout dedans que de l'air.... "   [:D] Of note to 'visit' and 'see' : the landscape, the scenery, the tranquillity, the absence of summer touristy crowds!...... in Aubusson : 'la manufacture des tapisseries' (if it's not closed down for cheaper import from China!) Some of the original Versailles tapestries were woven there and Aubusson was famous, for a while, for its weaving industry.... Some engineering projects as mentionned above (the dams) ....  

[:D]   I did wonder why there was so much postage expenses this month when sorting out OH's accounts for his VAT return ..... [:D][:D]

To all of you [kiss]  Cariad and I give you all a warm cwtch [:D]       What's all that about you may ask as you've just hit the kettle for your nth morning fix of caffeine.... No, not Robbie Burns night ! In Wales [8-)] ... Nagoes.... Today is Welsh Valentine's day !! so to all the Welsh expats, and everyone else, de ma part un gros bisou [:$]

[quote user="Dotty "].....Where's Chris Head gone as well.[/quote]   He's gone underground. His wife told him off [:(] for spending too much time with us....

I received this Email last night from my Parisian brother : >>> Le 1er février 2007, dans toute la France : Participez à la plus grande mobilisation des citoyens contre le Changement Climatique ! L'Alliance pour la Planète (groupement national d'associations environnementales) lance un appel simple à tous les citoyens, 5 minutes de répit pour la planète : tout le monde éteint ses veilles et lumières le 1er février 2007 entre 19h55 et 20h00. Il ne s'agit pas d'économiser 5 minutes d'électricité uniquement ce jour-là, mais d'attirer l'attention des citoyens, des médias et des décideurs sur le gaspillage d'énergie et l'urgence de passer à l'action 5 minutes de répit pour la planète : ça ne prend pas longtemps, ça ne coûte rien, et ça montrera aux candidats à la Présidentielle que le changement climatique est un sujet qui doit peser dans le débat politique. Pourquoi le 1er février ? Ce jour là sortira, à Paris, le nouveau rapport du groupe d'experts climatiques des Nations Unies. Cet événement aura lieu en France : il ne faut pas laisser passer cette occasion de braquer les projecteurs sur l'urgence de la situation climatique mondiale . Si nous y participons tous, cette action aura un réel poids médiatique et politique, moins de trois mois avant l'élection présidentielle ! Faites circuler au maximum cet appel autour de vous et dans tous vos réseaux ! Faites-le aussi apparaître sur votre site Internet et dans vos newsletters.   Contact/ information : Cyrielle, Les Amis de la Terre : 01 48 51 18 95<<< His comment was : I am curious to know what will happen in all these households, right across the country, during these 5 minutes of living with a candle light... To which I answered : Let's see what happens in October... The governement of the time may well put up your taxes to pay for a sudden surplus of 'allocation familliale' to be paid [Www] Be very mindful of whom you vote for in April/May!! [;-)]  

A visit to the Thiepval memorial is recommended. A very imposing building designed by Edward Luytens on which some 73000 names are engraved on its walls. On most of the graves near it there is just a simple mention 'Known only unto God' and 'Soldat Inconnu' Took my son (24yrs) there last September and he was a little choked by the 'imposeness' of the monument and the futility of war and thought that the 2 at this place went hand in hand.... PS : I know [:)] there is no such word as imposeness but I can't describe the feeling any better....

Went out this morning as per the usual for the Sunday newspapers and I am glad to report that my little town ....... STILL has their Xmas decs up ! 21st January [:(] ! though well battered from last Thursday's storm and not lit up at night... all in an effort to save on the electricity bill to the local taxpayer I wonder.... or in readiness for next Xmas, after all there are only 11 months + 4 days of shopping left !! Must hurry for those bargains ! [Www]       I won't say which little town in Wales I am too ashamed....[8-)] 

[quote user="Frogslegs"] Not really sure where to post this as it is about England? Our first trip back to Blighty together in 6 years and we want to stay in London for two nights. Somewhere near theatres, sights ect. Any recommendations. People think we are mad, are they? Having lived on the Isle of Wight for 6 years after leaving rural Essex and now living in Deux Sevres is it going to be a shock to the system going to the city after 13 years? maria www.le-tilleul.com [/quote] Whenever I need to go to London I stay at the Mostyn Hotel on Bryanston Street. It is just 50 yards off Oxford Street at the Marble Arch end of it. Last time (some 12 months ago) I paid £70 per night per person (daughter was with me). At the opposite end of Bryanston Street there is a lovely Indian restaurant with a slight French twist as the cuisine is mostly from Pondichéry the French part of India, the bit we had before Clive of India embezzled us of it [;-)]... The food is just very good. If you can't make up your mind about which dish to have, go for their 'thali' which is a selection tray of dishes from their menu. You will never have so much delicious food on your plate!... Quite an experience.... Sorry Edit : The restaurant is called 'La Porte des Indes'

[quote user="KathyC"]Thank you again so much. Unfortunately the relevant number is 12406 and it just isn't there![/quote]   That's because it could be a La Poste bank or a Caisse d'Epargne or a smaller bank. They have a different number than the high street banks. The wellknown high street banks mostly have a code number starting with 3 after the FRxx. Do you have a BIC SWIFT number ?... it should tell you which bank it is. BNP is Banque Nationale de Paris (as in BNP Paribas). SOGE is Société Générale. BP is Banque Populaire. BF is Banque de France (the Trésor Public bank where you pay all your taxes to etc...) and its number after the FRxx on the IBAN is always 30001....  

[quote user="JayJay"]  Although with inflation, spending A penny is long gone, more like 50 of them now![;-)] [/quote]   The charge is only 10p at my local public convenience. ... Yours in quite inflationary Jayjay!...

From near the Cardigan Bay and the Dovey / upper Severn valley catchment in Mid-Wales : it is trees down, bins scattered all over the place, fields bordering brooks and rivers resembling lakes and good aqua-skidding conditions on the road if there ever was such a sport for the Olympics!  The roof on this office building (a converted industrial unit) is just about holding it together...... Twas 'fun' coming to work, will be more 'fun' going home...... [:(]

Dick and Mikki [:-))] that is SO SO funny !! [:D][:D][:D]