Swissbarry

Remember - babies are God's way of persuading people to have teenagers.

This thread has now degenerated to the point where some of the postings are just downright nasty, and have nothing to do with France, or the original topic, or civilized discussion.  Whatever happened to the Forum's Code of Conduct: "Users must not post messages which...are insulting, abusive or defamatory to others in any way"?  Has this been cast aside? I've been casting around for a tactful way of saying this, and I think perhaps the best thing would be if a certain member were castigated, or maybe even cast out, before I - and others - become any more downcast.  

Am I the only one to have noticed that someone has posted, in the Food and Wine section, to ask what their clafoutis should look like? This really is too embarrassing for words.  Why, for God's sake, don't they just ask their doctor? Oh dear, deary me.  I've just realised... it was a man who made the posting!  Whatever next!

[quote]There you have it hichhickers with two head,they are the old sort that thought france was the socialist paradice,but rent out property for profit.[/quote] Eh?  

Don't know if I'm allowed to post this, but will try.  I'm looking for a really nice plot of land on which to build a house.  Between 1000 and 3000 sq. metres, flat or almost flat, within 1 km. of shops in either Piegut, St. Mathieu, Abjat, Cussac, Nontron, Bussiere Badil, Vareignes or other village in the same area.  Anyone know of any?

Don't know if I'm allowed to post this, but will try.  I'm looking for a really nice plot of land on which to build a house.  Between 1000 and 3000 sq. metres, flat or almost flat, within 1 km. of shops in either Piegut, St. Mathieu, Abjat, Cussac, Nontron, Bussiere Badil, Vareignes or other village in the same area.  Anyone know of any?

...Amelie?

Richard, that was a gem.  Thank you.

WHISTLE A HAPPY TUNE   My wife can’t whistle.  That’s not a criticism of her, oh goodness me no.  It’s simply a dispassionate, totally non-judgemental observation, like saying she can’t speak Serbo-Croat, or pump iron, or fly.  It doesn’t mean she’s not an absolutely wonderful and talented person in absolutely every other conceivable respect.  No, not at all.  So I hope that’s clear.  Dear.   But nevertheless she whistles.  Because, you see, while she’s aware that she can’t speak Serbo-Croat, and is almost convinced she can’t fly, for some reason thinks she can  whistle.  So she does.  And I’m not criticising her in the tiniest way, you understand.   The trouble is, whenever she whistles, it makes me want to wee!  No matter that I’ve just been to the toilet a few minutes ago and haven’t had a drink for several weeks, just one tiny trill is enough to get me going.  In the waterworks department, that is.  And here’s the bad part – she has become aware of the effect her whistling has on me, and is using it to make my life very difficult.  She deliberately waits for the most inconvenient moment – just as I’m dozing off to sleep, or watching Beckham take a vital penalty, or nearing the front of a very long queue at Carrefour – and then launches into the shrill wheezing screech that is her version of whistling.  Just so she can watch the result.  I’m not even safe in church: the other week she decided in an evil moment to whistle the third verse of Onward Christian Soldiers.   Most annoying of all is when I’m driving.  And this brings me to the point of this article.  I live in France, don’t I, so why should it matter if I need suddenly to have a wee on the outskirts of Limoges, or at the traffic lights in Nontron?  I can just do what the French do, can’t I, and wee nonchalantly at the side of the road.   Except it isn’t as easy as that.  In the first place, being a man, I find I have to wee against something.  It is a well known fact that men cannot wee directly onto the ground.  Instead, we must find an object – a tree, a urinal, a wall, a boy scout, or whatever – so that we can wee against the side of it.  I don’t know why this should be; it just is.  So the first problem, if you’re a man, is that you have to move away from the safety of the car and find a tree, or a traffic cone, or a No Entry sign, or some such item.  And even when you’ve done that, it’s still not easy.  Because another well known fact is that British men cannot wee in public.  The French make it look easy, I know, but take it from me, if I am to find some relief from the whistling-induced agony that Kath inflicts on me, I have to be unobserved.   Now that’s alright if there’s a convenient bar handy, or a tent, or best of all a cave.  But too often there is no such haven available, and one has therefore to go into the undergrowth.  (Thankfully, living in the Dordogne, there is nearly always some undergrowth to go into.  What would I do in Darlington?).  But not too far into the undergrowth, for the deeper into undergrowth one goes, the more dangers that lurk!

THE SUN A cautionary tale for all those who enjoy the French sun. My daughter, Lyndsay, is a sun-worshipper, and when she and her partner, Dave, decided last year to holiday in Provence, she was anxious that the two of them should be able to sunbathe. But Dave has ginger hair and a freckled complexion, and burns at the slightest exposure to the sun’s rays. Lyndsay therefore despatched him to their doctor, with instructions to find some sort of preparation that would allow him to spend time in the sun. The doctor duly obliged with a special cream (not a conventional sun cream, you understand, but a very greasy and smelly and expensive one) which he assured Dave would give him absolute protection from the Provencal sun providing he applied it liberally. Once in Provence, they hired a car and set off for a run. Dave was plastered with the special cream. It was a very hot, sunny day, and he drove with the window open, smoking a cigarette. Suddenly, the wind blew the glowing end off his cigarette, and to his horror it landed on his forearm and stuck there to the cream, which actually caught alight!  With Lyndsay screaming, and his arm literally on fire, poor Dave managed to steer the car off the road and into a lay-by. To their amazement (and you really have to imagine the chances of this happening) they were followed off the road by a police car, and the agitated gendarme ran to them with a fire extinguisher (!) and proceeded to spray Dave’s arm and extinguish the flames. This story would have been incredible enough if it had ended there. But there was more to come. For just as Dave was recovering his composure and stuttering his thanks, the policeman booked him. Yes, really! I suppose there are several threads to be drawn from this story: beware the Provencal sun, don’t smoke and drive, be thankful for the French police, but at the same time don’t assume that the French police are soft. Oh, by the way, I didn’t mention what he booked him for…. ...... ............. ............................          ….it was possession of a firearm.

[quote]Dear Mr Swissbarry, You really should compile your stories. You write very well with just the right blend of observation, humour and wit. You do of course need to put a warning at the beginning of ...[/quote] Thank you for those kind words.  2 responses out of over 170 viewings does make one wonder if it's worth the bother.  I did actually try to get my articles compiled and published once, but the publishers to whom I wrote didn't bother to reply.  And about three months ago I wrote to a magazine, enclosing some sample articles, to ask if they might care to publish them, but never even got the courtesy of a reply.  And the name of the magazine?  Well, it was Living France, actually! So faced with those sorts of rebuffs, I can't get enthusiastic about further attempts.  By the way, my daughter lives in Liverpool; I take it from your nom de plume (note the French, eh?) that you're from there too?  But her partner supports Everton. Regards, and thanks again for the encouragement.   swiss

...and if you're still stuck after all this, I have a friend who works for SECU in Angouleme, and whose private telephone number I could give you if you needed further help.  He speaks good English.

The fact that something is inevitable and unavoidable (e.g. old age, the weather, John Prescott, the term "Newbie") does not mean that we cannot or should not complain about it if we don't like it.  So I think Taq had every right to point out his distaste for the term.  I happen to agree with him that the distinctions between different grades of membership are irrelevant and pointless (a newcomer might have more and better things to say than a veteran), and at the same time I can see the administrators'/moderators' position in that they are only following orders. Incidentally, why is a euphemism necessary?  There is nothing shameful in being a censor, and that is what these administrators/moderators really are.

[quote]Haven't used the facility for about 15 months but you used to be able to park there. They also have a cafe and toilets and even showers that you can use. The only downside is that it is very noisy all...[/quote] Thanks for that, Brian.

Don't know if there's any truth in the rumour, but it wouldn't surprise me.  The airport car park is usually very full, and sometimes it's difficult to find a space.  But then, I don't suppose it was ever meant to cater for people who want to park their cars for two months at a time!  Isn't it perhaps just a tad unreasonable to occupy a space for so long, when space is at a premium?  What if twenty or thirty people wanted to do the same thing? Free airport parking is a generous and uncommon bonus; if we abuse it, maybe we'll lose it. 

It seems that every British person I meet in France is in the process of renovating a house.  The men all talk knowingly about unfathomable subjects like zinc guttering and cladding and vermiculite shrouds, and even their partners often seem to be amazingly practical and resourceful.   I swear one lady I know is knitting a bungalow! Well, I may as well come clean. I am not Handy.  I am not Practical.  I cannot Do It Myself.  To misquote a war-time saying, give me the job and I’ll finish the tools. I estimate, for example, that it is going to take me 112 years to learn how to light a wood fire.  There are, you see, all sorts of different logs - oak, acacia, chestnut, pine, sycamore, etc. - and they all have different characteristics. Some spit, some smoulder, some just lie there and laugh at you in French, some burn furiously, and some are best left for lining blast furnaces or acting as Middlesbrough midfielders. It doesn't help when you can't tell your acacia from your elder. And then the damn logs come in different lengths and diameters, and different sized logs should be placed on different parts of the fire. Oh yes, and if any of the wood is damp you're completely lost, but you can't tell if it's damp inside until you try to burn it. French people are, I'm sure, born with all this knowledge.  Many have it in their genes, and others have probably studied the niceties of log fire lighting at the Sorbonne.  I’ve watched them light their own fires, and it’s almost spontaneous combustion.  But for an impractical useless ex-pat like me it's just too much, especially when my wife shouts “Stop throwing so much wood on the fire; it doesn’t grow on trees, you know”. So I finish up hurling the tongs across the room and drinking whisky (I think I was born with the knowledge of how to drink whisky). And as if lighting fires wasn’t hard enough, there are forever new problems which emerge to challenge my practical abilities.  Mice, for example.  We haven't actually seen the mice, so we can't be sure what they are like or how many there are. All we've seen is what look suspiciously like mice droppings on the bathroom floor. They must be mice droppings, because no human beings can do poos that small (I know, I've tried). So I went out and bought two sorts of mouse killer. One sort - cleverly called Souricide (souris is French for mouse) - comes in the form of teabags which contain cyanide instead of tea. The other sort takes the form of bars of what looks like soap but is really a deadly poison which will kill anything that moves. So I put these things on the floor before going to bed and guess what? The next morning, they'd vanished. No, not the mice - the cyanide teabags and the bars of poison! Now this is a bit worrying, because it means that either there is a whole army of mice who somehow managed between them to nudge poisonous teabags and large bars of “soap” back to their nest, which seems unlikely. Or else - and this is the scary bit - there is one huge mouse with jaws big enough to accommodate bars of soap and teabags. What's more, this supermouse, or rat, or puma, or whatever it is, obviously thrives on cyanide!  Mind you, we’re a bit more optimistic now because at least the mouse / rat / elephant droppings have turned yellow. I may not have killed it, but at least I’ve upset its digestion! Better stop now: the fire's threatening to go out. No doubt the Pyrenean mountain ash log I added should have been 4 cm. thicker and I should have placed it at the back of the fire instead of the front. I wonder if mice burn?

[quote]And the labels on knickers are on the other side, and I have ended up putting them on back to front more times than I care to remember.[/quote] Now this is worrying.  Do you mean the labels on your knickers aren't at the back.  'Cos if they are at the back, then you can't possibly put them on back to front, can you?  Or are they on the side?  And if so, which side?  Is everyone wearing different knickers from me?  Really, I have enough problems in my life without this, so just let's have a nice simple explanation, please.

Friends from England are visiting us, and wonder if, on their way back to the UK, they will be able to park their car and caravan overnight at Calais dockside.  Can anyone with recent experience of this advise, please?

Outcast, having read your last two postings I'm convinced I know your true identity.  Tell me I'm right: you're really John Prescott, aren't you?

Well, I’ve become an expert at something.  Back in England my knowledge of birds was limited.  Oh, I knew a hen when I saw one, and a budgie, and probably an owl, but that was about it.  The vast majority I simply classified simply as “Little Brown Jobs” or “Big Grey Jobs”.  Oh sorry, I learnt how to recognise a penguin, too, after I nearly ran over a nun by mistake.   But out here in rural France, the place is fairly teeming with birds.  Birds of every size and shape and colour.  There are bloody great things with claws and teeth, that might actually be eagles if they aren’t buzzards or kites or vultures.  And huge cormoranty things that could just as easily be storks or flamingos or cranes.  Or pterodactyl, for all I know.  I went for a walk with a pal the other day, and he kept stopping to whisper excitedly things like “Jay!”, “Bittern!”, “Redstart!”, “Try and keep up please, won’t you?”, and “Crow!”  I was enormously impressed and I determined there and then to become proficient at bird recognition.   To start, I thought I would compile a list of all the birds I already knew, and I’ll tell you, I surprised myself.  Alongside robins and owls, I had exotic things like emus and ostriches, and parrots, geese and swans.  But let’s face it, you’re unlikely to encounter an ostrich or a parrot in France, so that wasn’t too helpful.  No, I needed to be able to pick out woodpeckers, and kingfishers, and nightingales, and blue-bearded minch dwellers, and the other myriad occupants of the forests of Haute Vienne and the Dordogne.   So I bought myself a bird book.  “Birds of Europe: a spotters’ guide” it said.  Hah!  Now don’t get me wrong: the book was beautifully illustrated and extremely informative.  Each page explained, in great detail, the characteristics of each bird and – importantly – their distinguishing features.  So I learnt that in order to differentiate, for example, between a stone curlew and a Senegal thick-knee, you should be aware that the latter has less yellow on its bill.  And although the short-toed treecreeper has toes the same length as the normal treecreeper, which is a bit of a disappointment, it is nonetheless a bit smaller. That’s helpful, eh?   And the tree pipit, I would have you know, has a shorter hind claw than the meadow pipit.  So that’s alright then.    What the book didn’t tell me was how to find these damn birds and persuade them to sit still long enough and close enough for me to find their picture in the bird book.  Not much chance of spotting a pippit’s hind claw when it’s whizzing past in a blur of feathers at 80 miles an hour, or of checking whether that distant dot 1100 feet up in the sky is a tawny eagle or a spotted eagle!  And even when the birds are reasonably co-operative and let me get within 500 metres of them, the differences between them are so insignificant that you would need to examine them under anaesthetic with a magnifying glass to tell them apart.   So how can I describe myself as an expert, you might ask.  Well, expertise is relative, is it not?  And though I might not know as much about birds as David Bellamy, I know some people who know less than me.  This is very important in life.  If you always mix with people less clever than yourself, you can always appear relatively intelligent, see?    Oh, you should see me now when some of my townie friends come over from England to stay.  They come from places like Middlesbrough and Darlington, and are therefore babes in arms when it comes to bird recognition.  The nearest they ever get to a bird is eating a MacChicken or reading Page 3.  So I have great fun taking them for a walk, then stopping suddenly to examine a small pile of poo on the ground and saying something like “Hmmm, there’s been a wilch-gobbler here, and it looks like it’s been eating grass seed again”.  Or “Hear that?  Gosh, if I’m not mistaken that was the mating cry of the Granfrew’s tit, just out of earshot”.  One of my favourite ploys i

Now that’s enough.  You’re starting to squabble again.  And I won’t have it, d’you hear?  You can jolly well start to show each other a bit of respect, and be nice to each other, or I’ll make you stay in after the bell.  And sit on your hands.  And write out a thousand times “I must not be a cantankerous git”.  I’m going to ask the Great Superintendent Administrator in Chief to give me the job of Making People Be Nice on this site.  And if that means visiting each of you personally and kicking you in the groin, I’ll DAMN WELL DO IT, DO YOU HEAR?  I’VE HAD ENOUGH!  SIT UP STRAIGHT!  WIPE THAT SMILE OFF YOUR FACE!   I should warn you, I once nearly met someone who had a black belt in karate, and I’m not a man to be trifled with.  My ankles simply ripple with muscles.  So have a care.  And Be Nice.

One of the odd things about coming to live in France is that you leave all your past behind, and therefore you can, if you so wish, re-invent yourself. And some British people do just that. As they make that final journey across the Channel or through the tunnel they magically become joiners, or plumbers, or estate agents, or computer experts, or whatever. No matter that their entire work experience to date has been behind the sweets counter in Woolworths, they suddenly have the opportunity to describe themselves as tradesmen, or financial advisers, or retired surgeons. For who can gainsay them, when no-one any longer has any information about their past, and when even their accent fails to give their French neighbours a clue as to their background? Well, the author isn’t like that. Oh no. I haven’t pretended to be anything but the hugely intelligent, handsome, urbane, rich, polo-playing Concorde pilot that I was in England. Except for the other day. I love doing crosswords - notably, The Times crossword. It’s not so much that I actually enjoy the process of solving the clues, but rather that I gain immense satisfaction from nonchalantly throwing down the completed crossword and seeing the awe and admiration in people’s eyes. Actually, I only ever successfully completed The Times crossword once - in 1986 - but people are still impressed if you get only a few clues, because for all they know you’ve only just started on it. So what’s this got to do with France, I hear you ask. Well, amazingly, since I came to live in France I have become much better at The Times crossword. I have, if you like, re-invented my crossword skills. It started as I sat at a crowded pavement café in Piégut, drinking my Pernaud, thoughtfully sucking the end of my sunglasses and generally trying to look like a retired Concorde pilot. I had completed about three clues in The Times crossword, and realised that a somewhat attractive lady was glancing at me, and then down at my paper. She was tall and dark, with an unmistakably French aura about her, and I could sort of sense that she was imagining me on the polo field. So I attacked the crossword with a new vigour, and suddenly I had a brainwave. She was French, wasn’t she, so how could she possibly know if I was putting in the correct answers?  Eureka!!  Deftly, I filled in 7 across – “Traffic warden goes to ground in American state”. Yes of course: CABBAGE fits nicely, doesn’t it!!!  Then 3 down – tricky, this one – five letters ending in G and the clue “Mood music found in the playground”. No problem. I quickly entered THONG.  Well, why not, when it fit?  By now I was getting the hang of it, and my hand moved in a rapid blur across the page. No sooner had I glanced at a clue than the answer flew from my pen: SISTER…ENCOURAG…DARLO…CRICKETBATT…YHUMONG…FRUTUBUTW… CLEVRSOD… There was just no stopping me. OHOHOHOQ…GRIBBLEBLOG…PERNAUDJE… I reckon I finished the whole thing in under five minutes, and triumphantly placed the paper on the table while casting an intelligent, handsome, urbane, rich pilot's glance at my companion. Slowly, she picked up the paper, and looked at the crossword. Then she looked at me, and with smouldering eyes full of Gallic intensity, whispered, in an unmistakable Brummie accent… …”Ee, yows a sad kise, pal”.

Actually, I reckon they're going to be the next must-have fashion accessory.  I've bought one on and I must say I look rather dashing in it.  Gives me a sort of rugged, man-of-the-world look, with suggestion of links to the police, building site supervisors, paramedics, and similar no-nonsense professions.  A hard hat and my mock-Concorde-pilot-shades would complete the look, I think. Trouble is, it completely hides my labrador pullover.  

So many helpful people.  Thank you all. However: Rdler - Wouldn't this entail buying a second TV, and even then would it work without the main TV in the lounge being switched on? Les Lauriers - difficult to run a cable such a long distance - nowhere to conceal it with tiled floors.  Ang again, wouldn't the main TV have to be turned on?  I suggested to my wife that I might get a Goblin Teasmaid, and I can't tell you how upset she was.  It was like the time I said I'd get a concubine, and she said I'd have to feed it myself. Mazan - I suspect your solution is a brilliant one, but you haven't quite managed to get down to my level of ignorance of all things technical.  Please stay with me though: I eventually managed to learn how to tie my shoelaces, didn't I, so there may be hope.  What is a wireless video sender, and where might I get one.  What is the French for "I'm looking for a wireless video sender, pal"?  I already have some speakers which run off batteries and pick up a signal from a little box thing that I have plugged into the digibox, but to do this the digibox and TV have to be turned on.  What sort of hi-fi?  Don't give up on me. Baz - it's a Roberts radio and doesn't seem to have this facility. BJSLIV - what sort of name is that?  Why can't you be called a normal name like Fred or Alice or Austrianclive?  And when I put it to my wife that I might look for a little slider round the back, I can't tell you how upset she was.  Following on from the concubine and the Goblin Teasmaid, I think it was all too much for her.  And I am the Real Genuine Swissbarry, dammit.  Do you want to see my lederhosen?  Or my enormous Toblerone? Gwynydd - again, I would have to leave the TV and digibox switched on all night, wouldn't I?  And what sort of name is that?  For heaven's sake, get yourself some vowels. Seriously though, thank you all.  Between us I'm sure we can work this out and help stamp out ignorance and save my cat.

[quote]2 Solutions:- First one is to set up mirrors so you can bounce the signal off the remote control thereby enabling you to switch on the TV from bed. The other is to ask your wife to switch on the TV ...[/quote] Brilliant, Weedon.  Thanks a bunch.  One small problem.  Have you ever met my wife?