Coco

My parent have just shocked and stunned us both by coming back from Normandy this weekend to tell us that they have bought a house about 7 miles from ours and that tomorrow they intend to put theirs in the UK on the market and move lock, stock and barrel! They have the cash to buy the house in France and once they sell their 4 bed detached bungalow in the SE of England they will have (as you can imagine) rather a lot of money to stick in the bank. My question is: now that they intend to live in France permanently, inheritance tax will kick in at about 33,000 rather than 250,000 If they set up a company in Jersey or Guernsey, of which the 4 of us are directors, could we avoid paying so much inheritance tax when it is finally left to us? DOes anyone have any views, or know of a better idea? Coco

I agree with you Mary - these sections were requested and yet they are never used! Coco

SO what happened to the other 550 odd members? Last time I looked there were over 3400!!! I have always suspected that there are not actually this number of "active" members, but why have they vanished? Coco

I think you'll find they need to mains gas mushroom wellies, otherwise there's no pipe for the sound of your voice to travel down. Coco

We use Eaton Insurance, based in Vannes in Britanny. Gordon Eaton is English and his wife Lena is French. They insure us through Continent Insurance and we found them excellent when we needed to make a claim following the Dec 1999 storms. They dealt with everything over the phone, no forms to fill in and the cheque was with us in days. We are also covered for public liability insurance for guests staying at the house. Their phone number is 0033 2 97 47 31 97. It may be worth getting a quote from them. Coco

Nich I've just done some comparisons this morning of identical crossings to those I have done this year. Easter this year was 245 and for 2002 would be 258, our June break was 210 and next year would be 258 and our August one was 197 and next year will be 227. The overal prices themselves haven't risen that much but the cabin prices included in each of those have risen by 50%. They were an appalling rip-off before, now it's unbelievable!!!! Coco

If they've gone up drastically from this year's prices then I don't think I want to look! But knowing Brittany's policy of not releasing the new timetables until mid-November, how have you managed to make these comparisons? We've changed to the tunnel property owners club, but that's no help if you don't already have a property. And only time will tell if it's going to be any better - with all the delays they are having due to refugees in the tunnel we may well find we have to revert to the ferry! Coco

Hi Adriana When we were over in June we arranged to have a phone put in. We explained to the guy at France Telecom that we would be taking our handset home with us each time for exactly the reasons you state. He then told us about a free scheme where you can dial in a code and then decide what services you will allow. You can allow emergency calls only, local calls only, national calls only or full service. He gave us the leaflet explaining this and told us we could do this ourselves. You can, but you need to register with France Telecom first - so we have yet to set it up, but the service is available, and better still it's FREE!! Coco