Fantine<br><br><br><br>Susie

I have just received an email addressed from [email protected] telling me that my email account has been temporarily suspended due to one of 4 reasons - details of which can be found in the attachment. IF YOU GET A SIMILAR EMAIL DO NOT OPEN ATTACHMENT - IT CONTAINS A VIRUS. Fortunately the AVG software dealt with it and I seem to be OK.

[quote]11th or 12th January and "she" is on the starting stalls already ! I am told we need "things" !As usual, Tina will have two shots at sales, as we are back in the UK for Christmas and New Year !!Sorry ...[/quote] I have a page set aside in my shopping list notebook specifically for sale items - just so I don't forget what I want!

Sounds great but opening Easter 2007 sounds like a very tight timescale to me. You are in the process of buying the land, you'll need to get planning permission, you want to built a luxury pool and tennis court, 'build' all the pitches with their services and community area etc. etc. I think 16(ish) months is not enough time to acheive it all.

My OH had it done in the UK and I also had to sign to agree to the proceedure. A general anaesthetic? Wow - that's a bit extreme, it's a five minute op; a local should sufficiently do the job. A couple of months ago, some brave chap, agreed to be the subject of a vasectomy broadcast LIVE on ITV's This Morning programme!! No problem, I don't know what all the fuss is about, it was just like going to the dentist.

Don't worry - they're freely available from supermarkets and garden centres. I remember Jardiland last year having a massive display and a really good choice of live/cut trees.

Go along to your doctor and ask. Your doctor will give you a presciption for them, take it to the pharmacy to get them, then back to the doctor (or nurse) for administering them. There has been so much hype over this issue but AFAIK there is no proven link between MMR and autism. My two have had theirs (at aged 1) and the booster (at aged 5).

To expand on TUs reply a little more, you will need a letter from the UK to say that you are no longer in receipt of it in the UK. You will also need birth certificates for the children (you have to have 2+ children to qualify)and also maybe you and you spouse too. You will also need proof of income for last two years, proof of residency (EDF bill) and your bank details. More than that I can't remember (3 years seems like a lifetime ago!) Go along to your regional CAF office which may be at the same place as CPAM and sign up.

I'd like to know too. When I turned my compost bin a few weeks ago there were dozens of them in there.

If you are spending the whole Christmas EVE with them then I would expect to be fed a multi course festive meal as this is when the French have their 'Christmas dinner'. Go on an empty stomach. They also tend to open their presents at midnight (in theory after Mass). Maybe take a wrapped present, especially for their kids.

Sorry to disagree Bob but we had a Mobalpa solid French oak kitchen fitted two years ago. The designer in Mobilier de France was excellent, open to our ideas, made some very useful suggestions, came up with a scale plan and 'photo' of what the kitchen would look like. They also built a unit to go around our tall fridge so that it looks built-in and not freestanding with a cupboard over. Yes, the drawer sides are imprinted with 'mobalpa' but they are very solid, (attractive when open) metal drawers each one complete with dividers/cutlery organisers that can be adjusted to suit. The quality of the cupboards and fitting is more than very good. I would recommend them.

"Fantine what are you doing these days, polishing the parquet (that's fantastic!)." I was bored (already) with my mug-shot. Cute isn't he. The nearest I'll get at the moment to having a real one (OH says no, non, niet, nay)

Reminds me of Paul Burrell in the Aussi jungle - makes me heave just thinking about it. Re the resto - I would not go with an English type name and not promote it as English. If you are serving food like you have suggested, it'll be a sucess based on the quality of the food, ambiance, service etc. Why the need to be 'English'?

We couldn't find one in France. A Mijoteuse is not the same - they have an electric element under the bowl and do not have a low enough setting to act as a slow cooker and also consume more electricity. We had ours brought over from Argos. I did see on a French shopping channel a few months ago, a proper slow cooker being demonstrated, but like I said, I couldn't find one in the shops here and I searched high and low.

Ha, how topical! After signing the devis in July, worked started on ours today. Gutters are 'gouttier' and the hooks 'crochets'. Our guttering is attached via hooks which are attached to the wooden batons under the tiles.

In our village there is a lavoir and loads of other springs dotted around. A friend is lucky enough to have one in her back garden with cresson growing in it, last year she gave me a large bag full (complete with the odd tiny fresh water shrimp) - must go and ask her if she got some going spare now!

[quote]Noel Edmonds!? Does he do a version of this? Has it crossed the channel? I thought some one like Shane Ritchie would have been good as an 'Arthur' type, but Noel Edmonds ?- can't see that all But ...[/quote] 'fraid so. In the afternoons on C4 before (or is it after?) Countdown. It's called 'Deal or No Deal'. It is actually a very old format that was on yonks ago in the UK called Take it or Leave it.

You're not alone - we watch this too! So much better than Noel Edmonds' version. Arthur is sooo cute Have no idea about the board game, just thought I'd lesson your embarrassment!

I thought it was funny - found it this morning on http://avatars.jurko.net/4/ huge selection, still and animated.

That's Handy then. Oh, sorry wrong brand!

Very, very funny. Ta.

No not snow. EDF Tempo tarif. Last year, this coming week saw the first white day but by this time the year before we had already had 17 white days. So far this autumn it's been blue, blue blue all the way. Which is great for me because my pool's still running (with a pompe a chaleur and an abri ). http://particuliers.edf.fr/article487.html I suppose this indicates a mild autumn so far, though it has been cold the last couple of mornings, frosty even in the Dordogne. We are, apparently, in for a very hard winter, are they saving all the white days (and red ones) for when it's minus 15 and below?!

St Moret is almost exactly the same as Philadelphia, comes in the same type of tub too.

[quote]All you are doing is confirming that this cars are not on british roads and therefore do not need british road tax bob[/quote] ...and so should be re-registered here with the relevant CT where necessary. I hope I am not in a crash with one of these cars as it's probably likely they're not insured either.

Is it common for French families to call their twins by names which sound very alike? There's 5 years old boys called Quentin and Corretin at my daughter's school - pronounced the French way, they sound extremly similar and I'm often unsure as to which child is being spoken about.

I bought a new one last year - larger volume with a glass lid so I can see what's going on. I've used one for years and love it. Especially good for cheap cuts of meat. I do brown the meat first. I understood (from the instructions of the new and my old one) that the ingredients should be at simmering point when you put it in the Slow Cooker. I brown the meat, lightly sauté the veg add a spoonful of flour to thicken then add the stock/juice etc and herbs/seasonings, bring to simmering and bung it all in the SC and forget about it. Works every time and is delicious. I have also 'roasted' a chicken in it with aromatic veg. Comes out very juicy, again brown the skin first in a pan otherwise it looks very anaemic! You could do the same dishes in a very, very, very low oven. But it is as low a temperature as a Slow Cooker? And is the power consumption as low?