nimportequoi

Here in Brittany (not far from Will in 50) we've had loads of unexpected snow, really treacherous driving conditions on the way home from work, even on the A84. To add to that there has been a power cut ongoing since this morning, no sign of EDF getting things sorted, so its freezing inside as well as outside - thank goodness for the woodburner and gas hob! 

Laymyhat.com  is brilliant for rental property owners and has loads of advice,so look there, but as you will find, it depends a lot on location, type of property and facilities as to what advertising works best for your individual property. The internet is the way to go, but I would personally do a search on Google of what potential guests would type in to do a search on a property such as yours and go from there. I advertise on a mixture of cheaper regional sites and the more expensive international rental sites. Their effectiveness changes year on year so you may need to change them from time to time.    

Buy some good thermal underwear, thick jumpers, a hot water bottle and do lots of housework/exercise to keep warm. I am determind not to put on the gas heating (which has doubled in price during the last 3 years) until December - luckily its been quite mild so far. The only problem I have had is when the MIL comes to stay - she has the central heating on 365 days a year and lives near Cambridge, not the coldest place in the UK. She has had to invest in some thermal underwear for her visits to France.

Love your cat, only thing is it reminds me of my lovely ginger tom, who having been shot by hunters last year, incurring 200€ of vets bills to save his leg, then disappeared (foxes???) in April, never to be seen again. Here in Brittany, no white/red days so far, only blue, I wish I'd kept the pool heating on now. Hopefully they will all come in January when the gites are (usually) empty....  

Send your CV off to every language school in the Pages Jaunes, and also to the Chambre de Commerce and GRETA. I did this and got lucky, one of the language schools I applied for gave my CV to another one looking for teachers for a big company in my local city. I have recently had to turn down some teaching as there is too much for me to cope with.

The language school I work for is currently looking for another experienced English teacher in the Rennes area to teach English to adults. If you are interested, please e-mail me: [email protected]  

Its difficult because different rental sites tend to bring in different results for different property owners. I can recommend you look at www.laymyhat.com as there is chapter and verse on the varying sites you can advertise on. Personally, I have always found the free sites a waste of time. Unless you are prepared to pay for your advertising, perhaps as much as 5% of expected income, you won't get the bookings. I would recommend that you do a search on the words most likely to suit your property/area and see what rental listing sites come out top. In addition there are the more expensive but established sites such as holiday-rentals.com, which have brought in good business for me.

This is no help at all, but the only resto in our area that served good vegetarian food closed down last year, not much demand for it in Brittany I suppose!

I prefer Darty to BUT, the sales staff are a bit better and the delivery service is excellent. When I bought some DVDs for the gites they set everthing and checked it was all working. I've never had a problem with Carrefour either (48hrs delivery too). Its too much hassle with BUT to hire a van and deliver stuff yourself. Regarding after sales, I prefer GITEM - although you pay a bit more, they are local always come out the same day if I have any problems.

Gay, Yes I did see SF on JR, an excellent interview and I agree that language does evolve, however, I wouldn't necessarily teach people to talk like that (for example "I done it") as if they were using grammar like that in a professional situation it wouldn't sound good. However, I do think that if I'd have been taught  some 'argot' vocabulary when I was at school, I would have understood a lot more of what my French neighbours when I first moved here! 'The Complete Merde' is a useful little book to have on that subject.

Margaret, if you want to get into school teaching, I'd start by trying to improve your English grammar - its not really grammatically acceptable to say 'I'm wanting' even though David Beckham does...

Ty, next time you are up North have a look in the car park at Plertuit (Dinard) airport. Its difficult to park there because there are so many Brit cars there on a near full time basis. I don't know for certain, but at a glance a lot don't look legal...

We have a chlorine pool and it is run in winter as in the summer with obviously less filtration required (you half the temperature of the pool and then you filter for the equivalent number of hours). You also need to keep opening up the abri to reduce the growth of algae and mould. We find that a high pressure cleaner cleans everything perfectly well, except the runner seals, which are awful to clean, I find a good quality cleaning product for the mould in bathrooms works best for me. Its not much maintenance at all and the abri has been great for us - we live in North Brittany, our pool is still 27°C and the heater has hardly been on at all this year.

I have Sky+ in France and it works fine, it was first run in the UK but not for 12 months and a phone line was never attached.

My French Accountant said if your earnings from gites surpass 24,000€ you are then obliged to register with the ch de c and you become loueur professionel, paying cotisations and taxe professionelle instead of taxe d'habitation (and social cotisations).

I'm British, so there was no impediment! I actually teach a lot of people now who have been taught by the Franco American institute, so thats why I thought it would be a good option. Another place I did some teaching and there were other English speaking nationalities was the ESC at Rennes - there was definitely an Australian who taught there, but he was married to a French woman so maybe that made the difference. In my humble opinion, there are a lot of international companies in Rennes who deal probably more with American companies than British companies and as I'm sure you are aware, there are a number of differences in the two 'English' languages, so American English would be quite useful. I would have thought that there would be a lot of demand for your services. However, I know nothing on the work permit side which is obviously more difficult.

Failing that, when I was initially looking for work in Rennes, I just went through the pages jaunes and fired off my CV to all the language schools (and there were about 12 or so). I got offered work with a few of them and it was more my business/work experience rather than my tesol qualification that got me the jobs.

If you are going to live in Rennes, a good place for you to go to would to find teaching work would be the Franco-American Institute. Why not contact them and see what importance they place on a TEFL qualification?

The only thing we found that worked on arrival on France is a rather horrible device which you place in a mole hill, it then explodes underground when the mole approaches and must send shock waves around undergroud as for the last 3 years our 0,5hectare lawn has been molehill free. The only problem is that it is quite expensive and my other half nearly had his head blown off when it went off accidentally once when he was checking it, so be careful if children and animals are around. It is very effective though - we bought ours at the local Point Vert.

I can't claim to have tried this myself, but according to Elizabeth David, you can either score the rounded sides of the chestnuts and bake them at 150°c or gas 3 for about 15 mins, or boil them in water for 8 mins, then squeeze them and according to her, the skins should come off easily with a small knife. Bon courage!

Here in 2003, the maize was so dry that unfortunately there were a number of cows on a neighbouring farm who exploded once they had eaten it (as soon as it reached the liquid in the stomach it expanded et voilà). I hope things aren't as bad this year, as it has been very dry again.

"You are missing the point - it is accepted that most registered artisans carry out a small amount of extra undeclared work. This is completely different to the English people that are making no attempt to work legally. All of their work is carried out illegally - at the same time they receive the benefits of registered workers." I am not missing the point, I completely agree with this. I bought my property from an Brit, who had employed another Brit who works au noir all the time in this area for other Brits to do all the jobs required in the gites. It has since cost me a fortune to get his shoddy (and in some cases dangerous) handiwork re-done correctly by registered artisans. So I agree with Ty. Why should people like that get benefits from fiddling the French and in some cases UK system whilst others officially working pay for them?   

I pay my share of social charges as I work and have a business here too. I am just commenting on the fact that it seems to be accepted that a lot of workers do a little work on the side to supplement their meagre incomes. Or there is an entraide between neighbours/friends. Is this as bad as some UK ex-pqts who have tried to get my business, pay no tax, no cotisations and rely on their E111 despite having lived for 10yrs in France? And also charge double the hourly rate charged by French artisans?

What about the travail au noir which is carried out by several ouvriers in their spare time who work for legitimate French entreprise in order to earn a little extra? Is this an equally 'grassable' offence in your opinion?

I think they are all different, but my local école maternelle is happy for the petite section to do mornings only, but it has to be every morning (here school is generally  Mon, Tue, Thur & Fri). My daughter has been going since the age of two and a half, she only went mornings for the first month. Since then, she has been there full time (I work out here, so no choice really!) She is now four and a half and loves school, speaks French nearly fluently (still a few problems with the le's and la's) - at school there is no difference between her and the French children. I would recommend starting children as early as possible as learning a language is so easy for young children.