suzi05
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Posts posted by suzi05
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Definately! I'd buy them (or maybe drop heavy hints that someone should buy them for me). I found a pretty pink tool set somewhere but they were rubbish quality, barely better than toys really. And I am constantly disappointed that Belinda (the concrete mixer I got for Valentines day 2 years ago) is such an ugly orange colour!
Congrats on your job too!
suzi
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I tried to e mail you too but it bounced back! Have a look at our website and contact us if you want to know more
Suzi
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Hi there
We use a bilingual accountantcy firm in Bordeaux - pm me if you're still looking
suzi
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I accompanied my in-laws to the notaires office a couple of weeks ago to complete on buying their house. They (as buyers) had already paid the notaire the full advertised price (which included the agents fees) and the notaire wrote out a cheque for the agent there and then and kept hold of the balance to pass onto the vendor.
Suzi
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I would love to get a copy of your list when you compile it. Having been veggie for 20 years, the last 5 in France, I would definately welcome knowing where I can get something a bit more exciting than an omlette for dinner!
suzi
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But the hitch is that there is no norm for salt systems in 'public pools' (that is pool used by the paying public- your Gite guest if you will). You must use Chlorine direct as your primary sanatisation method. If you choose to employ the electrolysis as well I gather in some departments is up to you but it alone does not cut it with the DDASS (Dept of Heath). So I would be careful about the idea that you can rely on your equipment to keep you on the right side in all cases, because if the DDASS officer does arrive to do a control and he does not like what he sees then he can close the pool for the 'public' in a heart beat.
Now I'm scared!
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Punaises - YUK! Our house is FULL of them! Not only do they stink if you squish them but the stinky stuff burns your skin too so beware! My baby son managed to squish one on his face and it really came up red and sore. They also love to get into our clean clothes for some reason - more than one of the delightful little things has been re-located when we've opened a suitcase in a foreign land! And don't even mention the number of times I've got right to the end of ironing a particularly troublesome fitted sheet / king size duvet cover, only to hear that "crunch" followed by that horrible "green" smell, usually followed by lots of swearing and another washing machine load!
If anyone knows how to encourage them not to live in and around our house (short of hoovering them up or grabbing them individually and chucking them out of the window which is all we do at the moment) we'd be eternally grateful!
suzi
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Thanks Pooguy and Suze. It looks like our salt system can't cope! I guess i'll add some chlorine and will definately look into this Zeolite. Is it very expensive? Our pool is about 3 years old and the sand is the original stuff. It does have alot of work to do as it is the pool used by our gite guests ao there are anywhere up to 15 people in it throughout the summer hols! Last year we had an algae attack mid-season which was awful. I felt so sorry (and guilty) for the poor people here on holiday at the time. I didn't know we had to add chlorine occasionally - I've always ignored those products in the shop, thinking they'd maybe harm the pool. Thank you pooguy for highlighting that.
suzi
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Hi All
Someone stopped me in town the other day and asked how I was going to cope with the new pool testing rules. Something about having to keep a book to prove when and how you test your water. Does anyone know about this? Or is it just heresay?
On the same subject (vaguely) - I have a salt water pool which is bright green! I have given it a good post winter scrub and hoover to waste; checked the salt and added a load; I even threw in a load of anti algae product (about twice what it recommends on the bottle) and have left the filter on full time for about 3 days and nights but all to no avail. Surely I'm not meant to "choc" a salt pool?
Any advice gratefully received
suzi
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Gosh! Are we supposed to have a F sticker on our french car when we go to the UK then? Never have done and our number plates haven't got the blue bit.
suzi
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We have all Navy blue or dark green towels. (Which I do boil wash!). If they fade too much I just shove them in the washing maching with some navy blue cotton dye. I had pale towels, but sun tan lotion ( the bain of my life ) left orange stains all over everything which no amount of boiling or stain removal products would get rid of! I don't know if it's because our water is particularly iron-y here. Does noone else have the orange stain problem? We've given up even buying white summer clothes.
suzi
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Are we allowed to recommend ourselves? www.patiras.com
Good luck with finding the perfect holiday!
Suzi
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How about a Beauceron? Beautiful dogs - french too! Rotty type colour, very friendly and loyal, great with kids. We got one from the SPA and I would recommend both the SPA and the Beauceron to anyone!
suzi
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Have you looked on the Holiday-rentals.com website? Quite alot of the gites on there will do long term rentals out of season.
Good Luck!
suzi
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Hiya
I don't want to discourage you at all (we moved here 5 years ago in about the same position as you and don't regret it at all), but I personally wouldn't count on gite income to live on. If you could find a job first that could keep your heads above water before you get here, and then use income from the gite as a (much needed) bonus, then that's probably the safest way. Also we found that renovations took twice as long and were twice as expensive than we ever counted on (even though we thought we'd taken that into account!). I know everyone says it - but it's true I'm afraid.
Re the gite saturation: My advice would be to look for something different you can offer that will make you stand out.
It's good that you're thinking hard about it - we didn't really. We just made the jump, and there have obviously been times when we have realised how stupid that probably was. France is just a different scenery - being broke and worrying about where the next mortgage payment is coming from here isn't any more fun than it is in England. If anything it's a bit harder because you don't know the system, the language, you're away from your friends and family.....
Anyway, I don't want to sound like a wet blanket and I really hope you find a way to make it work out - as I said, we don't regret it and have no plans to move back to England, despite having modified lots of our original daydreams!
Good Luck!
Suzi
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Of course the schools reflect the area. But surely it's our duty as parents to ensure that our kids do travel more than 30km from their doorsteps, and that they aspire beyond factory/shop/agricultural jobs - or at least know that other things are within their reach should they want them?! Why do they need Private Prep's? My son's primary school teaches them that you should be nice to one another, you should love your family, kiss your aunties, respect adults and recognise that there are people worse off than you. They learn to plant bulbs, sing songs and have fancy dress canivals and I don't beleive I've ever seen a computer in there. Meanwhile his cousins in a good old British primary are a whizz on computers and know which trainers they should wear and NEED the latest mobiles because EVERYONE else has them; and wouldn't be seen dead kissing their aunty in public for fear of being beaten up in school for being wussy!
Yes it might sound like the good old days here in our rural backwater and what he's doing now won't earn him a place on the board of directors anywhere, but there is time enough for that later.
Personally, I went to a rough as anything comp on a council estate where most of the pupils didn't aspire beyond pregnancy before 16, if the drug habit hadn't got them first. No, that wasn't the schooling that my parents would have chosen for their children, but they didn't have the luxury of choice. However, you don't spend your whole life at school and luckily my home life was such that I did aspire a little beyond that. A few years on, a degree, PhD, years in Cancer Research, set up and running a gite business, and now living in the kind of place where I do have the luxury to be able to choose a "nice" school for my sons, I think I am the proof that your school isn't the be-all and end-all.
I'm sure we could find people who have moved both to and from France with varying degrees of success in changing their children's education. I don't think it matters which country you're in, you have to look at the school itself and make a decision on what is right for your kids at that time.
suzi
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Hi Vicki
Our son is at the local (semi) private catholic school and it's brilliant. We sent him there becasue they didn't care about the catchment area and we live in a bit of an odd place where it would take us about 2 hours to get to our "local" school. Anyway, it costs us about 90€ a term. on top of that we have a "voluntary" 20€ a year charitable donation; lunch (37€ for 10) Then 19€ a month if we want him to go to before and after school club. nothing more so far (but he is in maternelle). The school insurance was optional and we took out our own which was about 10€ or free with our house insurance.
They are all lovely in our school and very friendly. The teacher talks to every parent she can when we collect the kids to let us know how they got on that day; the big kids look after the little kids. And they don't teach them to be catholics! Not that I have a problem with that if one wants to become a catholic, but we didn't particularly and I was a bit worried about it. Apparently because they are semi-private they have to stick to the curriculum which forbids religious instruction, so they just have RE like we did in school.
They say the money we pay pays for extra activities, equipment and the buildings etc and for extra classroom assistants i think (there always seem to be loads). This year they bought tennis equipment and bikes for the maternelle - hmmm my son (who is 3) managed to ride one over someone's arm and break it last week - maybe they shouldn't have bothered with the bikes!
good luck
suzi
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Our CONSUEL man glanced at the fuse box, stuck a meter in one socket in the lounge, said what a lovely house it was then signed the forms and gave us his e mail address so we could send him photos of said lovely house to show his wife, and in case we wanted any advice in the furture! So much for our panics over whether chases were the exact correct depth / distance from doors etc. Maybe he'd seen so many scary places he was just releived the sockets were actually attached to the walls!
filling in the form was the hardest thing for us.
suzi
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Hi Sandra
You absolutely can go through ANPE / ASSEIDIC as someone suggested. I did it and while they try to be very helpful, it took a month to sign up for ASSEIDIC and then another 3 weeks to sign up for ANPE before I was allowed to use any of their resources. Even then it was pretty hard going language wise even though I think that my french is better than "pretty good".
The letter of motivation is a weird french thing that we don't have in english really as our CV's cover it all. I went to the ANPE courses on CV's and LM's and found them useful from that point of view (despite having a PhD and having hired people myself in england); so would be willing to let you know what they said. I also got a french friend to have a look at mine and tweak (frenchify) them, so although my french probably isn't up to correcting yours, I can let you have copies of mine if you think it will help for style etc.
Good luck!
suzi
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I feel I have to put in a good word for my friends the Coypu (s?). We have hundreds of them living here on our island with us. They do tunnel into the ditch banks and cause a bit of damage there, they also eat all new and juicy shoots they can get their paws on. However, they don't eat trees, vines or things that are too tasty (they leave garlic, onions, and even rocket well alone!) and don't usually bother tunneling under chicken wire put around the veg garden. They are generally very friendly - you can tame them with a piece of bread or lettuce and then they behave pretty much like a pet rabbit. They are relatives of the beaver and they were originally introduced for their fur (or so I beleive) which is waterproof. And if that's not enough, the baby ones are possibly the cutest things ever when learning to swim!!
I have dogs which are fans of the coypu for very diferent reason - it is true that when cornered they stand up and fight (wouldn't you?!) and their teeth do alot of damage. I have had to have my dogs stitched up a few times, and do try to stop them hunting them when i can. I wouldn't recommend you get your dogs to chase off your resident furry friend - he'll probably move house on his own once he knows dogs are around. Re Lepto - our dogs and those of our neighbours are vaccinated on recomendation from the vet and have never had any problems despite coypu being their favourite between meals snack!
We had an old coypu that lived in our garden (before we had dogs). He was great friends with a coq we had at the time, and perfectly content to spend his days mowing our lawn for us. Shame we couldn't have trained a few of his friends to join him and finish the job!
suzi
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Our son Isaac will be 3 in March and starts school in January. It's not compulsary that they start that early, but plenty seem to (free childcare?!) around here. We went and asked at the Mairie who gave us a form to fill in to choose the school, and return to them with a proof of address. Apparently then they send you a date to look around the school. We ended up signing Isaac up for the local semi-private school. Only about 200 euros a year and no need to be in the catchment area - which is a big issue for us here as we live on an island and to get to the school in our commune would take us about 3 hours! We just phoned the school up and asked if we could go round and they were really helpful with all the forms.
Here they have dates when you have to register by for the Maternelle or you miss the boat for that year - but I guess it depends on how big a town you live in.
Good luck!
suzi
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We paid EDF around 8oo euros for a new counter and cables connected from the telegraph pole immediately in front of the house! They came out first to measure up and sent us a quote. We also had to pay 200 euros for the "Consuel" conformity check before EDF would do the work.
suzi
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I wouldn't worry about the agent still showing people around. In our experience, they carry on showing the properties until the compromis is signed just in case it falls through.
suzi
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We get about half and half of our bookings from holiday-rentals and Chez Nous.
Chez Nous are frustratingly useless when it comes to customer service, but they come up with the goods as far as bookings are concerned, and actually if you just advertise on their website they're not that expensive. Their brochure is too big to search through anyway in my opinion, and every one of our bookings from them last year came from their website - hardly anyone had even seen their book!
Holiday-rentals are great - you can do everything (updates etc) yourself online.
If you're thinking of taking out new advertising, I'd advise doing a mock search on the site of your choice for a property such as your own to see how they sort them. French connections for example have a "private pool or shared pool" option rather than just pool or don't care which. I think this was responsible for our absolute lack of enquiries from them as when forced to choose upfront most people would choose private and ours is shared.
suzi
www.patiras.com/trinite.htm
Good Idea - Bad Idea?
in Earning a Living
Posted
We offer to prepare a meal for our gite guests on arrival. I think about 99% take us up on the offer (they do practically all have kids) after a potentially very long day in the car they're usually grateful for someone else feeding them! They eat with us in the garden, we don't give any choice as to the dishes, but i ask them to tell me in advance if there's anything they don't like or want, and wine is included. I have to say though that we don't make any money at it (we charge 28€ a head for adults) but it's pretty good fun getting to meet everyone!
We have occasionally been asked by potential guests if we can recommend a chef who will provide meals / catering for them in their gite.
Suzi
www.patiras.com/trinite.htm