KathyC

[quote user="Teamedup"] Traci, I won't pretend to understand you. Due the times you have posted I assume that you have a phone, an ordi and internet access. How broke have you got to be to have these things? I just know that we didn't have a phone at all for the first two years we were here.   It is true that in the UK you cannot always get financial help, if a person has what the government considers to be means. Owning a property in France was probably something that they considered as means. [/quote] Traci's original post says "several properties".

[quote user="Traci"] The work i'm doing here is varied, painting - interior & exterior, curtain making and soft furnishings, garden designing, upholstery, decking, I already said earlier its sporadic and I use most of these funds in taking my ex back to court for his non- payments, and just trying to survive here.  I currently don't have any medical provision for either of us, so i just pay the amount due and hope that nothing serious happens to either of us, and want to get this aspect sorted out as well.........................and as for being tarred with my brush!.........well you should try eating bread for 3 weeks and telling a child there's nothing else as mummy can't afford it.  I'm doing the best i can for now and remaining positive. [/quote] Although I'm naturally sorry for your situation, presumably it was your choice to come to live in France rather than remain in the UK where you have family. Unfortunately you do yourself no favours by admitting that you're also working illegally as well. Given all the skills you seem to have and the fact that you have a property whose value you could realise were you to return, I would have thought that you could have made a decent living in the UK if you so wished.

The OP was talking about her daughter's eligibility for healthcare in France on the back of their E106s. The thread went off topic when Traci started extolling the virtues of being able to get large sums of money from the French government without having contributed anything. The OP has talked of her daughter getting work in France rather than claiming benefits. Teamed Up's comments to Traci's post seem entirely reasonable to me; unfortunately the OP's daughter seems to be getting tarred with Traci's brush!

Certainly in the UK the time of day you go to A&E affects the quality and speed of treatment you receive. Obviously in most emergencies you can't choose but my husband has a chronic condition that needs urgent treatment on occasion so we sometimes go to A&E before things reach crisis proportions. We had to go  the other day as a problem was looming but by going at lunchtime, things were very quiet and we received almost one to one care from people who seemed relieved to have something to do. Had we waited for a full blown crisis, it would probably have been round when the pubs come out and it gets ugly in A&E. There's often a lot of spare capacity in the daytime because staff have to be available for any sudden catastrophes. I assume that this would be the same in France.

[quote user="Dotty "]The OP lives in the Poitou Charente, so do I.  The Hyper U and Super U near me have a promo on rose, white and red wine sans alcohol.  Can't think of anything worse myself, but there you go.  What ever floats your boat.[/quote] Boat floating! I knew there had to be a use for the stuff.

[quote user="Russethouse"]I've still got my copy of Coral Island..........I must have liked it as I went to the trouble of covering it with library film. I wonder if any other ladies remember Ballet Shoes by Noelle Streatfield ? I read that lots........[/quote] The Fossils! Weren't they wonderful; you could relate to all of them in different ways. Also agree about Katherine and Louisa May Alcott, such an interesting woman and from such an intellectual background. I don't suppose you were a fan of the Abbey School books by any chance?

 Pratchett definitely, Dorothy L Sayers and Jane Austen. Nothing if not eclectic!

[quote user="Cassis"]So if we gave a bushman in the Kalahari a choice of an electric kettle and a Senseo machine, which would he prefer, do you think? [/quote] Depends whether he's a tea or a coffee drinker!

Kettles are really good for making hotty water bottles when you're cold! I was just surprised that a kettle was non essential and a Senseo was essential. Each to their own.

How can anyone manage without a kettle?

Thank God, I thought it was just me!

[quote user="Pun"] And a spare set of keys (for your own use) [/quote] That reminds me; I do wish that owners of self catering accommodation would provide more than one set of keys. Even if you've only let to a couple, I find the idea that people spend their holidays joined at the hip quite frustrating. I'm sure that we can't be the only people who like to go our own way, at least some of the time and it spoils the freedom of being on holiday to continually need to make arrangements so that the keyholder is first one back.

We're paying 6,500euros for a total rewire of a two up, two down house with sous sol, grenier, garage and summer room; that seems on a par with what you've quoted.

Thanks Catalpa, I'll do it tomorrow; thanks for the suggestion.

[quote user="Russethouse"] Did you have to catalogue yours ? [/quote] No, thank God; life's too short! Your husband's book buying habits sound very similar to my husband's; eclectic in the extreme! At least mine are 95% fiction but even these can go out of print. (Perhaps we should catalogue them; it'll give us something to do on the long winter nights in France.[:)])

sweet17 It's not the burglars I'm worried about; as my mum used to say"they'd have to bring it in before they could steal it!" Although I've never had a fire, the thought of having to replace everything without any insurance cover is rather scary; even if your furniture is secondhand/IKEA it would still be disastrous if you couldn't claim without receipts. We've claimed a couple of times in the last few years; freezer contents, carpet ruined by leakage, that sort of thing. RH I've never thought of books as a collection; we used to have very average contents insurance until one day we looked around, counted the books and multiplied by £10. We immediately tripled our insurance which alerted the insurer who thought he could sense a fiddle in the offing until he came round and stared in amazement. I don't think he could believe that anyone with so few furnishings could have so many books! As far as book prices on the jacket goes, this assumes that some of your books aren't priced at 2/6 as some of my husband's beloved Penguins are. Catalpa Could you possibly pm. me with the name of the insurer you're talking about. Obviously they may be too expensive but it sounds as if it's not really worth forking out for French contents insurance from what has been said here. Thanks.

[quote user="RumziGal"] [quote user="hastobe"][I'm assuming from what you have said they are AAT qualified - so an accounting technician rather than an accountant - there is a big difference.   (By contrast - as a graduate and experienced ACA in a large practice - the charge out rate is up to £400 per hour - but that takes a hell of a lot of graft to achieve) Kathie [/quote] Yes, but the point is that they're earning good money at 20, without any impressive school-leaving qualifications or anything like that.   There is a set of possibilities open to youngsters in the UK that isn't available to their peers (or above) in France.   Or at least, not without going to the UK...... that's all.        [/quote] For someone who is forever pulling off people's rose tinted specs about France, RG, you sure know how to wear them in the UK! The fact that you know someone who's been lucky doesn't make this typical of the young people in the UK, most of whom are poorly educated and working in minimum wage jobs - certainly away from the affluent south east. There's always someone who knows someone who has broken the mould and succeeded against all odds, whether in France or the UK.

Thanks Quillan, I think that my definition of valuable is a bit different from some of those posting here! Let's start again. Assuming that your belongings are a mixture of things you've brought from the UK, things you've bought second hand and things that you've bought new and never thought to keep the receipt for ( who keeps a receipt for a 150euro Carrefour TV?), does anyone know whether a French insurance company would pay up (like a UK insurer would do) if you lost things in a fire or were burgled? I've always been quite completely covered in the UK but it sounds as if it's not going to be worth paying for in France. Our contents insurance has always been quite high as it includes over ten grands' worth of books and not a receipt amongst them!

Presumably if your house burns down your receipts will go with it! I never thought of contents insurance for things breaking down, only for fire and theft. How would you cover things that you inherited (not that I have any), some of which could be very valuable? Anybody else have any experience of this?

[quote user="Quillan"]    The other thing is that when you ever have to claim on a French household policy you have to produce a receipt, not a till receipt but a proper facture for the item. We had none for our UK stuff and when something broke they wouldn’t entertain a claim. My camera on the other hand, bought in France with a proper facture, and dropped in the river was sorted out inside two weeks with no hassle (it was a Canon digital SLR worth over 1,000 Euros). [/quote] So, if your whole house contents goes up in flames one day or you're visited by a very ambitious burglar, does that mean you'll get nothing? If that's the case I won't bother with contents insurance. That's scary, can anyone else confirm? (Sorry Quillan, it's not that I disbelieve you, but if you're right, I don't see any point in bothering with insurance.)

[quote user="Panda Bear"] In danger of going off topic but in line with the sentiment in the article sited by WJT, has anyone else noticed that programmes on the TV such as 'master chef' are starting to be full of what anyone would consider to be highly trained professionals looking for a way out of their hard fought for career.  The last show I watched had 2 lawyers and a scientist with a phd, why do they want to give up years of training to become a chef which they could have achieved in a fraction of the time?  We seem to live in an age where everyone is unhappy with their lot and wants to change, I must say that when I first started work everyone eyed the top job with envy and worked hard to get promotion, if I think about it now I don't know anyone who has that kind of ambition anymore, the only ambition I come across is to be able to 'drop out'.  Am I imagining this shift in mind set....   [/quote] I do careers guidance work with adults and what you've said is so true! I've seen unhappy teachers who want to be hairdressers, unhappy chefs who want to be plumbers, unhappy plumbers who want to be teachers; it goes on and on. Sometimes I wish I could get them all in a room together and get them to all to swap their lives to see if they would be happier. I rather doubt it!

[quote user="ErnieY"]A complimentary chimney sweep to any I've offended.[/quote] I've always wanted to have a chimney sweep pay me compliments; thanks, Ernie.

Am I the only one who thinks that you can make perfectly good coffee in a coffee pot, just the same as you make tea?

Catalpa, I agree with you about the people who live in southern England but then I don't think that you could describe anywhere in that area as the country. Southern England is just one great dormitory suburb of London; it just happens to have some bits that haven't been built on! My experience of living in the country was south Shropshire in the 90s; apart from the incomers (like us) many people were very much as you describe in rural France - or at least almost so. I taught at the college in Shrewsbury and there were certainly a few students who'd never been out of the county and the majority had never been to London. Where we lived was about 20 miles from a supermarket and there was nowhere, apart from one pub, that was nearer than a half hour's drive to go to in the evening. I expect many people who come from rural Wales would be able to say the same thing. I think that anyone who moved to rural France thinking that it was going to be like Sussex, but with cheap wine and houses, must have had a very rude awakening!  

[quote user="Blanche Neige"][quote user="RumziGal"] [quote user="Lassie"]What is going on?[/quote] Ummmmmm....... perhaps they're bored in the winter, frustrated with bad customer service and poor workmanship, and are missing a social life with intelligent, educated friends? Sounds reasonable, I see no mystery there!  [:)] [/quote] Rumzigal you have a point. Probably the rose coloured spectacles have slipped and I think we underestimate the value of family ties and really good long-term friendship. Money and location are not always the be all and end all. [/quote] But what does anyone think that the countryside is going to be like in the winter - in any country?