Coco
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Posts posted by Coco
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[quote user="Dick Smith"]They will have been trained to say whatever is necessary to keep themselves safe and get out of the situation. If that means complying with Iranian instructions, then it is done.
[/quote]I thought they hadn't been given any training at all. The MODs belief being that RAF need the taining in case their personnel are downed in enemy territory but navy personnel are unlikely to be captured!
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As I said, I think this can be the only explanation - it's the fact that they bring back the empties that is a little confusing [8-)] and I don't charge a deposit!
Three in two days though Cerise - that beats their usage here!
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We just couldn't work out how they got through so much, especially as the empty rolls were left in the bathroom, so they were clearly using it and not snaffling it away for their stay in a gite later during their holiday. Then someone suggested that perhaps they were taking it out with them in case there was none in the public/restaurant loos that they visited. Perhaps that explains it.
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You may also find that your bank won't let you have a CB machine without a siret number.
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No you're wrong, the Normandy country accent is definitely Geordie, or rough Glaswegian. I always get downhearted during the winter months because the only French people I encounter are our neighbours and I become convinced that my French is either not progressing at all, or if anything, I'm going backwards! However, one of our neighbours comes from Caen and her accent is definitely easier to understand. Another girl, who only moved to the village last year, comes from Paris, and I always understand her. A friend who lives in the village comes from quite a posh family in Paris and her French is as clear to me as English - I never have any problems with anything at all that she says.
We find that during the summer months we understand just about everything our B&B guests say to us - except those from the Lille area - they seem to mumble so much[:@] as well as sound as though they're choking.
Incidentally, we also find that locals seem to have difficulty understanding us, whereas Parisians and people from other regions have no problem at all. Perhaps they're just glad to be able to understand someone in Normandy. A couple of weeks ago we had a couple stay here from Cognac. They stopped to ask for directions in the village and the husband told me that he had turned to his wife and said "are we still in France?" [:D]
By the way, can anyone say Reims correctly? I've heard as many different versions as the number of people I've asked, ranging from Reemz to what sounds like someone having a good cough followed by spitting!
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We saw a sign in Leroy Merlin last week quoting 40€ sq/m.
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Saturday morning is a dead cert round here.
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Thanks Will, as I thought. If the rumours had purely come from Brits I would have ignored them but several have come from Maires or local French businessmen. Still, they're just as prone to making things up as anyone else I suppose.
So it isn't even definite about Flamanville yet then? I didn't realise that!
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Has anybody heard any more about this recently? I thought I saw a timetable printed somewhere that said no decision would be made til the end of this year or next year and that construction wouldn't start til 2010. However, rumour, and I believe it is only rumour, is rife around here as to which villages it's going through; with everyone saying they know it's going through someone else's village because their Maire has told them so, neh! [:P] Does anyone know any FACTS?
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Sorry Paula, I missed your initial query but all ended well as I was going to confirm that we have eaten at La Pierre Chaude a couple of times, following a recommendation from a French B&B owner that we stayed with a few years ago, and it was very good.
No Dick, it's not in a courtyard, it's halfway up the main drag of the old town.
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Haven't got a small pine wardrobe have you?
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[quote user="Ac50"]
Just wondered how much this is affecting people in Manche, especially around our area Carentan? House prices don't seem to have dropped, looking at what's for sale on the notaires website and local estate agents, but wondered how much it has affected tourism?
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Why would house prices drop? I really don't think the UK buyers have that much overall effect on the market here. As for tourism, well we're on schedule for it to be our best year yet. Most of our UK visitors became wise to BF's exhorbitant charges a couple of years back and seem to use LD to Le Havre and Dieppe, Speedferries to Boulogne or Seafrance and P&O to Calais. We're just south of Saint Lo.
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Who's Mr Zjob? Not the poor old chap Uncle Joe and his Missus have sent to the Gulag for 151 years? [;-)]
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[quote user="Prasutagus"]
Coco - you sound like the kind of nurse I have always been looking for.
Are you still working?
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Gave it up a long time ago. But I can assure you, I wouldn't have the same effect these days - middle-aged spread having taken a firmer hold than Sister obviously did [;-)]
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[quote user="ErnieY"]I don't know where your experience was Coco but I can tell you that not only would it be nigh on impossible to inset a catheter into an upstanding gentlemen and I don't believe that any surgeon or properly trained nurse would attempt it.
It is not uncommon however, for one to "rise to the occasion" as it were, post insertion, but please please please take my word for it that this is something you really really do want to discourage at all cost's [:'(]
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Oh I quite agree Ernie, that's why I was so useless at it, I was never able to manage to insert a catheter properly. Having re-read my posting I didn't explain myself very clearly about the 16 year old either. The catheter was already in place, I was just securing the tape after emptying the bag, that was the bit that "fitted well" at the time and then was sagging too much afterwards and he was getting embarrassing leaks, hence mum's reason for asking for the Sister to do the job instead [;-)]
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I learnt very quickly after our first season that White is the only way to go. We had navy blue in our blue and yellow room - after that first summer they had turned a sort of washed out mid-blue colour and pink in the ... wait for it.... pink room, which if they got any stains on, which I sincerely HOPE was suntan lotion, they were buggared! It also meant that if we had several bookings following on from each other in one room then we ran out of towels and couldn't interchange. Now everywhere is white and it's so much easier - and now we have the tumble drier to keep them fluffy, life is wonderful [:D]
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[quote user="Cerise"]...Mr Cerise (who I swear eats the stuff) ....[:D][/quote] That was the only logical conclusion I could come to about them! [:D]
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Our current guests are with us for 8 nights. Tonight is night 6 and they have asked if they could have some more loo paper. I have just given them rolls 7 and 8!!!!!! I haven't got a clue what they are doing with it, but surely this must be a record for one couple? That means they've used 6 rolls in 6 days; half a roll per person per day, (out most of the day, so presumably they "go" no more than once in the morning and once in the evening) that means they're using quarter of a roll each per "sitting"!!! I'm getting very worried about my fosse!
They're heading south to an apartment in Andorra for a week and then a gite in Provence so my husband suggested they may be "stocking up". However, when I have cleaned the room and emptied the bin there are tallying empty rolls there.
Cerise once said on a previous thread on the same subject:
Suggest you send your guests via our B & B to your gite - cos it took me a while to realise that the one-nighters on their way to gites further south nicked the spare toilet rolls from the bathroom cupboards!! Do you think I should put up a notice explaining the role of the supermarket in France?
Better lock those cupboards Cerise, cos they're heading your way! [:D]
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[quote user="Will"]
This is one instance where it is important to do one of these things, because if you get it set up wrong the French authorities are likely to demand both the employee and employer cotisations from you, which together will represent about 60% of your salary.
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I'll second that, I was working very much how it sounds as if you intend to work and what Will describes above is exactly what happened to me. And the French authorities are not prepared to accept any excuses, ie "your lady in the front office helped me with the forms and told me just to sign and she would fill out the rest." It didn't wash and I got stung for the whole lot. Hardly worth working!
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OK, you want a humourous anecdote from a female on the subject........ Chris Head asked how the tube could be passed without an erection - in my experience it can't. As an 18 year old student nurse I was being taught how to fit a catheter - easy peasey on the women, for the obvious reasons you have already described. Every time I got anywhere near touching any of the men's bits they got very large and, well, you know [:$] One particular mum, who's 16 year old son had to have a catheter and bag fitted several times a day refused to let me do it in the end because she said that although I fitted everthing securely in place at the time, with surgical tape, within minutes of me leaving the room the tape was no longer a "tight fit", if you get my drift...[Www] Strangely enough, the Ward Sister (55+) didn't seem to have the same problem - and I don't think it was down to her nursing experience.[blink]
Wonder if I'd still have that effect 30 years on? - judging by Sister's experience, probably not [:(]
Always reminds me of the Joanne Whalley scene with Michael Gambon in the Singing Detective - the one where she has to rub the cream on him.
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If you want responses along the lines of "you can get it here instead" then flat pack kitchen units..... We got ours from Leroy Merlin, solid oak doors, much cheaper than we remember then being available in the UK. Now that statement alone could mean we are incorrect, as we don't go back that often now. However, we had B&B guests last year who are renovating a barn and bring EVERYTHING from the UK, and I mean EVERTHING, including their landscape gardner and carpenters! They took one look at our kitchen, priced it up in the UK and agreed that Leroy Merlin were much, MUCH cheaper than the UK for a self-assembly kitchen of that quality.
To add to your list, we have recently had to get bog-standard white plastic pendant light fittings from UK as they seem to be unavailable in France unless they have a b***y great 8 inch bulb hanging from the ceiling!
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[quote user="Will"]
Anyway, I quite inadvertently (and in hindsight very conveniently [;-)] ) steered the topic off along a France-related tangent, so unless this yet another 'lets have a pop at the moderators' sort of playground game there cannot really be a problem. Can there?
No "pop at the moderators" intended Will. I would have made my comments no matter who had posted in this section - I just find it interesting that a Moderator admitted it was in the wrong place but still was not prepared to move it. No big deal though.
. And it ended up with somebody offering 'over the asking price'. That, again, just does not happen under the French house buying system.
I can bear this out - we once wanted to buy our local presbytery and put an offer in (on the advice of the agent) at 10K below the asking price. Someone else cam back with the full asking price and we offered to go an extra couple of K to secure it but were told that the game was up; the full price had been offered and that there was nothing we could do about it. We lost out but to be quite honest I'm glad such rules are in existance to stop things spiralling out of control.
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[quote user="Bugbear"]Great programme and seriously, does it really matter where it is on here................pas importante[/quote]
Of course it doesn't matter where it is. I've never bothered about how much "French interest" there is in a thread as long as it's of interest to someone but so many times moderators have moved threads that were going along quite happily, or before we had the Off Topic section, commented on the lack of French content of some threads, yet when they themselves start a non-French thread in the "wrong" place it is not only allowed to stay but argument is given as to why it should. It's only banter, after all [6]
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[quote user="Russethouse"]
Of course it 'should' be in the off topic section, however this is the animal section where people who are interested in rescueing animals look -
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Well if it should be why doesn't a mod move it there? [:P] As this is a Forum about France wouldn't people be wanting to rescue animals in France? And incidentally, this is the Pets section, there is a separate section for people interested in animal welfare and rescuing animals! I looked at the thread because I thought there was a French-related programme on BBC2! One rule for one.... [:P]
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