Suze01

All 'etrangers' are listed seperately on green sheets at the front of the electoral document that you sign after voting. Of course not everyone has bothered to register to vote, even if they know they could.  I know of three English households whom I reminded to register in December but didn't bother because they didn't want to for whatever reason.

Have just done my stint on the bureau.  At 3.30 we were up to a turn out of 75% (of 774 voters).  Not bad.  Bit annoying though that there was a constant huddle of people from the second list outside the Mairie, sometimes almost blocking the doorway! Going back just after six to watch the counting.

[quote user="Tony F Dordogne"]Opposition list, goodness me no, that would mean more than 11 people being interested in the election, nice and sedate in our little commune of 148 potential voters and we only have 190 odd inhabitants.  Our local big town has 3 lists so that should make for an interesting count this evening. I'm on election duty this afternoon - I'm one of the scrutin team - so have 2.5 hours of waiting for people to come in to vote, must take something to read cos from memory in the UK, it can get very boring. Obligatory aperos this evening when the count is finished apparently! [/quote] I'm on duty too from 2 to 3 this afternoon.  Then at about 7.30 it's aperos and results at one of the adjoint sortantes houses then the local bar is booked for cous-cous at 9 hopefully accompanied by lots of Champagne [;-)] BTW there are about 1000 in our commune but even so the second list did find it tricky to find enough people to fill it.

Good luck for the vote today Tony.  Does your village have an opposing liste?  We do here but by all accounts we stand a very good chance of getting elected en entier today.  We had a public réunion friday night where I had to do a 2 minute presentation of myself, then each of us presented one of our projects, again another speech for me to do, both went really well as did the whole evening for us.  I was soooo nervous - there was about 100 people there, of which only 20ish were not supporters of our liste - the 20 were mostly the members of the other liste! What a relief for all of us after it was over - nothing left to do but to wait for tonight's results to come in.  Bon chance!

You can cross off as many names as you want to.  As long as you don't exceed the number of seats available that's OK.  If there are two listes then depending on how everyone votes then the resulting council can be made up of a panachage of the two listes (ie: mixed) and so if enough people cross off these names they may not win a place - but it does depend on voting as a whole because if one liste gets 50%+ of the votes the entire liste wins. Complicated but possible!  If you feel really strongly then I would speak to as many people as possible so that they also cross off these names.

Simple, just cross off the name that you don't want. 

[quote user="oscar"]What's the Maire's list by the way?[/quote] The Maire's Liste is his team of people putting themselves forward for the places on the council.  Normally a liste will be = to the number of places on the council.  Then there may or may not be opposing listes.  It depends on the size of your town/village on how it works.  Have a look on the [url=http://tf1.lci.fr/infos/elections-municipales/0,,3706147,00-municipales-mode-emploi-.html]TF1 website[/url] where it explains it clearly. BTW, our voting cards should arrive today having been posted a couple of days ago.  The 1er adjoint told me the other week that they wait until february was over so that anyone turning 18 would get included in the distribution.

Our Titre de Sejours run out this Sunday [:-))] I think we'll try through the Mairie for the Titre permanent before going to the Prefecture - at least we'll get a friendly familiar face there!!

Yes, there's quite a few of us by all accounts.  Our group photo was in the Dordogne Libre a couple of weeks ago and again last week in full colour in the Sud Ouest. Susie (Stu & Helene's friend - I met you and Dawn last summer at their house)

...now, what was the name of that film? [;-)]

[quote user="Clair"]Hamlet: J'ai un chat rouge (roux), son nom est (il s'appelle) Hamlet, il a très gourmand, il est très gros, mon mari l'appelle Garfield. Il prend son petit déjeuner avec moi alors (puis) qu'il va et vole la nourriture de mes voisins.! Un jour il a volé mon perroquet de voisins (le perroquet de mes voisins), mais il est (va) bien maintenant.  Le dimanche il va à l'eglise ! Il s'assied avec les vieilles dames. Après elles lui donnent le (du) lait et des biscuits. He is a toy boy (C'est un gigolo), sa amie (sa copine or son amie) a quinze ans plus que lui. [/quote] 'les vieillles dames' should be elles not ils IMO [:$]

In living memory since we've lived here, yes.  The first few year's lows were -15, -8, -12, -8.  This year I think -6 or -7 has been the coldest, very briefly.  Today we hit 20 in the shade for the first time this year.

[quote user="5-element"]... and maybe the same this week - which co-incides with the children being on holiday, i.e. at home, and needing to do their thing, which is more than likely to involve energy consumption. [/quote] Not all kids are on holiday yet.  Zone C doesn't start until next week. Glad I got nearly all my washing done on Sunday though.

[quote user="Jane and Danny"]Cathy, That should be mille neuf cent quatre-vingt-dix-neuf, I think You should have practised abstinence for a year- it makes thing easier. Our son was born in deux mille deux Danny [/quote] Dix-neuf cent or mille neuf cent are both correct.

[quote user="5-element"][quote user="fussy"]yes still saying blue, can you tell me what meter I have to look on, is it the one that edf come and read.[/quote] Not at all, it's a tiny little boxy thing which they used to give you when you were joining the Tempo option, it's about 2x3inches and has nothing to do with the usual electricity meter. [/quote] Not quite.  When Tempo was originally installed  EDF also changed the actual meter (that gets read by the EDF guy) as it's specific to Tempo and is different to a 'standard' meter and sends the signal to the 'little box' that you can plug in anywhere in your house.  If you look on the screen it says the day's colour in the bottom left corner.  This is what you are actually on for the day.

... and it's going to be red again tomorrow (hoorah - let's get them over with). Gail and Fussy - are your terminals/meters still saying blue for today? Maybe your little boxes didn't pick up the signal from the meter and was stuck on Sunday's blue, did you check your meters?

[quote user="Gail Smith"]Our light is blue today!   Gail [/quote] [quote user="Anton Redman"]Presumably different parts of the country. Also possible not all of the red days have been used up so forcing them through before end of March even though no actual need. [/quote] Gail is a few kilometres from me and ours is saying RED.  The EDF Tempo website is a national website, it does not differentiate between regions therefore I can't see how it matters what part of the country you are in. It is very detailed Anton with history going back several years - it tells us exactly how many red/white/blue days we have used and how many remain, there are no surprises. I had the email warning last night for a red day and the website says that it's a red day. EDIT: I've just checked the meter and that says Rouge too.

What an absolutely stunning property. I LOVE it! [IMG]http://i140.photobucket.com/albums/r20/regine79/dreamcastle.jpg[/IMG] That fire place and the vaulted ceiling are amazing.  Do you know any of the history Frenchie? What family owned it etc. Why hasn't the Government or the dept that deals with MH stepped in to stop the decay of such a fabulous building? In the UK there has been a TV series called 'Restoration' highlighting such properties around the UK - the public phoned in each week and voted for their favourite and at the end of the series the winning property was restored.  France could do with a similar emission.

I have mowed this early in previous years but I've found that the chickens do a very good job of keeping it down at this time of year.  Give it another month or so and I don't think they'll keep up with the growth rates though.

Go to the local Mairie and ask what the land is categorised as on the PLU (agricultural, constructable, non-constructable etc). Find out if anyone else is currently using the land who is not the owner ie: another farmer using it for hay/grazing sheep etc. as this can be a nightmare situation (similar to squatter's rights).

Have PM'd you a link to some of my coop build pictures. Susie

But if you were driving an automatic then you wouldn't take your foot off the brake even if you did put the handbrake on, unless you put it into 'park' as well.  My OH's car doesn't even have a handbrake as such - it gets applied electronicaly when you switch off the engine.  As long as you properly stop then the handbrake isn't necessary, surely. Often I've stopped at the line and the car behind has also stopped (hopefully!!), I move on and the car behind  goes straight off without stopping at the line.  I wonder if a gendarme would accept that he'd 'stopped' [8-)] I don't think so somehow.

Just thought I'd let you all know that I got my new updated Permis de Conduire from the Prefecture today duly stamped wth all the categories that I previoulsy had on my UK licence  [:D]

Personlly I wouldn't use Russian Vine.  Apart from it's invasive qualities the blossom has a very pungent smell reminiscent of cats pee.

Tilly is beautiful.  Can I assume that she has been wormed?