Bob T

OK, I said that we survive on much less than 9500 per year, it is actually less than 7000 per year. Property taxes this year wer a little over 400 euro. I am not that far in the North of the Perigord Noir being 20 miles or so north of Sarlat. I don't have top up insurance, that is a matter of choice, I don't feel that I need it at the moment and have not needed it over the past 2 years. The cost of heating was mentioned, but that again is very individual. You would need to heat less here than in East Anglia as the weather is generally warmer. I spent loads on my oil fired heating in East Anglia, but nowhere near as much on my wood only heating here and the house is nice and warm. The car and bikes here save us around £320 pa by not having road tax. The bike insurance bill has dropped from £700 in the UK to £220 here, property taxes were £1200 pa two years ago inthe UK, but are 400 euro here. I don't need to travel 60 miles a day to work here. The list goes on. Everybody is different and has different expectations, but I can say that for my lifestyle, this is much cheaper.

I don't see why the reception should be any different to the UK. The sat dish is looking at the same satelite. Our normal sky systems works just as well here as it did in the UK.

The debit card use charge, £1.50 with Halifax, does not apply to all banks. Nationwide do not charge anything.

No but I decided in August to buy a new Hyundai Tucson (see my blog for the full story) and rather than pay the full 29500 euro that the local dealer wanted I did a search on Wanadoo. I ended up going to Cahors and getting the same car for 5000 euro less. I am very pleased with it and the service.

And then ask the UK agent to arrange all the Solicitor stuff and be present, with the English speaker from his office there. Ask him to arrange to get the phone connected and the electricity changed over. The ask if he will help you out for the first couple of years when you need it. These are all things that my French estate agent did for me at no extra cost.

I live on less than that. There are also tow of us but with no dogs, two 1100cc motorbikes instead. Take no notice of house renovations as that only applies if you buy a house to renovate - not everyone does. We have a 3 bedroomed house and our wood heating is miles cheaper than hte UK was. Our council tax on a tiny bungalow in the UK was £1100 per year two years ago and the taxes here were €400 yesterday. We eat out and travel oftern and also live in the Dordogne, not the expensive bit full of Brits near Sarlat but a little further north. People here are not as materialistic as those in the UK. See my blog and you will know how well I live. Bob

Just try to remember that a freeview satelite dish can see the satelite, but a digital terrestial freeview box cannot see the transmitter aerial that is in the UK unless you can see Dover from where you live. So the answer has to be that the freeview box may pick up some French channels but it has not got a cat in hells chance of picking up UK TV.

Just paid mine today, they sent the bills to the UK agian. I have told them a number of times that I live here permanently and have no interests in the UK. I have now completed a RIB so that they take the money from my account and then they can send the bill where they like. One of the bills was only 44 euros, does not seem worth it.

Those were the days. I asked to go to the Falklands war, but was refused as I was a battle damage repair man, where is the sense in that? I also tried to get to Gulf war 1 but was refused as by then I was a computer specialist. I was willing to do my bit then, but now I feel more for the French flag than I did for the British flag. I feel that the people here tend to appreciate others form all walks of life, in the UK I no longer felt the feeling of belonging. I know what you mean about the ATC at BZN, but these days due to spending cuts the ATC do many parades that the RAF used to do. I remember the BofB ball at Wyton mess where there were ATC on parade as there were no servicemen to spare. Things have changed so much. My cousin is a Mason and attends all the vetran services that he can in the UK. He complains that people hoot their horns at some of the vetrans because they are overflowing onto the road!

There is a pre printed form available from the prefecture. I have got mine but not filled it in yet.

C5 diesels have a particle filter in the exhaust system that needs to be serviced and replenished every few years. This might be causing the anti pollution problem.

I have just attended the armistice day gathering in my town, There was no church service, but I was invited to drinks afterwards. After many years in the RAF nad having a great uncle buried in France who died in the first war, I thought it would show support for a Brit to attend. I have just posted the pictures on my blog if anyone is interested.

There is other good free software out there, AVG antivirus for one, beats paying for Norton.

I have also used this program. It works well, but be aware that you need a reasonable spec PC to run it on. One one of my PCs it is very slow.

The way I see this whole subject is that I have my standards. They are not British, western or French. I live here in France and accept the way that the population want to treat anyone. If I don't like the way France treats Muslims, then it is not my place to critisise them. If I felt very strongly then I would move back to the UK.I am after all a guest in this country. I am not trying to offend anyone with this post or in the way I treat people of any colour, but I do believe that I am tolerant of all people and that includes the way a nation does things.

Cassis, I had two colour inkjets here in my study and a black and white laser. The problem that I have found is that if you don't use the injets on a regular basis then the ink dries or it prints out a bad page on the first print using expensive photo paper. It was costing so much per page that I bit the bullet and spent around €300 on a colour laser. I now use any old paper and get a good print every time, even if it has not been used for 3 weeks. OK the toner is expensive at €70 times 4. but that should be every 3 or 4 years, so will end up being much cheaper than inkjet cartriges. When I was in the UK. I was a trained systems analyst, and changed many small businesses over to lasers from inkjets and never had one of them that didn't save at least 50% of their printing costs. The only problem was always the initial outlay, but that is changing now with the cost of colour lasers falling.

KathyC, I know just how you feel, the bottle of wine per week in the UK has turned into 3 or 4 bottles here, but I probably drink less beer and less fruit juice here so it evens out. They say that red wine is good for you anyway, I assume that we will live for a very ling time here. Better go and open another bottle - that will be yet another year on my life expectancy, hic

I have not been to Bergerac airport for over a month now. I am always amazed at the very dusty UK registered cars that look like they have been there for 3 months or more. I doubt if some of them would get through an MOT and I see that many of them have no tax disc. When the authorities realise what seems to be going on there, I have no doubt that they will sort it out and start charging for parking and checking the legality of some of the cars.

Ian, I like the bit where you say Fuel (but you have to drive further). That may apply to you but not to everyone. I used to drive 60 miles a day in the UK to get to work, but here I don't. My local supermarket in the UK was 8 miles away, but here it is 8 km. We have an income here of around 15 % of what we had in the UK, but live a much better life and eat out more oftern than we did. The cost of living is all down to the individuals expectations. If you have to go to the English section in the supermarket, because you cannot live without peanut butter, then it will be expensive, so will you English newspaper. If I lived in the UK then my duck pate and a French newspaper would be much more expensive than it is here. I spend loads of time building and upgrading computers here and find that I can buy parts and systems for the same in Euros here as I used to spend in pounds in the UK, and I was buying trade in the UK. As for clothes, I no longer need to wear suits and ties and smart shoes, jeans and T shirt will do. The biggest saving must be the fact that I do not need to buy and alarm clock here as I get up when I want!

Assuming that you are running Windoze XP, run the network setup wizard on both machines and it should all work.

Connect the Video and TV with a scart lead and see what happens.

I was in the same situation and asked a French freind, he said that here in France you don't pay things till youare asked to, so we left it.

When we changed from dial up to ADSL we continued with hte dial up till we got an email from Wanadoo, then plugged in the ADSL modem and it worked. No downtime or anything. That is when I went out and bought a decent modem/router.

If you are thinking of buying a router, I can reccomend a Netgear 834 from www.cdiscount.com. It is easy to set up and is also WiFi should you need it. I have one and have fitted quite a few, all bought from cdiscount with no problems. You do not have to rent the livebox, you can ask for a €1 modem instead - better than €3 per month.

I have wanadoo as my ISP. I get a 1 meg ADSL as I am 5.6 km from the exchange and pay 24.99 € per month. I have a Netgear 834 modem router with three PCs on it, one hard wired and two wireless. I also have a couple of Dect cordless phones around the house and they have no effect on the ADSL at all. The ADSL is allways on and the phones work as normal. I also use skype on the PCs for free calls to other skype users all over the world and free calls to French landlines (this is supposedly only till the end of the year).