feuillants

Hello All We are able to proceed with renunciations of the reserved heirs as my husband's children have agreed to do this - what a decent bunch! Does any-one have knowledge or experience of how to go about it? I am assuming we will require a notaire, but can it be done in another country than France and then the paperwork recorded here?  Or do we all make an appointment and go en masse?  We may have some problems if so as one of the children lives in Oz. Any info gratefully received, and, if no-one has yet done it, I will post our results so others can benefit...

Hello We live in the Midi-pyrenees, and I am trying to find where I can take the French certificate very very quickly. All our pompiers and red cross now say there are no more courses until september. Does anyone have any other knowledge of how to become certified?  (apart from being driven crazy by this weather!)

Hi We live in 31. It's this year that's a bit not right...we are told by French friends that once in every 7-10 years it's like this in the spring - but this year it's lasting much longer than usual as it should have improved by the full moon... At this time we normally start shutting doors and closing shutters to keep the heat out - but this year we would still like to have the fire going (but think it's just too chicken to do so). And no let-up yet in sight!  I'm not looking forward to 2014!

thanks for the attention - it definitely is/was a hare! I am very fond of these animals and hope it's not what it seemed to be...

We have just seen a hare at the side of the road in the Haute-Garonne looking very sluggish and remained motionless when I picked him up to put him deeper into the verge.  He nosed about a little amongst the foliage in a most desultory way, and appeared blind. He had growths all over his head, and eyes that looked damaged and remained shut.  Not a car injury that I could see. This looks like myxamatosis but I hadn't realised that hares can succumb. Can any-one comment further - is it spreading?

This could be a new Guinness record site. We waited 15 months and then went and fetched them. Okay, surely that's not the record...

Doesn't it also depend on the conditional clauses you put in the contract...?That's why they're there!

Hello Some pointers from people we know who have done this: Tenants are usually long on promises and short on delivery - for a whole wealth of reasons - so keep your gardener tenants never look after your house as you would, so be prepared, for example, for washing machines that leak over wooden floors for a year, broken bathroom fittings, removal of everything (including shrubs in the gerden, and in one case the entire rockery) and filthy state of house at the end of a let.  This will not always be the case, but psychologically it's better to expect that "your" house will not feel like yours any longer. Good neighbours are invaluable but can get caught in crossfire and could be in a difficult position without legal status; best perhaps just to keep in touch with them? If you have been happy with your insurer up until now then it may be a good idea to find out exactly why they are recommending another firm!  Use the cover supplied by British Gas and other companies for emergency and maintenance contracts - for gas you will have to have the landlord's certificate anyway, if you have mains gas.  That will give peace of mind -(having said that, I know of one tenant who didn't use the call-out service even though she had all the paperwork and phone numbers to hand for the emergency...) In the light of the above it is a very good idea to use a recommended lettings agent, but even so there can still be surprises.  You may be lucky and have lovely tenants who come with excellent references (bank and personal) and who look after the place beautifully , leaving it clean, all bills paid and no bad feelings - but I know of no-one who has ever met them!

Hi We live on the Gers/Haute Garonne borders near Samatan. We have not yet seen any martens, swifts or swallows.  I keep a record too and they are usually here the 1st week of April. Can anyone re-assure me that they are OK?

When we went back to sign the compromis the owner told us there was no fosse septique.  How could this be - people had been living in the place for years... Turned out that the previous owner intended to increase the capacity, so took out the old one.  Then he had a heart attack and died.  2 years later the pipe was still just sitting waiting for the new one to arrive... And the boiler had exploded.  So the lady took a plastic bucket, filled in with fioul, draped one of her old skirts on the top, and put the pipework into the still functioning ballon heating system into it. And the roof terrace had a hole 2 metres by 3 in it, covered with more rags and a coffee table.  Worse was that the roof terrace was saucer-shaped, so when it rained all the water fell in a cascade down the 17th century staircase. And the electrics were in a box in the barn where water also came in, so we were treated to a spectacular firework display when it poured.  And there's more, but time has kindly drawn a curtain over some of it. We say, the previous owner would have paved the road to Hell, but he never quite got round to finishing the preparation work...