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toots

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  1. Can someone please tell me if you still have to use beam benders in France????? and also the current price od diesel - gaz ole at the supermarche...................
  2. Me too, in 1997 we took our caravan down to Poitiers, we were house hunting, the franc was 7.5 to the £, our previous trip it had been 9!!!!!!!!! quite a difference.........and we had to reign in our spending somewhat. I was looking for Le Creuset.....it was dearer in FRance than in the UK at that exchange rate.
  3. I think a lot of the problem is due to the falling pound, the exchange rate is as low as €1.11 at some dealers. For ourselves we booked our holiday last year when the euro was still fairly high, we have a strict budget for holidays and the weak pound means we will not be able to spend as much as we would have liked whilst we are in France. There was a report on TV last week saying that a meal for two would cost roughly £7 more this year...........fuel has risen out of all proportion, we are travelling right down through France to the south near Adge, although we have a small car which is very econimical fuel and tolls are going to take up almost half our budget.....we also have 4 night booked in village B & B's to break the journey into manageable chunks. We are francphiles, visiting as often as we can afford to do.............( we wanted to live there but the 3 tries we had all ended in heartbreak) right now people in the UK are loking at staying at home, the exchange rates bring a UK holiday almost on par.
  4. Thanks for your interest, once again our plans to spend some time 'en France' have been thwarted this time by my grand daughter who has decided to get married in the Dominican Republic on 14th February next ..............one day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  5. I know this has been covered before, but can someone tell me the equivilent for plain flour and self raising flour in France............I am not looking for cake flour but flour to make scones and crumbles with.................  
  6. This sort of thing makes my lood boil, some people seem to think that beause you live in France you are holding open house free..........a few years ago, when our hopes of living in France were shattered an email friend offered us their caravan free, just pay for the gas we used, which we accepted gratefully. I asked if there was anything they needed from the UK and bought it, not a vast outlay, but I would not accept any payment, they had been kind enough to offer us accomodation...we shared a couple of meals, and  they insisted as thanks for the stuff we had taken out for them, we were taken out for lunch.............not an expensive restaurant but one of those wonderful places that only opened for lunch and if you did not get there by 12noon you could not get a seat..........a 5 course lunch, with wine the total bill for 4 was €40........we appreciated the accomodation...........the wonderful scenery and were happy to pay for the gas.................. Relatives especially seem to think that you bought a place in France purely to entertain them and they can bag a free holiday,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,b***** cheek. I am afraid if it was me I wuld make it clear that I expected them to pay for at least fuel if we went out for a trip, help with general chores and buy the groceries........in fact I think I would go as far as saying well you are welcome to come and stay but my charges are................................and give them a resonable amount to defray the cost of entertaining them.....airport collections XZY......and help with the housework etc appreciated............. I know its very difficult, but you have to live, freeloaders make my blood pressure rise!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  7. Prior to looking after the two houses locally to where we now live I was housekeeper for a family in The South of England who had very high standards........he was High Sherriff of the County.............. Provide accomoadtion and I might think about it.OH was a jobbing gardener!!!!!!!!!! LOL
  8. Until 2 years ago I was working as a housekeeper looking after 2 properties, one of which was a Grade 2 listed Building on 3 floors and the other a barn conversion. I charged £20 for 3 hours and could clean from top to bottom including mopping 4 stone floors in the barn and 2 in the house.........and if necessary stripping beds and putting stuff in the washer. The grade 2 listed building was always full of visitors at weekends and the barn had 2 teenage boys in residence.............. I think who ever did your clean was taking the mickey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  9. We are looking for a 16 - 20 week winter let on the med coast in this area............if you are able to help us please contact me. Thank you.
  10. How awful for you to have such a problem, I have not read the saga from the beginning but worked out that you had a tenant who had not paid rent and you had a job to get him out. What does conern me however is the jaundiced view of some of the replies. We would love to live in France, cannot afford to buy but would rent, we have rented in the UK for the past 7 years and never been in arrears. We would have difficulty in providing a large deposit, but we could provide rock solid references......................................as a retired couple we live on a limited income......our quaility of life would be so much better in France, the food is far better quality and resonable. A small garden would allow us to be able to grow most of our veg, as we do here on our allotment............please do not tar everyone with the same brush.........there are some decent people still about.
  11. I prefer to take cutting too, this is the time of year to do it whilst there is still soft growth on the top of the plants. I put five round the edge of a  plastic pot and put the pot in a poly bag, once they show signs of growth, I open the bag and gradually get them used to being out of the bag, into a cold frame, then pot up into 3" pot and grow on throught the winter and plant out in the spring. I use a similar method for geraniums and have been very sucsessful with them, geraniums hate rooting compound, it makes them rot off, I root fuschias in water and then pot up.................they stay on a window cill in the house until the spring and then go into the cold frame for a few weeks to aclimatize before I pot them on pinch out the tops and wait for them to flower.
  12. Bindweed is a job for life..... Tell me about it, we took over an allotment in November 2006, we had it ploughed and harrowed which, of course, brought all the weeds in christendom to the surface, I have fought a running battle with bind week and brambles, mustard and various other weeds ever since. I have just spent an hour this morning digging a small bed and removing the roots of the bindweed and brambles, fortunately the recent rain has meant that the weeds pull our fairly easily, but they are a pain in the butt........I have tried most of the well know weed killers, none have really done any good, the only cure in my view is dig it out, I find that eventually it weakens but it can pop up in the most unexpected places...........  
  13. What has happened to the classified adds that used to be on the web??????? I want to find a gite for a holiday, and to rent from a LF contributer.
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