Chrisdubna

The only thing that happens round here in Winter is Breton dancing, though you do see the odd bar which has a lively young clientelle.  There are several clubs offering tuition and some are even quite patient with non-Bretons and beginners. CHRIS

What really pisses me off is when someone posts asking for something to be brought from or taken to the UK, or a lift to or from some port or airport.  A friend who lives near me and also myself go back to the UK quite often so we used to volunteer to provide this sort of service.  Usually there is no response.  Though once I got a response from a guy who must have thought that Nottingham is somewhere near Newcastle.  He expected me to pick it up from Newcastle and as a freebie. The other day on another forum I responded to a small ad and two weeks later am waiting for a reply. Rude is what I call it. CHRIS

We are holding our third Fest Noz in the Maison des Fetes at Belle Vue, Redon on 22nd March.  Starts at 9pm and continues until 2am with three groups giving of their services free of charge.  Er Lan Eur, Ar men du and Dans 'Teurjou.  Bar and some cakes.  Entrance 6€, children free. The profits go to support the education of African Children. CHRIS

[quote user="Bob T"]Do you break down very oftern in the UK then? Your car should be just as reliable here as there. If you do break down you may find that the many small garages and petrol stations here are more able to help you out than in the UK. Parking is the same, there are plenty of (mostly free) car parks in towns and loads of laybys here. [/quote] Well maybe that is so, but not always.  A car that is only used for fairly short journeys is going to face a big challenge if it has to face not 10s of miles but 100s of miles.  That usually sorts out any car.  Let me give you an example.  I drove to Moscow in my Land Rover 110.  A water leak that had probably been dripping for months but not noticed even by the pre departure service at a main agent burst into full flow just after leaving Poland.  Thanks to the fact it had a Nissan Engine I limped into Moscow and got a new rad flown out from the UK. I would always recommend taking out foreign cover as it gives peace of mind and you can rely on English Speaking assistance.  I live here so know how to deal with such problems as might arise but even then I am going back to the UK in a few days and I am taking out foreign cover on my French insurance. CHRIS

[quote user="Opalienne"]We have one but the problem is that most of the nuisance calls we get (veranda salesmen etc) withhold their numbers.......[/quote] Err why is this a problem, if callers can't display their number then don't answer them.   When I was in the UK this successfully avoided me speaking to double glazing salesmen, bank managers, credit card companies and many other disreputable characters. CHRIS

[quote user="Deimos"]Is it OK to cut ff the lower branches and if so when is the best time.  [/quote] I always prune apple and pear trees in late October, my French friend swears you have to do it in March.  I get loads of apples - he gets very few. CHRIS

[quote user="Lautrec"] Could someone advise me when chestnuts start falling and can be gathered? Thanks. Lautrec. [/quote] Depends upon the part of France you are in.  In Brittany October - there is a Fete des Marons held at the end of October in Redon.  A great week - come and join us next year. CHRIS

"If you swap your Sky dish for  a French dish, you'll loose C4 and Five." NO, reception is not dependant upon the DISH you use and most dishes sold in France have a universal LNB which will happily receive almost anything out there including all the channels you normally get in the UK.  I have installed many French dishes without problem.  However, and I think this is what was meant, if you also use a French Receiver insteal of a Sky digibox then there are restrictions on what you will receive and if you don't point the dish at the Sky sats - well you won't receive the Sky broadcast channels. CHRIS

"They had an upload/download ratio of 30:1 and therfore spent a fortune on a dial-up connection, taking hours to send content to their customers at 56kps and had a patchy download experience (Ranging from perfect to pathetic) for occasional browsing." That is not a problem with the Sat system they bought but with the advice they were given.  Basically there are two types of Sat System - 1 two way via sat - good download speeds and upload speeds from 256K depending upon how much you pay. 2 download only, upload via telephone in which case the upload speed is no better than an analogue telephone line. In these circumstances I would have recommended a dual bonded ISDN line which is available on nearly all France Telecom lines and gives 128k upload - the maximum you can get without ADSL. The answer, having bought the system, is not to sit there and watch it upload but to do it during the night. CHRIS

I presume you are receiving your signals from Sky.  There is more than one sat up there and the dish has to be aligned for the best reception on all sats otherwise you can tend to lose signal in poor weather conditions on some channels.  In bad weather, heavy rain, snow or even really wet fog it is normal to lose signal but that would affect all channels.  The way round this problem is to increase gain at the receiving end ie the dish by increasing the size of the dish.  90cm in Brittany is best but in SW France maybe up to 1.5 and even then you are likely to lose signal in really bad weather.  If you really want to be sure of receiving a signal at all times maybe you need to borrow one from Goonhilly Down! CHRIS

[quote user="Liz"] I was listening earlier to an item on BBC Radio 4 'From our Own Correspondent' about the imminent change from Department based car number plates.  You can see the text at .http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4549542.stm  the recent programme doesn't yet seem to be available to 'listen again'.  I will certainly miss these localised plates, I love to know where people have come from. Liz [/quote] Oh gosh that could be a tragedy, how will we know to avoid Parisians on the road who drive as though they are participating in the 24 hour Grand Prix rather than on the beautiful Brittany roads. CHRIS

Has anyone experienced the cardinal sin of opening a bottle of wine in a French Friend's house?  I was invited to friends' house for New Year's Eve, the husband is a reformed alcoholic and does not drink at all and he has been quite ill through most of 2005, so much so we thought we would lose him in July.  His recovery has been miraculous and hopefully long lived.  During this period he has needed a lot of support and also his wife who was at her wits end.  Several times she went to pieces and on occasions a couple (one French one English) of us have picked her up and got her going again. I have got to know the house pretty well and especially the kitchen where I have prepared meals for visitors whilst the husband was not capable of even eating etc.  I still help wash up because he is not really capable of standing for periods, though he is getting better. On New Year's eve a Spanish man and his wife came along and I was asked to help which I did very willingly. On 2nd January they all accepted hospitallity in my home with a good peice of roast beef and yorkshire pudding etc. Later I learnt from a French friend, also at the party, that the Spaniard had complained to the host that I had committed the cardinal sin of opening the wine.  Apparently it is for the host to do and not for a guest.  There were all sorts of other inuendos as to how come I knew the house so well.  The host was very happy for me to help and has told me so and he actually asked me to open the wine, I guess being an alcoholic he still has unhappy memories of what he went through and there is always the risk of starting drinking again. This is not the first time that this remark about opening the wine has been made previously by a born and bred frenchman.  Is anyone else aware of this and what it means, also any other customs I should watch out for? CHRIS

[quote user="geno"]Not working for me either since late Friday. I did notice they haven't been taking money from my account since July though! [/quote] Not sure it is good to know I am not the only one having trouble but thanks for the reply.  CHRIS [:'(]

I recently needed two 250Gb hard drives for my server and decided to order from dabs.fr but couldn't find what I needed that was in stock so I looked at dabs uk site.  There I found a huge range and tried to order for delivery to France.  Operation refused. I emailed dabs and they indicated they could not deliver to France from their uk operation so I eventually waited for stock and duly ordered from the French site.  The parcel was delivered from the UK so why couldn't dabs deliver from the UK to France on their UK site? Quite odd. CHRIS

Is anyone else having difficulty this weekend connecting to NetbySky?  Well I suppose if you are you are not in this forum unless you have an alternative connection like me.  The help line is constantly engaged and they are not replying to emails.  The error coming up is username and password not valid on this domain but they are the username and password that worked when I reinstalled only 2 weeks ago. CHRIS

somewhere I must have this info but can't find it Can anyone give me the colour wiring diagram for French Telephone sockets. CHRIS

In the UK I was once part of an association which organised an all night festival of jazz.  It was supposed to raise loads of money for a well known charity but instead lost a lot of money which resulted in the members paying quite a lot of money out of their own pockets. Could the same thing happen in France?  I am told by French friends that I am fussing over matters that are unimportant but for me ,at the moment, paying out several hundred Euros would be very important and at any other time I would still wish to avoid doing so. The scenario is this.  I am a member of a dance club which wishes to organise a Fest Noz.  There are probably 20 members.  The Fest Noz could cost in the region of 10,000€ to produce with income at the rate of 6€ per person meaning that 2000 people would need to attend to break even. Frankly on past performace anything approaching 2000 people is merely a dream. But who pays in the event of a loss? I think I know the answer and am worried that there seems to be no concern on the part of French friends. Also do French Associations have constitutions, formal meetings and presentation of accounts and reports in the way that we would do in the UK? CHRIS

I receive TF1, France 2, France 3 M6 etc from Telecom 2B but this is in analogue.  A friend has just gone digital but are these channels available in unencrypted format in digital? Can you give me the Sat name and position and if possible a web site where I can find the frequencies etc. CHRIS

[quote]To be particularly pedantic (amn't I always?), removing a $ky card from the address to which it is registered is an offence under the 1968 theft act, as the card (contract, expired or otherwise) never...[/quote] Now that's an interesting one that I had missed, Nick.  Theft Act indeed.  I am not a legal expert but doesn't the Theft Act rely on an intention to "permanently deny the owner use of the item", in this case a card?  I cannot for one moment imagine that any prosecution would stand any chance of success and that is probably the reason why there has never been a prosecution (according to my friend who is high up in (the) Sky). Phew pleased to know I can sleep peacefully tonight. CHRIS

When in the UK I was regularly using a key board on the midi port but having brought it to France it refuses to work.  Is there anyone near Redon who has a working Midi Port and lead so that I can check out which part of the chain is at fault. CHRIS

[quote]Hi. When we move to France, we will be taking all our sky equipment and our ON digital box. Can anyone tell me what i have to do to set it up AND will it work . Thanks nich the wood[/quote] Not a very helpful reply from Rupert Murdoch but made me laugh.  Sky can be received throughout France but in some areas (the further you get from the centre of the footprint) you will need a larger dish eg 80 or 100cms.  These are readily available in France.  They cost around 40€ and come compete with an analogue receiver box but the part that is useful is the dish and the universal LNB. It is tricky to line the dish up but can be done if you are patient or have plenty of good luck.  Local firms will do it for you but of course charge.  My firm installed dishes for sat systems in the UK so I have a flash alignment meter but they are a bit expensive for a one off. As for the reception of Sky in France being illegal well no Gendarme is going to put you in jail nor are you going to face extradition to appear in the Magistrates court in the UK.  The contractural position is that Sky is in breach of contract if it permits its transmissions to be viewed outside of the UK and the republic of Ireland.  It can stop you viewing if it discovers that your box is located in France by simply turning it off though of course it cannot stop you viewing the unencrypted channels eg BBC1. Hope that helps. CHRIS

[quote]Chris, Here it is and if you offer this reference number on joining : 101182 you will get 240 minutes free to the UK (and so will I )http://www.phonexpat.com[/quote] Thanks Miki, I'm going to look at their rates and will certainly use your code if I decide to transfer to them. CHRIS

[quote]Since my computer was repaired in the UK, we have had no sound. Is it likely that we still have sound and it just needs to be activated in someway? It does mention that I need to enable something on '...[/quote] Use the Pause / Break button to stop the scrolling information.  The advice given by others is most likely to have solved your problem otherwise if you can indicate your operating system, sound card installed or details of the motherboard if the sound card is "on board" then I'll try to help further. Email me direct please. Just a few thoughts from experience: I presume you do not get the wonderful windows welcome music.  Is the lead to the speakers plugged in the correct socket - should be colour coded.  Do the speakers work - try them in a walkman or something low volume similar.  Try playing a CD - can you hear that. CHRIS

[quote]We are at present purchasing a house in Tarascon SW France, I have heard from a couple of sources that French paint is not as good as we have in England and that it also very expensive.I would be inte...[/quote] In general it seems to me that external french paint (masonary) is cheaper and better than external paint bought in the UK.  Internal paint seems to be cheaper and better in the UK.  I feel a day trip to Jersey or Guernsey coming on to visit B&Q and to pick up those other things I miss which cannot be bought easily in France - bacon, gammon, stilton, cheddar, custard powder, Coleman's Mustard etc. Oh forgot the duty free! CHRIS

Can anyone give me the web site address for the Expat phone system please.  I know it has been posted before but SEARCH does not appear to be working - just says error on page. CHRIS