Chrisb
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Posts posted by Chrisb
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.............................or you could just pop a double dose of Eparcyl down the pan to be on the safe side!!!
Chris
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Couldn't you just 'lock' it and put it in the FAQ sections as 'How the forum works'
Regards
Chris
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They are now blue!!
Chris
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................my youngest son, Toby, doesn't mind when his name is pronounced Toe-bee, it's when they call him by his full name that he is not so keen (Toe-bee-ar*e) !!!
Chris
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I, too, have German Shepherds with dodgy stomachs, and have always fed them on Burns, Proplan etc, until someone suggested that I try something called 'Quat' Pat' ie. both 4 pastas and 4 paws, quite clever really! It is a complete dog food mainly composed of pasta spirals and dried chicken/lamb etc. I have seen it in most supermarkets and it costs about 6€/4 kg. You can either add warm water or feed it crunchy and my two love it - they are very picky eaters and have never had a single 'squitty' stomach since they started.
Regards
Chris
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We came over 18 months ago with 3 gerbils, which are pretty much on a par with hamsters, I would have thought. We were told that we needed a health certificate for each of them, which, with the consultation was going to cost over £100
!! Ended up paying about £30, and the gerbils travelled over in a cage on the back seat of the car. Neither they , nor the 2 dogs were even glanced at at anytime during our trip, nor was the paperwork checked. Regards
Chris
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Hi there
Has anyone still got a Gite available (2 bedrooms, pool if poss) for 4 people near the Ardeche gorges for the week of the 9-16th July?? If so, please e-mail me asap.
Many thanks
Chris
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............I probably could if I tried, but my tongue is so firmly lodged in my cheek that I am unable to pull a sufficiently 'smugly odious' face!!
Smug regards
Chris
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................smug, me, never let it be said!! Just because my husband does the same as your friend above, and I spend my time lunching with friends, playing tennis, riding my horse, drinking wine round the pool, and indulgently watching the children romp around our acres of fields and barns, why on earth should I feel smug!!!
Seriously, I do feel very lucky to be able to live in a beautiful house in Normandy with the benefit of a decent UK salary, without having to worry about setting up in business in France, or having to wait until we are retired. It isn't always easy being here on my own with the kids, but, on balance, I wouldn't want to be anywhere else - and believe it or not, my husband finds the commuting less stressful than he did when we were in the UK!!
Regards
Chris
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I'm with Dick on this - I did notice after I had posted that the other Chris had a small 'c' but one wouldn't notice this at a casual glance - would it not be better for the names not to be 'case specific' - this would then avoid any possible confusion - just suppose someone decided to be dicksmith, miki, or god forbid, Outcast - what fun they could have!!
Chrisb
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I have just noticed that there is a forum member with the same log-in name as me (Where do you come from? thread in Post Bag) and coincidentally I also live in Normandy (50) near to St Lo. I am not particularly bothered by the fact, but was surprised to see that 2 people could have the same name - some of the wind-up merchants that post on here could use it to their advantage to really set some sparks flying!!
Chrisb
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Hi there, we are miles away from you, in Normandy, but I would imagine that you should have no problems finding what you are lookig for. If you look in the house renovation section there is a thread about gravel which will give you a rough idea of prices, and bark chippings or 'ecorces de pin' (sp) are available in 50/100 litre bags at prices ranging from 3,50€ to 12€ a bag depending where you look! You can also buy it by the cubic metre - our local pepiniere (nursery) sells it like this for 60€ a cubic metre.
Regards
Chris
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Thanks for your reply and offer of help, fortunately I am now sorted, the engineer did a trade with the receiver, I think he was a bit embarrassed that he couldn't get it to work!!
Thanks again
RegardsChris
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Hi David.....his bike was in a sort of no-man's land, permanently exported from the UK but not got round to re-registering in France!! We live in Normandy and he commutes weekly anyway, and had phoned a few dealers in the UK, one of whom offered a 'snap your hand price' as he had a buyer lined up for it already. He didn't find the French price much different to that in the UK. He was going to do a Depot Vente thing with the local dealer to sell it, to avoid any hassle - that might be worth a go for you, if not, there are always loads of bikes advertised in the local weekly paper.
Hope you get on OK. As you say, it's a bit of a hike from the Tarn!!
Regards
Chris
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We had a simialr problem with the purchase of a debrousailleuse (sp?) from Bricomarche in Coutances (50). It stopped working after only having been used a couple of times. I took it back to the shop and they said they would send it to their nominated repairer - after a couple of weeks I was told that the repairer had said that we hadn't put a mix in the tank - just petrol. I argued that at the same time we bought the machine, we had also asked for advice and also bought the fuel can and the small bottles of oil to make the mix - why would we have done that if we hadn't intended to use it, and that we were not stupid!! The guy agreed then to repair the machine and about 10 days later I had a message saying it was ready. When we arrived we were told that we would have to pay for the repair as we couldn't prove that we had put mix in..............I argued again and eventually, for the sake of 30€, agreed to 'go halves'! So, unfortunately, I don't hold out too much hope for you, although we did wonder afterwards what would have happened if we had refused to pay for a repair that we hadn't agreed to pay for!!
Good luck
Chris
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Hi there....when my husband decided to sell his motorbike, we went to the local moto dealer and he lookes up the Argus (second-hand)price for us. It actually proved to be better for my husband to take the bike to the UK and sell it there, perhaps there isn't much demand in France for a Kawasaki VN 800 Classic!!
Regards
Chris
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Thanks for your reply..............I just don't understand why our decoder worked in the shop and the enginers worked here and ours didn't!! We followed the installation instructions in the manual, as did the engineer, but no joy..........I'll ask our neighbour to come round and take a look, no geeky kids in the vicinity I'm afraid!!
Regards
Chris
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Quote: I watched the programme and cried nearly all the way through it as i am a "work widow" whilst my husband works in uk and comes over thurs to sun when i then have t cope with the house and 3 school age...
My husband,too, works in the UK during the week, and I only have 2 boys at school - but I don't feel the same way as you at all! I lead a very busy life over here while he is in the UK, French classes on a Monday, day spent with a French friend every Tuesday, Wednesday - no school for the youngest, then table tennis and solfege in the afternoon. Thursdays I do my shopping, and/or lunch with friends and on a Friday when hubby is home, we try and go out to lunch somewhere before he has his French lesson in the afternoon. I have been approached about 3 or 4 part-time jobs, but don't have the time to fit them in, especially as somewhere in the week there has to be housework, gardening, dogs, horse and donkey to look after!! We spend weekends as a family - my husband and sons play table-tennis for the local town, and husband and eldest son (aged 13) do Ball Trap as well.
I agree that it can be tough coping with children on your own, especially a teenager son who stretches my patience to the limit, and my husband finds it hard to adjust back into the choas that is family life at weekends, but, on balance, we are all prefering life in France. How long have you been here? - perhaps things will become easier for you if you can make a few friends that you can have a moan with.
And just think, when your husband is not here, you can have ALL the bed, watch what you want to on the telly after the kids have gone to bed, and you don't have to cook big meals in the evenings as the kids eat at school!!All the best
Chris
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We haev a problem with our newly aquired French Satellite decoder..........we bought the dish and decoder in Bricomarche - just to receive the 6 French channels. Man in shop explains to hubby that it is a piece of cake to install, so we come home and have a go - no luck, can only get 1 german channel, so I arrange for local French satellite installer to come and do the job. He corrects the position of the dish, and replaces existing cable which we had reused from somewhere else. He manages to get a picture off his equipment but not off our decoder, so he takes it home to have a 'fiddle'.........comes back saying that it is faulty and brings his own decoder which works perfectly. I take our decoder back to Bricomarche and the guy promptly plugs it in to the TV in the shop, adjusts a couple of things and it works perfectly!! He then says to plug it in to our TV and it should work - I might just have to adjust the Vertical or Horizontal, depending on how the 'tete' is set up, so I come home and guess what, it doesn't work....AAAARRRRGGHHHH!! Why not, Help!! Suggestions in extremely simple terms please, I am completely clueless when it comes to such matters!
Regards
Chris
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Oh...........the only way to choose which sort to have really, is to find where it's coming from and go and look. Mine will be from a builder's merchants that I know well, about 10 miles from my property.
Exactly.........................I went to the builders merchants and had a look at all the options, then chose the closest to what we have down at the moment. There didn't seem to be a huge difference in price between any of them. I suspect that the 'Gravier blue' is probably the same as Alcazar's pale grey stuff - it is bigger than pea shingle and not as smooth - I wanted grey/blue to match the slate roof on the house!!
Chris
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Hi - I'm up in 50 so can't help with a supplier, but have just ordered 4m3 (about 6.5 tonnes, apparently) of 'gravier bleu' at a cost of 33€ + TVA/M3 with a delivery charge of 10€
Regards
Chris
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Yes, Peta, I've done that,too!! We had friends round for dinner the other evening and were discussing stereotypes - I mention Johnny Onions with the string of onions wrapped round his ar**e, instead of his neck!!
Chris
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We are in the same position, my husband commutes weekly to the UK. We have just filled in our tax-return for this year, and as it was our first, we asked for a hand to fill in what was required, and the 'Inspecteur Divisionnaire' duly obliged. ALL we did was fill in the first page of the 2042 with our names and address, number of children on page 2, how many at college etc on page 3, then his income roughly translated into euros in the box marked TI at point 8. (by roughly I mean he asked us and a couple of other people drifting by the office what we thought the exchange rate was, then gave hubby a calculator to work it out!) He then wrote in 'Autres reseignements etc' "Salaires percues en Angleterre (Income Tax)", we signed it, then he stamped and signed it and said 'all done'!!
I asked if he thought there would be any tax to pay, and he said not at all, we were covered by an agreement between France and the UK, and it didn't matter what his income was there would be no more to pay. At no time did he ask how many days my husband spent in France or anything like that - it was all completed in about 2 minutes, and he gave us a copy to follow for next year. I even admitted that we didn't fill in a return last year as we had only been here a few weeks, and hadn't had a Tax d'habitation bill this year and he just wagged his finger, said that we were very bad, then shrugged and said he hadn't heard what I had just said!!
I am just relieved that it was so straightforward!!
Chris
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I think that childrens' passports have to be countersigned because they can obviously change an awful lot over 5 years, and the new photos may not look anything like originals!!
Chris
Anglo-French Club, Georges?
in North West (Basse-Normandie, Haute-Normandie, Picardie, Nord Pas-de-Calais)
Posted
.............can't help any more, other than to say, perhaps you mean Gorges, which is sort of between Periers/Carentan/La-Haye-du-Puits?? There is also an Anglo French association in Coutances, but, again, I'm sorry I don't have any further info than that!! (not a very useful post, really!!)
Regards
Chris