Cendrillon

"I was fascinated by the story of Brittany and Brittany ferries." I think this is / was on Brittany Ferries own website and may still be there.

In March this programme will feature Rachel Khoo (of My little (French) Paris Kitchen fame) . She will be returning to her roots in the Far East.

Yes it was shown earlier in the week and is well worth watching. She was in the Jura apparently her husband is from this region.

"comme on dit" I think is used a lot in everyday French.

Hank I corrected my last PM to you. Predictive text has a lot to answer for!! LOL

Hank I have sent you a PM

I think Angela has summed it up well. "pure souche", and not referring to animals. "Born and bred", I suppose" It's all to do with roots.

We have a draughty old house in U.K. and burn these eco compressed logs on our open fire. They burn well for a couple of hours but I agree that although they look good with flames etc they don't provide a lot of heat. They do stop the cold draught whistling down the chimney. If you poke the logs they do crumble, smoke and smoulder so I definitely wouldn't recommend doing that. Sometimes I'll put a log on next to them and that will eventually burn. We have not tried any that say they are day-burn.

I second Andyh4's comments and all the other points made so far. Mandy forget your dream life for a moment, and put yourself in your 16 year old daughter's situtation - how would you cope ? especially without French language skills. "She has ADHD and Aspergers" I imagine this is difficult enough at the best of times never mind with a foreign language and different culture to get used to.

No but I think I would like to.

http://uk.weather.com/story/news/snow-spain-amid-unusually-cold-temperatures-20150206

"Where ever any of us chose to live though, is there anything wrong with a practical check list?" Sound advice, Idun[:)]

As usual Betty I think you have made very good points.

Our U.K. experience is that we are always given the exact amount of tablets etc and expect to take the whole lot . Sometimes however the G.P. has to change the prescription after a few days for reasons such as test results and then we end up with stocks of unused pills.

I am sure that would be time consuming and an expensive task.

Once any medication has left a pharmacy they are not allowed by law to take it back into stock in case it's been tampered with.

idun wrote the following post at 04/02/2015 12:02: "I know that they have mentioned it recently, but we had thunder storms and snow last night. Neither of us can remember ever hearing thunder when we had snow in France." Idun last week we had thunder and a flash of lightning here in Surrey. The sky was a black as could be, the wind howled, there was a hail storm and then we had snow. It was enough to cause chaos on the roads but the snow didn't last overnight. This week we had a covering of snow on Tuesday but again fortunately it didn't last for long. It has been bitterly cold though.

That makes at least two of us then Betty[:)]

" I think I'm allergic to period drama." Me too Betty!

Our two favourites ships are the Bretagne (Portsmouth St Malo) and the Cap Finistere (Santander to Portsmouth). Although it's their flagship we don't like the Pont Aven it's very big and seems to have loads of plastic everywhere.

I suppose Nutella could also be shortened to Nutty. If the child was an English speaker that would not be good news.

We use Brittany Ferries and I think you'll find these days that they are very comfortable and stable ships. We normally plump for a 4 berth outside cabin but for the use of two passengers only. This way top bunks are strapped against the wall and you both get the bottom bunks and more space. We have also had cabins in the bowels of the ship and for just an overnight sleep (Portsmouth to St Malo) we don't mind. In place of the porthole you have a long mirror.

Me too

If it's going to be rough I am sure BF will advise everyone to have a cabin if they've not already booked one and tell them to be careful how they move around the ship. My advice FWIW is to not each too much for dinner, forget the 4 course meal and wine in the posh restaurant. Got to bed early and remain horizontal in your bunk for the night. Those ferries are pretty stable and we have found that in the cabins on deck 1 at the bottom of the ship you are less likely to be aware of the motion. Bon voyage

I think if many of us had been in the same situation, reporting at such a dangerous event our (perfect [;-)] ) French accents would have quickly slipped!