Etoile

Yes, nine minutes is one hell of a time to wait for a reply.

Back to the subject, there is one type of food you can buy in France - French food. In the UK you can have what you like, it is clean, fresh and inexpensive. I look forward to trips back to the UK to catch up on eating out. Certainly here in the Charente all the restaurant food is much of a muchness, that is if you can attract the attention of a member of staff willing to serve you. One of the problems is that France is so hard up now - even the supposedly smart restaurants are pushing the eleven Euro three course lunch. My last meal out was moules and you could hardly find the little buggers in the shells. When you buy mussels in the UK they fill the shells. The supermarkets here, particularly Intermarche, are experts at confusing/trick special offers and out of date food, but are not experts at cleaning, tidyness, nor especially mopping up water spills in the frozen food area. Perhaps the Dutch have the right idea; bring all your food with you in a car.

I stand corrected, although I enjoyed my little rant. We have been offered these things but as you say the companies seem to take quite a cut.

The trouble is that nothing like this works very well in France and service is non-existent. We have an Orange livebox and we are supposed to be able to call out through it, however most times when you try it just hangs up and you lose your web for a while as well, so we have to go back to FT and pay for the calls. France is desperate to be a 21st Century country but until they sack half the civil servants and get some attitude towards service they will not get there. I still enjoy living here but you have to take the very rough with the very smooth...

Thanks Dave, just the sort of reply I've been dreaming of! I really cannot see why I need to go to the expense of the flexible liner when my chimney is straight. The only thing I might do in addition is fit a top plate to keep the heat in the chimney and the weather out. Thanks for the tip about the correct positioning of the pipes: I have read this male down female up thing before and it certainly makes sense, although it does go against ones immediate instincts.

Any help would be appreciated. I am about to install a second hand woodburner in an old stone fireplace. Being shocked at the price of flexible stainless steel liners I am wondering if there is a less expensive option in using some form of rigid pipe, considering that my chimney is dead straight up and I can see the sky from the fire place, 8 metres up. Maybe I can even feed this up from below in telescopic sections? Whilst on the subject my burner has an outlet of 20cm diameter but I believe I may be OK with something about 15cm wide? I think that is about the width of the existing chimney towards the top. Thanks in advance for any views on this.

Thanks for the help folks, Sid, it has GD on it and not CD which would of course stand for 'Chiminees Diffusion'. I don't know if it is a budget model or not: It seems to be all cast iron and the bitch certainly took my back for a ride when I waltzed her out the back of the car and serenaded her into the fire-place. I may try and fit a 'choke' into the flue above. Anything for a bit more control. Hopefully then she will get her Controle Technique and I can fire her up! Again, thanks for the help.

Any help would be much appreciated. I have purchased an insert from Anglo Info and am keen to plumb it up and light it. Although an insert it stands on its own legs and apart from the appearance I cannot see why it should have to be built in. I intend to stand it in my fireplace and connect it to a stainless steel liner run up my chimney. A few questions: 1. Must I build this in or can it run as a stand-alone unit? 2. The steel chimney from the top is 200mm wide. Does my liner have to be as wide as this, or could I get away with say 150mm? I am not sure if my chimney is 200mm wide at the top. The height of the chimney is circa 8 metres. 3. Since there is no space for a damper in the flue am I safe to assume that I will be able to control the fire via the slider on the base of the door, (assuming my rope seals are all good). I am very keen to keep her in over night. I would really appreciate some help here. Thanks in advance. http://i451.photobucket.com/albums/qq234/GerardSaunders/photo1.jpg

Thanks for the replies folks.

Here Here. We're full again tonight, not bad for late September, and we turned down a request for two rooms tonight. Even the October pages of the diary have a bit of ink on them, unknown in previous years. People frequently blame the supposed recession for a downturn in business, but then everything shakes down: The Mini garage gets the Ferrari drivers, the Hitachi dealer sees a few Bang & Olufson types, and maybe in our B&B's we get a few high-flyers who cannot afford to fly so high this year.

We live in the Charente and the peages here do not accept my HSBC Visa card, in fact neither do the petrol stations. I tend to stay in bed on Sundays in France nowadays.

I have to say we've had a very good season here in the Charente and the fourth letting room we converted has already paid for itself. A lot of French visitors and repeat English, being just off the A10 people frequently stop with us on their drive south then return on their way back up. We have also had a healthy trade in longer stayers and it is always welcome being able to give the washing and ironing machines a rest. Alas, we are now full of insurance trainees until Christmas Eve when we will leg it up to Calais once we've cleared away the breakfasts. We spent zero on advertising this year. Not complaining.

Several times a day now we receive a call from the above, but on answering the line hangs up after a couple of seconds. There is no reply if I call the number. Any ideas folks?

All I want is to be able to ask someone where something is, without them all disappearing like waiting staff at a French restaurant.

Thanks folks I will try this, having had the same problem for some time and being too busy to bother to sort it.

Perhaps it is time for a change of occupation?

The English supermarket is probably the best place on earth to shop now. Our nearest store here in the Charente is an Intermarche; it is grubby, shabby and the food is frequently off. Last week they were selling gone-off prawns, and I complained although I did not demand a refund. Nothing was done. There are also no special offers here in France like the BOGOF in the UK, the most you seem to receive is a little slip of paper at the checkout telling you that if you buy a further twelve tins of confit between 9am and 9:05am on a certain day you will receive five percent off.

Yes, come on!

We have just painted some floorboards with a water based floor paint from the Bricomarche in St. Jean D'Angely. Presently Euro29 a tin and nice to apply. Impossible to say yet how it will endure but it looks good after two coats and the brush and roller clean under the tap! Very happy so far, a relatively good French paint experience...

My mother knitted me a balaclava when I was at school. I really struggled with it until I was told that I had it on the wrong way around.

That's because the truth is that Western ways appeal to a lot of people, as they reflect a higher material quality of living and a freedom of expression. If you look at the leaders and the wealthy element of virtually any country on earth it will be the Western trappings in which they indulge. We also bring business and money to these countries and they want that.

Tried to delete the above as it is in the wrong place, but apparently there is a time limit(?)

Where is it please.???

Some times we have to reject things that are incompatible with our hard fought for way of life. 'Tolerance' is a word that seems to be on everyone's lips these days, and if you do not want to tolerate all and everything you are then a bigot.

We run a B&B in the Charente and had a guest's Bentley scratched down both sides last summer. I was worried that it had happened outside our house, but it had been done on the Ile D'Oleron! Of all places, 75 reg. unfortunately. They were nice people, but the Parisians are not always nice and there is definitely an attitude to them in the rest of France.