Loirette

Does anyone know how to successfully remove a stain out of a white top caused from the juice of a fresh tomato ?  I have tried all sorts but the stain is still there!  Red wine, no problem, but tomato, no chance. 

Hi Mme Bretagne We have loads of mirabelles and I mainly bottle them for later to make pies and crumbles, I also make jam.  But as a quick a very tasty dessert, I buy some ready rolled puff pastry (made with butter) and cut the mirabelles in half and remove the stones (which come out very easily).  I then lay the mirabelles cut side up on the pastry leaving a small edge all around and sprinkle lightly with castor sugar and bake at 180 until nicely coloured and pastry is crisp.  Serve warm, with cream, icecream or creme anglaise - delicious.

Wooly, that is an amazing photo.  Thank you for sharing it with us.

Martin Thanks.   We haven't checked the signal strenght I have to admit, and actually have no way of dong that unitil a TV that can handle the signal arrives (or have I?)   I do know that we've gone over to TNT here, so no worries with that, and, the chances of us going back to the UK with the TV....... ?

Thanks for all the info.  Now moving on a bit...... We're looking at a Panasonic LCD HD Ready TV, which we'd be buying from the UK. In the spec is says that the Integrated Tuner is PAL-I and DVB-T.    This will obviously be OK for our Sky TV but, will it cope with us plugging in the French Ariel and asking it to tune the digital (non HD) stations coming in terrestrially?     A friend nearby has brought over a Sony TV and done just this, and it all works fine.  But we’d like to be sure before we spend!   Thanks!  

Just checked our version and we are still on 3.7.6 so no updates happened here overnight.

Coops Looking at our paperwork, it took about three weeks to issue a licence.  Not wanting to give you false hope, but yours may come through earlier than two months. See you next week!  

Coops, I have only just seen this posting, otherwise I would have replied earlier. In Jan this year my husband applied for a french licence at the Prefecture in Le Mans Sarthe and was told that he needed to provide from P237 (even though I had done exactly the same thing a few months earlier and was seen by the same person).  Anyway, we tried send the application by post without this form but that didn't work either, so I sent an email from the on-line  Impots.gouv.fr website asking if they could send me a copy of form P237.  They responsed almost immediately saying my request had been passed to the relevant dept to deal.  Sure enough within a couple of days the form P237 arrived in the post and we now both have french licences.  So perhaps you could try this route, it might just work

Martin Thanks again.  I'm sure there will be more questions.....

So to be absolutely clear,  if I want to watch any form of HD TV (free of paid) I will need to purchase an HD Box, regardless of which sort of HD TV I bought?  Any recommendations on HD boxes? Thanks again for your help.

Martin963 thanks for that.  When you say I would need an HD freesat box to hook up to, could I use my skybox, although this is not HD.  the Television I am looking to purchase will have a built in tuner (if that makes any difference).

Thanks all for your comments.  Sorry if I seem a bit dense, but there seems to be various choices of HD TV's.  Some say they are HD Ready, some say HD Ready 1080p etc...  What is the benefit of one over the other?  I do not plan to subscribe to HD channels, so will only be watching any free one's.  I have a DVD player but not Blue Ray.  

What are the benefits of an HD Ready 1080p TV if you do not have a subscription to an HD service? 

We have a mobile phone which we keep solely for the purpose of using in the car in case of emergencies/breakdowns etc. Therefore we have hardly used it in 6 years.  We have an O2 pay as you go SIM which as long as we top it up every 2.5 years and use the phone at least every three months or so for a chargeable call, is not cut off or time expired etc. But, it is a UK number. So, does anybody know if there are similar "no time limit" pay as you go options with any French mobile providers?  We have looked at a few but as far as we can tell, there may not be such a thing, but others may know better.  

Thanks everyone for your replies.  By partner, I meant husband/wife.  Just to be clear, although they will both get automatic entry into the French Health System under IB (ie the 5 year rule is waived), will they still have to pay CPAM 8% of earnings after allowances?

If a person is receiving long term incapacity benefit and relocates to France, does their partner also receive free healthcare?

Thanks for the info.  I thought as much but wasn't 100% sure. You're right coops, if we can hear each other, it'll be good to chat, otherwise I'll get in touch after the weekend.  

Hi If you move to France with an illness such as Type 2 Diabetis, do you still have to comply with the 5 year residency rule (ie. aprrox 2 years cover by UK and then take out private health for the balance of the 5 years) or do you automatically get included into the system and get free prescriptions for this and related illnesses? Also, once you are excepted into the system (either immediately or after 5 years) and benefit from free prescriptions for said illness, am I correct in thinking that you would still have to join CPAM and pay your 8% cottisations and other non related illnesses would only be reimbursed at the normal rate?    

We have also done a forced update and are back to the previous version.  Fingers crossed this is the end of the problem.  Thank you all for the useful help and advise.

[quote user="cooperlola"] Not long to go now 'til the big weekend.[:D]  See you soon. [/quote] Indeed!  Trust we will see you at St Saturnin.......  Big day for Corvettes this year.

Hi All As this thread has gone quiet, I was wondering if this problem has gone away for others or have you found a fix or just resigned yourselves to it?  We are still experiencing the same as before and it is getting rather annoying!

Hi I live in France and really love it here, BUT, if I were able to (that means obtain a green card), I would live in America without hesitation.

I don't suppose any of us are in a position to contact Sky to see if they are aware of the problem and what's being done to fix it?  

Well how strange!  We have also been having the same problem so we checked the auto-standby and that was set to off.  I guess we will wait and see if it settles down. 

Hi Our microwave has stopped working.  There is power and the turntable still goes round, but nothing else. I was wondering if it was feasable to have it repaired or would it be as cheap to buy a new one?