Renaud

?

When I first started using this forum it was a great source of advice and amusement. I visit as it is near the top of my Mac's list of favourite sites. I too have found friends here. At first the forum seemed partly peopled by lonely expats isolated in rural areas and partly by those who requesting help so that they might also inhabit the same areas. Happily, there are you intelligent and amusing people who keep the site interesting. I regret though it now seems a calm backwater. All the trolls, sock puppets and obsessive characters have gone and with them some of the zany and thoughtful folk too.

Anybody had this joker contact them? Hello, I need to make a reservation at your place for 4 persons coming to stay in your region for 16 Days, starting from 1st November till 16th November 2011. I will need to know your rates per / night for the 4 guests and i will need you to tabulate and let me know the total run-down cost for 16 Days period with tax and discounts in pounds currency, so we can arrange for payment. If you do not have availability at the time we request, please let me know when you preferably have availability to accommodate 4 Adults. Do get back to me quickly. regards, Frank.

I was recently reading a book by Alan Massie, whose protagonist is a policeman in Bordeaux at the time of the fall of France. I caught myself thinking, why doesn't he keep his head down and wait for the liberation? Then I realised the German victory over France was so sudden and complete and the army of the only French ally, Britain, had been so comprehensively defeated that the notion of eventual liberation must have seemed a pipe dream. So how then to live under German rule? Kate Muir quotes Picasso, Coco Chanel's friend, “Oh, I am not looking for risks to take, but in a sort of passive way I do not care to yield to either force or terror.”

Still their first innings was a shambles.

Until a week ago the Tour de France has passed me by. However I was staying near Albi when the Tour came nearby and when I came back to London, I turned-on to see the countryside. I am now hooked. The continuity of the camera work makes it hard to follow but the commentators* are tremendous. They keep the various strands of the competitions lucid and they are positive about all the competitors. * The ones on UK TV I mean. I would have no idea what the French ones were on about. Similar I guess to the England - Norway footie match I once saw on TV in Saudi Arabia which had a commentary in Egyptian.

Norman "The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity." Is this a preview of the Apprentice final?

Best wishes

The Hemicycle restaurant at the Abattoirs is good. It is by the river though I can't remember if one can see it from the restaurant. (www.lesabattoirs.org/hemicycle.htm) There is a very pleasant restaurant at the airport. Yesterday there was a 20 minute queue at passport control before you could get to the gates.

In 1940 it looked for the French as though the Germans had won and the occupation was going to be a permanent fact of life. Now with wonderful hindsight we think 'if only the French could have put their life on hold for five years'.

None of those in the last forty years but seven and a few bits before then. (Boasting).

Firstly, my sympathies for your predicament. Secondly as you asked for thoughts… Back in 2005, when you joined the forum and I guess started buying your house, the world was different. And I don’t just mean that Amanda Lamb with her embonpoint and lisp were on A Place in the Sun, rather than the girl with the least attractive accent possible, they now use. Credit was easy, the (our?) baby boom generation could look to use the huge increases in the value of our homes to buy abroad. France was great as when us baby boomers were at school French was still taught and even O level failures such as myself felt France was a friendly kindred place rather than an alien one. (Please stop sniggering all those who have gone three rounds with the functionaries in the car registration office). The immobiliers had started to use the internet and the comparatively low prices (by UK standards) made all those slightly tumbledown houses with blue shutters look very attractive when stuck at your desk on a wet November afternoon. What the best of the immos did was ‘sell the dream’. The copy in the descriptions mentioned, “The patio is perfect for watching the sun go down with a glass of chilled rose” etc etc etc. Back then I was also looking at properties on the net, and the sites were a lot more chaotic that they are now. (I am getting to the point of what I want to say). There was a guy selling his house near Sarlat. He had a well-written listing on the French Property News huge jumbled-up list of assorted properties. His listing pointed you to a website he had set up. This was a master class of how to make a property desirable. The photos were all sunny and attractive, the text was seductive with the ‘glass of wine watching the sun set after a lazy day investigating the markets in Sarlat’ touches. There were plans of the house explaining the possibilities in each room. The text let you know that the local farmer took care of the garden whilst they were away and somebody took care of the pool and the lawn. On top of all this the furniture was included and there was an old car and a mobilette thrown in with the sale. Talk about a complete turnkey sale. I emailed the guy to congratulate him on a great website and he told me that an Irish couple had flown out the next weekend and bought it. They knew more about the place than the neighbour who showed them round. As I said earlier the world was younger then and the economic was different. Talking to a local estate agent she said that the French market for houses under €200,000 was healthy but above that less hot. If you are looking to sell to the French then they know what sells at what price, good luck. If you want to sell to the British, Irish or not-French buyers I humbly submit that you must also sell the dream and as the guy with the house outside Sarlat did make the potential buyer feel that they are buying a turnkey dream. So I advocate getting a website done stressing all the positives. By all means bait the dream by saying that you are selling at a price that will never be equalled. I don’t know your property or what it looks like on the sales sites but I have seen too many houses on private sales property websites that have a desperate “Hey, it has all go wrong for me and I am having to sell at a sad loss” properties. The message is “Hey I need another looser to take this off my hands.” So perception, perception, perception. Never forget you are selling a dream. Get a website built that sells ‘great property, turnkey sale, all the information you need, sharp price. Question is how do you drive the potential buyers towards the site? Small ad in French Property News? Ad in the Lady? In the Royal Academy’s magazine? Think about magazines that those dreaming about “the glass of wine watching the sun go down”. The ad should not need to be big as it should only say ‘Great house for sale, just look at this website’. Bon chance.

If he play, being young and unskilful For shekels of silver and gold Take his money, my friend, praising Allah The kid was ordained to be sold. R Kipling, Maxims of Hafez (I think) I memorised (probably inaccurately) this in order that I never gamble for money.

Rats - I thought that viruses were things for PCs.

What are friends for?

Where did you dig-up this programme? From the fragment you describe it must have been part of a once mighty series.

The euro in its current form cannot survive the situation in Greece and the rest of the pigs, means some other outcome is inevitable.

The image problem with RyanAir is all down to O'Leary. As mentioned above the prices are usually amazingly good value. O'Leary's problem is rather than basking in the praise he could get for the low prices, prefers to try for niggling extra bits of income and thereby loosing the goodwill. If he doubled the basic airfares and said that the extras were throw-in for free the airline would still be low cost and he would be the traveler's champion.

"an over-weight, grey haird man, with glasses and a beard." The swine is impersonating me, and I wonder how many others on this site. My lurcher says the afghan is impersonating him.

Quillan wrote: "That's exactly what the Americans want and why they have been trying to manipulate the markets, their paranoia of the Euro is massive." The PIGS badly need to devalue then start to rebuild their economies. They cannot do this under the Euro. Once elections start in those countries then defaults will happen and the Euro will devolve into something else. In Portugal, as in Greece, debt is growing faster than GDP, making a default more-or-less inevitable. What the USA might or might not want is irrelevant.

I don't think the euro in its present form will survive the year, mind you I wrote that last year. The PIGS will start defaulting as they cannot pay the loans forced on them.

Watching Spiral with its cast of venal characters will make anybody abandon a career in crime in France. Unless you are an Albanian Pimp.

Judith - congratulations. The thing that makes Rouen so hard is that the roads leading to it and from it are so straightforward one is totally unprepared. Miss one unexpected and not very well indicated marker then you are sunk. The cow roundabout is pure satire on the lost Anglais.

Where is Maigret when you need him?

In Japan, they have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful 'Microsoft Error Messages' with Haiku poetry messages. Your file was so big. It might be very useful. But now it is gone. ------------------------------------------- The Web site you seek cannot be located. But countless more exist. -------------------------------------------- Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, and reboot. Order shall return. ----------------------------------------------- Program aborting: Close all that you have worked on. You asked for far too much. ------------------------------------------------ Windows NT crashed. I am the Blue Screen of Death. No one hears your screams. ------------------------------------------------- Yesterday it worked. Today it is not working. Windows is like that. ------------------------------------------------- First snow, then silence. This thousand-dollar screen dies so beautifully. ------------------------------------------------- With searching comes loss And the presence of absence: "My Novel" not found. ------------------------------------------------- The Tao that is seen is not the true Tao-until you bring fresh toner. ------------------------------------------------- Stay the patient course. Of little worth is your ire. The network is down. ------------------------------------------------- A crash reduces your expensive computer to a simple stone. ------------------------------------------------- Three things are certain: Death, taxes and lost data. Guess which has occurred. ------------------------------------------------- You step in the stream, But the water has moved on. This page is not here. ------------------------------------------------- Out of memory. We wish to hold the whole sky, But we never will. ------------------------------------------------- Having been erased, The document you're seeking must now be re-typed. ------------------------------------------------- Serious error. All shortcuts have disappeared. Screen. Mind. Both are blank. -------------------------------------------------