Acoustic

Thanks for the info.  We've made 6 gallons without the campden tablets and will pick up more demijohns etc next week when we are back in the UK. Nice to know we can get airlocks though! So far we have made blackberry, apple, apple and blackberry, apple, apple and rosehip and pumpkin.  We aren't desperately fond of French wine generally so this will supplement our wine supplies from Spain and Portugal.  I love country wines and in fact they don't taste at all like grape wines anyway.

I've been keeping up with this thread as an observer only as I know neither you or cooperlola, although I suspect she has almost certainly given me some input on various queries before now.  I feel that you are really feeling the strain now, what with the long distance you have to travel, the uncertainty about your wife's current state of health, the insurance, MIL, etc, etc.  All I can suggest is that you take advantage of the people offering various offers of help on this site.  They are all making genuine offers and I suspect you really could benefit from these.  Hopefully your wife will be transferred to a hospital much nearer to you very soon.  That round trip must be horrendous, especially when you obviously don't get much input when you actually get there.  I suspect I am certainly not the only one who has been watching this thread but not made any comment until now.  Many people are thinking of you both and hoping things work out.

You will never find logic to anything of a red tape nature in Spain.  You rarely find a member of the Guardia Civil (they administer traffic) who knows the latest rules either.  This causes all sorts problems with such things as driving a Spanish registered car on a UK licence (perfectly acceptable legally but no one told them) and what you should or should not carry in your car.  I believe (but have nothing to prove it) that they insist on jackets for each passenger in Spain.  We carry two in the side pockets anyway as we have a Spanish registered car and last time we were there jackets seemed to be the flavour of the month (sometimes it's exhausts or it might be seatbelts - you never know but word spreads like wildfire so anyone there soon finds out the latest preference.  You should have seen the moped riders suddenly start wearing helmets when they had a blitz on that. Strangely it was all forgotten a few weeks later, all helmetless as normal). An example of the sheer idiocy of their rules revolves around their version of the MOT (ITV).  Being in southern Spain earlier this year and thinking we would just pop in and get our first test certificate 6 months early (it's due at four years) we were horribly surprised.  Firstly the car failed, based on a new law introduced since we bought the car that all towbars have to have a manufacturer's certificate PLUS a fitting certificate.  All news to us, ours was fitted by the dealer before we bought the car new.  As these requirements were not in force then, we had neither piece of paper, and boy, do they love their pieces of paper!  We managed, by driving on a 150km round trip, to get the fitting certificate from the dealer but could not come up with a manufacturers certificate. So, we came back to France with a big "fail" stamped on our documentation as we needed the tow bar for a trip back to the UK.  Once there we had the bar removed, popped into northern Spain and tried to pay for a retest.  Oh no, "rules" say the retest has to be back at the same testing station.  Now where is the logic in that?  It's a complete retest, not just a check over of the offending item but we had to then go all the way back down to the southern coast.  After a fraught morning we came out with the precious two year ITV sticker.  My OH is a fluent Spanish speaker and had problems (usually the young "ladies" employed in a position of miniscule power who are so rude as to be unbelievable) so I just dread to think how the ex-pats on the Costa del Sol are now dealing with their cars failing the ITV for having a factory fitted towbar. I know this has little to do with living in France but perhaps we can be pleased that at least the rules here are pretty constant and logical.  We're buying in France next time.  Anyone want to buy a Spanish reg car with full ITV.....?

Pictures as promised.  Everything seems to say "elder" (red stems etc) but somehow I'm not sure.  Something to do with them being on very low bushes I suppose?  Any help  in identification would be great! [IMG]http://i328.photobucket.com/albums/l360/janlawther/elder2.jpg[/IMG] and another view [IMG]http://i328.photobucket.com/albums/l360/janlawther/elder1.jpg[/IMG]

Strangely enough we were actually looking for sloes today but these definitely aren't.  Sloes seem to be in very short supply in the Dordogne this year - I have seen a grand total of two!  We love a drink called pacharan, a Spanish liqueur, a combination of anis and sloes.  This is what we had been planning to make but I suspect this year isn't the one for this. The berries we saw today are shiny, in clusters and much smaller than sloes.  The leaves are relatively large and tender, not like the spiky little blackthorn bushes.  I will take a picture tomorrow and post it.

We take our cats back to the UK regularly and have done so from both Spain and France.  As long as the tick and tapeworm treatment is within the 24-48 hour window then it doesn´t matter where the vet has his surgery.  Before now we have timed it that the treatment was in southern Spain ( almost two days drive to Calais) and still managed to fit things in.

This is not really a gardening question, but IS to do with plants. Walking along a little lane here today we noticed an area covered with some lowish shrubs which had the look of elder, complete with white flower buds and plenty of ripe black berries.  The berry clusters were upright rather than drooping and somehow I don't think they really were elderberries.  Does anyone have any idea what they might be?  Unfortunately we had been out taking photos of various wildflowers and my camera battery was flat by the time we found them but I'll try to get a picture over the weekend.

Thanks for the suggestion.  We've actually been looking in Brico Marché this afternoon but although they have the equipment they don't seem to have any of the compounds etc.  We've gone ahead and made the wine without and put the yeast straight in so we'll see how it goes. We need more airlocks for our demijohns and I think neither are available in France so we will just add them to our next UK shopping trip along with the tablets.

If you are sure it isn´t just the recipient barring emails from your ISP, you can try changing the port (on Outlook) like this: In the Outlook screen click on "Tools" then "Email Accounts" then "View or change existing email account settings", then highlight the account you are having problems with, then "Change" then "More settings" then "Advanced" then  in the box next to "Outgoing Server", change to 587   Remember what the original number was (it's probably 25) in case you need to change it back.  Mine is on 587 with Tele2.

We just picked our first two kilos of the year yesterday afternoon and set off some wine last night.  We're hoping it might be ready for Christmas...

I'm told this is a poroporo or kangaroo apple.  It's native to New Zealand and Australia and is from the Nightshade family.  The leaves and unripe seed pods are poisonous but the ripe pods can be eaten.  I don't think I'll try though!

We are about to make some country wines but did not remember to buy Campden tablets last time we were in the UK.  Can anyone tell me the French equivalent and the type of store we might buy them in please?

We had several oleander bushes in our garden in Spain.  They were lovely, if a little hard to keep under control.  They are just about everywhere in southern Spain and although they are poisonous I think they are perfectly safe as long as you don't actively EAT them.  I used to spend hours hacking and pruning ours, carrying the cuttings down the road to the tip, etc with no problems. We occasionally let our house so I always pointed them out to guests but there were never problems with them.

Thanks for the suggestion but I think you're right, it isn't an oleander.  I've taken a couple more pictures, one of the plant now in the garden to show the flower and another of the one still in a pot to show the seed pods.  The flower is just under 4cms across. [IMG]http://i328.photobucket.com/albums/l360/janlawther/plant2pb.jpg[/IMG] [IMG]http://i328.photobucket.com/albums/l360/janlawther/plant1pb.jpg[/IMG]

[IMG]http://i328.photobucket.com/albums/l360/janlawther/plant.jpg[/IMG] A friend in southern Spain gave me one little seedling plus a cutting.  Both have taken really easily.  Does anyone know what type of bush this is and whether it is poisonous please?    It has green seed pods, about the size of a marble. very shiny.  The flowers are quite profuse, a lightish purple with a yellow centre.  There are no distinct petals.  Most of the leaves have three points on them although some are single.