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.

I bought a really sad little tomato plant without a label and it has borne some absolutely gorgeous but very strange looking tomatoes.  Does anyone know the strain?  They are slightly striped when ripe, quite large and very tasty!  I would like to buy more seeds for next year. [img]http://i328.photobucket.com/albums/l360/janlawther/toms.jpg[/img]

We always use the ciabatta mix from Lidl (blue pack) to make our normal loaves.  We never buy shop bread.  Half a pack in the breadmaker (I guess it by squeezing the bag and tipping it) 360 cl of warm water, a splash of olive oil and let it get on with it.  Perfect every time, it rises, browns etc and smells heavenly!

I want to buy a swingball set (post which sets into the ground or into the base used for a parasol, elastic rope with ball plus some raquets).  I haven´t been able to spot one.  Does anyone know of any of the larger chains or supermarkets who stock these?  Actually, having just described it I suppose we could try making our own...

I´ve been hanging on a reply to this one as well - I can buy a smaller Intex with saltwater system for the same price as a much larger version of the same thing without the system but a regular pump and I'm not sure which one to go for. I have about another day to make up my mind!  Surely someone has one and has an opinion on how good/bad it is?

As a sufferer from nut allergies you have my greatest sympathy.  You will have to teach your daughter to be particularly vigilant about food which you have not prepared yourself.  Make sure you ALWAYS carry the adrenaline pen and try to get several to make sure you have one set in the car etc.  Check their expiry dates and make sure they are all valid.  In my own experience you will find the French not to be quite as scrupulous as the Brits about identifying items containing nuts or prepared in an environment where nuts have been, particularly items produced in local patisseries which often have crushed nuts on the top.  Also the very tempting soft ice-cream shops which have the same crushed nuts on top of many of the tubs and where not much attention is paid to the dangers of cross-contamination. I think it is a little cruel for people to pop up with "they never were allergic in my day".  Allergies to nuts are very real and very dangerous, putting aside the parents who almost will such things on their kids to somehow make them "different" and actually have no such thing.  Yes, peanuts are a pulse BUT the allergy to them is real and, as in my case, very often will run alongside an allergy to what I call the greasy nuts, ie brazils, walnuts etc. and also the drier ones, almonds, hazels, etc.  I asked a doctor to help me identify the dividing line between a pulse and a nut and he didn't know how they were defined.  He said I would just have try things and see what happened!  I did it by holding the nut/pulse in my hand for a couple of hours to see if the hand went red, puffy or itchy.  In this way I discovered I was NOT allergic to coconut, chestnuts and pine nuts, or any of the traditional lentil or pea family.  But everyone will be different and with a particularly violent allergy I would imagine even the test I did will be problematic. Try this site for more info - http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~aair/nuts.htm

I need to order one of these in the next day or so.  Reading other posts I have more or less decided against the ones with a blow up ring around the top and also the ones with a metal frame so I am probably looking at one with metal sides which we can possibly build a wooden shell for at some point.  I'm looking at a smallish one, probably about 5m round or a little larger if I go for an oval one.  Having had a standard in-ground pool when we lived in Spain and having seen the various problems neighbours had with their various systems I have a few definite requirements, ie a sand filter and a skimmer.  The Intex ones come with the skimmer but only a cartridge filter (which I would prefer NOT to have) and GRE appear to come with the sand filter or with a cartridge skimmer but not both.  I may be reading the information incorrectly and therefore wonder if anyone has either of these systems and can comment on them or give me some advice?

You could look for a BioCoop near you (there is one in Nantes but I'm not sure how near that would be for you) - they have a huge selection of veggie things suitable for a barbecue etc.  Otherwise you could just ask them to bring a couple of boxes of Sosmix and Burgamix with them, they are both pretty adaptable to make suitable stuff for that sort of thing.  If you have a local market you may find someone selling the same sort of thing.  You will not do very well in LeClerc etc, they don't seem to cater for veggies very much and I have never seen Quorn, Linda MacCartney style burgers or sausages etc..

Cats hate the smell of lemons.  As it's quite a nice smell to humans you could just try spraying the places she was using with a lemon smelling spray (you can make you own with some lemon juice and water but be careful because it bleaches slightly) and she will probably keep well away.

...or should it look like this?  I have no idea what it is either. [IMG]http://i328.photobucket.com/albums/l360/janlawther/DSCN0971p.jpg[/IMG]

We have just received a letter from our water company (Saur) to say they are coming next Thursday to inspect our fosse "and advise us on conforming to standards".  This was apparently mooted for the whole village some two years ago but we have only been here a few months and don't quite know what they are going to be looking for or might recommend.  We were just about to have our fosses emptied (we have one for the loos and another for grey water) and don't know whether we should now wait.  Does anyone have any experience of these inspections please?