AN UPDATE Following the advice given earlier, before going back to France I attempted to open an acount with Orange.At the final page of the sign up procedure, I was notified of a tech error. Tried again (having to use a different name) and on the final page - guess what- tech error. Third attempt didn't get beyond the first page without crashing. So, it was time to try signing up with Free. All procedures completed and details for logging on promised to follow by post. So, a week later we arrive in France. No communication from Free (and still none when we left a week later). However, while we were there two letters arrived from Orange - one for each of the supposedly aborted attempts! Within two minutes I was online. As for Tiscali: still nothing. The computer dials, converses with a computer at the other end of the phone line and reports that User/Password are unknown. Anyway, problem solved. We do have dial up access with Orange (though I swore I'd have nothing to do with them after the broadband problems they caused me in the UK). It's painfully slow compared with ADSL but, as I said in my original post, I only need to access mail and make occasional bookings etc.