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Down or Up ????


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Just a bit of silliness.

Our neighbour Michel is  ................ how can I put this?  A bit of a one-off.

We live in the Midi.  All of his extensive family live in Lyon, where he was brought up. He and his wife regularly make the trip there for births, weddings and funerals.

He always says "On va descendre a Lyon". Then I say to him that you can't "descend a Lyon", it must be a "monter a Lyon". "You're going north, so you're going up!"

Then he says that he's going to "Monter a Nimes" (directly south from here).  I just shake my head and tell him that he's a mad Frenchie.

When I lived in the Thames Valley, I'd always talk in terms of going up to Manchester, Leeds, Nottingham and down to Southampton or Exeter.  Bristol was dodgy (due west), but probably down.  Anywhere in Wales was definitely up though.

Is it me?[8-)]      

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Everybody here travels up to London...which is sort of east of here. People who live in East London seem to go up to the West End. I can't remember, but I think when I was a northerner I still went up to London. Although I might have gone down to London.

On an even more parochial level, do you go up the road or down the road to the shops (or wherever)? And is there any consistency or logic if the road in question isn't on any form of incline?

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Along to the shops? :-)

I think one goes "up" to London because the railways had an "up" line (towards the metropolis) and a "down" line.

Always seemed funny to me when living in Warwickshire as a child that people went "up" when they were effectively travelling south.

Angela
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Quote "Coming from that fair city I have to take issue with your description of Bristol......or, as the Bristolians very aptly would say "Bristle""

As an old 18 Bus driver there I often saw Ford Cortinals and had problems with my TV aeria because I lived in the wrong areal

Still remember the great expression look at her gurt big Brisols
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Just a little variation on the 'Down or Up'.

Five months ago, we suffered an electricity breakdown (24hrs). It was repaired by ErDF, but it was purely a temporary fix - above-ground cables all over the estate, signage saying "Danger de Mort".

Proper fix scheduled for mid-April and everybody duly informed by email and letter. Juice would be off for an afternoon. Nobody came.

It got to yesterday and all of a sudden, some contractors turned up and dug a very large hole in the road (single lane providing the only access to and from all the properties).  This morning, they all arrived en masse.

A tractopelle operated by one bloke and three others looking down the ever-deepening hole. (You could see the damaged cable which had caused the problem).

Two ErDF Transits and three blokes looking at one who was up a long ladder poking around at the cabling 6m up

I asked whether the juice was going off today, to which the answer was "Not today, sometime in the future - we'll let you know".

So ................. five vehicules, eight blokes, six of whom were either looking down or up. [blink]

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Well, the hole got filled in & tarmaced over. Fine.

Then the juice went off this morning at 10.30. Nobody around from ErDF, so not a deliberate act as in fixing something.

Phone calls in to them -"Une petite probleme". "Treize heures".

Juice came back on at 12.00 !!!!
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