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How is this for being frugal, would you go this far?


idun
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An idiot IMO.

Saving money out of necessity is one thing, saving it for it's own sake - and suffering privations as a result - is just stupid and pointless.

There was a piece on the BBC just half an hour ago about some bloke who has lived without electricity for 3 years because of some dispute over a bill, another idiot.

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A benefit of the house into which I am about to move  -  and one of which I intend to take full advantage  -  is that there is a public fountain less than 100 metres away.  Though I probably won't actually bathe in it.

I enjoyed using the local lavoir last year.  Though rather cowardly I did it on a Monday, when no one was about.  I think I am the only person to have done so this millennium…

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If its the report that I read in another paper then they wanted to charge him £15 per months standing charge yet he used less than 1m3 of water, I suspect that he pen and inks a bit though.

Were I to be in a similar position, and I could well be as I use very little water and a standing charge like that would really hit me, then I would do what my grandfather did back in the days when if you wanted home comforts then you had to make them, he lived completely off grid until 1984, he collected all the rainwater and used it for, bathing, toilets etc, there was still a hand pump in the village square opposite him which he filled a fresh water container with for the kitchen, I think he did actually cook in rainwater but as for washing fruit, salad veg etc I cant be sure.

So the young guy is not being that smart, he could have all the home comforts for free and drastically reduce his consumption of bottled water, look how little fresh water you actually consume when camping or caravanning when you have to carry it!

That said I get the impression the guy is not a bricoleur.

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I used the lavoir in the next village when I moved here and people were outraged, they reported me to the mairie and to the communité de communes and I recieved a visit and a warning.

I hadnt known that it had recently been restored as a historic monument [:$]

I think I might have got away with the clothes but it was stripping off for a wash which did for me, what was I to do they closed the public bath house and turned it into the office de tourisme [:(]

Macdonalds was the answer!

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I read about this in another publication which said that he goes to friends for showers........

So he goes to friends, uses their water so they pay the bill - I think I would be recommending sex and travel to him if he was a friend of mine.

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[quote user="sweet 17"]G, your lavoir will be frozen in the winter and you won't want to wash anything, not clothes, not anything, in it![/quote]

Alas, they  -  rather unsportingly  -  drain it in the winter.

But they got their own back, anyway.  It was a largish rush mat, which had been in the kitchen until it sustained a rather disgusting accident.  A trip to the lavoir, with Wellington boots and a yard-brush, was the obvious solution.

But the rubbish collection  -  twice a week in those halcyon days  -  took everything that didn't move.  You couldn't even leave a wet umbrella outside the door, without it going to the dump.  Nowadays, of course, they would refuse a rush mat point blank, because of the ozone layer and global warming.  But then, as Tuesday inevitably follows Monday, so  -  seizing their opportunity  -  my rush mat, hung neatly up to dry, was confiscated. 

[quote user="sweet 17"]Sorting out my email thingy and will email you très bientôt[/quote]

Oh good.  I was worried  -  in your present state of emergency  -  that I hadn't got through.

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[quote user="sweet 17"]new and more complex computer problems and do wade in and help if you are able[/quote]

It's really out of my line, I'm afraid.  I can speak HTML like a native, but I don't actually know anything about computers  -  because mine never goes wrong and rarely even has a fractious moment.

My only proposition is one which elicits a high degree of consumer resistance:

Go Apple-Macintosh… 

(Feel the Fear, and Do It Anyway  -  you will never regret it.)

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Apparently the man who has stopped using water because his standing charge was so high is the same man who changed to an 0871 number last year so that he could make a profit out of the cold callers who he didn't seem to be able to stop calling him.

Hoddy
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[quote user="Chancer"]I used the lavoir in the next village when I moved here and people were outraged, they reported me to the mairie and to the communité de communes and I recieved a visit and a warning.[/quote]

Haha  -  that's excellent.  (As a story, I mean  -  I am firmly of the view that lavoirs are there to be used.) 

But I am also interested in the principal  -  if there is one.

In a neighbouring village a local agriculturalist regularly fills up his largish bowser from the lavoir (which also had been restored as a historic monument).

When challenged about this he made a robust and pungent speech to the effect that the water was provided as a public facility, that he was perfectly within his rights to use it, and that if the complainants didn't like it, then they could do the other thing  -  and continued sturdily as before, without further molestation.

But, of course, he was from that village  -  I imagine that a much more tenacious opposition would have been offered had he too been from the next village.

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[quote user="Chancer"]

I used the lavoir in the next village when I moved here and people were outraged, they reported me to the mairie and to the communité de communes and I recieved a visit and a warning.

I hadnt known that it had recently been restored as a historic monument [:$]

[/quote]

To commemorate what?[:D]

 

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