Harnser

I read one report that the locals are vowing to run her out of town. The police made her close up and escorted her " to a place of safety" Good riddance- nasty old bag.

A previous encounter with Paddington. Very poignant.

Your bank debit may very well have all that you describe on it - our CA bank debit cards do not.

"I have a personal reservation about using debit cards because I feel that they are too much like cash and that I am effectively opening my personal fortunes (OK, all the money in my current accounts) to fraudsters and thieves! " You may have noticed that the various numbers on your debit card bear no relation whatsoever to your bank account, except to an electronic card machine and the system behind it, and to get that to work you need to type in your four digit passcode at the point of sale. However, by writing and presenting a cheque, you are giving anybody who has evil intent, your account number, bank branch, and your signature. Which of these two options is safer?

I seem to remember that if it's valid UK licence and you apply to ANTS online to exchange it it for a french permis you will get in return an official document that confirms to the gendarmes or police that your licence is in the process of being exchanged and they are not to arrest you.

I just checked https://www.prix-carburants.gouv.fr/ and the price I paid for SP 98 today is the same and the gasoil price is the same. The Intermarche site we will go to tomorrow for the weekly shop shows diesel 30 cents cheaper. but SP 98 at 30 cents a litre more than we paid today at 25 km distant. WTF is going on here? I thought the Mekon said that ALL fuel would be discounted 30 cents?

Yes and no - I bought our reserve winter stock of 40 litres of SP98 generator fuel this am at the retail minus €0.30 price. But the same filling station had their gasoil price shown on the price board at the non- discounted price - I have no idea why!

We have a 3/3.5 kw max silent inverter generator bought after a 3 day power cut about 5 years ago - not much fun sitting in a dark house with no lights, sat TV, internet, mobile phone , land line phones were out, the local cell mast power also was out, we had to drive around looking for high ground to get a phone signal to reassure our daughters in the UK that we were ok after a storm. We were ok for heat with wood stoves and cooking with bottled gas but the electrically heated hot water was running out. I did all the changeover switchgear and cabling for running the house, barn and workshop. As there have been warnings about impending rolling power cuts this coming winter I'm going to increase our generator fuel stock to a week's worth at 12 hours a day running time at half load. It's all about self-reliance.

That's pretty much on the money Ken. As confirmed by this article. Professor Gordon Hughes has written the following blog describing his experience of sourcing reliable energy supplies to power a remote rural broadband network in Scotland. A couple of abstracts from his paper "I have written a number of papers on the costs and performance of wind power and other forms of renewable energy. Even serious empirical research provokes responses along the lines that any questioning of the merits of renewable energy amounts to original sin or blasphemy. There is little that I – or anyone – can do to convince those who treat the superiority of renewable energy as an article of faith." "Still I wonder how much practical experience such commentators have of the reality of relying solely on renewable power in commercial applications. For this reason other readers may be interested in what I have learned as an economist faced with the practical issue of relying upon renewable energy" "To emphasize the general point: the central challenge of the transition to renewable power is not the generation of electricity. That is the easy part. Rather it is the difficulty and costs of ensuring system reliability that must be addressed. Up to now, all electricity systems depend upon a legacy of investment in storable energy resources, primarily in the form of fossil fuels but with some storage hydro. None of the operators has any real idea of how they will function without being able to call on such backup resources. While scale will permit options that are uneconomic for small operators, the lesson from experience is that the investment and operating costs required to maintain system reliability in electricity systems dependent on intermittent renewables are likely to be very large" https://ref.org.uk/ref-blog/367-the-reality-of-relying-upon-renewable-power

The edit time window strikes again. The removal will include removing the huge concrete foundation substructures. It's in a sensitive ecological area near a tiny watercourse which is one of the last few habitats of the freshwater pearl mussel, so the removal works will be under an official microscope. That is going to cost the operators megabucks.

In our commune - fortunately not near us, we can just about see the red obstruction light on top of one of them in the distance. "Declared illegal since 2009, and after a veritable legal soap opera, three wind turbines must be dismantled at a place called Nizio, in Guern, near Pontivy (Morbihan). The operators were still trying to play for time with the Council of State which, on December 30, 2021, reiterated its decision requiring the dismantling of these disputed installations" https://www.ouest-france.fr/bretagne/morbihan/justice-dans-l-illegalite-depuis-plus-de-douze-ans-un-parc-eolien-du-morbihan-doit-etre-demonte-186a9296-6a56-11ec-b759-e96b51f23ee5 https://www.letelegramme.fr/morbihan/guern/eoliennes-de-guern-le-prefet-du-morbihan-ordonne-leur-demantelement-10-01-2022-12902539.php

Our palleted kiln dried hardwood originates from Estonia by way of a local supplier. It's stated to be either oak or hornbeam - hard to tell which visually. I know it comes from Estonia from batch tickets stapled to the pallets. Judging by the density I lean towards hornbeam, which unlike oak, has few uses apart from fuelwood due to the difficulty in working it. Estonia is about 50% covered by forests and exports a lot of wood pellets from their forets de sapin.

If it's wood waste like tree branch trimmings from timber production it would be ok, but cutting trees down solely to make wood pellets is just a waste of good timber. And then there is how much transport is involved to get it to where it's burnt. Like a lot of the deluded green groupthink we see happening, it has a coat of greenwash paint but under the surface is the reality they don't want to discuss or tell you about.

To be honest I think they make it up as they go along - I sometimes try to listen to the BBC local radio station from where we were last in the UK - it can be blocked or not - "the usual "contractual reasons" recorded message. I have no idea why and as it is the British Brainwashing Corporation I couldn't care less. Try using a VPN if you've got access to one.

"Supply pressures are driving up prices. Driven by soaring energy prices, many are rushing in advance on firewood , to the point that professionals fear a shortage. The "abnormally high" demand for wood pellets in anticipation of winter, amid fears of energy shortages, could lead to a "supply deficit of 5 to 15%" , warned the French Federation of fuels, fuels and heating (FF3C), on August 26." https://actu.orange.fr/france/face-a-la-crise-energetique-les-francais-se-ruent-sur-les-granules-de-bois-de-chauffage-magic-CNT000001RI3fP.html

I've always understood "engagée" to mean committed or involved - is this correct?

Following the drought and now getting enough rain so the ground is nicely damp, I’m wondering if our grass will recover from being 100% burnt brown and what to do if it doesn’t to any acceptable degree. The weeds are up and thriving but not the grass. Reading up on grass, which I’ve never had cause to do before, only curse it when it needs mowing, there are more types of grass than you can imagine. And some types are more resistant to drought than others and are used in southern france where drought is a yearly occurrence. I’m guessing that our lawn was seeded with UK grass seed which is unlikely to be drought resistant. Is it possible to re-seed a lawn just by sprinkling grass seed on to existing dead grass, raking it in and watering it? When we are allowed to of course.

I was under the impression that gasoil and essence had come down about 30 cents/litre since the heady days of more than €2.10 /litre? Gazole: 1.809 SP95: 1.801 at our local Intermarche today from https://www.prix-carburants.gouv.fr/ Like you we can't fill up - both cars are running near to full.

There seems to be a problem with the edit function - you go to edit and it comes up with a page that says "can't find that post" Sorry for the double post.

A mate and I set out early on motorbikes one Sunday, got to the the outskirts of the next small town/commune and a couple of scruffy gendarmes appeared from behind a hedge to our right next to a mini roundabout, stopped us and proceeded to breath test both of us - negative. You get to keep the disposable mouthpiece they plug into their handheld breathalyser machine. The reason they had staked out the town early was the town Fest Noz the evening before. Fest Noz Breton- fete de nuit - night party etc Breton night festival, an excuse for excessive drinking eating and dancing! I got breathalysed once in the UK in 40 years driving when some silly twerp rammed the back of my Volvo 245 GLT estate with his dinky little Toyota. I was stopped waiting to turn right, he then proceeded to reverse which tore his front plastic bumper off as it had got hooked ever the towbar! The original equipment Volvo towbars then were like something off of a bulldozer. He accused me of doing the damage and he called the police who breathalysed both of us - negative. That was the standard UK blow into the bag test.

A mate and I set out early on motorbikes one Sunday, got to the the outskirts of the next small town/commune and a couple of scruffy gendarmes appeared from behind a hedge to our right next to a mini roundabout, stopped us and proceeded to breath test both of us - negative. You get to keep the disposable mouthpiece they plug into their handheld breathalyser machine. The reason they had staked out the town early was the town Fest Noz the evening before. Fest Noz Breton- fete de nuit - night party etc Breton night festival, an excuse for excessive drinking eating and dancing! I got breathalysed once in the UK in 40 years driving when some silly twerp rammed the back of my Volvo 245 GLT estate with his dinky little Toyota. I was stopped waiting to turn right, he then proceeded to reverse which tore his front plastic bumper off as it had got hooked ever the towbar! The original equipment Volvo towbars then were like something off of a bulldozer. He accused me of doing the damage and he called the police who breathalysed both of us - negative.

That's why we now buy our firewood kiln dried and delivered on a pallet from the supplier's truck by his small off-road pallet truck to our hard standing where we then use our own pallet truck to trundle it into the barn. It's hellish expensive, but it's less than 15% moisture content oak and burns very well. Another advantage is you can see exactly the quantity and quality you are buying before you pay the driver.

We had a good drenching this PM from 2 or 3 heavy showers with a rumble of thunder in the distance. OH the head gardener is running around filling every pot, bucket and empty dustbin she can find with the runoff from the barn roof!

The weather was cloudy and cool here in central Morbihan yesterday - and light rain nearly all day on and off. No sign of the forecast thunderstorms yet.

To my mind, a permanently installed unit has one big disadvantage. When or if it goes wrong or needs servicing you have the usual french problem of getting someone in to do it. If it's portable you just put it in the back of the car and take it to an air conditioning repairer.