ssomon

Dream on 🙂

There was a chateau by the beach in Bouisseville, near Oran, Algeria, where we lived in 1969-70, where an old French lady had lived on her own since Independence. My wife called to see her one day and found she lived in spartan conditions in just one room in the huge building.

The only time I've drunk non-alcoholic beer was when I was in Saudi. It was excellent - provided it was fermented in a large container with yeast and sugar, and, after a week or so, when it had cleared, cooled, and mixed 50:50 with fresh cold bottles of the same 🙂 Otherwise, it was revolting.

That sounds to me more like plebeian slobs.

Can anyone explain arrested development please?

I think they are what used to be called "personalities". None of them make me feel like celebrating anything.

Does "amazing" beat "incredible" ?

Seems a term commonly used in the UK, maybe also by some here, who apparently see nothing odd about it. "There are question marks hanging over ...." in place of "There are doubts about ...... " or "I am not sure about ....."

"Question marks" hanging over things.

Even with one door missing that terminal is probably more protected than ours, which is in the road, and recently filled up with water. Run all the services underground? The daftest idea I ever heard of.

I think the reputation for fine food arose when many skilled cooks in the grand chateaux lost their jobs after the revolution and opened restaurants to make a living. Many restaurants still seem to be run by people who lost their jobs.

The Intermarché in Sigean is another. The odour pervades the fruit and veg section as well.

I was in a car repair shop yesterday and a guy there asked me whereabouts in Scotland I was from. He had seemed to have been scared off by indignant Scots who he had asked where in England they were from, so was taking a safer course. If Scots want to be different, why do they continue speaking English? Answer: because that's the only language they know.

My major dislikey about France is the almost complete absence of courtesy on the roads. Our town is a Siamese twin with the town to the west. A main road runs through both, and there is no gap between the two. The next town recently decided to have Priorité â droite, and put up large yellow signs advising of this at all the entries to the town, but no-one has put up yellow diamond signs (whatever they are called) at the exits. So drivers going east think there is PâD in our town, slow down and can't understand why we don't drive out in front of them, and drivers going west try to mow us down when we drive out in front of them (or attempt to). In both cases they tend to have a mini fit, screaming, sounding their horn, and gesticulating like possessed monkeys.

My Amazon seller gave me a full refund. I think I bought the book elsewhere. Yesterday I received a package of 3 books bought on Ebay UK. The books cost £8.35 and the delivery charge was £15.19 I asked if customs clearance in France was included, and also why the individual delivery cost for each book was being charged rather than a the cost of a combined shipment. The seller told me "We take care of all charges and you do not have to pay extra. However, if for some reason you are asked to, you can let us know before taking any action. The shipping price is mandatory on all of the items, unless it's free. At this time we cannot offer discounts on multiple orders as eBay does not make it possible to do this in an easy and efficient manner via checkout. We have therefore set low, flat rates of postage instead which are almost always the lowest rates that can be found on any site and are accurate in terms of the increasing postal charges we pay on heavier items we send" They were in my letterbox yesterday morning. There was an export sticker on the package with the value of each book and its customs code. I have not been asked to pay anything but am keeping the packaging and label for a few days.

I buy car parts fairly frequently from an English company whose prices are shown without VAT to anyone logging in from outside the UK, so since Brexit they send my order at these prices, i.e. without charging VAT. Before the goods are delivered I receive an email from La Poste offering the choice of paying the import charges on line, with a reduced handling charge of €2, or paying the facteur or at the PO by cheque or cash, with a handling charge of €8. I usually pay on line; my last order cost me £25.63 in the UK, including postage, and a total of €7.00 import charges. When I buy through Amazon UK, however, the price shown includes any French TVA and import charges, and La Poste simply delivers the goods, usually straight into our letterbox. So presumably they use the system mentioned above by DaveLister. On one occasion the facteur rang the doorbell and asked for a payment for a second hand book I bought from an Amazon seller. The amount was over twice what I paid for the book, so I refused to accept the package or to pay anything. The facteur simply said OK, and left. I phoned the seller, who said I should not have been charged, that he had to pay to support the system and would contact Amazon about it. It all depends on whether a seller in UK chooses to 1) pay whatever it costs to join the export scheme, 2) register with HMRC to sell VAT-free and generate more paperwork, or 3) simply charge UK prices and leave any import charges to be paid by the buyer.

We usually listen to the traffic news when travelling on the Autoroutes. A few years ago I often wondered why so many old soldiers were involved in accidents. Eventually I realised the newsreader was referring to HGV's.

Thanks, AB.

In a discussion about the names of nearby, now defunct, factories, I came across this saying or pun, which I don't understand. "les usines prenaient le nom d'un lieudit, d'un hameau, d'un moulin ou d'une métairie ...... mais Cayenne reste une énigme. Cazals risque une hypothèse qui viendrait de l'argot. «La boîte, c'est l'atelier quand on ne l'appelle pas simplement Cayenne»." https://www.ladepeche.fr/article/2018/09/20/2872083-la-route-des-usines-monde-industriel-a-redecouvrir.html

Yes, it was, but a pharmacy might still be able to sign you up. I just thought it might be worth a try.

We had a similar problem, in that the very old cards which we had at the time we were invited to sign up had no number in the position indicated. I asked about this at our usual pharmacy and they signed us up and put a sticker on our cards. However, no-one except the pharmacy has ever added any information to our "espaces"

Not quite such a sunny life for those born in the Empire just before WW2 I'm afraid.

The contract which I signed did not mention any charge for connection. The Free Mobile connection via the 4G router is quite fast enough for me - it varies between 15 and 40 MB/sec - but the house telephones, which are connected to the router, only ring for about ten seconds before the call is switched to voicemail, and this is not adjustable. This is no problem if callers leave a message, which our usual callers to do, but if they don't, we can't call them back as missed calls are not recorded. This may not actually be a problem, as it filters out spam calls. The advantage is that the monthly charge is €19.99 (€9.99 for the first year) compared with at least €39.99 with Orange, and there is no monthly charge for the router, which I bought for €100 from Amazon France.

It's not always that simple. I signed a contract with Orange for a fibre connection in February 2022 and the technicians arrived at our house shortly afterwards. The manhole with the nearest terminal is in the road about 35 metres from our house, which fronts directly onto the road, as do the two neighbouring houses between us and the manhole. I assumed the installers would dig a trench between our house and the manhole, as overhead connections are not allowed here, but as there was a conduit already in place under the pavement from the manhole to the furthest neighbours wall, they planned to run the cable along the front of the neighbouring houses and the wall between our house and the next. The problem was that they wanted to see written permission from the two neighbours to fix the cable onto their facades. One neighbour consented, the other flat refused, so the technicians left. When I contacted Orange their only reply was that the connection was awaiting the consent of the neighbour. Almost 2 years later we still have no fibre connection, and have to use the 4G mobile network for Internet access.