mint

Except we don't pull worms from people's noses.......yuck!  That's definitely one I won't be using[6]

il se retournerait dans sa tombe ! Just hope it means the same thing and is not a ghost story for toussaint[:)]

Please excuse me, I am breaking rules to tell BinB that I shall be PMing him in a couple of minutes.....sorry, folk.

Thank you, Sue and Parsnips.  Can you please tell me what column on the avis this 7.5% appears just so that I know where to look?[:-))]

I think you'd kick yourself if you missed this[:)] [url]https://www.arte.tv/fr/videos/098476-000-A/le-cercle-des-voix-aix-en-provence-2020/[/url]

Parsnips, you mean that we can claim for 2018 and a reduction for 2019?  If that is the case, could you please explain to some of us who are themselves clearly all at sea and who wait to hear what you have to say? Thanks, Parsnips.  Bon dimanche[:)]

Here is Agnès Poirier on this subject: [url]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/25/we-french-love-our-history-teachers-samuek-paty-made-us-remember-why[/url] It gave me a deeper understanding of the national shock his murder has caused.

I have enjoyed all your comments......just goes to show that beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder. Norman, I think you are a bit harsh because I do think that old Banksy does have a social conscience. I have a magnificent print of Monet's waterlilies stretching along a wall in the "garden room" (well it does have double doors into the garden).  I have been known to refer to it sometimes as le petit salon but it is really a glorified higgledy, piggledy room to put some books, the large fridge-freezer, the rack where I keep tins of food, the bread maker and a cold storage for cooked food in the winter. Some of the more uninteresting items are hidden behind an intricate carved wooden screen bought for some derisory sum from some real expats when they returned to the UK.  It is a lovely refuge for me in summer when the upstairs part of the house is too warm.  I also have some half a dozen prints of Breton ladies doing rather unladylike things in their costumes plus, musn't forget, a photo or two of OH's ancestors. I think the painting is realistic.  The trolleys definitely do not belong and are never seen in the Dronne.  In Port Talbot, however, they are a common sight in the river as you walk on the bridge to get to the side where most of the big shops are.  I wouldn't be nostalgic about poor old Port Talbot at all, except that I had an interesting job there and I liked defending it when people run it down.

Alas, not numerous as in previous years and I see only pink ribbons and no announcements of walks or lunches or anything else to raise either money or awareness. Here is an article that you may be interested in: [url]https://www.sudouest.fr/2020/10/24/cancer-du-sein-axel-kahn-lance-un-cri-d-alarme-pour-inciter-au-depistage-8000781-4696.php[/url] More than interest, I urge everyone to take note and maybe have that screening test?

Actually Becket, please don't apologise.  I don't require you to like it[:D]  I enjoyed your comment. Bansy is indeed clever and topical and, of course, the nature of his work is a bit "crude" and sort of unfinished.  If I was made to compare, I'd compare him to Hopper whose work also lacks the finer details but the subjects are always wide and sets the imagination racing. Nobody is going to ask me but, if I had a chance to rename it, I'd add the word "just"!  "Just show me the Monet" would make it all more smoothly menacing and more "godfatherish"[:D]

What nobody likes this painting?  As Victor Meldrew might say, "I don't BELIEVE it!" Doesn't speak to you about then and now, rich and poor, class division in society, environmental degeneration, nature and industry, manmade and manmade (yes, I dare say that garden was in fact planted by Monet)?  And even, in my particular case, the river Dronne, near which I now live and the river Neath that flows through Port Talbot where I lived for a few years. Me, I LOVE paintings and not much pleases me more than having time in front of a painting and just thinking about what is portrayed. You certainly don't have to be an expert to enjoy paintings but you do need to have some degree of interest[:D]

What a happy coincidence; just when I had read up on this thread last night, I found this a sentence from "France in the New Century" by John Ardagh: The State promotes an integration which the public then obstructs, the public stresses cultural differences which the State refuses to recognise. So there you have it in a nutshell.  This is not a problem that is going to go away.  Ardagh's book came out in 1999 and we have already been living in the "new century" for 20 years......same old, same old[6]

[url]https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/banksy-show-me-the-monet-auctioning-sothebys/[/url] If I had the money, I'd be making a bid for it.  Or, if there is a print available, I'd buy one.

All fundamentalists cannot be reasoned with.  There are interesting debates throughout French tv on this very subject. As expected nowadays, there are also debates on all the social networks.  Many have pointed out that the purpose of the illustrations was to provide a starting point for criticism and argument. I have always been against silencing certain viewpoints.  I remember writing, at the time of the Irish "troubles", to the powers that be, to allow tv viewers and radio listeners to hear Jerry Adams' voice and not use actors.  Let whoever it is have their say and let us hear the totality of it, the voice, the writing the drawings.  What I loathe even more than these crackpots are the "authorities" who seem to think we are incapable of forming our own opinions. 

Norman, yes, I am very surprised about Ariège.  The bits of it I have seen consist of small mountain villages, wilderness and none but hardy types on the mountain paths.  But then I didn't go for the bright lights. Tancrède, you seem to have an intimate knowledge of the fleshpots of L & S, considering you claim to avoid them?  Or do the bouncers turn away someone of your not inconsiderable age?

Thanks, ET.  Yes, I like Mantel and I enjoyed the other 2 books. I don't mind wordy as long as it's interesting.  What I don't much care for are "flim flam" books, you know, nothing to get your teeth into.......nothing too lightweight and no-need-to-use-your-brain for me.  It's like eating pap, no substance and you can gobble it up all in one go![:D]

Sure thing, ET, I'll let you know if I should read a Tde R and like it. Is that book of Mantel's the last part of the Trilogy, starting with Wolf Hall?  I did enjoy "Bringing up the Bodies".

Caroline, I do find the news of your dad very sad.  I was a huge fan of his and had once been accused of being nauseating on account of my, I suppose, grateful posts about him.  He was full of knowledge about all things motoring and I remember asking him once whether he was a UK policeman.  To which his reply was "good evening....."  Made me laugh hugely[:D] And cajal, thanks for the link and yes I do recognise some of my own posts[:)]

I have part answered my own questions.  She is a writer of les bestsellers[:D] Still would like a personal recommendation. Bestsellers can mean popular but doesn't mean she is any good. All comments appreciated.  ET, you are one of my best bets.....[I] 

Does, has anyone read her books? Worth reading or not? I heard her talking about the English writer Daphne du Maurier on TV about whom she has written a book.  So biographies then?  What other types of books? I have some spare time at the moment and would like recommendations of some contemporary French writers.

OK, we're not talking big bucks here, a mere 5 euros, but I thought I'd put this out there to see if anyone else has experienced it. I went to the anaesthesists' department recently to have my pre operative RV.  Visit over, the receptionist handed me my carte vitale back and said I had to pay 50 euros.  Out came the credit card machine and I typed in my code.  She gave me what turned out to be a devis and said here is the receipt.  I noted 45 euros on the "receipt" and pointed out that I had paid 50.  No, no, 45 she said, look, pointing at the figure on the paper. I was loaded up with the usual files, had my VSL and driver waiting, had my co-passenger waiting, a whole sitting-room of fiddly patients waiting for me to finish and I did think that I must have somehow misheard. Anyway, after my hospital stay (should have been 1 night but turned out to be a dramatic 5; but I digress) and going over my bits and pieces of paper at home, including my credit card statement online, I noticed that they had indeed taken out 50 euros. Just as a small bit of information in the course of our small talk, I mentioned the matter to my nurse who is calling at my home everyday.  I asked her, do you think that that was a deliberate policy on the part of the department to defraud their patients?  To my huge surprise, she answered, yes of course it is, they do it all the time!!! So has anyone else had a similar experience? I shall email the accounts department together with my credit card receipt and the devis which, looking back, I should not have perhaps paid.  I wasn't too bothered knowing my mutuelle would cover all fees including déparsements honorairs and that I'd get the money back.  But, I just felt too flustered and yes I suppose intimidated by the large, unfriendly receptionist.  And, after all, I was a nervous small woman needing an operation and she was a very large, overbearing and extremely unfriendly "authoritarian" figure![:-))]

To get a CdS a holiday home owner would need to take out full health insurance as a French resident, which will likely be pretty expensive for oldies, assuming they can even get it which will depend on medical history. ET, this will be the first time I will have had the temerity to correct you as your knowledge of how things work in France is nothing short of phenomenal[:)] Getting a mutuelle does NOT depend on medical history though, as you have said earlier in your post, it does depend on age. We have had 3 changes of mutuelles in the dozen or so years we have lived here and, whilst it is true that your choice of mutuelle is greatly reduced by your advance in age, your state of health or its history has nothing to do with whether you are accepted or not.

[quote user="Gardian"] They’re all insistent though that you don’t get it done until early / mid Nov. It’s all about the length of effectivity of the vaccine.[/quote] Yes, my nurse says every year that she does them the second week in November, otherwise you won't be protected towards the end of the flu season.

Sue, we are just as bad.....there are more ways of killing a cat than stuffing it with cream?[:-))]

I have a frog in my throat.  J'ai un chat dans ma gorge......well, they would, wouldn't they?[:-))]