If I recall correctly, there has been in France a system for many years with regards to hiouse numbering... i.e. any house that isn't numbered - typically in rural areas I suppose - it has an implicit number, which is the number of metres from the start of the road. I'm not sure how this works with houses on both sides. Our house in France is only named, as far as I know. The postie knows it ,and the hameau only has perhaps 50 properties anyway.. One day we hope to get back to it. What will be in the postbox is anyone's guess.
Morning all. Dry, warmer and little to no wind which makes it feel much better. The little village a couple of miles down the road from us is having properties connected to the fast fibre network today. The cables have been laid to our village, so I suspect it will become available to us before long. I am not sure if I need it as I am getting 19MBps, which seems remarkable for the middle of nowhere. Have a good day all.
There are 14 houses here, but 3 streets, all with nice signs up now. We had a few run-ins with our original post lady, who didn't like what we thought was a rather nice post box, because it wasn't standard. These days we don't have a regular postie, maybe five or six different ones who do not know us. Please get your address updated would appear on envelopes from the electricity company; That turned out to involve a visit to their office when I was in town, and three weeks for them to actually do it. It has helped with parcel deliveries. Before the names and numbers appeared, you would often have requests for guidance as to where someone lived. I do hope that things improve for you so you can enjoy your house again.
Morning all. Bright and not cold today, so I could be outside doing some light gardening. Instead there is a football match to be watched at what seems a strange time. As it doesn't get dark now until after 6.00 pm, maybe I will go out when it has finished. Have a good day everyone.
Went to the allotmentt this morning.... decimated by recent storms..... one compost bin just disappeared ... the tool box scattered every where
Morning all. On my way back from the bread machine, I took a small detour to see what all the noise was about just outside the village. There is a steep hill going down to a small stream at the bottom, and the fields either side occasionally have a few cattle in them. I found a huge digger there and a machine that cuts trees up. No wonder there was a lot of noise drifting up the hill. Quite what is going on is yet to be revealed, but thinking about the orientation of the land, do wonder if they are going to install a solar farm. They are starting to pop up on poor quality agricultural land in many places in the locality, and although cattle can no longer graze, sheep can. Have a good day everyone.
Morning all. Grey and damp, making the changing of a light fitting very difficult, simply because with the power turned off I cannot see what I am doing. I am thinking I need one of those lights that you can wear on your forehead, and although I can buy one for €10 it is not locally, so will have to wait. I wonder if I can tape a small torch onto a baseball cap? I might give it a try. Have a good day everyone.
Have a look at rechargeable hanging USB lamps. I got a powerful one for camping, cost £15 and it makes a dark room brighter than a summer's day!
Have got a sore head from banging it against a wall for the last couple of hours. My mobile phone is in the process of dying so I told my wife I was going to order a new one - she offered me an old one of hers and charged it up for me. Took the sim out of mine one only to find out that it won't fit - so put it back into mine, only to find it wouldn't work. Tried to log in to my '3' account to order a replacement and found that they have been upgrading their website - had to reregister, so I did. Everything went swimmingly until the final step when they asked me to confirm my ID by sending me a validation code - to the phone which I couldn't get to work. So I rang them and waited whilst I slowly moved up the queue - eventually a human answered, I told her my tale of woe and, unbelievably, she she told me I'd have to confirm my ID by telling her the validation code she had just sent to my phone... After fending off offers of a new mobile, tablet, laptop, broadband and god knows what else, I finally got what I wanted - at least I will hopefully get it on Tuesday, to go with the new mobile I ordered from elsewhere which should arrive on Monday. Life used to be so much easier without all this modern technology - I never even had a landline until 1988, when I discovered that I could ring the club's results service from Australia five minutes after matches ended...
Head banging BB, I will join you. Today my brother-in-law has a birthday, so went to Amazon UK to send him a gift voucher. Found his e-mail address, wrote a message, went to pay, but received a message to say that my credit card has been declined by the bank. Started again, filled in the card details carefully, checked them to make sure they were correct, with the same result, payment declined. Made the purchase with a different card, no problem. Amazon said that I should check with my bank if there was no reason for a card to be declined, so tried the bank's automatic chat line. Having no joy from that, I was given a number to ring. Security checks gone through, I was told that I could join the queue, which was currently six minutes. Spoke to a man who said that there had been no request from Amazon for any payment, so they couldn't have declined it. This one keeps happening with Amazon, he tells me. Try removing your card from the Amazon system, then reload it, but apart from that he knows as much as I do still. Too clever by half are some of these systems.
Funny we had that on our Amazon account in France too. This week we had a good one... our gas meter has not been working for two monts and we have been trying to get it sorted...... eventually we had an email to thank us for booking our engineers visit the next day, which we had not, so we had to ring up to cancel and rearrange.... and one of the securtiy questions was whther we had one sort of gas meter, two phase i think, or another.... we had no idea obviously and this really seemed crazy for a security question...and all we were doing was rearranging an inspection visit.... it is really getting crazier and crazier........eventually the phone person,'found a way' to get us through their own security............
Well, it has been one of those days. Modern French lighting fittings are not designed to be attached to older style wires. The new ones are solid but thin, whereas the older wires were the twisted strand type and much thicker. Then there is the difference between bayonet type light bulbs and the screw in ones. Both are still in use, along with many variations for new lamps. A bit of adaption and you get there, but it just takes twice as long when things are not from the same era. Still, the snowdrops are in flower and newborn lambs are in the fields, so Spring is not too faraway now.
Only just noticed this Frenchie so a bit late in responding. The take up on voting rights from those still within the 15 year limit here was pitifully low and so if they didn't use this right I can't imagine those who've been here 30 years or longer bothering. I've been here for 34 years and have had full voting rights here (since naturalization 5 years ago) and pay no taxes in the UK. Also I understand that you have to vote in the last constituency you were registered for in the UK, which in my case was in rural Somerset and was a choice between Tory and Liberal, and so, for me, a purely tactical vote (Labour is wasted there) - at least here I know that my vote counts. Those Turks who are here and who haven't naturalized (which is a lot) have MPs in the Turkish parliament who represent the Turkish diaspora directly (and they can actually physically vote for them here - none of this postal stuff). Actually Erdogan has been here in Cologne rallying support at election time. If my vote is tied to Bridgwater then there's little point.
My sister has lived in Munich for over 40 years and she was quick to apply. I think she has lost touch with what's going on in her old constituency of York though.
I received an e-mail yesterday afternoon to say that I had been added to the constituency register as an overseas voter. I believe it is the case that you do not even needed to have lived in the country if you are a British Citizen.
It would be fair to say that our oven has been doing odd things for the past year, such as turning itself on when you walked past it. However, last night it went totally bonkers when the thermostat didn't cut in, so it just continued getting hotter and hotter. The oil in a tray for some roast potatoes started to bubble and smoke, creating a foul smell around the kitchen to start with, but before long it was spreading around the house. It would not turn off, so the only way to stop it was at the fuse box. This morning looking inside was grim, so instead of trying to clean it, we concluded that it would have to be replaced. Found on-line what we thought would be a good replacement, so contacted the store to ask if they had it on display so we could check it out. No, it is not displayed in any of our branches, so resorted to looking at the on-line manual and comments left from people who had purchased it. Having decided we had not found anything better, had to create an account to buy it. Their website only crashed once, which is an improvement on some others. Then there was the questionnaire about access to the kitchen, and finally confirmation they will deliver, install, and take the old one away on Wednesday between 8.00 am and 5.00 pm, with just a hint they may send me a text when they are on their way. Today I had all planned out until this happened. I see why many locals just shrug, and take one day at a time.
Well, it is Wednesday, and our new oven is on its way. Just received a text to say man will arrive at approximately 11.42 am. That sounds rather more than an approximation of time, but we will see. When looking at different models before plumping for this one, I discovered that spare parts should be available for about 10 years. This will be only the third cooker we will have owned in almost sixty years, so I hope it will have a similar life span. Have a good day everyone.
