Living in Brittany

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03/28/2007

Spring has come

You know when its spring the grass needs cutting twice a week and the first thing that happens is the ride on mower goes wrong it chews up the belt or some pulleys seize up . After a couple of breakdowns and a few expletives I decided to get another its been the worst mower we have bought only 3 years old very poor design some mass produced American thing with Brico painted on it. By accident I found just the make we need cuts well in wet condition and is wait for it MADE IN BRITAIN amazingly so I eventually bought one on ebay so now have to a dash across to pick it up. I saw a new model of the mower in a shop here and on ebay buy it now was a £1000 cheaper. The French aren't into competition too much and ebay France is a fraction of the size of the UK version.
The weather has turned mild and pool is heating up even jumped in yesterday for a minute I prefer the temperature over 20+ but it was bracing. We seem to be well on top of work almost worrying waiting for the first arrivals on Saturday mostly French.
I downloaded Mozilla Firefox a few weeks ago as the computer kept crashing it made an amazing difference hasn't crashed once since and it even has a spell check so I can make more literate sentences. I had to visit a doctor last week for some tendonitis thing and was struck by how less rich they are compared with the UK they even have posters up explaining it. Plestin has a population of 3500 and supports two practises giving a total of 5 doctors only one got fed up a year ago and got a job at St Brieuc and commutes each day. He tried to sell his share but no one would buy it I suppose the average age in Plestin is 70 and the medical problems wouldn't be too interesting. A French friend told us the equivalent name of a "wrinklie " is a " tamalou" ( ta -mal -ou ) I shouldn't mock as I will join them one day at least at the moment I can feel young living in Plestin.

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03/09/2007

Interesting election

The election for the president in France is getting interesting for a long time it looked like a Sako v Senglo match but with Bayrou moving up in the opinion polls ( yesterday he had 21% and Sengolene had 24% ) it looks as if the socialist party could miss out on the second round of voting for second consecutitve election. The french like the third man option the first round is used as a beauty contest and you vote ( I don't I haven't got a vote ) for who you fancy there is a big choice in green and red candidates. le Pen steady at 14% ( doesn't look as if he has the momentem this time ) but the surge of Bayrou has captured the French a sort of centralist liberal. The problem has been the permformance or lack of from Royal a pleasant person to invite for a meal but she doesn't really cut it as a leader ,and the socialist party is split with petty jealousies as her partner is the secretary ( has had a personality by pass ) and she got her nomination by going outside the party. The french left seem to think Bayrou has a better chance of beating Sarko. The problem is Sarko is the better choice as France really needs some reforms for years the gouverment has been throwing money at problems instead of making changes. A lot of people were retiring at 55yrs when we first arrived. Running a business is a nightmare with high social charges and over 50% of the population work for the goverment so whereas the population realise there should be some fundamental reform they are never going to vote for it so we could end up with Bayrou as president! Vive la France

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03/06/2007

Boring work in March

In March I have to do the most boring work of all emptying the pool and cleaning it is nothing compared with doing the accounts 3 days of tedium putting all the bills in the right piles then finding the bank statements and the enormous pile of papers we receive from the french system to say we have paid the correct dues to the various rip off organisations we are obliged to join, and then to add more misery am obliged to dump it at an accountant to be certified for which we have the privilage of paying them 1500€. Our accountant used to treat us with a lot of distain thinking "do they know what they are doing " but to complete we have a meeting with the boss man who we are on kissy terms with ,well Paulien is ,he used to play sax in the town band .so our accountant changed his atitude and is much more creepy now.
There was an interesting article in the paper last week it showed a map of France and the winter rainfall and practically everything south of Nantes and Paris (Ille de France ) has had about 50% of normal rain so they already in deficet . THe water issue is going to get very serious with competing demands from agriculture ( alot of the south grows crops only because of irrigation ), tourism and domestic demand which increasing ( alot of pools are going in I think France is just behind the USA in pools per population. So the moral to the story is don't go further than Brittany for your holiday

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