Living in Brittany

We had a cold spell last week and on two consecutive days had snow but it disappeared late afternoon but it made driving very tricky for the school run at 7 in the morning, I had to resort to loading the Boxer with a pile of stones to give it better traction on the roads. The first day (Monday ) the buses were on strike so I had to drive into Lannion I think the council workers were also on strike as the roads weren't treated that day but the next day they found their salt stocks and all the main roads were very drivable. The minor roads stayed treacherous until the snow melted.
Max my eldest son has at last received a letter of confirmation of French nationality, its only taken 3 years and they seem to ask for the same documents three times but I guess it keeps the bureaucrats in a job. You need to be French national if you want to work in the civil service which is probably half the jobs in France, but at least there will be less jobs lost in the looming recession.There is a big motor construction sector but they have been lobed a few billion to tide them over and Sarkozy is taking of abolishing the professional tax in 2010 ( an illogical tax on business ) which is causing local government to worry over future revenue as they are the main benefice of the tax.I guess they will have to radically increase the "taxe foncier" or " taxe d'habitation"
I found a good source of spare parts for my Peugeot classic last week a mechanic in the garage found a local 305 being scrapped so we stripped off the parts I needed for nothing and I just gave him some cash for helping me.The garage had quoted 240€ for just one of the items!
My brother who is a wizz in marketing has been on at me to join "twitters.com" its an insane chat site where you can't post more than 140 syllables but allegedly all the "bright things/people" use it.I manage a couple of posting but don't really understand it and then you get followers, who log on to your 140 utterance,bizarre the death of intellectualism.