Best thing I ever did moving out here. It wasn't difficult to get into the French health system either which is excellent. We live in a small hamlet and the people are great. So helpful and very welcoming. The effort you put in to embracing their way of life is returned five fold. Good luck.

im quite interested in leaving britain when im older, maybe for france, somewhere like that, but i cant speak a word of french
i just find people here so rude and aggressive. they just treat you like shit, if you where to fall over in the streets for examply, most would find a distraction or just ignore you, and there all stingy un helpful bastards, unwilling to give you any breathing space, esepcaiily the rich ones in there second homes round here where i live, there all tight, and when they owe you money, well you might as well not bother

Educate yourself James, learn a good trade and make money. That way when the time comes you can buy your way out of the area you don't like be it a district or a country.

Du musst herrschen und gewinnen, oder dienen und verlieren,
Leiden, oder triumphieren, Amboss oder hammer Sein!

Thanks Paul, I am quite optimistic that the lifestyle will suit me fine. My wife is the same, we've done the big city 100 miles an hour thing and it's time to kick back a little and slow down. The language is tricky for me, I was once quite fluent in German but French is totally alien, I have a mental block about learning it, preferring to keep putting it off. I know that I must do it though, plus it would be rude not to.



It depends what sort of stuff you like to read. Personally I never read fiction, everything I read is either Military, Historical, art, Biography, or instructional. There is one book that I would recommend to anyone, and that one is ostensibly a work of fiction but is actually based on real events observed by the writer. The title is 'The ragged trousered philanthropists' written by a man using the pen name Robert Tressle. (Tressel?)

It was written in 1904, and is the tale of a gang of painters and decorators who undergo various hardships that were common at the time. There is great humour in it , and also an uncanny feeling that nothing much has changed in the interim 106 years! - And of course it hasn't, because it's a tale of human nature, and that hasn't changed in the last ten thousand years.

O-N people keep telling me i have the entrapeneur in me, (with all the, ahem deals i do ) as in i do a hell of alot of small jobs on boats, on the side of working, and i rake in the money doing that, as its all in my piggy bank

Shhhhhhhhhh, James. You don't know if somebody on this forum is a tax inspector for HMRC

I don't blame you at all, Old Nail; I suspect I'd feel the same had lived in similar places.

Brought up on an island in the outer Hebrides (tho' which brings its own problems, believe me...), my childhood was pretty idyllic - even more so in retrospect. I now live just outside a town (not quite a village) in Devon with a similar atmosphere in many ways. In betweens, I've had a few years in London's east end - Poplar - as Canary Wharf was being built; the pile-driving would be my morning call. Funny thing is, it was the most foul of housing estates that nothing on this planet would persuade me to walk into these days, but back then I was naive having come pretty much straight from the Island (with stints in Edinburgh) with my little yellow rag-top kit car, so I didn't anticipate any problems. And that's how it turned out - my daft car was completely unharmed. I won't say 'untouched', because it would often be crawling with the kids from the estate. But my naivety meant I approached them as I would kids from back home, letting them have a 'go' behind the wheel and telling the more selfish ones to get out and let someone else have a go.

I think this country has a lot going for it - the people in particular - and I don't have your pessimism for the future. That's is definitely not to say that there aren't major problems in many areas - there certainly are.

And your dream of France is one that's appealed to me too for many, many years - just an idyllic part of the world, everything that the 2CV conveys.

I wish you luck, tho' I don't think you'll need it; you've had it planned for a long time, and I'm sure it'll be everything you wish it to be. I wouldn't worry too much about that kidney either - the worst case scenario is that you'll end up with one from a scally...

Keep up you practical skills, James. One of the most rewarding things you can do is to do-up your own flat or house - rewarding in every respect. You just need to get the deposit to buy your first one...

its all under the £5800 or whatever limit anyway, its not much in theory any way but form someone with no bills to pay bar petrol and a bit of chocalate and the odd bit for my car its alot!!

ive done one flat, a friend of mine wanted to do up his flat so i helped, i fitted a kitchen, so in one day i was eltrical man plumber man and gas man, no flies on me

the guy i helped is great, he had a quote to get his boiler serviced as it had sooted up cos he had cut him self off the gas mains and running of a bottle, as he couldnt afford the piped gas and he didnt want to pay the price to get it serviced, so buttered his toast, and used the bread knife to scrape all the crap etc inside, and serviced it himself, dee sooted and all!!

O-N: re. 'The ragged trousered philanthropists' tip: cheers for that tip, I'll dig it out and give it a read. I bought Niall Furguson's Empire (nonfiction, all about the rise and demise of Britain as a world power) recently. Unfortunately, it's number of pages are intimidating me, so it's currently being used as a coaster for my bedside glass of water.

Old-Nail,
isn't Tressell's book more political than anything else, since it " advocates a socialist society in which work is performed to satisfy the needs of all rather than to generate profit for a few"?

No doubt it's more entertaining than the tomes penned (separately) by two friends of mine, one being "An introduction to Modern Vehicle Design" (Dr. Julian Happian-Smith) and the other being "The Slow Burning Fuse - The Lost History of the British Anarchists" ( John Quail).

Mind you, I skimmed through the introduction to John's book this evening and after noticing his reference to car mechanics in the text, will probably be 'discussing' that with him the next time we meet.
Cheeky b~gg#r...

< http://libcom.org/library/personal-introduction >

ken