MooN

I can only really speak for the part of France I live in. France is a big place and the locals, along with their Brit immigrants, differ vastly from one area to another. This part of france has it's fair share of Brit immigrants, but most of them work, rather than retiring here. Very locally the brits work on the hotel boats on the canals or in the tourist industry. on a wider scale the brits in Burgundy tend to work in the wine industry or tourism. as I understand it the Brits on the south coast are more in line with those who emigrate to the costas, wanting to retire to guaranteed sunshine though maybe not as dodgy as Pete describes in Spain, @Tango ? The Lot and Dordogne regions are allegedly heaving with brit expats ( the Dordogne has been since the middle ages and the last crusades) but I believe mostly retirees again. You then have the mountains and the ski resorts which are full of your younger brit seasonal workers during the ski season, but as dopeheaded and mindless as most of them are, they don't have the scammer reputation. I think the spanish costas attract a certain type of Brit. A hangover from the days of el cheapo package holidays, freddie laker flights and an allegedly easily corruptible police force. All of which will attract a certain type of person. The now ageing brtit expat population will again attract a certain type of brit scammer, or bring out the scammer in a certain type of person... vicious circle. As the ageing Brit expats status and income is fragelised by Brexit or whatever, they will become more suscetble to the scammers, which in turn will attract more scammers... etc...ect

WTF is a "pacified e mail?" when it's at home ( along with it's Nigerian billionaire's sons)

“rules are for the obeyance of fools, and the guidance of wise men”. Harry Day ( or possibly Douglas Bader).

or possibly " nice Jugs!",

We should all vote for this one just to piss Pete off!

That would win hands down if only the sign clearly said NO MOTORCYCLES

I am who I am. no more, no less. I now know the name I was born under, but nothing else changes. I had always imagined that I was probably the unwanted offspring of a polish sailor and a cheap whore ( which is why I have always laughed at notions of being British cos I was born british) I was born IN britain, but that is all.) There is no record of who my biological father was or what nationality he may have been, though it's faily obvious he must have been northern european, or caucasion at least. I am, and always have been content just being me. As for abandoning a child , who am I to judge? guessing based solely by the name of my biological mother, the year and place of birth I imagine she was a young girl, unmarried, abandoned by her boyfriend the minute he discovered she was pregnant. maybe her choice was the lesser of two evils, or maybe she was coked up to the eyeballs and needed desperately to get back on the street. Who knows?

no top box, but a cb radio, a first aid kit, a gun holder and th etank lights up. That's gotta be worth something right?

not surprised really, that probably goes back to the inquisition... wait for it...

Look @boboneleg, no topbox!

You want a nice top box you do

sad but true...

Well done to you both, I've been her nearly 29 years but I was young free and single back then so only had me to worry about and had a job here that I came out to.

You should'nt have to renounce british citizenship Pete, you request Spanish, though some countries ( the us I believe amongs others) do require yuo to renounce other citizenships. In France there is a distinction between becoming "naturalised" in which case you renounce original citizenship and become French and aquiring citizenship, which implies you become a french citizen but don't renounce other previous citizenships. this is a longer and more convoluted process I believe, as this is what I am doing and wil, eventually have dual citizenship. this will mean that for the french authorities I will be French with all that that implies and in the UK I will be British with all that that implies, you cannot, in any circumstances play one off against the other.

Not the same problematic Bob, I'm married to a frog so the dossier is a bit different ( I have to provide between 4 and 10 years woth of "proof of common life" ie that we actually live together, on top of all the rest) and so far my problem has been needing a full and unabridged birth certificate. I was adopted at 4 months old prior to 1976, so requre councelling with a duly accredited adoption councellor and psychologist before i am allowed access to the information on that document. I now have found a way around having to go back to the UK for that councelling and have been supplied with the name of my biological mother ( so I'm actually biologically not who I claim to be at all). I now need to send of for a copy of the full birth certificate, once I get that I can send it away for translation. This has been a blocking point for me for about 3 years now...

what if they die from fright?

good luck with that! 3 of the people I work with and have been here for years started the process but have given up. 2 others are struggling on, 1 person I know has succeeded ( it took over 2 years form submitting the request with it's attendant dossier. I have been working on my dossier seriously for over a year now and am still awaiting on official document from the UK general registry Office, which I will then have to have translated by an authorized translator. I will then, and only then be able to organise to attend the language test and after that can begin compiling the french documants that are time senditive.. ie have to be issued within the last year, 6 month, month or whatever. it is soul destroying...

I know almost nothing about guns, and if I was an actor on a film set and was handed a handgun by a qualified professional armourer and told it was safe, I would probably take their word for it. I dunno how much Baldwin knows about guns. Can you tell a blank from a live round without unloading the gun?

I've never really been into concerts and really dislike crowds so have seen very little live music. I remember seeing The Boomtown rats at a theatre in London. They were playing in the interval in some show that my gran had taken us to see, i was far too young, about 8 or 9 I guess. I remember the song though, cos it was "I don't like Mondays" though I didn't recognise it till years later. I've seen various smaller bands at open air do's in my misspent youf, I think I saw Blodwyn Pig but don't remember it, Phil collins with Phl bailey, Stryper, The Pogues ( in a pub in southampton) and Bob Dylan in Dijon about 20 odd years ago. French bands like Renaud before his voice gave out and Ultra Vomit live in the parc in auxerre, but no really big groups. Dylan was... welll... Dylan not really a showman but genius lyricist and musicien. the Pogues were fucking brilliant, but you have to like that sort of thing.

Welcome in, but don't listen to Bob he's not all there. How does the T700 compare to the triumph?

Do it!

managed to get out for an hour this evening, clear skies but only about 7 deg C so I got me thermal knickers on, liner in me jacket and rode up into the vinyards west of Chablis. in the ongoing series of finding oddities amongst the vines, I found motocross track!

no idea. Goldwing? do they still make pan europeans? the new tiger 900 rally? i'd have fun trying loads of them...

Yes I'd buy the tiger again cos it's fucking awsome I kept the transalp for so long because I found no other bike on the market capable of doing everything the transalp would do ( kinda ties in with what @XTreme was saying ) but this tiger 800 does all that but faster smoother and better. most modern bikes are too small for me.

Bizarrely, that actually made the french news this morning ( obviously at the time as well but I wasn't born then) I couldn't make out why this year and not previously, like on the 50th anniversay for ex?