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Wednesday, 14 November 2007 |
For readers with family abroad, online Christmas shopping is a boon, but can you trust it? Tim Stapleton has a few tips for avoiding disappointment, or worse, deceit.
With Christmas shopping
beginning soon, the choice and
cheap prices that are to be
found on the Internet can be very
tempting. Internet shopping is easy and
convenient. This information is to help
you buy with confidence on the net.
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Wednesday, 14 November 2007 |
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It wasn’t intentional that we have featured
couples in this issue, couples working
together, at a time when a rather important
couple was splitting up… The idea was to
look at what seems a very common format
for the still active when they flee the rat race
and settle over here. After 15 years working
with my own ‘partner’ I could have said a
few things about it but on second thoughts
it’s probably as well that I haven’t. If it isn’t
always wonderful when every moment of
relaxation can be interrupted by business
brainstorms, it has the advantage that no one
can ever quite remember afterwards who
had the good idea first… In a couple, the
two sides of a problem tend to get thrashed
out internally before staff or clients are
bothered by it.
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Wednesday, 14 November 2007 |
Dear Sirs,
I was recently in hospital in Montauban for a
routine knee operation. My right knee was
recovering and I was told that after
kinésiologie treatment, I would receive elbow
crutches. I grabbed the French dictionary.
What was the French for crutch? I was given a
choice of béquille and entrejambes.
I tried to select the mot juste. Happily, I
did not telephone the nurses’ station to ask
them to kindly send two entrejambes to my
room. Surely they would have thought my
recovery had been too rapid, especially had I
later requested deux cannes anglaises.
Sincerely,
Peter Herley
And I guess you meant kinésithérapie
(physiotherapy), not kinésiologie, an
‘alternative’ form of healing.- Ed
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Wednesday, 14 November 2007 |
Dear Madam,
You have exposed me as a ‘faux ami’! But in all honesty I have to return to ‘Nil carberundum’,
because my suggested version seems incorrect. No I am not a classicist, but then the invention,
Nil Carborundum is not classical either!.
A friend rang to tell me of the contents of French News for September, page 13. It was at
that moment that I suddenly realised that ‘carborundum’ or even ‘carberundum’ could in no way
be derived from a Latin gerund or even gerundive. (Please note that the French perversely term
their form of the gerund, eg ‘en allant’ as the gérondif whereas in Latin it would be gerund.
Belatedly I checked in a 1949 Cassells dictionary and discovered the word ‘carborundum’,
defined as “Protected trade name of a silicom carbide used for grinding wheels etc”. La devise
(which seems the best description) ‘nil carborundum’ seems to be a concoction proclaiming the
refusal by lower military ranks to be ‘ground down’ by their superiors – as you probably
know anyway.
The good news for you is that with the approach of autumn this pernickety correspondent
will most likely lapse into hibernatory torpor...
Yours sincerely,
Terence O’Hara
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Wednesday, 14 November 2007 |
Sir,
The proposed changes to the french health service and the serious effect on British residents in
France, many of whom will be forced to abandon their lives and dreams in France and return to
the UK. The prospect of being denied access to the health service unless one has private
insurance is a nightmare. Is your paper launching a campaign, to persuade the British Embassy
that they must intervene to protect the interests of British citizens in France and not simply wash
their hands of the problem, and secondly, aimed at the French government, to seek either a
change of policy or protection for all existing Britsh citizens living in France.
John Macreadie
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