roses are beatiful and can give much pleasure but they have thorn's and that's ok if they are handled properly.

not a bad coparison to life in france

I have been here 7yrs have encountered the thorn's but had lots of pleasure from the roses.

I think Parsnips made a very good point in that it is only a good place to live here if you are not constantly worrying how to pay the bills. It is always far more expensive than you ever imagined it to be , and the poor exchange rate and rubbish interest rates do not help at all to those who thought they had planned it well with enough capital to back them up. The longer you live here , the more to grips you get with all the paperwork and the french way of doing things, the language gets better too, but speaking personally, whilst not wanting to wish our time away, we will be pleased when we are pensioners and have a guaranteed income again.

We have been here nearly 3 years have immersed ourselves totally and generally love it, love the weather in the summer, love the cosy log fires in the winter, but you do need to forget the english way of spending money, keeping up with the Jones's etc and to be happy live the french way, don't worry if you haven't got the latest furniture, car, gadgets, etc, do grow your own veg, be resourceful and be happy to be in a country where politeness and good manners are a must. France to me is the England of my childhood, where it was safe to walk around, quiet roads, no yobs or gangs, and nobody worrying about what you had or didn't have.

A few days back in England is enough to convince us how good it is here. We're going back for 4 days to visit family before Christmas, but not looking forward to either the long journey or the chaos that is England, we'll be counting the days till we're back here.

Bonne Chance