They say everything happens for a reason… we’re just yet to find out why.

The Piglet family hasn’t been having much luck lately. We call it La scoumoune. I’m not quite sure of the origin of the word, I believe that it is Arabic but it’s commonly used in the infamous HLM cities in France (social housing concrete jungles) along with “avoir la mauvaise oeil” as a way of [...]

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A letter to the French Social Security

Dear French Social Security People, I know that you have an ever increasing “hole” in your budget and that you have been trying to find solutions for years on how to maintain the French healthcare system and yet save money so to ensure its future sustainability. I know that you have been unsuccessful and that [...]

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Could you be financing a French utility company?

Who here pays their electricity and gas bills by automatic direct debit? Did you know that it is likely you are financing the utility companies by doing this? I’ve always been useless at paying bills, I would open them, put them on my desk, have a couple of really busy days and they’d soon be [...]

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A waiting game… Round two

Happy belated Christmas everyone!! Hope you all had a great holiday and that you enjoyed the festivities of the season. The New Year is just around the corner and the Waiting Game continues in the Piglet household although there have been some small but major developments… Our bank still has not come back to us [...]

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Silly Pregnant Brain, French Health Cover Update & Christmas Tree

Silly pregnant brain had me believing hen had teeth after PIP said they were hard to come by… It’s a wonder I can even function currently, stupidity is becoming my middle name. Yesterday I poured my coffee in the bin instead of in the sink. I turned the tap on over the worktop instead of [...]

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French healthcover: when it goes wrong it goes oh so very wrong…

Having read several posts over at Traveling Amber regarding her battles with various French administration departments during the late stages of her pregnancy, I decided to follow her advice and start tackling some of my administration problems now, rather than leave them until later on. Ambers’ tales have left me weak kneed about what’s to [...]

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Dreaming of pastures greener…

I just went to post about how I’m becoming fed up of living in a show home when I realized that I hadn’t yet posted that Mr Piglet and I had decided to leave our city loft and move on to pastures greener (literally). As some of you may have gathered from my last post [...]

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British female risks attacking French tax office employee

For a blog about a foreigner living in France there’s not that much stuff on here about the horrors of French bureaucracy and you could be lulled into a false sense of security that everything was hunky dory and not that hard in France – just as I was. As I’ve been living here for [...]

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Living frugally – Emptying the freezer. Plus Tomato Tart Recipe

Coming back from Corsica I decided to have a “clear the freezer” week. Having checked my bank balance upon my return, I ws sent into a state of shock to see we’d spent far, far too much money and that Hubby and I were going to have to live much more frugally for the rest [...]

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Fancy a job ? Earn £750 as a sun creamer!

Or should I say, screamer! I mean this is a total scream isn’t it? Given that most summer jobs in France are low paid, the possibility of earning £750 a week to rub sun screen on peoples back on the beach is amazing! I stumbled upon this article on The Telegraph website a few weeks [...]

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