Too many coincidences methinks, of course it’s him! 
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Eddie, not sure about those pages, as I have never seen them before - but yes they are both me. I note that one carries a date of 2012 and the other 2018. I am not the Webmaster on SF, and as I say I have never seen these before, so the mysteries continue. Probably James has the answers?
I was referring to the ‘doppelganger’ picture he provided showing a young chap with a beard. Which is not me.
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Norman I think you were looking at @james picture in his post
Hi Norman, I think this is you …
this is the photo we are all talking about and belongs to “norm1”
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That’s deffo Norm1, good looking swine. You wouldn’t think he was 135 would you ?
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Had I the talent to render my post in Latin termini would have featured therein.
I am just a simple oik of the type that travelled on the Clapham omnibusses. 
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I should stop reading the daily Mail if I was you. If you had to experience a PIP assessment, you wouldn’t be convinced that people in wheelchairs are all benefit cheats.
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The road system was probably planned to give the local population time to prepare in case Tory MPs like Sir Edward Leigh try to lay siege to Calais.
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Hi Nicky, please add your surname to your user profile as per our T &C before posting again, thanks!
This is a foreign county and the people who live here are NOT English with a foreign accent. Live with it or go back to the UK (which, in my estimation, is finished).
We came to France in the first place 10 years ago because of the house prices. This is the only place in western Europe where I could buy outright with my equity. Since then, I have encountered those from commerce, bureucracy, hospitals and my neighbours and I have absolutely no problems with any of them. Au contraire, they have all been ready to help, and the French health service is first class. (Perhaps being a Scot is a help). So my message to the original poster is simple - chill. .Nothing is that important.
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A thought-provoking thought.
Many thanks and be well…
Hi Jim, apologies for long post. I think it’s perfectly normal to go through a negative period regarding France. I have been here just over 10 years now and I regularly go through periods (thankfully they don’t last more than a couple of days, weeks…erm, months) in which I start to detest everything about France. The problem is essentially mine. Nobody forced me to come and live here and I have no right to criticise French people or the French system when I can’t even name 5 departments or the second largest city, and will never speak French enough to understand the nuances of French social interactions and why this or that document or that verb conjugation is how it is done here, ffs I can hardly name more than a handful of contemporary French celebrities, politicians, writers, sports team… and so the list goes on. I am a foreigner here and apart from legal rights I am simply (mostly un-wanted or un-welcome) a ‘visitor’. Most people are polite and courteous to me but will never, repeat never accept me in their clan or group nor countenance any confident displays of Anglo-Saxon or any other foreign culture if it rubs up against their cherished Frenchiness (they seem more tolerant and accepting when I tell them I am part Irish!) I could list many things that I dislike about France, but I am sure I could find an equal number of things that I love. The point is that I have no history here, I am a semi-tourist who can go home or disengage at any moment. This gives me freedom that most French people do not have, and I constantly remind myself that they have to put up with the same gobshite as us. We are guests here, France owes us nothing- we have always to adapt to them, and if we are pissed off, we either need to accept what we cannot change or change what we cannot accept, and do a LOT more Budhhist meditation.
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Why do you live here? If you don’t know/like the culture and can’t speak to anyone then what’s the attraction?
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Gary - if you live here as a tourist (effectively) then you cannot understand the frustration of NOT living here like a tourist. Every single point you make about why you can’t judge the French (whether not being able to communicate, or even name a few celebrities) is testament to this. I am not criticising you - it is your choice, but at the same time this very way of being means that you cannot see, feel and smell the French the way they are as you don’t know who they are.
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It is almost like living in splendid isolation, do you not have neighbours that you interact with?
JJ - GF (post above) DOES like it here - most of the time. Why shouldn’t he live here; it’s not obligatory to understand completely the french culture, nor to be totally fluent in french. All he has done is to articulate the truth; if we’re not born french or lived in france since childhood - we will never be ‘french’. GF has written, honestly, on his feelings about living in france. Many of us, if we’re equally honest, would admit to the same feelings, to a greater or lesser extent.
Where’s your tolerance of someone else’s different view point ?
I’m sure if a lot of us here were living in the UK at the moment we’d feel equally p----d off about life in the UK.
There are ways of doing things that even the french themselves would like to change. Are they wrong ?
Try to reread the OPs post, your reply - and then meditate some…!!
I would take issue with “lived in France since childhood”. I moved to France as a mid-20’s adult. I am quite open about recognising that I associate more closely with the way French society, or should I say, mainland continental European society (having also lived and worked in Germany), exists and functions today than anything akin to current UK society. I can understand Gary for setting out why he feels he doesn’t fit in, whilst also recognising that life just continues anyway just fine most of the time. Are there things that irk me about French life ? Of course, but then even the French moan about their own lives, and as with pretty much any country that I have ever visited or lived in, the local population will always find something to be dissatisfied about, that seems to me to be simply part of human nature. The grass is only really as green as we choose to see it, IMO, absent outright acts of physical/violent repression/murder, etc carried out on the civilian population. As Gary indicated, it all comes down to what you’re prepared to put up with, and are in a position to do something about if you are no longer sufficiently satisfied with your lot.
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Your first sentence makes no sense, I use the word tourist figuratively as here I live, work, pay my taxes, have a social security number and help my landlady take out her garbage. I also speak pretty good French and know enough about French people through my work, friendships and other diverse numerous encounters that we ex-pats have to work hard on our attitude, language skills, and sensitivity to French culture to be truly accepted.
That isn’t what he said. What he said was
Which isn’t the same thing at all.
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I was merely asking a genuine question… I wasn’t saying he shouldn’t live here or anything like that just curious as to why…normally if you are not getting enough out of your circumstances you change them and the OP seems not to like quite a few things. So no need to be so aggressive.
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