Nothing personal! Just a bit of a culture shock, finding it all individually wrapped like it’s something precious.
Just looking for a decent cuppa!
Our local Super U has an English section with proper Yorkshire and PG.
I mentioned the strange habit of wasting rainforest on wrapping each teabag and was met with looks of horror, apparently they cannot imagine teabags simply loose in a box!
So what about tea loose in the packet then? Quelle horreur!
Our kids were the exact opposite. They were delighted when they went to a birthday party and had shop bought cake!
When I went on an exchange to France, my first ever foreign trip, I was about 13 or 14, I stayed with a family from Agen. They knew that English people drank tea but that’s all. So they gave me tea in a bowl with condensed milk. The bowl was a bit of a problem too as at home you had soup or cereal or pudding in a bowl. So I sat there diligently drinking my tea with a spoon.
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I love the bowls of hot chocolate and coffee that the French dip their breakfasts in, it is so funny. Apart from when I am expected to join in dipping my breakfast.
Ha Ronald… reminds me of a story my wife tells me of her exchange visit to northern France…
She was being shown round the menagerie and introduced to the lapins… she was asked if she liked lapin and said yes…
She was mortified when the cuddly one she pointed at was served for tea… 
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Plastic wrapped teabags are soon to be done away with and about time too.
Good.
Outlined in this Month’s Living magazine South West France - The Healthcare Handbook (pdf) in English 200+ pages. Published in 2018 it doesn’t cover the Covid-19 crisis but is still a handy reference if you are uncertain what your rights are or how to access care in France.
Link to the publication here
Thanks Graham. Very useful.
By the way, have you still got another laptop? That one got covid and no amount of repair disks saved it.
you didn’t wash the keyboard with warm water and soap did you? 
No course not, used bleach…lol
Error message reads ‘either you unplugged a Gubbins without doing the watchercallit or hard drive has perished with age’. Or similar.
I hadn’t unplugged anything so I assumed hard drive.
Maybe the time to reformat it with Ubuntu and if that doesn’t work replace the hard disk?
My Ubuntu disk isn’t working on it, but I think the disk is faulty. Can’t afford a hard drive, I don’t think.
I’ve sent you a couple of DMs so as not to clutter up this thread…
Wonderful post that I hadn’t read before! After 3 gestational diabetes pregnancies (the first 2 diet managed the 3rd insulin) I’m now high risk / pre diabetes. The most amazing change to my life has been the LCHF diet (low carb high fat). Basically you cut out (or majorly limit) all carbs (rice /potatoes / bread etc) and eat lots of fresh veg / salad, protein and fat (ie stop being scared of cheese / butter / full fat dairy etc). I was a tiny smidgen under being classed diabetic after my 3rd pregnancy but after going very strictly LCHF for about 6 months I lost 12 (or was it 16 - can’t remember)kg and my HBA1C went from dodgy to totally in normal range. I’ve never eaten so much cream / butter / cheese and all the yummy stuff in my life - never felt liek I was on diet as I felt satisfied and like I’d had a ‘treat’ every meal after years (since a teenager) trying to eat low calorie and always being hungry and all the knock on / cyclic dieting issues that brings. The research has been astounding in terms of results for type 2 diabetics (who for the last 50 years have been told to eat lots of carbs and no fat each meal) and now they are showing similar positive results with other health conditions as well.
ETA if anyone is really interested in the science I’m happy to look up some of the research articles on this subject as it is a really exciting area of nutritional science IMHO>