What I would add to Caroline’s useful advice is that I found using a spoonful of bicarb and a spoonful of citric acid to clean the loo worked just as well as bleach!
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Thanks for the tip! I’ve given up buying all the endless cleaning stuff. I mix washing up liquid and white vinegar and put it in an old spray bottle but bicarbonate is also my friend!
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I don’t buy any either these days. White vinegar, bicarb, citric acid and washing soda (not all together 
) seem to work in one combination or another for pretty well everything. In the “old days” washing soda was used for washing up and laundry and it’s brilliant for getting rid of caked/burned on grease…
Citric acid? Do I find it next to white vinegar in the supermarket and does it have a very different french name? Would love to add it to my repertoire
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I haven’t seen it in a supermarket - I buy these things a kilo at a time on line! I think you can get acide citrique at LeClerc though at least. If it’s food grade you can use it in making fresh lemonade or in certain wines too. The best place to get it in “the old days” was home brew shops until people started using it to cut heroin so it went under the counter, I understand…
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You can get it in supermarkets, in the cleaning stuff aisle - Briochin do it, also bicarb, fullers’ earth etc. You can also get it in brico shops and bio shops.
You run a strict (rough) regime chez toi Graham 
Our fosse has functioned fine in the fifteen years since we bought the house but it has seen better days, and though SPANC seems to be dormant around here I’ve been planning to do something about it for a few years. I got an étude des sols done about a month ago (€500ish) and their view was that while the fosse itself was OK, and sized correctly the tranchees d’epandage had disappeared 
I was keen on a micro station but they were a bit sceptical due the ongoing maintenance. Or the cynic in me wonders if they’ve a mate that renovates fosses but doesn’t do micro stations. Also I hadn’t realised that micro stations also need a filter bed, albeit a smaller one than a fosse.
It looks like a new bed and getting everything shipshape will cost around 10K. (though everything around here seems to cost €10k).
Anyway, I need to approve their report which they will forward to SPANC, so I’m pausing before pulling the trigger.
Thanks Veronique I recognise that mark. Though ordering it online is not a bad idea!!
Peter, I remember this from infant school, if I recall, each sheet had printed on it, ‘now wash your hands please’ the IZAL factory was in Chapeltown ( near Sheffield) I’m a South Yorkshire girl…
Yes Dawn, it was pretty useless stuff.
Great as tracing paper though…
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Me too 
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Angela, I’m a Barnsley lass, what about you? 
Sheffield! Not that far really…
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Barnsley, the St Tropez of South Yorks.
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Indeed…
Neither abrasive nor absorbent, as us kids at school said when we complained about it.
Suprmarkets sell ‘Phenix’ washing soda. under €1 for a box, sprinkle a pinch in with washing-up liquid = bubbles galore.
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