Barbara…
I have no idea… but, it is clear from your Posts that, for you, the past and the present are very much intertwined.
Your anecdotes are interesting, but you do repeat them on all sorts of different threads…where they (sometimes) do not seem to be relevant to the matter in hand.
When I first arrived…apart from painting which I did myself…then my first big job was sorting out my UK right hand drive car…(I knew nothing about siret numbers…) Much running around later and with newly delivered headlights I drove to my nearest garage…I currently speak only a little French but luckily for me the garage man spoke only a little English…On one of my visits there had been a massive storm and our commune had no electric for 2 days…He asked if my house had weathered the storm okay and I told him sadly about my fallen potatoe tree…(he sympathised) He fitted my headlights and also raised the window glass on the driver’s side as the electric window button had failed and I was sporting a sheet of plastic and sticky tape…He quoted me for the electric window button brand new from Volvo but said that he thought it was expensive and that I could no doubt find one cheaper elsewhere…I took my car for its controle technique (It still had just under 6 months MOT) and passed with a couple of advisories on tyres…so I went back to him for two new ones…If I had to leave my car there then his father gave me a lift home and picked me back up when the work was done…Him and his parents are an absolute joy and I will be a customer for life…x 
Honesty is the best policy… if only because, if one lies, one has to remember the lies… and it can (and usually does ) get worse and worse…as the lies mount.
If you tell the truth… there is no hassle… you don’t have to remember what you decided to say or do… you just relate what actually happened. 'nuff said 
I have always found you very polite, even in the face of untrue or not so nice replies or comments
Very sound advice Mark.
Thank you Harry for your comments
Seeing that there has been some discussion of Facebook, let me tell what happened when recently my laptop broke down and for a while I was without a computer and without Facebook. And so I decided to make friends outside social media but by applying the same principles.
Each time I go out into the street, I tell passers by what I have eaten, how I am feeling, what I did last night and what I will be doing for the rest of the day. I give them pictures of my family, my pets, and me doing some gardening and on holiday. I also listen to their conversations, tell them I “like” them, and give them my opinion on every subject I can think of… whether it interests them or not.
And it works. I already have four people following me: two police officers, a social worker and a psychiatrist.
Sorry for my warped sense of humour but I felt this discussion was getting a bit heavy
God your French must be good!
Had the police officers called for back-up…an Official Translator … perhaps…
Most people share that sort of information amongst friends. That seems to be misunderstood by many people. True, many FB conversations may be overheard by complete strangers, but there are simple to activate security measures to avoid that. I overhear conversations as I walk around supermarkets, sit on trains or walk down the street, that is considered normal and is Facebook any different to that?
No facebook is much like here.
Or do you disagree?
Why do you chat with strangers on here?
That is a very good point Barbara. On here I ‘chat’ with complete strangers including many that I have no shared interests with whatsoever. The vast majority of the people I know on FB are people I know. The only strangers I mix with there are those with very similar interests in particular cars, chateaux and boats. A lot of people who criticise FB, usually in a superior, sarcastic manner, either have no idea about how it can be used or used it badly themselves.
As I have said before we are all so different on here…our lives, our ages, our history and our interests.
By the way I love chateaux too…so many around here of course.
Facebook united us with old friends from London who moved to Charente so we now can spend time together.
Facebook also brought me closer to many people whom I knew from UK and we have bonded through
our interests.
Not so sure about all the baby pics and selfies…
But we are all different…that is why we bond and that is also why we disagree.
Is this site classed as so called “social media”? I really do hope not as I’m quite proud of having nothing to do with it, Arsebook, Twatter etc…
Exactly. You are happy to run down something that you admit to knowing nothing about. That I find impossible to understand, as is the need to attempt humour and superiority by inventing names.
I don’t think we can entirely blame Mark for Arsebook - the French do love referring to it as Fessebook, which tickles me I have to admit.
How the f¥#k do you know what I know about them! You are assuming wrongly
The big clue was that you wrote that you were proud of having nothing to do with it. I prefer to get advice from experts.
It’s still infantile and petty.
Are you deliberately looking for a fight? Not having anything to do with something is totally different from not knowing about it, I would have thought even you could see that, but it seems I’m mistaken.