I am pleased that when we moved here we got our landline installed (Orange) and put on liste rouge at the same time. Not one single scam call in well over 10 years.
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I’m quite intrigued by this landline of which everyone speaks…
If you lived here, you wouldn’t be, John! Mobile connections are achieved by hanging out of the window 
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I have found the transcribe feature of Google translate (I’m sure their competitors all have similar features) a godsend in these situations. It often does a better job than my ears/ brain in not just translating the french to English but translating the garbled ‘noise’ into actual words, I assume because it’s trained to listen for and pick out the actual words in the general sound. You can replay as many times as you like, line by line if need be, until you get a translation of the whole thing. I try to do my own translating wherever possible not to get lazy, but in cases like this it’s incredibly useful.
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I had the sameproblem in Bretagne, my 500 year old house has one metre thick solid granite walls and the FREE engineer who called one time to sort out the internet also commisserated with solid stone walls and lack of mobile phone signals ashe was affected personally too. I used to have to go upstairs and open a window to talk to anyone! The reception down here is a little better but I try not to have much to do with mobile phones if I can help it and always give my landline number when required.
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I wouldn’t be without one, can’t bear mobile phones, you can never hear anyone and the screen goes off after a few seconds. I remember having to use public phone booths out in the middle of the village end of the 80’s before we got a landline in France and never had enough coins.
Or moving to a particular sweet spot in the garden !
I’m genuinely curious as to why this would trouble you. Not at all challenging your right to be troubled 
Because I like to see what is happening and have no idea of how to get it back again to a screen. Due to personal circumstances, owning a mobile phone was not an option previously until after I was widowed and my son bought me one from the supermarket for use in case the car broke down or I needed a neighbour’s help. I don’t pay anything for it, two hours for free and I never make calls. I just find people glued to phones very sad, what happened to the art of good conversation?
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You can change that so that it doesn’t go off or stays on for a longer time, perhaps a question to your son to change the settings for you.
I am a long standing Orange customer. I signed up for the list rouge when it was free, I know that, at one time, it was subject to a fee. What spam we get comes mainly on our mobile. But not too much. I’m careful about sharing my mobile number or indeed the fixed one, I block suspect calls on the mobile toute de suite. I agree with the advice already given. If in doubt block it. Genuine callers will leave a message or send a text. A friend recently signed up for a Sosh internet+mobile contract. They offered a fixed line number as part of the package. A real no-cost option as the fixed “line” is actually VOIP.
Gus
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I just this app on my phone and it flags spam numbers and allows you to flag numbers that it doesn’t yet know about. It works quite well.
I installed the Orange app. After also setting ‘silence unknown callers’, yesterday’s entries in the recents list now look like this… with red symbols. Fairly reassuring.
Clicking on the blue i reports that the first call is “telemarketing”. The second call is “Malicious potentially”.
thank you, I will ask him when I see him next.