Gotta agree with Simon, I can’t take Le Depeche too seriously, even though my husband was recently on the front page !! But I do have a soft spot for all local newspapers and think they are as important as local shops, markets, schools etc for preserving an identity. Always look forward to reading them for the little gems you can find. I remember one in Lorraine had a two inch square somewhere on the back page after the school football photos and new babies titled “World News”.
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The Ariège section of La Dépêche recently had a front page story about someone being caught by an average speed camera!! Honestly…I couldn’t put it down…
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once you have gone you have gone!
But Ronald I think that you fear dying alone without the tears
and tenderness of family to comfort you.
Odd subject but interesting…we all face the same finale.
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You should read the Sunday Post (DC Thomson, Dundee), if it still exists - a compendium of gems
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Not so; but I feel very English, and that is where I would like to take my last breath and be scattered.
It still exist-my parents get it every Sunday and have as long as I can remember. Oor Wullie and The Broons-still make me giggle.
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One of my earliest memories, Mam reading me the Broons and Oor Wullie Sue, amazing how things ‘stick’ 
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And got an annual every year. My Dad (a Glaswegian and 90 this year) read and loved Oor Wullie and The Broons as a child as well.
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I am a big fan of the Broons and Oor Wullie. Do you know the wonderful Wee McGregor? I bet your father does!
You are quite right about most SF members living in quiet rural spots. This distorts their view about what is happening in urban Britain, Holland, America or wherever they happen to come from. Much as it does for French rural dwellers when they consider their own cities.
As it happens I have always chosen to live in cities - the bigger the better - and cannot for the life of me see any great difference between Dublin, Paris, Berlin or Toulouse in the sense that cities are vibrant, changing, exciting, cosmopolitan and above all young places where everything is in continual flux. The exact opposite of that quiet rural way of life that so many immigrants from N Europe seem to aspire to.
Coming back to your point: the recent ‘problems’ and ‘incidents’ in Toulouse may have made the television news but, frankly, for someone who has lived here for 35 years and who was brought up in that quiet provincial backwater - Belfast - the fact that a few kids burnt a few cars and demonstrated their misery in the streets for a few days had no incidence whatsoever on the other 99.9% of residents.
If we were living in the 1960’s you’d possibly have a point Simon - but we’re not, thankfully! We live in a connected world be it rurally or in a city - therefore no excuse for not being well informed about what’s happening around us or anywhere else on the planet. It’s all a matter of how people choose to inform themselves - cities can be some of the most lonely and isolated places imaginable with the people in them utterly ‘distorted’.
Totally go with the rest of your post !!! 
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Agree with a lot of that Simon, never felt lonely sailing alone, but arriving somewhere, I knew no one, in a busy place, could be, a very lonely experience 
Yes Simon our rural lives are filled with different things and those things include keeping in touch with what is going on in the world around us.We use our time in different ways but it is less dramatic.
So so easy to become lonely and isolated in the city. Every one seems to be running around and having no time for life itself.
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Living in the country feels like living in a bubble where you are detached from the rest of the world.
perhaps!
Coming from London which is another kind of bubble…ready to burst.
You are not sure Tim are you about your life here in France? But you came here
for a change and you possibly miss UK,
…if you choose to be 
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That is true too…
My place is paradise!
Almost…just take away the verbose paperwork and I am there!
Don’t miss the UK and would happily move to the US or New Zealand if the wife would agree BUT what happens with the kids will ultimately dictate what we do and I would guess we will end up splitting our time between different countries.
Children grow up and move on. Life adapts. I have two children who live and work in London and they are both glad that I live here in rural France as I am much more accessible than if I’d lived in south west or north east England or my third choice of the Welsh borders. My other son is in Australia so it’s pretty irrelevant where I am located in Europe.
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Yes children do have their own lives.
And I am sure that they want you to live yours to the full.
We have French cats who roam the vineyards in summer and keep cosy inside in their
beds and baskets during winter.
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