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Well, I've just had the hard sell from the white van "traveller" man (Thats PC for a word that rhymes with Hippo!). Gave me a demo. of how his cleaning stuff worked, sprayed a half square metre of house and gave it a scrub and it came up really clean. Under all the cr*p from years of neglect and dust from lanscaping the garden, there is a nice creamy colour that lurks beneath the off white that is there at the moment (paint oxidation I think). Anyway, after lots of hardselling, in easy French, I say I will think about it.

He initially wanted €300 for doing the pinnion (yeah, right!) I asked how much for the front as well or even the whole house (it does need doing). The figure suddenly changed to €400 for the lot! Last year we were plagued by folk and the best price we were offered was €300 including the roof but as the heavy groundworks for the garden / rockery hadn't been done, there was no point!

He wouldn't give me his card, it's the only one he had (rodent detector now into overdrive!!!) I ask him to write down his details and if I want his services, I'll ring him.

Well, it was painful to watch! This lad must have been about 20 but he struggled to copy down his (mobile) number and Morlaix 2600 (His spelling was Morlix) in capitals, copied one letter at a time from the card he had. All the time he kept his hand over the card so that I couldn't see the address, revealing just the bit he needed to copy. He asked me when I would call him, today? Tomorrow? He said he had the stuff in the van and could do it now......I said I didn't know when. He realised that I wasn't going to bite and off he went. He is obviously only in the Morlaix area for a couple of days before moving on.

So...be aware folk!

Dick xx

I'm so pleased we don't get them here but living close to Geneva where it is presumed that everybody is rich, these ruddy people abounded. They never had business cards so you got a posh one obviously!

All these 'roofers' suddenly become tree surgeons (ha ha) in the summer months, the unemployed from Marseilles were everywhere (funny how there were no unemployed from anywhere else, yet it was 5 hours away ), peoploe selling overpriced cleaning products for the blind and just about everything else you could possibly think of, like the dodgy (rather large!) lorries coming down my private drive shared with one other house when I suddenly appear and oh would you like any potatoes? I should have said show them to me! Probably filled with some unfortunate's telly, furniture and jewellery!

Dick - they all live in rue madelaine in town and are travellers. They all have newish white vans, not many with dept 29 on but none are signwritten and they are all swarthy looking. Before we sold our trafic last year, I would get four or five lots per day every day for weeks on end knocking on the door asking to buy it - no way and now its gone they leave us alone.

As for pressure washing, we have an industrial one and evenbuying that and using just water will cost much less than they are offering it for plus they do not issue proper devis or factures and if they are on the black and there is an accident to them or you or they are dobbed in by neighbours - you carry the can I am afraid.

How do the blind know if something is dirty?

And ya moan about my spelling!

peoploe?