A very happy christmas to all the forum contributors, workers, Avant, HJ himself etc.

We will have a trad english xmas here in France on xmas day despite the slightly unusual way, to us brits, that the french do xmas.

They have their big christmas meal tomorrow night, on christmas eve, usually mountains of sea-food, foie gras, roast turkey, pork or venison, cheeses. dessert etc all floating on gallons (litres?) of red wine.

Then they spend christmas day recovering and go back to work on what is to us, boxing day!

We've already had one xmas dinner last saturday with my local brit motorcycle club at a brilliant brit-run bar restaurant not far from us in an old mill next to a lake.

www.barrestaurantpontsamoel.com/ ( ok it's a bit of advertising, but they just bought the place, they are nice hardworking people and they do good food and accomodation - sorry!)

I'm back on Weds, will be driving a new MAN TGX - oh what a joy that will be :-/

A tip for you WR, take a 40torx screwdriver with you, remove the three screw bolts that hold the headlight units in place (two in the front behind that flip off trim piece, one behind the little flip off panel above the cab steps) and grease the threads before refitting every 6 months or so, it might be 2 years before a single bulb blows in either headlight housing and those bolts will have rusted solid in the captive nuts behind in th meantime.

I would if it was going to be my allocated vehicle for the foreseeable future but, it won't be and everything that needs doing will be done by the local MAN dealer. I got very close to going home the other day when the vehicle I was allocated for the day looked like someone had fly tipped rubbish inside it, I dread to think what some peoples houses must be like if the inside of their allocated trucks look like that.

see folks, this is the home of utterly useless information...

Oh GB, all information is useful if a person has use for it.