A week ago I received a nasty email from someone connected with the person who is my employer at the music school. The contents were rude, abusive and untrue - also rather threatening.

A couple of days ago I went shopping and one of the shop assistants in the course of conversation said she had heard I was retiring. I asked her if she could tell me the source of the information and she said she had read it somewhere but couldn't remember where. Today I met a neighbour who said the same thing. He was able to tell me where he had found the information and passed the source on to me. It turns out that in the journal of our Communaut? des Communes, published last month there was a two page article about the music school. It was done in the form of "True " or "False" paragraphs. Most of it was a very unpleasant insinuation that I was responsible for spreading rumours about the closure of the music school, the person taking over, the fact that I am apparantly totally inflexible etc. This is not true. I can tell from the style that it was probably written by the author of the email. It was quite cleverly worded - I couldn't accuse them of libel but these are powerful people locally and, as I have now discovered, bullies.

The interesting thing was that I had vaguely wondered when the next journal would be published as I usually read it but I had not received a copy recently. It is remarkable that my neighbours and the rest of the Commune had all received a copy but not me! I checked at the post office and was told the jounal had not been distributed via the post but that the powers that be in the commune had got someone to do it for them. I can only deduce they were instructed not to put a copy in my letter box.

All this has come about because I have resigned form the music school where I was being asked to do an impossible task. All but two of my pupils have said they are staying with me and this has obviously upset my employer. But they have good reasons for not wanting to continue their lessons under a different system - and a system about which they were not informed and then mis-informed. In addition my employer simply docked 16 hours per month off my pay without asking me if I was agreeable to a change in my contract and she just gave those hours to someone else. Now in point of fact those hours were for "coordination" which she accuses me of not having done but which she prevented me from doing. Come what may, if she had asked me to sign an alteration to my contract so that a new coordinator could be appointed to prepare the new school year I would have agreed. I just wanted out. But as she didn't I went to see her and asked to be paid for those hours. After all no employer can just do that.

However, the article must have been written before that little episode and in it it is clearly stated that a new coordinator has been appointed as from May. The email I got last week accused me of running a campain to persuade the parents stay with me. In fact it was the parents who asked me to set up privately and I have certainly run no campaign. However the music school seem to have run a public campaign of insinuation which has no dobut been read not just by the parents of my pupils but by the whole of the commune.

After the email I decided to take legal advice and I will be doing so. I have also decided to cut any communication with members of the association which runs the music school to an absolute minimum. I think I just have to sit tight and wait for the dust to settle.

Sorry about this long rant but I just had to get it off my chest.

So sorry to hear this. Aquarelle. How unbelievably vicious! I hope you get some good advice and can set the record straight with the local community who seem to have been sold a pack of lies.

So sorry to hear this. Aquarelle. How unbelievably vicious! I hope you get some good advice and can set the record straight with the local community who seem to have been sold a pack of lies.

Couldn't put it better. How awful for you, Aquarelle...

I feel the same too, hope things settle and that the locals realise the truth....

We have just had to move Plato onto a special diet to help manage his diabetes as it looks like his Kidneys are also on the way out too. Cost per week ?17.90 + insulin + syringes. Now he is a wonderful cat and we've had him since he's been 7 weeks old and he's over 14 now, but our once "free to a good home kitty" that ate reasonably priced cat food is now an expensive member of the family!

However saggy and a bit loose at the seams we still love him!

Yes - it gets expensive around this stage. Rosie is (we think) around 18 or 19, and has been on meds for kidney and diabetes for a year now. But we do our best for them, don't we ?

Sorry to hear about Plato, jod. Hope the medication continues to work - and that the price doesn't increase.
Know how that sort of thing feels - been there several times.

I am really missed off (change the first consonant as I dobut if the letter p would be allowed.) I am in the middle of assembling umpteen emails and other documents in preparation for seeing a lawyer about the nasty work situation I find myself in.

Today's post bought another problem. A long long document to be filled in so as I can claim my pension and asking for multitudinous justifications - pay slips from years and years back, certificates to prove I have worked here and there, my social security card - though they have my social security number - and umpteen other things that either I haven't got or if I have they are boxed in the loft. Plus duplicates of things I have already sent these imbeciles. And they ask me to send all this as soon as possible.

If any of you are thinking of moving to France - don't - unless you have a mind like a filing cabinet and the mental endurance of a triple marathon runner. This is supposed to be my summer holiday. My sister is arriving from Australia in less than three weeks and I've a pile of things to get ready for her visit and my partner is really under the weather healthwise.

I can't cope and for the first time in a very long while I am really depressed. I am not normally a tearful person and I don't give up easily but I am pretty near the limit today.

Thanks Dawnmc71. A bit of commiseration is a great help and my morale has moved up a couple of notches. Sorry to hear Spain is as bad. I wonder where the best country in the world is from the point of view of administration???

There probably isn't a best place... if there's little red tape it could quite easily mean that there isn't any administration anyway

All the best sorting it out.

Trouble with France and Spain though is there is a lot of red tape, and as a far as my brother in-law's experience of Spain has been at town hall level you never know what sort of red tape you are going to come across.

Thanks again for all the kind words. I can now take a few of the letter a's out of Aaaaaaaaggghh because I had a helpful telephone conversation with a very pleasant sounding lawyer - picked at random out of the Yellow Pages. I have an appointment to see him on Thursday. His French was clear enough for me to understand every word and his manner courteous and confidence inspiring. He told me exactly which documents to take, where to park and even gave me his mobile number in case I got lost. So I feel a bit better.

Thanks again for all the kind words. I can now take a few of the letter a's out of Aaaaaaaaggghh because I had a helpful telephone conversation with a very pleasant sounding lawyer - picked at random out of the Yellow Pages. I have an appointment to see him on Thursday. His French was clear enough for me to understand every word and his manner courteous and confidence inspiring. He told me exactly which documents to take, where to park and even gave me his mobile number in case I got lost. So I feel a bit better.

Thanks again for all the kind words. I can now take a few of the letter a's out of Aaaaaaaaggghh because I had a helpful telephone conversation with a very pleasant sounding lawyer - picked at random out of the Yellow Pages. I have an appointment to see him on Thursday. His French was clear enough for me to understand every word and his manner courteous and confidence inspiring. He told me exactly which documents to take, where to park and even gave me his mobile number in case I got lost. So I feel a bit better.

A very minor argh compared to most, but... I'm getting really sick of living at home I love my parents and have always been very close to them, but I feel like their constant scrutiny has taken the enjoyment out of everything I want to do. If I practice music, they complain that they always hear me practicing and never see me studying, that I need to rethink my priorities, that I'm deluding myself. If I study, they have to know exactly what I'm doing, and then I'm not learning material quickly enough, or rigorously enough. If I don't tell want to tell them what I'm doing, then they assume that I'm trying to hide from them because they'll disapprove. I know that they are only acting like this because they care about me, and that without their support last semester would probably have ended disastrously, but I feel like everything I do is being judged, and I feel horribly self-conscious all the time. So I've just stopped doing anything and spend most of my time moping... and then I get angry with myself for moping because I really have no right to complain... and then I mope more Oh well... at least it's only a few weeks until school starts again...

I am yet again the last person in the office. It's becoming a habit. I go home too tired to really play piano properly. The list of stuff isn't getting any shorter. I haven't got time to finish anything so it's all a bodge job, which of course takes longer to unscrew the next time around.

I suppose I *have* a job, so it could be worse.

Hope things will get better. It's not good on the long run to work until you are too tired to do something wich is good for you. I can only send my sympathy!

As you all probably know I got a job offer yesterday. Well the guy who decided to hire me has been told by his MD that the company is going to restructure and as a result the job offer has been withdrawn.

That is annoying as the refernce had just been sorted out bar 1 and I was basically just waiting to be told when I was starting and sign all the paperwork etc...

At this point in time I feel like I am unemployable, having not lasted much time in my last job and losing this job.