Tag Archives: les bonnes affaires

Saturday 6th July 2013 – DAMN AND BLAST!

I went to Commentry today to do my shopping – the first time for I don’t know how many months. And we had two of what can best be described as disasters.

Firstly, there’s a shop there called “Les Bonnes Affaires” – one of these surplus shops that sells overstocks, bankrupt stock and so on. I’ve bought  … ohhh … tons of stuff from there and it’s all been useful too – something of a paradise for me.

But I won’t be buying anything from there ever again because there’s a notice on the door – “Fermeture Definitive 23 mars 2013” – yes, closed down for good over three months ago. That is definitely a disaster;

The second thing is not really a disaster – it’s more of a calamity.

Bricomarché has been selling a range of wood stoves and I’ve had my eye on one of them – it’s a wood-burner with oven and back boiler, exactly what I want for downstairs to heat, cook, and to boil the water for washing and heating.

Every time I’ve gone into the shop I’ve been eyeing this oven and thinking to myself “one day you will be mine”

But damn and blast!

Bricomarché has changed supplier and that type of model isn’t in the new range. Of course, Brain of Britain hasn’t made a note of the manufacturer and of course he asked the staff of the shop but none of them could (or would) remember who it was.

Now I’m well and truly snookered.

So after another exciting dream I was up and about in what was the most glorious morning of the year so far (and it held throughout the day too which was a complete surprise).

I didn’t do much in Commentry (there wasn’t much to do in all honesty) but I did go to Neris-les-Bains, the swimming pool was indeed open, and I had the best swim for absolutely ages.

I really felt the benefits of that too.

This evening I went round to Marianne’s. It’s been 6 months since Bill’s death and so a group of us had a little party and get-together in his memory.

She had found a bag with all of Bill’s drawings and paintings, and we were allowed to choose one each as a memory.

I have many paintings here, all painted by people who have flashed in and out of my life at one time or another, and I was pleased to add a small watercolour of a beach scene to my collection.

Now I’m nice and clean (for once) and so I’m going to treat myself to clean bedding tonight. That’s pushing the boat out rather far, isn’t it?

But I’ll be on my own tonight because Strawberry Moose has gone on a sleepover.

And the dream? Ohh yes, I forgot. I was working in a big office and I had a pile of folders on my desk with post in that needed to be dealt with. The post was put inside the files ready to be worked, but some of the cases were quite complicated and I had had a few sitting there for months and I hadn’t told anyone about them. I’d just learnt that I had been transferred to another office immediately, which meant that these cases had to be abandoned and would be inherited by another who would immediately identify my misdeeds and wouldn’t my name be mud? I was in something of an awful panic about this.

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Saturday 12th November 2011 – I’M GOING …

… to bed in a second.

Yes, I’m thoroughly exhausted and I don’t know why. Probably the early start this morning had something to do with it.

Up with the alarm waiting for a phone call for this photo safari thing, and it turns out that I had not been patched in to an earlier e-mail circular and so I’d missed the point of this trip out. But anyway it didn’t take us long to do what it was that we had to do.

motorised hang glider commentry allier franceThis afternoon, seeing as how the weather was so beautiful I went to Commentry to do my shopping there.

And while I was in the car park of the Les Bonnes Affaires I was buzzed by one of these motorised hang-glider things passing low over the town. I was trying to think where he might have come from because there’s no suitable cliff in the vicinity off which to leap into the ether – unless he can run with his feet fast enough to make a clean take-off.

And I wonder what the rules might be about low-flying over a built-up area like this

badly sited solar panels commentry allier franceWhile I had the camera out, I noticed another example of poorly-sighted solar panels – over there on the roof of that bungalow. Facing full west they are, so they don’t receive a glimmer of sunlight until early afternoon.

These “become a producer of solar energy and sell to the electricity board” high-pressure salesmen have struck again. It’s hardly surprising that the industry has such a bad name when they do things like this.

I did make a couple of interesting discoveries though. And they were both at Bricomarche.

  1. they have a huge pile of water-resistant 8mm plywood at €39 a sheet of 2.5×1.25 metres. It’s expensive all right but it’s what I need for the roof of the lean-to and they do have it in stock.
  2. they also have the stove that I want for downstairs. A woodstove with an oven and with a central heating boiler built in – for €1499 too. That’s exactly what I want, because the sun will heat the water in the summer and I need something for heating it in the winter. If this does everything, it will be perfect. I can even do cooking with it as well.

But the real reason for going to Commentry was that with the weather being so nice I could nip down the road to Neris-les-Bains for a swim. It was glorious in there – the water just right and the pool quite warm as well. Shame it can’t be like that all the time.   

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire football club de foot us menetrol puy de dome franceAt the footy tonight the 3rd XI match was cancelled as the opposition couldn’t raise a team, and the first XI went down 2-1 to a team that they had played off the park, something of which they seem to be in a habit of doing

I’d tell you much more about the game but enough of this for now. I’ve fallen asleep twice already while typing as far as this, and if I don’t get a move on I’ll be ……..THUD THUD

…….ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

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Saturday 2nd July 2011 – AND SO, AFTER …

… my day off yesterday and my new plans for the rainwater harvesting I went to Commentry today and bought everything that I need.

Cost me an arm and a leg again but I ought to be getting used to this by now.

And on the way home I thought of yet another potential improvement. But I’ll worry about that later.

And while I was in Commentry I spent a small fortune too – a lot of which went on toys.

Well, you might remember that I bought an eccentric sander for my workshop a few weeks ago. And today, LIDL was selling off its stock of sanding discs – 30 in a box and all for €1:00 a pack.

At that price I had to clean out the store as I’ll get through a pile of them when I’m body-filling. There were a few other toys as well and it all adds up.

One thing I did do was to buy some ready-mixed bread mix. My baker is on holiday and so when I cook my pizza on Sundays I can experiment with making bread. This ready-mixed stuff should make it easier.

And what I didn’t do is spend any money in Centrakor or Les Bonnes Affaires – and that must be an event worth recording too – it’s probably never happened before.

The swimming baths at Neris les Bains were crowded but it was all good fun. So hot was it that the sides of the baths were opened to the air. And I had to wait ages for my private shower – there was a queue.

A report on the other new toys – the SatNav and the new electric coolbox from Tuesday.

  • The satnav doesn’t display the speed at which I’m travelling and doesn’t have an audible speed alarm.

    That’s a major issue. It’s not half as good as the LIDL one, wherever that might have gone to. But apart from that it does everything else that it’s supposed to.

    And strange as it might seem, when I switched it to American English I was reunited with my old friend the Lady Who Lives in the Magellan SatNav that I bought in Canada. Yes, it is she. It’s just like old times now in Caliburn, with me, she and Strawberry Moose.

    I’m half-expecting Casey – the Chrysler PT Cruiser from Canada – to turn up next.

  • The coolbox is impressive.

    An ice-cream left in there for over an hour was still unfrozen – and that was inside the cab of Caliburn with the outside temperature of over 30 degrees.

    The frozen stuff had defrosted after 5 hours but was still pretty cold, and so I suppose that this is doing what it is supposed to.

    I’ll wire that permanently into Caliburn now and they can live happily ever after.

Tomorrow morning I’m helping Marianne at Roche d’Agoux, there’s the brocante at Arpheuilles-Saint-Priest, – first of the year, and then there’s the new water system to fix.

Good job I had the day off on Friday.

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Saturday 28th May 2011 – The first thing …

… that I remembered this morning was the usual cacophony of bells and whistles and the like. Second thing was the boulangère outside. And I hadn’t left her any money and I wanted to see her to cancel the bread while I’m away. Ahhh well.

And so after a leisurely morning of not doing much it was off to Commentry. And no OSB in the DiY place either. That’s a blow. I’ll have to use one piece of anything that I’ve got around here and then get the rest in the UK. But they did have a bundle of coving stuff there – end of series and the like – all for €3:00 and so that ended up in the back of Caliburn.

At the Bonnes Affaires I bought another one of the huge casseroles with lids, and that will be the beichstuhl for outside, when I come back.

And at the swimming baths at Neris something quite unusual happened. I was there before it opened and in the queue in front of me was a young kid. When she got to the ticket office to pay, the attendant asked her how old she was.

She was 11, so she said, and the age limit for an unaccompanied child is 12, so the attendant turfed her out. The kid burst into tears and so, feeling quite sorry for her, I found myself saying to the attendant “that’s ok – I’ll keep an eye on her”

When I was the stepfather to Roxanne we used to go to the swimming baths every week. I taught her to swim and to do lots of other aquatic things too and we used to have a great time there. It was something that I really missed after I split up with her mother – I was such a good dad to her, I reckon – and so with this girl we had the same kind of fun in the swimming baths. I taught her to do somersaults underwater, to swim on her back, and then we did a quick 12 lengths of the pool, and it’s quite a long one too and I was shattered. I have to say that I haven’t had so much fun for ages. It’s what I really miss, doing something useful and productive.

But just imagine that in the UK!

simca aronde commentry allier franceAnd while I was at Neris-les-Bains I encoutered another old car from the early 1960s parked up outside the swimming baths. The Simca Aronde was one of the most popular cars of its size in France during the 50s and early 60s, selling almost one and a half million examples, and there are still quite a few about here and there.

This is a P60 model, launched in 1959 and manufactured up until 1964. This one here is in surprisingly good condition for its age and looked really nice.

Tomorrow it’s the final matches of the season. We have Pionsat’s 1st XI, having blown their season last week, playing against Manzat who are already relegated. That’s at 15:00. That clashes with Marcillat’s 1st XI playing Commentry, but Marcillat’s 2nd XI are playing at 13:00, also at home, and so I reckon I’ll go there first and make a good day of it.

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Tuesday 17th May 2011 – I now have a new beichstuhl

beichstuhl home made composting toilet les guis virlet puy de dome franceand here’s a photo of it in ill its glory – minus the tongue-and-grooved cladding of course.

Did I mention that when I was at Les Bonnes Affaires the other day they had a couple of 20-litre aluminium casseroles? And just €9:99 too. I thought that I would try one because being a casserole it would be watertight, it has a tight-fitting lid and it shouldn’t be prone to rusting.

That so-called stainless steel bin that I bought from IKEA is rusty already and leaking, after less that a year and so it needed to be changed. At least this gives me an opportunity to redesign it.

It isn’t finished because I can’t find the hinges for the top part, and I can’t find the clips to hold the seat on, but they’ll turn up somewhere sometime.

Such delightful things that I talk about on my blog.

I started that after I’d been working on my voyage around Cape Breton Island, but I didn’t get a head start on it like I wanted. Another succession of cold canvassers, and the guy from Pionsat Patrimoine who doesn’t understand the meaning of the sentence “I’m busy and I don’t have time to deal with these photos right now” – mind you, the time it took him on the phone, I could have done it.

Tomorrow I’m going to strip out Caliburn, including removing the seats, and see what’s in there, and see if I can’t find that SatNav (although I’m not optimistic about that). I need to get ready to go to the UK.

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Saturday 14th May 2011 – Wonders will never cease

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire biollet st maurice puy de dome ligue football league franceAt the football tonight, Biollet St Maurice put two past Pionsat’s 3rd XI tonight as you might expect, but rather astonishingly, Pionsat replied with FIVE (or was it 6? I lost count). That doesn’t happen very often, does it?

Mind you, Pionsat were bolstered by Cedric and Sebastien from the 1st XI, playing their first competitive matches for many, many months following long injuries.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire biollet st maurice puy de dome ligue football league france Rusty and short of match fitness they may well have been, but they made something of a small difference to the team. The others on the pitch somehow picked up their game and were doing things that they don’t usually do.

But that’s the difference between “being beaten before they start” and “having loads of encouragement and support from the other two teams”. The first and second XIs ought to help out the 3rd XI whenever they can – something that I’ve been saying for years.

And there’s no football anywhere tomorrow – not even in the Allier. It’s cup final day, so it seems. What am I going to do?

This morning that solar panel guy came to see me, and he stayed for about 5 minutes. That suits me. I have no sympathy for canvassers and cold callers.

This afternoon I went to Commentry for the shopping and apart from the usual stuff I made some puchases for the water filters. Chatting to the guys in Bricomarche they had some fibreglass flyscreen stuff at €7:50 per square metre – much better for making a sand filter than a nylon stocking. The Centrakor came up with a pair of those anti-spatter frying pan covers that will be ideal for cutting down and also some stainess steel conical tea strainers, fine for conical puzzolane-filter housings that I’m building.

The Bonnes Affaires came up with some aluminium mesh gutter covers that they use for keeping leaves out. I can make good use of them too, especially at the reduced rate of €1 for a packet ot 0.8 square metres (I bought three). They also had some big casserole saucepans – 12-litre or thereabouts in aluminium for €9.99. I bought one of them to see if it’s any good for making an enclosed composting toilet.

And remember my posting of a few weeks ago about some interesting or exciting news that might be happening? Well, can tell you something but instead I’ll leave you to stew for a few more days.

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Saturday 16th April 2011 – One thing you have always wondered …

… is “what happens to the shop-soiled and damaged goods that LIDL can’t sell?” I can answer that for here in France – it all goes to “Les Bonnes Affaires” in Commentry. One of my favourite “end of series” shops – it’s had a major makeover and a huge pile of the junk that’s been in there for years has all gone. It’s now packed full of LIDL special offers in damaged, damp or torn packages.

The lady who runs it doesnt have a clue about pricing. Some of the stuff is 3 times as dear as it was when LIDL sold it. But other stuff is for nothing, like the battery-operated LED motion detectors at €2:99 and the 12 Volt LED lights with MR16 fittings (the ones that I use here) at just €2:00 each – I cleaned out the stock of them, I can tell you.

It was a really profitable half hour in there, I can tell you.

So this morning I did some tidying up in here and threw away a load of stuff that I no longer need. And then moved the Sankey trailer and dumped it in the lane (and now watch someone want to come past for the first time in a hundred years)  before going off to Commentry for the shopping. Apart from the usual, I bought 6 tomato plants for €2.30 and 3 aubergine plants for €1:90. I hope that I will have better luck with the aubergines and tomatoes than I have had previously. And the LIDL in Commentry has been enlarged – and about time too – it was far too small.

Swimming at Neris was next on the agenda. The water was lovely and a good warm shower finished that off nicely. Back home I gave Lieneke some of my mint cuttings (anyone else want any? I’ve a load)  and at 20:00 went to watch Marcillat’s 2nd XI play, seeing as there was no footy at Pionsat this evening.

Franck, the Pionsat team coach, was playing central defence but he couldn’t save them from a right spannering – 6-0 thay went down and they were lucky to get nil as well. They really are awful. Within the opening 30 minutes Marcillat had had to use one of their substitutes and he was booked twice and back in the dressing room. An astonishing performance.

But there’s footy tomorrow afternoon at Pionsat – the 1st XI are playing St Bonnet. Pionsat beat them 4-0 down there and they really do need to run up a cricket score tomorrow to keep their promotion hopes alive. We shall see.

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Saturday 17th July 2010 – I’ve not done much today

After having had to work on a Bank Holiday and on the odd Sunday just recently I’ve been taking it easy.

A leisurely morning entering the stats into the computer and then at lunchtime going to Commentry for shopping. Aldi produced s few tins of metal paint to replace the one we used on the caravan chassis a few weeks ago and Centrakor – one of the cheapo shops produced a shower curtain. But as usual the other cheap shop – Les Bonnes Affaires – produced the goods – a huge pile of plastic storage containers at 10 for €1 so I bought 30 of them. And then I can sort out all my nails and screws properly.

Most of the day was miserable and it didn’t lighten up until late afternoon. The water didn’t get hot enough for a solar shower and the electric water heater didn’t click in. But never mind.

But while doing the statistics it was interesting to see the figures of solar energy received for the first day that the automatic heater ran. Bank 1 gave an impressive 153.3 amp-hours and bank 2 gave a record 130.7. So now that I have somewhere to dump all of the electricity then you can see that my system is capable of generating almost 285 amp-hours of electricity – that’s over 3KwH – in a good day. And I’m quite pleased with that. Next task is to put up the remaining wind turbine. That should be even more impressive.

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Saturday 22nd May 2010 – I took the plunge this afternoon …

… and went swimming in Neris les Bains. For the first time ever it was warm in there – an air temperature of 26 degrees – so of course they left all of the doors open so a draught of air was blowing around. That won’t half cool down a wet body.

Just the usual suspects of course – no swimming galas or races or anything so it was something of a let-down but at least I’m now clean (in body, anyway).

So this morning I heard all of the alarms go off but badger that – I went back to sleep. I woke up … errr … some time later. So after breakfast and doing some work up here until 13:30 I went off to Commentry. Nothing exciting in LIDL or ALDI or the Intermarche either. Centrakor turned up trumps with a pair of plastic flip-flops for 2 Euros. Just the thing for wandering around swimming baths and muddy football dressing rooms. In Les Bonnes Affaires, the cheap shop, I spent 10 Euros, much of which went on interesting items of food but they did have a plastic stopwatch in there – good value for 2 Euros. I don’t wear a watch but I’ll need something for when I’m refereeing. That’s something useful.

On the weather side the Heat Exchanger recorded 63.9 degrees, the highest total this year and the highest since August 29 last year. In my room the temperature is currently 24.6 degrees – and at 01:30 too! It touched 26.4 degrees during the course of the day and that’s the highest since 9th September. The weather is certainly looking a lot more like it.

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