Tag Archives: sankey trailer

Sunday 27th July 2014 – NOW HERE’S A THING …

coffee machine working les guis virlet puy de dome franceI actually had a coffee percolator running here – all 850 watts of it – and it’s the first percolated coffee that I’ve ever made here with my electrical system. We are definitely making progress here.

WHen I turn the clock back to 2008 and the abuse and insults that were heaped upon me, all behind my back – in a public discussion forum by a so-called friend of mine when I talked about running a microwave oven here, well, the coffee machine draws the same current as a microwave and run for about the same length of time. I’m totally convinced that a microwave will run here and if I can find a cheap second-hand one as a test bed, I’ll be giving one a try.

Mind you, I did have a problem with the main circuit breaker tripping out as it has done on a few other occasions too. But this time, I was there when it happened and I could see exactly what was happening and it’s left me with a bit of omelette sur le visage. When I set up the system originally, I had a 600-watt inverter here. Consequently I wired a 75-amp circuit-breaker into the system, which was more-than-enough. Since then, I’ve installed a 1200-watt inverter and I seem to have … errr … forgotten to uprate the circuit-breaker.

Of course, 75 amps is the equivalent of about 950 watts and when I have the fridge running and a few other things besides, then a 850-watt coffee percolator is expecting rather too much.

Apart from that, I had a nice lie-in this morning, until 10:45 too and about time. And after breakfast I had a few things to do and then after lunch and the incident with the coffee machine, I did some shopping on the computer to buy the stuff for the Sankey Trailer and also some ink for the Hewlett Packard printer that I inherited. And that wasn’t as easy as it sounds either. I tried about 4 different cards before Paypal accepted one of them and to my surprise, it’s the one from the little rural bank here. None of the multinational cards word work.

I should also have ordered a new circuit breaker or 6 while I was at it but I forgot.

Anyway, that’s the end of the weekend and I’m back to work tomorrow.

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Friday 25th July 2014 – WELL TODAY DIDN’T GO ACCORDING TO PLAN

With the late finish last night it was something of a later-than-usual start.And this was interrupted by the boulangère with today’s bread. She’s going to be spending the weekend making jam and so seeing as how she seems to know what she is talking about, I took her to show her a tree and some fruit growing thereupon. She considers that it’s small plums and there’s no reason why I can’t make jam with them – but not for a while yet until they are ripe.

Back here I was sidetracked again with some research and so it was quite late by the time I made it outside. First job was to pick up all of the scaffolding that I’d dismantled yesterday and stick it over the fence into my garden.

Once I’d done that, I went up on the scaffolding and attacked the woodwork, putting the second coat of preservative on where I’d done the first coat yesterday.

I also attacked the bolts on the Sankey trailer with the angle grinder but this was where things went wrong and I ended up spending the rest of the day dismantling the angle grinder to find out why it keeps on stopping. It’s not been right for a while.

The brushes were worn and there’s a wire with a bad connection, as I discovered after I dismantled it. And I hadn’t finished it (and not by a long way either) at knocking-off time.

Up here later, I fell asleep watching The Naked Gun. I’ll see it again tomorrow and fall asleep in a different bit.

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Thursday 24th July 2014 – SO DESPITE THE LATE NIGHT …

… last night, I was still up at something like the correct time. And we had the usual procedure this morning of breakfast and then work on my website until midday. It was interrupted by a phone call from Rosemary – it’s nice to have phone calls from friends.

When I went outside, I went up onto the scaffolding in the beautiful weather and sloshed a pile of wood preservative onto the wood in the roof – the bits where I did the first coat yesterday.

While I was up on the scaffolding I untangled the mooring wires for the wind turbine. There’s only one attached to the wall at the moment and over the passage of time the other three have become tangled. It was a complicated manoeuvre involving a 4-metre lath of wood and a garden rake.

kwikstage scaffolding rear of house les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis afternoon I started checking over the rear wall of the house, slowly making my way down the scaffolding, dismantling it as I descended. I’ve arrived at the level of the roof of the lean-to and so I sloshed a pile of wood preservative on that too and I’ll do the second coat tomorrow.

I’m at the stage where I need a couple of buckets of mortar for the wall of the lean-to – some of the mortar that i did in the summer of 2012 needs some attention.

That’s tomorrow’s job and I finished off my working on the Sankey trailer. Of course, with it being ex-British-Army from the 1950S and 60s it’s a mixture of AF and Whitworth nuts and bolts. I have all my AF spanners but I’ve no idea where my Whitworth stuff is and so it wasn’t easy. I’ll have to use the angle grinder tomorrow on that. But the chassis isn’t as bad as I thought and even a manual wire brush cleaned it off quite well. I’ll still get the wire brush on the angle grinder to do it properly.

After knocking off, I watched The Spy Who Shagged Me, the same film that I tried to watch last night. And tonight I fell asleep in a different place and woke up in a different place too.

One day I might get to see all of it.

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Wednesday 23rd July 2014 – IT’S 02:40 …

… and I’m still awake. Serve me right for crashing out for an hour after I finished work earlier this evening. And that’s something of a surprise as I was in bed well before midnight too.

No rain or anything to wake me up so I slept right through and after breakfast I carried on with my journey around Lac St Jean and the Saguenay Fjord.

guttering down pipe rear of houseles guis virlet puy de dome franceOutside later, I finished off the guttering.

It was too much like hard work to set up the big electric SDS drill, and so I had a good go with the bigger Ryobi Plus One drill. I was quite impressed because once I put a new battery in it, the Ryobi did the job quite well. So that enabled me to fit the brackets for the downpipe and then fit the downpipe.

It’s all now glued into position and quite solid too as you can see.

kwikstage scaffolding rear of house les guis virlet puy de dome france
With having the scaffolding in place where I want it, I put in a higher row of planks so that I can reach up along the chevron on the outer edge and I put a couple of coats of wood preservative on there and also on the end of one of the roof beams. I’ll wallop some more on there tomorrow too.

I spent a delightful hour or so tidying up the concrete hardstanding, stacking everything neatly where it should be, so now there is plenty of room to move about there too without tripping over anything.

rotten chassis sankey trailer les guis virlet puy de dome franceNext, and as it happened, the last job for today was to look at the Sankey Trailer. I ripped out the flooring and ripped out the electric wiring so that I could have a good look at the chassis.

It’s not actually as bad as I thought it was. What I’ve been mistaking for rot on the chassis is about 10 layers of flaking paint. I reckon that if I attack it with the wire brush on the angle grinder and remove all of the loose paint and the loose rust, I can get down to the bare metal. I’ve a pile of dark brown metal paint that is suitable for painting over rust so a couple of coats of that should sort out the chassis and the inside of the trailer body. For the outside I have some yellow hammerite-type paint to match Caliburn.

For the flooring, there’s all of that that we fitted on a caravan chassis all those years ago – some heavy-duty 30mm planking. That should make a really good floor for that.


Once I’ve fixed that, I can go and collect some concrete from the quarry to finish off the job here.

And we finished the day in sunshine too. Even better, there’s a bright clear sky tonight with not a cloud in sight. Is summer coming back?

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Tuesday 8th July 2014 – I’VE BEEN A BUSY BOY TODAY

And I had a restless night too. I can’t remember where I was or what I was doing but it was certainly something quite active and I was quite worn out when I woke up.

So after breakfast I cracked on with the website until about midday, with an interruption from my solicitor in Belgium.

Downstairs I stripped down the water filters as nothing is getting through to the water tank. As I expected, the filters are all blocked up and so I cleaned them all out, fluhed them through and refitted them. Now they are working fine – I can tell you that because we’ve been having further rainstorms today.

I keep saying that I ought to adopt a regular programme of cleaning the filters – every four months or something – and that way they won’t block up. However I keep on forgetting to do it.

Next task was to reorganise the car parking. I’ve moved the Kubota and the Sankey Trailer over so that I can put Caliburn on the concrete. This is why I’ve done the concreting and it certainly does look better.

black and decker portable air compressor les guis virlet puy de dome franceTalking of the concreting and parking the cars, this is something that I bought on my travels. I’ve been looking for an old-type portable air compressor for ages. In the old days farmers used to have air compressors with detachable air tanks so they can charge up the tanks and take them off down the fields to blow up tractor tyres and the like.

I’ve never found one, but in Belfort I found this. It has just an 8-litre tank and runs off a 270-watt motor which, as you know, is perfect for my low-wattage electrical system. It’s light enough to carry around as well.

I changed over the plug to a British plug (I use British plugs and sockets here as the plugs are fused) and gave it a try. It charged the tank in seconds and inflated the wheelbarrow tyre in an instant. I’m well-impressed with this if it keeps this up.

I also changed the plug on the 500-watt vacuum cleaner that I bought the other week and tried that out. That works fine too.

I’ve been tidying up in the barn too, and then I set to to pull down the ivay and rip out the weeds and brambles and so on from the back of the house so that I can fit the scaffolding and get up there to do the guttering. I’m hoping to have the scaffolding up this week so that I can crack on with that.

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Wednesday 11th June 2014 – THIS PLACE REALLY IS THE PITS

inspection pit les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd it is too. This is the start of the inspection pit just outside here.metal

You can see how it’s being built. There’s the plastic lining and the breeze blocks that will be built up, with the reinforcing metalwork in the corners.

You’ll also notice the sink in the far corner. Anyone who has ever had an inspextion pit will tell you that even in the best circumstances an insection pit will be infiltrated by water and we were forever baling out the pit at Davenport Avenue in Crewe. This way, the water will sink into the sink and I can pump it out with one of those rotary pumps that you fit on an electric drill.

So Terry came round this morning and we went stright off to Montlucon and Brico Depot. A pallet of 70 breeze blocks went into the trailer, along with another 18 breeze blocks with the round corner-holes for fitting the reinforcing metalwork. 88 breeze blocks – cost €105. And isn’t that an improvement on €2.14 plus VAT of 20% per block?

Back here we unloaded the trailer. And I’ll tell you this – the Kubota is a marvellous tool for this. No messing about – we left the van and trailer at the top of the hill and ran a shuttle with the Kubota and Sankey trailer. Three trips and we had everything exactly where we wanted it. That’s better than carrying the blocks one at a time down the hill. It’s a superb little thing.

We lined the pit with the plastic and fitted the sink, and then Terry mixed the concrete while I was down in the pit tamping down the concrete and fitting the breeze blocks. And once more, the solar panels powered the little concrete mixer to perfection. It’s amazing what I can do here with my solar panels.

That took us up to 18:00 and so Terry went home and I tidied up, and emptied the beihstuhl. We’ll put some more concrete in tomorrow and then build up the walls.

However, that depends on the weather. We’re having a thunderstorm right now.

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Tuesday 10th June 2014 – I MIGHT HAVE GUESSED …

… and indeed, to such an extent, that I told Terry that it was bound to happen.

And I was right too!

It’s been a year or so since the farmer who rents the next-door field has been here to bring his cattle to graze in here. And so today, for the first time that we have deposited a pile of objects in the lane in front of his gate, guess what happens?

Yes – the aforementioned farmer brings his cattle. It’s absolutely typical.

So this morning I was up early and went to St Eloy to buy the breeze blocks, but I came back empty-handed. In Brico Depot they are €1:15 each and I was prepared to pay a little extra for the convenience, but when Cheze wanted over €800 for 300, then they can forget that. Terry and I will be off to Brico Depot tomorrow to buy a van-load.

digging inspection pit les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo this is what we have been doing today. And while it’s a little short of the Empire Pool, it took about 6 hours of digging out with the digger, a pick and a shovel.

It’s not actually a swimming pool, but an inspection pit. All of my life I’ve been working on cars by lying on my back in the mud underneath cars on jacks, on axle stands or even propped up on bricks. But now that I’m settled here and can’t see myself moving on from here, I am going to treat myself to better working conditions.

I’ve always promised myself a pit, and I’m going to have one.

And this is it.

We had the power barrow here today as the floor is about finished in the Sankey trailer but i had to nip into Pionsat to buy some petrol. And while I was there I had to help a couple of young Dutch girls who were confounded by the petrol pump. Any excuse to practise my Flemish.

After Terry left, I had another shower and called it a day. Until the farmer came round.

But here’s a thing. And who says it never pays to complain?

You remember the Brico Depot incident the other day involving the trailer? Well, I left a polite but firm not telling them what I thought about my experience. And today, I had a phone call from the manager, something that I never expected. He gave me the usual platitudes, even telling me that he had rung round a few other branches to see if anyone else had a trailer left over.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that he’ll put my name on a trailer whenever the next batch is issued, and you can’t say fairer than that.

-3

Friday 30th May 2014 – I’VE BEEN DIGGING AGAIN

Yes, and here’s a new development – I was actually outside working at 08:30 and I can’t remember if that has ever happened before.

Terry had a day off – he had another job to do and of course, paying jobs with folding stuff always take priority over anything else, and so I was on my own.

I started off by picking out all of the large stones from the pile of earth that I had excavated on Wednesday evening, And then I started to shovel up all of the earth into the trailer to empty at the precipice.

takeuchi mini digger les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’d dug out the soil a little too deep so it seemed, and so I ended up by having to backfill it and then driving up and down everywhere to flatten it all down.

Considering that it’s my first job with the digger, it’s not come out too badly but Terry says that he’ll smooth it off on Monday. Yes, we’re a long way from being finished.


clearing out parking place kubota B1220 mini tractor les guis virlet puy de dome franceThere was still plenty of time left and so I started to clear out all of the weeds from where I had parked the Sankey trailer.

By the time that I had finished , I’d cleared out quite an area and it looks quite good there now – quite an improvement. I’m going to park the Kubota there for now as I’ll be using the Sankey trailer for a while as long as the digger is here.

But with my early night last night, I had a good night’s sleep without any interruptions. Nerina wandered along too. I was in Crewe again at the Bus Station in the good old days when Crosville did the bus services there prior to the apocalypse of the mid-80s.

Each of the buses carried a notice of some kind and the notice had a glaring spelling mistake. I spoke to Nerina, who was working for Crosville, and it turned out that it was she who had written the notice. I told her that she should take more care about what she writes, but she had the air of not caring less about it.

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Wednesday 28th May 2014 – I’VE BEEN DIGGING …

… today. But not, as you might be thinking, with a shovel or a spade.

Just for a change today we had a nice day and I was up with the cock (but enough of my personal habits). And a little later, Terry came round. With his van. And the big trailer. And with our mini-digger, because if you remember, we own a mini-digger between us.

While Terry was sorting himself out I was rescuing the very sad Sankey Trailer from out of the undergrowth and coupling ut up to Caliburn, and then we set to work.

A few years ago I had someone from the football club pay me w avisit with his digger and he dug out a couple of ruined houses so that I could make a car park. He hadn’t done it exactly as I had wanted but he had been and gone while I was at the shops and so I wasn’t going to stand in the way of anyone who can work at that speed.

takeuchi mini digger les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnyway, the upshot of all of this is that Terry brought the digger around and we carried on where the prevuous guy had left off.

It took much longer than I anticipated as firstly I wanted to save all of the big stones to build a nice stone wall, and secondly, we had to keep on taking Caliburn and the trailer up to the precipice and shovel the soil out by hand.

Terry left at about 16:30 and hopefully he’ll be back to help me carry on on Friday, and I had a play around with the digger as I had never used one before. And I had an enormous amount of fun and I can certainly see a pile of uses for this.

I was all hot and smelly afterwards and even though the water was only 32.4°C in the solar shower I had a shower as I certainly needed it.

I crashed out for a while afterwards and then had a long chat with Rosemary on the phone. She needed a little cheering up.

So tomorrow is a Bank Holiday and I’m having a Day of Rest.

But it was sad to see the state in which the Sankey Trailer finds itself. The floor is dropping out of it and the chassis is rotten. It’s not got long for this world.

-4

Saturday 16th June 2012 – I HAD A DAY OUT TODAY.

In fact I went to Montlucon.

And even though I had a late-ish start I was still out and round and back earlier than usual.

The impetus was that you my remember me receiving a text to say that my new front door needs picking up, and if I didn’t get a wiggle on I would lose it. So offI went to pick it up.

It’s not very substantial at all, being just a sheet of double-glazing with a wooden frame around it, and it’s not going to be used for ages yet. But the reason why I chose it when I did, for those of you with short memories, is that it’s the same style as the windows that I bought for the house and the range was discontinued at the end of March.

The fact that it was the cheapest double-glazed door has nothing whatever to do with the argument, of course.

My luck was in too. At the Amaranthe health food shop there was some soya cream that had gone past the sell-by date and so they were giving a carton away to each customer. That will do very nicely for a mushroom and onion fried rice later in the week.

At at the rubbish shop (NOZ, for the benefit of the foreigners) they were selling a load of flavoured rice milk at just €0:75 a litre. There’s a nice long sell-by date on those and so of course there are now none left in the shop.

Almond-flavoured rice milk on my breakfast muesli – that has to be the way to go.

dammi multi vitamin fruit drink noz montlucon allier franceAnd Dammi if I didn’t find some of this on sale at NOZ as well.

It’s a multi-vitamin, multi fruit drink. And I had a good look at the list of ingredients and, sure enough, it contains vitamin B12. being a vegan as you know,
I have lots of issues about my vitamin B12 intake so I’m always on the lookout for different food items that might contain it.

And with a name like this, it ought to be good too!

It was piping hot too – hottest day of the year for me and so I really fancied a swim, but I had left my swimming trunks back at home. Never mind – Auchan was having a sale and so for €5:00 I treated myself to a pair of new ones.

I took the plunge and went to the Centre Aqualudique at the back of Montlucon. I’d heard a couple of good reports about it.

And it was certainly a far cry from Neris-les-Bains – tidal pools, a fast-flowing current, bubble-massage seats in the pool. And many more people there than at Neris so there was much more to see.

Ohhhh yes – I still chase after the women. The problem is though that at my age I can’t remember why.

€5:00 admission though – and that’s quite a difference from €3:20, and nothing like as intimate. I’ll just have to save the Centre Aqualudique for special occasions such as midwinter when it’s far too cold to be at Neris-les-Bains.

At the Brico Depot I bought 4 demi-chevrons and 3 sacks of sand. And you might be wondering why. The demi chevrons because I want to put shelves up in this cupboard downstairs and I want to do it the next time the weather is bad, without having to wait for a trip to the sawmill for the wood.

And the bags of sand?

There’s some sealing joints that need to be made on the roof of the lean-to that I fitted earlier this year. I’ve no sand here and so I need to dig out the Sankey trailer, change the wheels, trundle down to the quarry, load the trailer, bring it back here and bag up the sand.

With having the sand here I can have the job finished before I’ve even changed the wheels on the Sankey.

But I hate the people at Brico Depot. I loaded up Caliburn and then went off to pay for it “you need to bring your vehicle here” said the girl in the office. Walking 20 metres was clearly too much for her.

And so I brought the vehicle to the door and she came out – and then started chatting to a fork-lift truck driver.
“When you can spare me the time, if it’s not too much trouble for you” I said, and so she shrugged her shoulders to the driver and slumped over to me to check my load.
Yes, the staff at Brico Depot needs a collective smack in the mouth. It’s just like being back in Belgium and how I hate that country.

Back here I sat down to watch a film and the next thing that I remember was that it was 20:00. A long time since I’ve crashed out like that too.

And for the football we watched a team of bouncing Czechs pole-axe their opposition to advance to the next stage of the UEFA Nations Cup.

-1

Tuesday 14th February 2012 – IT WAS A PLEASURE …

… to wake up this morning with a temperature of 13.5°C up here in the room. It’s been a while since I’ve had a temperature like that.

Mind you, what wasn’t a pleasure was being woken up by a phone call at some ungodly hour of the morning. However, it did concern work so I can’t complain too much I suppose, even if it did get me off on the wrong foot.

heavy snow 2012 LES GUIS VIRLET puy de dome franceAfter all of that, I went to beat the bounds of the property. As you know, we had a right caning of snow through the night and I wanted to see what the weather had done to the place.

The answer is, as you might expect, that I’m properly snowed in and I shan’t be going anywhere for a bit. Luckily I had the foresight to leave Caliburn up at he top of the bank

As an aside, you can see the Sankey trailer and the Minerva, and also the old orange central heating tank that Simon gave me to use to store biofuels in.

And while I was checking up on the house, I had a brainwave, And it’s so simple that I’ve no idea why I never thought of it before – and I’m kicking myself for having suffered like this these last couple of weeks.

And so I dashed off for a rummage in the barn.

In the apartment in Brussels I had a small white kitchen table with two drop leaves and I remember bringing it down here. That had to be around somewhere and eventually I found all of the pieces.

I brought it up into the attic and assembled it in the room, and laid all of the kitchen stuff on it. It’s now making quite a useful kitchen worktop up here and I wished that I had remembered it earlier.

This afternoon I didn’t manage to do very much as I had a whole series of phone calls one after the other, and so it was pretty much a wasted day. Still, there will be other days.

Tea was baked potatoes and spicy beans, cooked in the oven. This was an excellent buy, this new woodstove.

But the temperature outside just now is astonishing – minus 1.6°C. That’s over 10°C improvement from last night. If that kind of temperature transforms itself into a decent daytime temperature, I might even have some water tomorrow.

And not before time either – I’m now reduced to melting buckets of snow.

-2

Wednesday 4th January 2012 – TODAY DIDN’T WORK …

… out as I had wanted it to do.

Forgetting to switch off one of the alarm clocks didn’t help much, for a start.

But nevertheless it was about 10:00 when I finally surfaced.

As part one of the plan, I watched one of the the films that Marianne had bought for me for Christmas. I’m a big fan of Louis de Funes and have a great many of his films, which I can watch time and time again.

But I’ve had loads of difficulty trying to track down one of his films that, to my mind, is by far and away the best film that he has ever made –  La Folie Des Grandeurs.

It concerns de Funes as a Spanish nobleman who runs foul of the Queen of Spain. Apart from the legendary “towel in the bath” scene, it also contains the immortal lines –
de Funes – “tell me some little flatteries”
Valet – “senor is the greatest Spaniard who ever lived”
de Funes – “that’s not flattery – that’s the truth. Try again!”
Valet – “errr … senor is very very handsome”
de Funes “that’s better!”

Anyway, Marianne tracked down a copy for which I am extremely grateful, and I sat and watched it. and I’ll be watching it again … "and again and again" – ed.

But at lunchtime, Terry rang up. He and Rob were working somewhere and they had run out of concrete. So that involved digging out the Sankey trailer and setting off for the quarry. He just had the sand/stone mix and so we had to go to St Eloy les Mines as well, and that took most of the afternoon.

So much for my plans to tidy up and do some paperwork.

But the tyres on the Sankey are thoroughly perished and they need to be changed before it goes anywhere else. You can’t haul a tonne or two of sand and gravel on tyres like those.

So this evening was quiet – I read a book. And that’s really it.

But going back to Marianne’s I do remember one evening sitting down to watch La Grande Vadrouille, another de Funes film in which he stars with Terry-Thomas. It’s another one of my favourites and Marianne had bought that for me as well.

And as I was getting the film ready to watch, Marianne was idly surfing through the channels and what should be on the TV but La Grande Vadrouille?

Coincidence or what?

-2

Wednesday 9th November 2011 – I BET …

… that you are fed up of hearing me talking about this wall.

Well, so am I, if the truth need be told, but not long now. Even as I speak, I’m sitting on the scaffolding planks doing the last row that I can, and there’s just about 90cms underneath that that I will have to do from a ladder.

But that can’t be done until I’ve moved the scaffolding, and that can’t be done until I’ve mounted the wind turbine (I don’t half do some weird things around here) and then there’s a strip that I can’t reach from the scaffolding – that’s going to be a ladder job too. 

I’m likely to run out of sand tomorrow and so rather than spend all of this time getting out the Sankey trailer, what I’ll do is simply to go to the quarry at Montaigut with a dozen or so sacks and bag it up myself there. That’s much more sensible, I reckon.

But I can’t believe that I’ve used so much sand. There was more than a trailer-load here before I started. 

At about 17:40 it became too dark to work and so,by the light of the solar lamps around here I started to tidy up at the front of the house. I’ve been pulling up weeds and putting them in the brazier that I bought the other week. When they have dried out I can have a bonfire.

There’s piles of other stuff that can go on the fire as well. High time I had a tidy up.

But it’s all getting to be quite exciting around here just now.There might even be a roof on the lean-to before long and won’t that be progress?

Ohh – and remember the thumb that has a lime burn on it? I’ve hit it with a hammer today. It’s not having much luck, is it?

-1

Tuesday 8th November 2011 – I’VE NOT …

… been feeling myself today.

“And quite right, too” I hear you say.

And I think that some of it has to do with shock. Shock of being wide awake and compos mentis, or rather, as compos mentis as I can be, long before the alarm went off. And that’s not something that happens every day either.

And breakfast was interrupted by a phone call – seems that there’s a panic down at the footy club and so I had to sort that out as well.

kwikstage scaffolding pointing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceWhen I finally made it outside, I had to reposition all of the planks on the scaffolding to get to where I need them for the next round of pointing and once I had done that, I could carry on.

For some reason, this has taken longer than I expected and I don’t know why.

I’m also on my last bag of sand and so I’ll have to go down to the quarry this week and get some more. That means pulling the Sankey trailer out of the undergrowth,which should be exciting.

But where I am now is the last bit of the pointing that I can do on the scaffolding. The rest will have to be done off a ladder.

And so before I take down the scaffolding, I’ll have to put up the wind turbine on the side of the house. That’s going to be exciting, trying to get that up on my own. And it’s complicated too as because of the roof overhang,

I need to do some engineering to get it to work.

And when that’s done, and the scaffolding is down, I can fit the roof on the lean-to. If I can get that far before the end of the year I shall be well-impressed.

I’ve come a long way this autumm. 

-1

Wednesday 3rd August 2011 – Well, I’m exhausted this evening.

I had another early start for a change and then attacked the web site. I’ve almost finished the Halifax pages and it won’t be too long before they are on line.

After that, seeing as the weather was miserable, I attacked the Sankey Trailer. That’s now empty at last, and I’ve fitted the new bracket for the jockey wheel. That meant drilling the chassis, seeing as it’s a heavy duty bracket and doesn’t fit into the holes of the lightweight one, and the huge inverter, a LIDL 300-watt electric drill and sone decent bits (stepping up from 3mm, 5mm, 8mm, 10mm) made short work of that. But the problem isn’t really the bracket – the jockey wheel just isn’t strong enough for it. But never mind – there will be one on one of the old caravan chassis that I can use.

After lunch I set about cleaning out the room that is over the bread oven in the lean-to. Full of tiles, dust, straw, all kinds of stuff in there since God knows when. That took a while and I’m now on the way to building a pile of wooden shelving to go in there. I’m going to store in there everything that won’t be spoiled by rats – such as engine oil, paint, all kinds of things like that. It’s high time I had a go at getting my storage sorted out.

So that took until about 18:30 when I ran out of easily-available wood. What I did then was to move the Sankey trailer into its new home. And I rather wish I hadn’t because you have no idea how heavy it is, and it’s all uphill as well. I finally got it to move and then I realised that I couldn’t let it go as it would roll back down right into Caliburn. A Sankey (these are the old British Army Land-rover trailers in case you are wondering) weighs about half a ton and that is blasted heavy going uphill on your own when you have a pulled muscle in your shoulder, I can tell you. But it’s now in place and I had to go and lie down for an hour afterwards. It’s a long time since I’ve hurt like that.

This evening I’ve been surfing the web. Shopping on IKEA Montreal, Walmart Montreal, a Solar Panel shop in St Laurent, and a few other places besides. I’m having to do all of this on my own of course, the way things have turned out, but it’s still exciting all the same.

With regard to a mobile phone, that scam company never got back to me, as I suspected that they might not. I was looking on eBay for a triband phone for North America but the prices are absurd, and then I saw a battery for the ancient Nokia 6110 that is hanging around here – just £2:49 plus 35p postage. What I’ll do is just pile loads of credit on my French mobile number and use that with the Nokia. It would have been easier with a proper phone and a proper phone number but there are some things that you just can’t do remotely.

One thing that I realised years ago, and I can’t ever remember why I keep on forgetting it, is that at the end of the day I just have to be self-reliant, do what I can do myself, and not lose any sleep about anything else.

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