Tag Archives: shower room

Saturday 25th July 2020 – I’M WHACKED PART III

We’ve been hard at it again today.

And still suffering the effects of yesterday because no matter what, I still couldn’t rouse myself out for the third alarm. 06:40 it was when I finally crawled out of bed.

There was the usual cup of tea brought to me, and then I carried on with paperwork and the like.

There was a group of us last night in a hotel, a conference or something like that. I ended up sharing a table with someone who resembled a girl from the radio. It seemed that at every meal I was sitting next to her which pleased me enormously of course. This slowly developed over the period that we were there. We were all on our own in a group, a lot of us, talking about spices and herbs. She had a huge collection of spices that she bought and she told us where to go to get them. She said that anyone who would like to could buy her a spice as a memento. I was immediately keen to go along and do this. In the end I found where she indicated the spice shop was but is was a 2nd hand record shop. I was looking in there at the records and found loads of obscure American records of the type that I’ve been recording of my own collection but this isn’t really getting my thing advanced. At some point I’d been talking to a couple of guys. This girl and another girl had said that they had been friends for 22 years and they can’t possibly have been work colleagues for 22 years because they weren’t much older than that so we were wondering if they had been friends or something. I made some kind of remark “it doesn’t matter if they are 22 years old I could still keep up”. I was with her friend at one particular point when a Ford Cortina Estate mark III gold came by, covered in patches of underseal and rust preventer, that kind of thing. I told her that I had a vehicle like that. She expressed surprise but wasn’t very interested. That reminded me that somewhere along the line I was with Nerina at one point talking about getting a new car for the taxis but for our own private vehicle would we be tempted to get something decent that we could use for a taxi if necessary and was that really a good idea. I thought that I’d like my taxi business to be bigger but only in a bigger town where there is room and scope without treading on people’s toes. But back to this story with the girl from the radio – I remember that they went off on an expedition somewhere leaving some of us behind. I was left behind and feeling very disappointed about this.

At another point in the night there was a question about scaffolding – being on scaffolding and what happens if a pole breaks or someone cuts one while you are on it. Terry told me about a system that he had where there was always a couple of wires to attach the scaffolding to various points somewhere so that if it did break the wires would snag somewhere and at least give some kind of temporary support while you scrambled down.

This yacht thing – there was more to it than that, including me buying a yacht for some reason. And I would love to know what “this yacht thing” was all about and what did I forget to record during the night.

After breakfast we collected our wits and the like and then headed off to Ingrid’s with the trailer. I managed to reverse that all the way down the drive at Daniel’s and drop it off there although the socket would benefit from a pile of easing oil.

Ingrid was pleased to see us and we had a long chat – to such an extent that Ingrid made lunch for us. We were there for quite a while.

Later on we went to Les Guis. I found a few things that we needed either for Rosemary’s house or for the barn and did a little more clearing.

One thing that I did was to place the pane of glass in the frame above the door in the bathroom. I bought that just before I was taken ill and I’d never had the chance to fit it. Rodents had been getting into the shower room and I wanted to keep them out.

That was actually the first constructive thing that I’d done down there. The ret of the time I’ve spent either clearing up or weeding. Having inspected the hole in the attic I injected a pile of expanding foam into it to block it up and I’ll see tomorrow if that has done the trick.

With the van all loaded up we went round to say goodbye to my neighbours but they were busy so we didn’t spend any time there.

Back here we crashed out for an hour or so and then I unloaded Caliburn.

After tea I had a look at a chair that needed fixing. I managed some of it with the aid of an electric drill that had a jammed trigger which was something of a complication, but the project failed because the sunken nut that I had found was too large for the hole. That’s a job for a wood file in due course.

Having had a shower and a clothes washing session, I’m now off to bed. Sunday tomorrow so a lie-in. And I’ve earned that too after this week’s efforts.

Wednesday 16th December 2015 – I WENT BACK …

… to my house this morning. And what’s more, Terry came with me.

Terry has no work on at the moment and I’m not in much of a state to do much right now, and so I made an executive decision (an executive decision being one in which if it all goes wrong, the person making the decision is executed) that perhaps we should go and do the tiling in my shower room. It’ll give Terry something to do, it’ll help me catch up with work at the house, and so on and so forth.

So that was what we did.

But it didn’t work out quite like that – for the simple reason that my shower room is very small. There wasn’t room in there for both of us and so after five minutes in which we had done nothing but get in each other’s way, I left Terry to it.

And we’ll go back tomorrow and do some more too because by about 16:00 it was far too dark do do anything.

But while Terry was tiling, I was tidying up on the ground floor. And you can now actually see the floor in there, a huge pile of stuff has gone out into the lean-to, I’ve sorted out most of the tools that are in there and so on, and now there’s actually a pile of room to move about. If I can do as well tomorrow as I did today, it will be quite impressive.

Of course, we’d parked the van in the little lane at the back of my house to unload it as there was so much to do, and so of course, not having seen the farmer for months and months, it’s today that he decides to bring his cows to the field, so we have to move the van. You could have bet your mortgage on that, couldn’t you?

On our way to my house this morning, we went into Pionsat. I have a huge pile of used needles from my twice-daily anti-coagulant injections and I need to dispose of them. The pharmacy seemed to be the best place to start, and he gave me a couple of boxes to put them in and take them … to the dechetterie.

And so we did. And there at the Council tip at Pionsat, a woman worker took the box off me and put it in a much bigger box of the same shape and colour, to join many other smaller boxes in there. Apparently, it’s what you do around here. We also went to the Intermarché for some bread for lunch, and I met Nada there. I haven’t seen her for ages.

But back to the shower room, I stuck my head in once or twice to pass Terry tiles, or trim something down with the angle grinder, but I haven’t had a really good look in. I’m saving that for tomorrow because although it will be far from finished, it’ll be good for me to be surprised – pleasantly, I hope. I’ll post a couple of photos too if I remember, but I won’t be posting a photo of the ground floor because it is rather a mess, even with it being tidied up. There’s still too much rubbish in there, although I’ve nowhere else to put it and I need to make some extra room somewhere – anywhere!

On the way back here, we were pursued down the lanes by Liz whose last lesson of the day at Montlucon was cancelled. She’d seen some nice Christmas trees and so after a coffee, she and Terry nipped back up to St Gervais to do the necessary. After all, with little people being around, a Christmas tree is essential.

So I’m off to bed for an early night. I have a blood test in the morning and I need to be on form. And I hope that my blood count holds up because if it doesn’t, I can see me in Montlucon on Friday having another blood transfusion and I’m becoming rather fed up of them.

Friday 31st July 2015 – I’M LOSING MY GRIP!

I’ve done something really silly today and I’m still bewildered as to how I managed it.

I was busy doing some electrical wiring when I glanced at the clock.

18:15! Blimey! The shops will be shut in 75 minutes!

So I quickly changed my clothes, leapt into Caliburn and head for the hi … errr … St Eloy.

The road down the hill from Montaigut was packed with traffic and I did wonder what it was all doing at that time of evening. But on the other hand, LIDL and Carrefour were comparatively empty. LIDL did have some 12-volt LED bulbs (it doesn’t now, of course) and Carrefour had some soya deluxe desserts reduced on special offer.

I picked up some cash ready for my voyage in 2 weeks time, and then drove home.

While I was organising a few things the stop-work alarm went off. 19:00.

What?

Yes, 19:00. It appears that it wasn’t 18:15 when I shot of to St Eloy but actually … errr … 17:15. D’ohhh!

I blame last night, though. I couldn’t sleep and I was still wide-awake and working on the laptop at 03:30. And with an alarm at 07:30, no wonder I’ve been feeling rather feeble today.

I had the usual sessions on the laptop and then after lunch, stripped off all of the masking from the door, fitted the air vents and wired in the socket at the head of the stairs on the landing so that I can plug the livebox in there. And that was where I was at.

But the air vents looks good in the door. The idea is that warm air heading up the stairs (once I finally have the fire going downstairs, whenever that might be) will go in through the vent at the bottom of the door, rise up through the shower room and out through the air vent that you might remember me drilling out all that time a couple of years ago. And that will stop condensation building up too.

So tomorrow, if the parts for this Hyundai haven’t come, I’m sure I’ll find some other things to do around the house. But do you realise – in 2 weeks time, I won’t be here?

But then again, I’m not all here now judging by my performance this evening, am I?

Thursday 30th July 2015 – HERE WE ARE THEN.

hyundai trajet diesel engine blocked waterway les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis is the engine of this Hyundai, with the cylinder head removed. And you can immediately see one of the problems.

If you look in the foreground of the photo you’ll notice that one of the waterways is blocked. And diagonally opposite in the bore of the cylinder is a little trail of rust. Water coming along the waterway is hitting the blockage and being forced out under pressure, right into the bore of number two cylinder.

My suspicion is that we are going to find that the head will be slightly warped. I hope that the new gasket will take that up.

damaged piston hyundai trajet diesel les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut there’s another major problem with this engine.

Look carefully at the crown of the piston in the foreground. Can you see how damaged it is? That’s either major impact damage or else it’s a severe heat seizure, and seeing as how there is play in the bore, I suspect the latter.

Apart from the play though, the bore isn’t too bad. It’s not scored or marked.

damaged piston hyundai trajet diesel les guis virlet puy de dome franceHowever, this engine is ruined. It’s not going to last long and with us having disturbed it, it’s probably not going to last even that long.

So what we are going to do is to replace the cylinder head gasket and patch it up with other previously-used components and then just drive it until it stops. 5 miles, 50 miles, 500 miles, who knows? But it won’t be doing much. And there’s no sense in throwing good money after bad

This is an object lesson for anyone – don’t buy vehicles off Ebay. This is about the seventh or eighth that I’ve encountered that has turned out to be a pile of scrap – a bodged repair job after major damage and quickly moved on.

There aren’t half some dishonest people out there.

So after an early night, I was up quite early having had yet another really good night’s sleep. And I cracked on with revising this blog that I’m trying to update relating to my voyage around Canada.

I must have written about 5000 words I suppose, one entry being nearly 1500 words. Clearly I don’t have anything better to do.

And later this evening, I replaced the door furniture on the shower room door where I’d varnished it.

But what a waste of time that this is turning out to be. This Hyundai has really p155ed me off, what with everything that has happened and what I’ve discovered today.

Saturday 25th July 2015 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

… that working late on a Friday night was exceptional, how about working on a Saturday morning too? Yes, I reckon that I didn’t even have 12 hours off.

shelob shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd I wasn’t alone while I was working either. I had company – or, rather, an interested spectator.

I don’t know where Shelob came from, or where she went back to, but she was certainly there while I was sweating away. And to be honest, I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a spider quite like this one before. The photo makes it look huge, but nevertheless …

suspended ceiling fitted varnished recessed lights fitted les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd I was there for a good couple of hours too this morning.

But now we have all three coats of varnish on the doors and on the shelves and it does look good in there. And all of the wiring is finished and the recessed LED lights are in place. And wasn’t it a good plan to buy that pile of recessed light fittings at Brico Depot? That works in spades, doesn’t it?

And you’ll see the LED striplight on the far wall. The bathroom mirror will be going under there when the tiling is finished. And that’s the next job, starting on Monday when I’ve done this car that I have to do.

Just as I was settling down, Lieneke came round for a chat and she stayed here for a good few hours. She was really impressed with the work on the house too – and so am I, it has to be said. It’s looking quite good so far.

But that diverted my attention and I’ve not done anything after that – just relaxed. Tomorrow, I need to press on with the radio programmes.

Thursday 23rd July 2015 – I DIDN’T GET …

… anything like done what I was hoping to do today.

For a start, I failed to beat the alarm clock this morning. I was all set to go to bed nice and early when someone with whom I needed to speak came on line. So I went for a little chat. And I would probably still be there chatting now had the battery not gone flat at 02:05.

So it was rather a bemused and befuddled Yours Truly who struggled out of his stinking pit this morning.

Of the computing jobs that I’ve been trying to catch up, I’ve finished one of them, which is a big sigh of relief. But another – tidying up the blog entries for my 2010 journey to Canada, I’ve hit the part where I was writing in shorthand with no photos, due to being out in the depths of Newfoundland somewhere. So with all of that, it’s taking much longer than anticipated. But to see where I’ve reached, just go to this link and work backwards. If you want to comment on any of the posts, do so on here.

And that reminds me – when I started editing this blog to correct the errors from when it was transferred here, I was having 10 and 12 comments a day regularly. Today, even though readership has tripled, the comments are now at about 10 or 12 per year.

Don’t be shy – if you have something to ask or something to say, then make a comment. If you are new, it won’t appear immediately until I’ve approved it, but that’s no reason to stop you.

After lunch I started to mask off in the shower room, and I’m nowhere near finishing that – that’s the problem with buying doors with small glass panels. And in any case, Rosemary rang up for a natter for a good half an hour.

And I had to fill in a few gaps in the woodwork – I did that by filling the gaps with wood glue and forcing clean sawdust in with a stiff spatula.

One thing that I had forgotten was to drill the holes in the bottom of the door so that cold air will enter the bathroom and prevent condensation when I’m taking a shower (whenever that might be) – anyway I did that today and that took me up to 19:25 when I knocked off.

And this shower room is never going to be finished – I have a car to dismantle on Monday now.

Wednesday 22nd July 2015 – I DIDN’T MANAGE …

… to beat the alarm clock this morning. It was a little more difficult to crawl out of my stinking pit this morning.

Still, I had breakfast and had the usual several hours on the computer sorting out a few things that have been hanging around for a few years. I also had one of these telesales people on the phone trying to sell me window shutters and I kept him on the telephone for 30 minutes.

After lunch, I attacked the bathroom ceiling and I can now say with complete assurance that it’s all finished. It didn’t seen too much trimming either, much to my surprise. Just a case of nipping off a couple of edges with a mallet and chisel.

I was half-expecting to have to trim down a full length of board, so no-one was more surprised than I was about how good the fit was. I couldn’t have done it better had I measured it up purposely.

The bathroom ceiling is lower than the ceiling on the landing so it needed an end-piece. A rummage around in the barn produced an offcut length of floorboarding that was soon cut down to size (I’m as impressed with this new circular saw as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin) and trimmed to fit, and then sanded off with the belt sander. And it’s come up a treat, that’s for sure, fits quite nicely and looks quite good as well.

I finished off the afternoon by tidying up in the bathroom and that’s almost completed. If I can finish that off tomorrow and do the masking off, I can start to varnish the ceiling. 3 coats of that and I’ll be ready to do the tiling.

For tea tonight I made a mega-red-pepper-and-lentil curry to keep me going for the next four days, and I’ve noticed that I seem to be overrun with ants in the verandah and the downhill lean-to. Where have all of these come from? Is it a coincidence that we had another brief shower of rain earlier in the evening?

Tuesday 21st July 2015 – I PASSED …

… the inspection today. Rosemary came by and gave the place her seal of approval.

And so she should have, too. I was awake long before the alarm went off, having my breakfast by the time it finally did, and then, fortified by a pot of strong coffee, I attacked the house.

The attic is tidier now then it has ever been since I have been living in it and there is no doubt about that. The rubbish has been taken out and the composting bin emptied and cleaned.

The bedroom had a good clean-around too and I even managed to bring a little order into the chaos that is the ground floor where I’ve been working. All the tools have been put away, the floor has been swept with all of the sawdust now in a tidy pile, and there are pathways through the tulips where one can tiptoe without breaking one’s neck falling over something.

I even managed to give some attention to the shower room, and I emptied and cleaned out the beichstuhl, even though it didn’t need it, but one can never be too considerate to one’s guests.

All in all, Rosemary was impressed and awarded me half a melon, which went down a treat for pudding this evening. She arrived at 14:00 and was here until 18:25 – some flying visit! I treated myself to a shower too, although I had to wait until 19:45 and the water had cooled down to a delightful 38.5°C – the temperature at 18:26 was a mere 42.0°C – not far off the highest that it has ever been.

I don’t mind visitors as long as I know that they are coming. It’s a good opportunity and incentive for me to tidy up and clean the place. And it does need it sometimes. I ought to pay much more attention to my accommodation.

But I’m surprised that I had the energy to do all of that this morning, seeing as I had been on my travels again. I was in a Ford Cortina estate (they aren’t half featuring quite regularly in my nocturnal ramblings these days) and testing the handbrake by the simple expedient of rolling backwards down a hill on this new housing estate and pulling on the lever. Of course, in this case the handbrake didn’t work and the car gathered speed. The houses at the bottom loomed up rather too rapidly for my liking and so I did a handbrake turn (with no handbrake, of course!) to pull up parallel to the kerb. A tabby kitten came out of the house right by where I was stopped and so I started to stroke it. Then the cat’s owner came out to see what was happening, and it was none other than a girl who has been previously described in these pages as “the one that got away”. Anyway, she invited me in for a coffee and we had a really good nostalgic chat about old times.

Monday 20th July 2015 – I HAVE NEVER FELT …

… so bad as I felt this morning.

There was no alarm call in the room this morning so I was quite surprised to be awake and sitting up on the edge of the bed at 07:40. But never mind getting up – the way that I was feeling, I was ready to crawl straight into the grave and I wouldn’t have cared at all. You would never ever have thought that I had had a really early night either.

Mind you, I had been on my travels during the night. Back in Brussels in fact, and I was back working at the EU which had somehow managed to transport its offices to Boulevard Reyers. I had a ground-floor two-bedroom flat somewhere in a traditional built-up area such as that on the bottom end of the Avenue Molière. Two-bedroom, it was, and a typical 1920s “3 pièces en enfilade”, but tidy as it might have been, the two bedrooms were under renovation so I had my double bed in the kitchen. This was rather inconvenient when I invited a young lady from the office back to my apartment to stay the night, but nevertheless, she came and stayed, and I was quite happy. Next morning, who should I bump into but Nina, a girlfriend from way back in the early 1970s. She grabbed me and said something along the lines of “now that I’ve got you, I’m not ever going to let you go again” – rather inconvenient seeing as how I’d invited the other girl to a rock concert that night. So I asked Nina if she fancied going to the rock concert, to which she replied “no”, which took a weight off my mind so that I could carry on with my plans, but Nina then said “but we can do something else instead” – and that threw me back into an even more confusing situation.

So with all of that, it’s no surprise that I was thoroughly out of sorts this morning.

Anyway, to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … after having an agonising couple of hours, I made a pot of coffee and drank it. And then I do have to say that I’ve never felt better after that. In fact I attacked a few things that had been built up for a while and dealt with them with gusto.

After lunch, I attacked the ceiling in the shower room, now that I have bought the tongue and grooving. And I was glad that I had had that coffee, because it was a struggle. I had to –

  • cut a few pieces with some fancy, intricate cuts
  • drill a large 60mm hole in one plank for the recessed light up at that end
  • rewire all of the lights
  • fit a batten to the beams under the suspended ceiling to attach (with some very long screws) the light cord switch
  • reroute a great deal of the wiring
  • wire in the 12-volt extension to the circuit that runs to the back of the wardrobe in the bedroom

And then I could start to fit the rest of the planks of tongue and groove.

Two more to fit and the ceiling will be finished, and even so, it was 19:25 by the time that I knocked off.

I’ll have to have a good pot of coffee tomorrow. I need to tidy up here because Rosemary is coming for an inspection, and she phoned me tonight to make sure that I hadn’t forgotten.

Friday 17th July 2015 – WE ARE NOT ALONE!

deer in field les guis virlet puy de dome franceI had a visitor this evening, and peering through the gloom I managed to take a photo of it.

A nice deer has come out this evening looking for food, or perhaps looking for Strawberry Moose – after all, it is that time of year and he does need to get back into practice seeing as how he’ll be off to Canada in about three or four weeks time.

I really don’t understand why anyone would want to kill anything as beautiful and graceful as this.

I was awake once more before the alarm clock, mainly due to the heat, and after breakfast I had another really good session on my wen pages. The trouble is though that the more I do, the more there is to do and rather than catching up, I’m falling even further behind.

I was driven out of the attic by the heat too, and I ended up wedged in a corner in the bedroom with the fan blowing full-on at me. Even then, it was almost impossible to keep cool.

After lunch I turned the house upside-down looking for some more tongue-and-grooving but that was completely unsuccessful. There is now no alternative but to go to Montlucon tomorrow and buy some more.

What i did do was to sort out the plasterboarding in the shower room ready for tiling and ready for finishing off the ceiling, and then to attend to some more outstanding bits of wiring. And that was where I reached at knocking-off time.

I finished off today by having a good shower – more to cool me down than to actually clean me off. And that’s me set up for the weekend now.

All ready for Montlucon, in fact.

Thursday 16th July 2015 – NO PRIZES FOR GUESSING …

… what was the first act this morning.

With it being rather hot up here, I went to open the window at the head of the stairs. And there on the windowsill underneath the window – well, I’m sure that you can guess what it was that I found.

The irony of it all is that I can see the windowsill from where I’m sitting. How I failed to see Cailburn’s insurance papers, I really do not know.

This morning I was up early once again and after breakfast I had another marathon session on the laptop and that took me right through until lunchtime. I edited a load of pages from 2009 as well as doing a few album lists from previous Radio Anglais programmes.

But I’ll tell you what – having seen the prices at which some of my CDs are on sale (one is on sale at €199:00) my CD collection must be worth a veritable fortune. And the irony of it all is that I doubt that there’s very much for which I’ve paid more than €10:00.

suspended ceiling shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter lunch I cracked on with the ceiling in the shower room. That involved drilling a few holes, sorting out the wiring a little better and so on, as well as having to find a few tools and things.

But I came to a resounding halt, mainly because I’ve run out of the tongue-and-grooving that I’m using for the ceiling and I’ll have to buy some more. I’m about 10 rows short, which is a shame. I’ll have another scratch around to see if I have any more, but I’m not very hopeful.

Rosemary rang up too – she’s planning on paying me a visit on Tuesday, and then Rob called. The head gasket has gone on his car and could I help him fix it?

Yes, it’s THAT time of the year again.

Wednesday 15th July 2015 – I’VE FINISHED …

… the flying shelf this afternoon.

flying shelf shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt took quite some effort and a pair of arms about 2 metres longer than mine, but nevertheless, after some considerable amount of ado about a great deal, I managed to do it. Strangely enough, the part that I thought would be very difficult was comparatively easy, and the part that I had expected to do quite easily was the part that took the longest.

However, looking for tools, nuts and washers was a considerable part of this too. But then that’s only to be expected.

It’s not as good as I would have liked – I can see several shortcomings in my work, but the design was good anyway. Just the execution was wrong and I’ll have to do better than this if I do it again.

But anyway, it looks OK if you don’t look too closely, and everything works as it is supposed to, so I suppose that that is something.

I was on my travels last night, visiting a football ground at a sports club in Crewe with a cement mixer – the lorry-based cement mixer thing. Someone connected with my family had connections there and they had ordered the cement, and meeting up with this person was the last thing on either of our minds. So I tipped the cement and when I tilted up the mixer into the vertical position, the lorry started to roll back. But someone from the football club grabbed hold of the bumper of the truck and hung onto it to stop it moving.

I was up before the alarm clock and so I spent a very profitable morning on the laptop doing some various assorted computer work, including finishing off a couple of radio programmes. I even managed to telephone the insurance company to have a duplicate label for Caliburn sent to me – which means that I will definitely find it now.

I had to go into Pionsat to buy some bread today for lunch, and also to try out the new bank card that I have received.

And tonight, I had a lovely warm solar shower that has made me fit for anything.

Tomorrow, I’ll be finishing the ceiling in the shower room, or at least, doing as much as I can.

Tuesday 7th July 2015 – THIS IDEA …

flying shelf shower room les guis virlet puy de dome france… about a flying shelf in the bathroom seems to work okay.

You can see how it’s going to work. There’s a bracket in the false ceiling (the false ceiling will eventually go over it) and from there are two lengths of threaded rod hanging down. At the moment the threaded rod is passing right through the shelves and held up with nuts, but there will be some captive nuts fitted into the shelves and the threaded rod will be cut to size.

The threaded rod will be covered by some nice stainless steel tubing and it will all look quite nice.

This morning we braved the heat and made it to Marcillat to record the radio programmes. Things went according to plan, except that Violette fell asleep and one of our 15-minute shows ran on for almost 19 minutes. She’ll have fun editing that down.

We went for a coffee and a good chat afterwards, and then I came home. I installed myself in the bedroom as 34°C in the attic was rather too much, but that didn’t work as I crashed out for a good hour – and I mean “crashed out”. And seeing as how I was in bed last night for 22:30, that was rather astonishing.

fitting bolt shower room door les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter lunch I’ve fitted the bolt on the bathroom door (not that we need it but still, you never know) and then I attacked the shelving. That’s all cut to shape and drilled out where necessary (it’s having a cable run through it to power things like shavers and hair clippers) and now varnished, as is the shelf that I made the other day.

And surprise surprise, I was actually working at 22:30 this evening. I put the first coat on before knocking off at 19:30, but when I went out to take the stats, the first coat was dry so I put a second coat on.

Tomorrow, I’ll finish the shelving (I hope), plasterboard everything in, and then carry on with the ceiling.

Monday 6th July 2015 – NOW HERE’S AN INTERESTING DISCUSSION.

Our Hero – “is it tomorrow that we are recording at Marcillat?”
Liz – “that’s right – at 09:30”
Our Hero – “ohhh” … pause … “I suppose that I’d better go home then”

Yes, the Bane of Britain has done it again hasn’t he? Gone to Marcillat on the wrong day. Still, it could have been worse. It was a nice drive out and in any case, at least it was a day early and not a day late.

And I’d been on my travels in the night. I was in Glasgow, the funniest city in Europe (everyone who goes there comes back in stitches) organising some kind of football training, and then I’d taken the Metro with Strawberry Moose. The train was stuck in the station for a while and so, knowing that I would awaken as soon as the train set off, I allowed myself to go into a deep sleep. But before I did, I took my trousers off and hung them over the back of the seat in front. Sure enough, I awoke as soon as the train moved, and I prepared to alight at the next station. But I couldn’t find my trousers. There was a pair of shorts there but they were nothing to do with me. Of course I made a fuss and the lady driver told me that seeing as how we hadn’t reached the first stop, no-one could have alighted from the train with my trousers. However, a couple of people had boarded the train and alighted before it had set off. I carried on the argument and a couple of the passengers started to become agitated. But none of this was finding my trousers.
Ironically, I’d been reading a little about the Glasgow Underground yesterday evening and also something comnected with North-West Glasgow and the Underground, which was where all of this was going on.

My morning wasn’t wasted though, as I did two more radio programmes – or, at least, half-done them. These are the rock programmes for Radio Anglais and I’ve done the miscellaneous programmes for two more months. I just need to do the two live concerts and find a radio commentary for one of the programmes.

After lunch, I made the shelf that will fit between the door and the stud wall by the beichstuhl. And the new Bosch circular saw – nice and lightweight, it cut through a pine plank as if there was nothing there. A nice neat cut, no need to sand it down, no whining, no rattling, and the inverter showed no sign of distress. This was the best circular saw that I’ve ever used (and so it ought to be at the price that I paid for it) and if it lasts the pace (because one or two people are a little sceptical about it) it’ll be just the job.

I also cut down a 300mm plank into 2x150mm planks, and the circular saw hardly broke wind doing it. But do you remember ages ago when I told you that the 600mm pine planks were actually 605mm? Well, the 300mm planks are actually 295mm. So much for Brico Depot’s precise measuring.

I had yet another shower to cool me down afterwards (I’m having my money’s worth from the home-made solar shower) and made a mega-red-pepper-and-lentil curry for the next 4 days. I may as well start the week as I mean to go on.

Friday 3rd July 2015 – THIS MUST BE SOME KIND OF A RECORD

Today’s temperature outside reached a massive 39.4°C and that can’t be far short of a record. No wonder I had a hard time starting work today.

This morning I wasn’t as bright and breezy as yesterday, even though I had the Dawn Chorus again giving me a helping hand. After breakfast I mooched around for a little and then plucked up the courage to attack the radio programmes.The second lot for Radio Arverne are now half-completed and should be done by Sunday, and I have to check over the rock programmes for Radio Tartasse because they are being recorded on Monday.

When I finally managed to attack the bathroom, it was really slow progress. I’ve only done the first three rows of the ceiling, but then again each one had to be cut and shaped by hand so it isn’t surprising. In fact, because of the way that I’ve done everything, there’s going to be a lot of the ceiling that’s going to have to be cut and shaped by hand.

I’ve also had to fit a supporting strut in the ceiling. There’s going to be a flying shelf in the bathroom and the brackets to hang it from the ceiling have to be fitted, and that’s why I needed the supporting strut.

Apart from that, I had to unload Caliburn ready for my trip to Montlucon tomorrow and you’ve no idea how much I didn’t want to do that in the heat that we were having. But at least the water in the solar shower was 39.0°C so that I could have a really good soak.

Now here’s a thing.

Apparently in the UK, there’s been a minute’s silence in memory of those who were killed in Tunisia. Now – can you remember if we ever had a minute’s silence in memory of anyone who was killed by an IRA terrorist?

This is an old Nazi trick and the Nazis used it to perfection. Whenever an “atrocity” was committed by a hated enemy, they would have these ceremonial minutes’ silence, parade funerals, eulogies and all that kind of thing. They whip up the emotions and subsequently the hatred, and then the Government can go ahead and invade another country to “revenge these dreadful deaths” and the public will be so whipped up by hatred that they can’t see what’s going on. And when you see the outpourings of the Tory Government, that echo the comments that the Nazis made about a death in Danzig or the Sudetenland, you realise just how much the Tories have learned from the Nazis and how much of it they have put into practice.

When it came to whipping up hatred against the Irish Republic or the Vatican over the deaths and other atrocities committed by the IRA, the Government was strangely silent. But when it comes to doing it against brown-skinned people, all of the gloves are off. This tells you all that you need to know about the British Government’s racist policies.

And don’t forget that it was the West that declared war on Islam, with the bushbaby’s “crusade” speech. And just who is so naive to believe that when you declare war on someone and start to fight them, they are not going to fight back?

You couldn’t make that up could you? It just shows you the depths to which the intellectual capacity of the Western world has sunk.