Tag Archives: Simon

Sunday 12th August 2018 – HAVING LAST NIGHT …

… been tucked up nicely in a spare bed at Liz and Terry’s, tonight I’m tucked up nicely in a spare bed at Ingrid’s in Biollet, just 15 miles away from my place at Virlet.

With it being Sunday there was no alarm but we had to rise early and organise ourselves. After breakfast we loaded up Terry’s van with some bits and pieces, including the plastic boxes that I had brought with me, and then hit the road.

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned this, but when I was at my house a few weeks ago I noticed that my tractor had been moved. And subsequently I had a message from Desirée and Simon to say that it had been further moved.

It’s an expensive piece of kit, as regular readers of this rubbish might recall, so it needed to be rescued. There’s a little bit of room on Terry and Liz’s car park and so we had agreed that it should go there out of the way and Terry can use it if he needs to.

And with Terry suddenly having a very rare free day from work on Monday, we went off to fetch it.

terry messenger les guis virlet franceRegular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I was there just now, I couldn’t get to the house because of all of the weeds.

But Terry had brought his heavy-duty brushcutter and it made pretty short work of the undergrowth. It didn’t take him long to cut a path through to the house and the barn.

And then I could enter the house, rescue the keys and then load up the tractor into Terry’s van. Terry had worked out the dimensions and there was plenty of room in his van for it to fit.

I have new neighbours too, Lisette and Berry, as Lieneke and Guus have sold their house. I went round to introduce myself and have a chat, and then we went off.

Ingrid had been to Clermont-Ferrand and we had arranged to meet up at the campsite at Les Ancizes. That serves snacks and is guaranteed to be open on a Sunday evening in the summer, so we had a meal there. Much to my surprise, they had a vegan dish on offer, Thai rice with mixed vegetables.

Back at Ingrid’s, we all had a good chat and I had a shower, managing to walk on a thorn that was stuck to my trousers. And that didn’t half hurt.

So here I am now, tucked up in bed. I’m going to have a really emotional day tomorrow so I need to be on top form.

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Friday 10th August 2018 – IT’S NICE …

… to have visitors.

Not the least reason being that it encourages me to tidy up and do some cleaning in here. And so I was glad when Liz said that she was going to come round and inspect the premises.

It was something of a late night last night. 01:00 and I was still up and about. But I’d had a really good sleep, such as it was, all the way through until the alarm went off at 06:20.

Even more surprisingly I was up pretty smartly too, and that makes a change for just recently. And after the usual morning procedure and breakfast, I tidied up the place, took out all of the rubbish and did some cleaning too.

But all of this tired me out, as you might expect, and it’s no surprise to anyone that I ended up crashed out for a quick 20 minutes sometime later.

Liz came round at 10:30, had an inspection and gave the place her seal of approval, and we then had a coffee and a chat.

With it being a beautiful day, we went for a walk around the town walls and to see the photos that are on display – the ones that I posted on here a few weeks ago – featuring different places here in Normandy.

Liz doesn’t eat bread so we made a big salad for lunch, followed by the melon that I had bought the other day. Another coffee and a good chat to put the world to rights.

After Liz left, I had another little relax. And when I thought about going for my afternoon walk it was pelting down. That put paid to that idea.

Later on, I made tea. The rest of the curry that I had made yesterday along with more rice and vegetables. And a bit more melon for pudding.

The football season has restarted and so tonight we had Bala Town v Carmarthen. And although the score was 2-1 in favour of Bala, it rather flattered Carmarthen and it looks as if it’s going to be another long, hard season down in West Wales.

It was nice sitting on the sofa watching the football on the TV via the computer. Really nice and comfortable, even if it did mean that I missed my evening walk too.

In between all of this, I’ve been having to make a series of phone calls half-way across Europe, and it looks as if tomorrow afternoon I’ll be off on my travels for a few days.

It’s all go, isn’t it?

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Tuesday 21st March 2017 – AS FOR LAST NIGHT …

… it was nothing like as good as the previous one.

But then again, there’s a good reason for that. And that is that somewhere in the middle of it all I had a very severe attack of cramp. And severe it was too -it kept me awake for ages while I tried to calm it down. And then it would go, so I would turn over, and it would come back again. This went on for hours, I reckon.

And then, I was awake at 06:00 – such are the perils of having an early night. I really do need to get my life back on track.

After breakfast I had a little relax and then slowly headed off into Pionsat.

First port of call was the Intermarché and a loaf of bread for he next couple of days. Man might not be able to live by bread alone, but I can if I have some stuff to go on it. Next port of call was the bank because I need to make some kind of financial arrangements for my future. They fixed an appointment for tomorrow at 16:30.

But outside, I bumped into Simon. Long time no see indeed but news of my impending demise had even filtered through to him. He invited me for a coffee and I agreed – but a little later as I still had two things to do.

The most important was to contact my internet supplier and have a moan about my Livebox not working. After much binding in the marsh they agreed to send out a technician to sort me out. At my charge of course, but some things you need to do. That’s tomorrow morning too.

And then round to Clare’s. She had been concerned about me when I was missing the other week and had even gone round to my house to see if I had arrived there. I had to express my gratitude and offer a bottle of wine in recompense. It’s the least that I can do in the circumstances.

I had a good chat with Simon and Desirée at their little office. I’m amazed at how domesticated and suburbanised Simon has become since he married. It’s clearly doing him good, so good luck to him.

Back here, my exertions finally caught up with me and I was stark out for a few hours. And then I began a little desultory packing, with a pause to watch a film. That took me nicely up to tea time, when a couple of handfuls of pasta, some vegetables and tomato sauce did the trick. I wasn’t all that hungry.

And then, bedtime. No idea why I’m so exhausted. It’s not as if I’ve spent too much time running around today – physically, that is.

And so I have realised, rather unfortunately, that I’m not going to be able to keep on going out here. I don’t even have the energy to pack up this place. Or anything like it. I am just not up to it. Even climbing up the stairs into the attic is killing me.

I shall have to take what I’ve got in Caliburn and head off to find some peace and solitude somewhere.

What a shame!

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Monday 23rd March 2015 – THAT STRANGE ROUND GOLDEN THING …

. .. that I glimpsed in the sky yesterday was there for all of the day today. It was the nicest day of the year so far, beautiful and warm, and down by Chatelguyon all of the trees are now in blossom. Spring is definitely on its way, and a couple of warm sunny days will see it here too.

Liz and I were radioing today, starting off at Marcillat and Radio Tartasse. I was there at 09:30 to record the rock programmes and then Liz joined me for the information programmes that we do. Violette was back in charge of the studio today, and you could tell that she’s not quite with it following the passing of Henri.

I had to go to Pionsat on the way back to drop of Simon’s superb floorboard machine (and I gave him a bottle of wine for his trouble) but the boulangère who I wanted to see – she’s back from holiday now but of course Monday is her closing day, so that was a waste of time.

Liz made a salad for lunch and then we went down to Gerzat and Radio Arverne for the next round of programmes there – and it was as we dropped out of the mountains at Chatelguyon that we noticed the trees and the blossom.

We did 5 programmes for Radio Arverne – I need to start to get ahead for the summer or I’ll be catching up with muself if I’m not careful.

Back here, I crashed out for an hour or two. This is becoming something of a habit now.

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Saturday 21st March 2015 – THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING …

… although you xould never have guessed it from the weather. We’ve had a hanging cloud on the mountain all day, it’s been pouring down with rain and I’ve had almost no solar energy. Consequently I’ve disconnected the fridge

bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt hasn’t stopped me from working though. Yes, I’m at it again, working once more on a Saturday morning.

I’ll tell yuo how good that little machine of Simon’s is, because it took me two hours to fit the final three runs of floorboarding using a hammer and nails. There’s not enough room to use the machine on the final three runs. To fit the other 35 runs, it took just five and a half hours, so you can see exactly what I mean.

bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceEventually, I finished it and all that remains to be done (the big stuff I mean) is the varnishing, the skirting board and the glass panel over the door. This is a dark house so you need as much light as possible filtering around.

When I had finished that, I went and did my shopping and then came home to chill out.

Now if anyone had said that FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI would draw against Aulnat, anyone at the club would have taken that without even kicking off. And when I saw that 5 of the players on the field were regulars from the 2nd XI in the 4th Division, then even more so.

But drawing 2-2 after being 2-0 up and having a 3rd goal disallowed under controversial circumstances has to count as 2 points thrown away rather than 1 point gained. To make matters worse, the equalising goal was really rubbing salt into the wound. Cedric, playing at centre-half, clears an attack by hoofing the ball out into touch, but the ball cannons off the back of one of his own players, rebounding right into the path of an unmarked Aulnat player standing in front of goal.

That just about sums up FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s luck as far as I am concerned. It’s a tragedy.

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Friday 20th March 2015 – MANY THANKS …

fitting floor boards bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome france … to Simon for lending me his floorboard nailer.

I’ve had some exciting and interesting tools here while I’ve been doing work but I’ve never had anything quite like this. Floorboarding has never been so easy and had I not run out of floorboarding (there are a few more packs in Caliburn) I might well have finished it today.

The first couple of pieces needed careful shaping and it took a while to align them, but once they were in place the rest followed quickly. And once I’d worked out the best way to employ the machine then it went even better.

But as I said, I ran out of wood here and so I called it a day – at 18:50 as it happened so I’d already put in a good day’s work. And apart from taking the stats I haven’t been outside at all. And that’s not a surprise because the weather has been awful today – pouring down with rain all day.

I’ve not even been to the shops (something that I usually do on a Friday evening). I’ll have to do that tomorrow – after I’ve done the flooring because I’m going to have another hour or so working on the floor, despite it being a weekend.

I was on my travels again last night and, interestingly, it was a continuation of a voyage that I had made a short while ago (which is the point that this person doing this experiment was trying to prove). I was back on that coach journey where that family from round here were passengers. I’d gone to bed and I sensed that I was not alone, looking up from under my eyelids, but still pretending to be asleep, I saw the girl from this family. She had come into my room. When I gave a sign of life, she shuffled off out again quickly.

This prompted me to go to look for her to find out what was going on, and that wasn’t going to be too difficult as the hotel rooms had windows facing the corridor, rather like the older part of our school, which amazed me from a privacy point of view, although the windows were frosted glass.

From ere I found myself working the office where Nerina was working, although the bosses put us to work in different rooms to keep us apart. I spent a lot of time chatting to a girl who worked there, and I stayed there until late evening to miss the rush hour traffic. In my car, which was a white Cortina mkIV estate with the spare wheel in a holder on the left-hand side of the tailgate, I saw the girl with whom I’d been working so I waved at her to make sure that she would see me and then go back to the office to tell everyone what a big car I had.

This was a quite exciting voyage, I have to say that, and it went on for ever. I wonder how it is sometimes that I find time to sleep. But I do wish that my real life was as exciting as what goes on when I’m deep in the arms of Morpheus.

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Thursday 19th March 2015 – YOU MAY NOT BELIEVE THIS, BUT ….

empty tidy bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome france… the bedroom is empty of everything apart from a set of steps and the tools that I need to lay the flooring.

Everything that I don’t need for the foreseeable future is now downstairs on the ground floor, as are all of the plasterboard offcuts. The things that I don’t need right now but which I’ll be requiring in early course are now stacked up on the stairs so I’m bound to trip up over them and break my neck before I’m much older.

That left three sheets of plasterboard and that was something that I was not looking forward too. They were too big to go down the stairs, my idea of a trapdoor didn’t work, and there was a scaffolding outside the window that I would have to dismantle.

One sheet was easy to deal with. This was the waterproof plasterboard for the shower room. I needed two full-lenght strips to finish off in there so by the time I’d cut them off, that left me with a full-length strip about 35cms wide and I could pass that down the stairs with no difficulty.

The second sheet was one of those that I bought years ago, one with the 40mm of insulation backing. That however was cracked across its width roughly halfway down so I reckoned that I may as well complete the damage. The tow halves of that went down the stairs with some degree of difficulty, but much less difficulty than dismantling the scaffolding.

This left just one sheet. And I thought to myself “sod this for a game of soldiers. I’m not dismantling the scaffolding for this” and I cut that in half too.

That resolved all of the issues at a stroke (of the plasterboard knife).

This gave me just enough time to sweep out the bedroom prior to lunch. And it does look nice in there.

After lunch I went round to Cecile’s. She and her mum are leaving tomorrow and she needed help to load up her car and to do a few other things too. It gave me an opportunity to rescue the floorboards that I had left there when I needed to unload Caliburn in a hurry a couple of years ago.

On the way back, I went to see Simon. He has a machine for fitting floorboards and he had offered to lend it to me. So I went to pick it up. It’s similar to a stapler, with an automatic magazine for the nails. You have to hit the piston with a heavy mallet to get it to work, and if you have the machine in the correct place, it punches lost-head 3-inch nails right through.

I forget how many times I’ve clouted myself with a hammer fitting floorboards, and if this maching works as well as it looks, I’ll have this floor done in no time.

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Tuesday 25th November 2014 – I THOUGHT THAT I HAD GIVEN THIS UP YEARS AGO

Yes, I had a phone call erly this morning from Simon. You might remember a week ago that some English people needed an old van moving from a house that had been sold and it had been offered to me. So could I fetch it this morning?

Terry and I went off to have a look at it and we picked up Simon on the way. We found the address and the van was in a shed right at the far end of the property, up a steep hill that had been churned up by a procession of diggers. Consequently, it took me three quarters of an hour to get Caliburn up as far as I could – and that wasn’t anything like close enough.

Luckily, the previous owners hadn’t left the handbrake on, so the three of us were, with much effort, able to push the van out of its shed and couple it up to Caliburn with the length of chain that I always carry about with me. THen we could pull it down the hill to the road.

I would have taken a lovely photo of the vans and all of us up to our eyeballs in mud, but the battery had gone flat in the camera, which annoyed me preatly.

The van didn’t look too bad – it’s a 2000 Ford Transit, the biggest of all the body options, but there’s a slight crack in the windscreen, a water leak and a fe other bits and pieces. And the starter had packed up. More in hope than expectation we gave it a puch down the road and to our complete and absolute surprise, the van fired up. I can’t think who was the most astonished.

A run up and down the lane to test the brakes, which actually worked, and so we made an executive decision (that’s a decision that if it goes wrong, the person making it is executed) to drive it to Terry’s. Terry and Simon leapt into it and I drove Calibuen as a blocking vehicle, to keep an eye open for the police and chase them away. It’s years since I’ve had to do anything like this, and you would never be able to do such a thing in the UK these days. This is what I like about France – you can still get away with doing things like this.

The drive was uneventful and the van is now safely at Terry’s.Then we all went home.

This afternoon, I started on my Christmas Special. I have tons to do, and only a short time to do it.

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Wednesday 19th November 2014 – AND YET ANOTHER …

… visitor today. I really don’t understand why it is that I’m so popular.

It was Simon’s turn to pay me a visit. His wife is an estate agent and she has just sold a house to someone. The previous owner of the property was an English couple and it seems that they have left an old van behind on the property and the new owner wants it to be taken away.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I seem to spend a great deal of my time towing vehicles around and recovering vehicles from all kinds of places. And anyone who has lingered around for any great length of time will know that I’ve always been up to no good with old abandoned vehicles in one way or another.

But an old van! Of course, Thoughts about a Citroen “H” or a Peugeout D4A immediately sprung to my mind, but in fact it’s an old RHD Ford Transit. But never mind – it will have plenty of company here. After all, there are two other old Frod Transits around here, and that’s not counting Caliburn. I’ll have a play with it and if all else fails, I’ll break it for spares and weigh in the body shell.

So Simon was here for ages this morning and we had quite a lengthy chat. There’s asomething bubbling away underneath the surface here, and he’s noticed it too. I thought that it wasn’t just me.

This afternoon I had some paperwork and a few phone calls to make, and then I finally started work. I’ve rearranged the battery box that I built and I added another new battery in there. That’s now 1300 amp-hours worth of batteries. I need to take out the 5 old Hawker batteries and add in the other four new batteries, but in order to do that, I need to replace the insulation with something more substantial. This means a trip to Montlucon and Brico Depot.

No fire tonight either.

The temperature here dropped down to 14.4°C during the night but climbed back up to 16.8°C today – helped no doubt by me using the gas stove that I brought up here last night to boil the water for my coffee.

But I was right to light the fire last night. The temperature outside dropped down to 2.4°C last night and that’s the coldest night that we’ve had in this latter part of the year. Winter is just around the corner.

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Tuesday 12th August 2014 – YET ANOTHER TOW JOB

caliburn tow in Frod Transit A frame les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis time, we used the A frame.

For a change, I was up early and went down to Pionsat to pick up Simon. Then we set off for Riom. I dunno if anyone else has had issues at the Ford garage there but they aren’t half miserable. They weren’t able to fix Simon’s Transit and instead of being embarrassed about it, I found them to be nothing but surly and uncooperative. I struck them off my list of local garages ages ago, and I reckon that Simon has done now.

It took ages for me to work out how to use the A frame – it’s been something like 15 years since I last used it, and of course Simon’s Transit is a big, heavy vehicle – right on the legal limit of 2.5 tonnes on the A frame.

Anyway, eventually we sorted it out and off we set for Montlucon. I would have been much happier with the trailer or even the towing dolly but Simon’s van is far to heavy for both of them and well over the gross weight for Caliburn.

It was quite an interesting drive to Montlucon. It’s all up mountain and down gorge and along canyon, not like anywhere normal, and of course Caliburn only has a small engine so we didn’t get up to anything faster than 70kph, and then not very often at all.

With the weight, going up the steep hill was a struggle but coming downhill was even more exciting, with Simon’s Transit threatening to overrun Caliburn in places.

Not only that, it’s a busy main road and we had to pull over every couple of miles to let everyone past. So it took hours to do the journey.

But anyway, we made it safely (after a fashion) to Montlucon, to find that Barratts, the Ford main agent, was closed for lunch. Luckily, they had left the gate open to the yrd so we could get in there and drop off the van. I had to reverse the whole train right across the carpark so as to put Simon’s van into a parking space, and much to my surprise, it went straight in. That was astonishing, considering that with the A frame pivoting in all directions and no driver in Simon’s van of course, it usually goes off anywhere excpet where you need it to go when you are reversing it all.

Simon bought lunch, for which I was grateful, and then we went back to the garage to negotiate. I know the service manager there and we soon sorted things out, and then we went back to Pionsat.

Simon made a coffee and then I came home and made tea – another aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit.

I’m glad that it all went okay – I was having all kinds of ideas running aeound my head about the million and one ways that this could all go pear-shaped. Still, it’s all in a day’s work, isn’t it?

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Monday 11th August 2014 – AS I PROMISED …

… I spent the day carrying on with the back-up. I would love to tell you that it’s finished, but no such luck, and not for the least of the reasons that the photo partition ran out of space.

Not only that, there are two other backups on the external hard drive too, one from a laptop of ages ago and the other is the continually-updated SD card back-up, and my next trick is to merge the two previous backups and then merge them in with the current one.

That won’t be easy as I need to keep the most up-to-date version of any file, and I bet that I’ll get it wrong.

So as far as I got, that took until 02:00 and then I crawled off to bed. But I did have an interruption. At about 16:OO Simon came round. That was “long time no see”. Anyway, it seems that his van broke down a week or so in Riom and was taken to a garage (the same one to which I took Caliburn in 2011) and they have been unable to fix it. The van needs to be taken – as a non-runner – to Montlucon. Could I help?

The van is too heavy for the trailer and also the towing dolly, but I do have something else and if I can find it in the desperate pile of rubbish that is the barn, I’ll go round and help him out tomorrow.

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Monday 26th May 2014 – THIS IS ASTONISHING …

… but here I am at 22:15 on a Monday evening and in a minute I’ll be off to bed.

Clearly something’s up, although I’m not quite sure what, and I did have a little something of a late night last night but nevertheless …

And the weather doesn’t help at all. It’s been raining for almost all of the day and this afternoon we’ve had some terrific rainstorms – coming back between Gouttieres and Pionsat I could hardly see the road.

So this morning I was up early and in Marcillat-en-Combraille for the Radio Tartasse version of Radio Anglais. And we had the usual shambolic performance that is becoming something of a trademark these days and it’s a good job that I’m engineering my own rock music programmes, for Heaven alone knows what they might be like.

Terry’s big Ifor Williams trailer was in Pionsat at Simon’s so I had to pick that up on the way back and drop it off on Terry, and then Liz and I made our way down to Gerzat for the Radio Arverne sessions.

Bernard for some reason wasn’t there and Philippe, the young apprentice, was there waiting for someone else (it seems that they had forgotten about us). But the someone else didn’t turn up so Philippe did the engineering for us. It took ages as he didn’t really know how our shows work but eventually it finished, only for Philippe to find out that the studio calendar was on the wrong page and we were indeed expected after all.

So what happened there I really don’t know.

So braving the rainstorms, I’m back home and I’m off to bed. I’ve had enough for today.

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Saturday 27th August 2011 – I’ve found a really interesting …

toolstation weapons of mass construction les guis virlet puy de dome france… plastic bag to wrap all of my tools and electrical bits into when I put them into my suitcase. And I’d love to have a remote camera in there to take a photo of the face of the security guard when he opens it. No sense of humour, these people. Am I the only one to notice that all of the humour and levity seem to have gone out of life these day?

But not to worry. I’ve also put a protractor, a set square, a set of logarithm tables and so in inside the suitcase. They are in a plastic bag labelled “Weapons of Maths Instruction”.

OK – I’ll get my coat.

And so it’s Saturday. And just for a change, I haven’t been shopping. There’s nothing I need to buy before I set off from here on Tuesday to go to Paris. And so I had a very leisurely breakfast – interrupted from my reverie by a large Ford Transit that came bouncing down the track here. “What does Simon want at this time of the morning?” I uttered. But a second glance revealed that the vehicle had French plates. “Is Terry back already?”. But no, it’s the baker in a different vehicle delivering the bread. That livened up the day.

So now wide awake and shipshape, I started to pack. Bill has lent me a big suitcase and Strawberry Moose fits nicely into it. Then, I’ve fitted all of the tools in there, some of the electrical stuff and also the slow cooker. Now I need to fit the rest of the electrical stuff, all of the paperwork and some clothes in there too. I’ve also sorted out some clothes to take – all colour coded and with logos on. I’m into colour-coding and corporate clothing and all of that stuff.

pointing fieldstone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis afternoon I carried on working outside for a change. I finished off the pointing on the wall – at least all that it’s feasible to do right now until I take off the rest of the corrugated iron roof.

I’ve reached right up into the apex of the roof as you can see and over across to the other side of the roof. That’s over half of the roof finished now and while it would have been nice to have found the time to do all of it, I’m reasonably satisfied with that.

It won’t take long to do all the rest and then fit the wind turbine.

pointing fieldstone wall tarpaulin roof lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceOnce I decided to retire for the day, I took down the ladder and fitted a couple of tarps over the bit where there’s no roof.

This is only going to be a temporary measure while I’m in Canada of course. Once the rest of the wall is pointed and the wind turbine is up, then I can roof it over properly.

Considering it’s Saturday, I’ve been extremely busy today and I’ll be glad to have a decent lie-in tomorrow – I’ve earned it.

Tomorrow if the weather is nice, it’s the Virlet brocante – one of the best in the area and I’ll go for a look around. I also have to plant some winter lettuce and cabbage and there’s some post to deal with – a few letters, two things to proof-read (one for Dave and one for Rhys) and half-a-dozen e-mails to reply to. When I’ve done that I can knock off because that will be everything that needed doing before I leave.

What? Up to date? Me? Perish the thought.

And in other news, at weekend I usually allow myself a handful of sweets. So this weekend I’ve finished the last of the root beer flavoured sweets because next weekend I can buy some more. They are only on sale in North America.

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Tuesday 23rd August 2011 – I was fed up this morning.

Well, I’ve been fed up for a few weeks actually about the question of food storage and what put the tin hat on it was on Monday when some tinned vegetables in an airtight container in the fridge had gone off, after just 3 days. And then a tin of beans came out of the tin already cooked. This morning though, a carton of soya milk had also gone off – after just three days as well.

I know that the fridge that I have isn’t up to much and a new one is very much on the agenda, but the temperature in the verandah isn’t helping. It’s been over a week that we have had temperatures well over 50°C in there and there aren’t too many fridges that would cope with those conditions.

And so late this afternoon I moved some of the boxes in the lean-to, made some space, and moved the food cupboard and the fridge into there. That gave me an opportunity to clean the fridge and the cupboard, to sort out the food and bin a lot of time-expired stuff, and to do something about the state of the verandah because where the cupboard had been was … errrr … rather in need of cleaning.

But I hope that in the lean-to, everything will keep cooler during the rest of the summer. The temperature in there only reaches about 28°C maximum.

This morning I started work on my business web site. It’s something of a mess because I’ve neglected it for so long, and so it’s high time that I bring it up to date, especially as I’m going to be plugging myself quite a bit in Canada. But it might well take more time that I have available as I can see me running out of time yet again.

I also had to nip into Pionsat. The guy in the mairie had found some information for Radio Anglais and I have to do that as well. I also saw Mike and Simon – Mike helped me load his old oil tank into the back of Caliburn and to unload it back at this end. And it isn’t exactly the same as Simon’s – it’s larger and so it wouldn’t fit fully into Caliburn. In the end I had two of the legs balanced on the back bumper and held in with a strap.

What a way to go! I thought I’d grown out of doing crazy stunts like that.

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Thursday 4th August 2011 – Having waxed so lyrical …

… about the surprising people who follow this garbage, it’s only fair that I comment that there are, would you believe, some people who don’t actually follow it. Yes, this afternoon while I was working outside, Simon turned up in his van
“I was just passing by so I thought I’d drop by to help you unload the oil tank”.

Yes, if he had seen Tuesday’s entry, he would have known …

But while we are on the subject of oil tanks, I may well soon have another. Anne, who sometimes reads this rubbish, saw that I had been given Simon’s, and she wondered if I would like hers as well. “What are you going to do with them?” I hear you ask. That is simple. One will be at the top of the bank and the other one will be at the bottom. They will be connected by a pipe with a series of filters in line, and the idea will be to tip used waste oil into the top tank, let it settle for a while, and then run it through the filters into the bottom tank. With the reasonably-clean waste oil, I can then refine it.

And so with being up fairly early this morning I had a good day outside. I’ve finished the shelving (well, as far as I can until I can sort out some more wood) and I’ve moved the paint from out of the barn into this little room. There will be lots of other stuff to follow it and that will give me the space to tidy things a little. I’ve already sorted out the plumbing stuff, and that makes a difference.

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