Tag Archives: tongue and groove

Thursday 15th December 2016 – JUST LIKE THE MATHEMATICIAN …

… called Hall, I’ve done three-fifths of five-eights of … err … nothing today.

I awoke yet again in the middle of the night to go off down the corridor, and was still asleep when the alarm went off this morning. But I was first up for breakfast and first back downstairs again. And then apart from a trip to the corner for my baguette, that was that.

We’ve had the builders in today. There’s been a leaky tap in the shower that’s been filtering into the bedroom at the side of it and today they came to sort it out.

They had to chisel off some of the tiles in the shower in order to access the leak, and they’ve repaired that. And then they chiselled off the damp plaster and put some tongue-and-grooving over it – with me giving some technical advice seeing that I’ve done rather a lot of this just recently.

But the plaster isn’t dry in the shower so we can’t use it and so that bathroom is closed off – which means that we have to go upstairs. That will be interesting at 03:00, that’s for sure.

I had a phone call today too – from the hospital. My appointment is on Monday at 11:10.

And i’m not looking forward to it.

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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.

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Saturday 18 July 2015 – THIS IS NOT SMOKE FROM A FIRE

hanging cloud forest valley les guis virlet puy de dome franceOf course it isn’t. This is one of the typical Auvergnat weather phenomena that one encounters around here – a hanging cloud. And it’s blowing up the valley through the trees in my forest.

That’s right. We’ve had a storm here today. And much to my (and everyone else’s) surprise, the weathermen had it right too because they forecast it for today. The first time since I don’t know how long – at least 25 days – that we have had rain apart from two small showers. 12.5mm of rain fell during the hour that the storm raged late ths afternoon.

This morning, I crawled out of bed with some difficulty and hit the road straight away. I Was at Brico Depot by 08:45, in time to have a couple of mugs of coffee. And buying the tongue-and-grooving (and a bag of 8mm nuts bolts and washers that I can’t find around here) didn’t take long.

So why did it take until 10:00 am to leave the car park?

There was a white Ford Ranger, just like Strider, on the car park. British plates too, and while I was admiring it, the owner and his wife appeared. He’s from Devon, a new arrival and a footballer. His wife is from Belarus and knows Minsk, which was one of my old stamping grounds behind the Iron Curtain in my Salopia Saloon Coaches days. Consequently, we had an enormous amount to talk about.

Off then to LeClerc and shopping. And that was supposed to be a quick visit where I was going to buy everything regardless of price in the interests of speed. But as it happened, while I was being dealt with by the cashier, I realised that I had forgotten to weigh my fresh veg. Dashing back to the scales, there was only one working and the queue was a mile long. I was obliged to abandon it all and ended up going to LIDL which was disappointing, because I could have saved a pile had I bought half of the rest of the stuff in LIDL anyway.

Back home here for midday and bumped straight into Lieneke who is now here. And then I came back and watched the weather change, doing a pile of tidying up in the attic too.

And today was the first day in I don’t know how many weeks that I had to heat up the water in order to do the washing up. That tells you how bad the weather was today

So tomorrow, I’m having a lie in and a day off. Recharge the batteries before I start back to work on Monday. It’s going to be a hectic week.

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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.

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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.

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Thursday 5th February 2015 – 12.8°C IN HERE THIS MORNING.

Hardly surprising, seeing as how downstairs it was all of 1.4°C. And (even at 10:00) it was minus 4.5°C outside.

decorator's door landing les guis virlet puy de dome franceConsequently, I have this morning fitted a decorator’s door to the head of the stairs on the landing.

These are great things, thrown together out of a bit of old plastic sheet and scrap offcuts of wood. Their main purpose is to stop the passage of dust into areas that are being painted, but they also work for keeping in the het and keeping out the cold. IN fact, you can feel the difference either side of the door so it’s clearly working. And as the temperature dropped downstairs, on the first floor we remained at a rather comfortable, if not balmy, 4.5°C

So having done that, and done some more tidying up, what was next?

windowsill bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceAhhh yes. We now have a windowsill in the bedroom.

This is from an offcut of pine board and normally it would be having about 3 coats of varnish on it. But that’s a waste of time with the temperature in the bedroom at 4.5°C.

The board took ages to fit as it needed to be carefully cut and shaped, and it’s come out quite well. But one unforeseen problem was that the window wouldn’t open with the sill in position. But that power belt sander that I bought the other day is superb, even if it did break the belt. Ith having something like some sun this afternoon I could use it. It did a really good job of sanding down where necessary and now there’s about 3mm of clearance under the window.

After lunch I tracked down some thin wood offcuts such as scrap tongue and groowing and nailed them to the wall inside the window and then started to clad the inside of the window with tongue and grooving like I did to the window at the head of the stairs. I have some of the t&g left over from when I did the bedroom ceiling and together with the offcuts from other projects, I should have enough to do a decent job there

I’ll post a pic when I’m finished with that.

I knocked off at 18:30 and it was just 9.3°C in here. And it’s snowing heavily outside too. If that’s not enough, the 10-day long-range weather forecast is promising not much let-up in the weather. It’s a good job that I don’t really need anything from the shops, as I won’t be able to go to fetch it.

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Monday 10th February 2014 – I WISH I KNEW …

… where my tile cutter is. I could have finished the window surround today.

window surround stairs les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs you can see, I’ve done three of the sides with the offcuts of tongue-and-grooving from the ceiling. That meant fitting battens to the walls and routing the anenometer cable underneath. And then each piece of tongue-and-groowing had to be cut and shaped individually, and that took a while – until lunchtime in fact.

After lunch I put the first coat of varnish on all of the wood that I’ve fitted so far, and then we started the “hunt the tile cutter”.

Last time I had it, it was in Brussels and as you might remember, we fled Brussels in such haste that stuff was packed any old how. I spent all afternoon until long after knocking-off time looking through the barn and the lean-to and I’ve no idea where it might be.

But apart from that, I was on the move again during the night but I can’t for the life of me remember where I was and who I was with. And today, to give you some idea of howdark and depressing it all was, we had 12mm of rain and by 16:30 it was sleeting.

So tomorrow I’ll put the second coat of varnish on the wood and then play round two of “hunt the tile cutter”. It has to be here somewhere.

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Friday 7th February 2014 – THE FIRST THING THAT I DID TODAY …

… was to rip off the tongue and grroving that I had put on the ceiling.

Well, actually, it wasn’t. First thing that I did do was to crawl out of my stinking pit, and at the unbelievable time of 09:20 too. I heard all of the alarms go off (it’s very hard not to) and I remember thinking that I’ll get up in a minute. And so almost two hours later …

Anyway, back to the plot. I ripped off all of the tongue-and-grooving that I did yesterday. It wasn’t going on correctly and I was certain that I could do better. And while I was having my breakfast I also had some inspiration.

head of stairs plsterboarding tongue and grooving les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo I had to recut every single piece and refit it, but I am glad that I did because the effect is so much better as you can see in the photo.

All that it needs now id to be varnished, the light to be fitted properly and for a couple of bits of beading to be added, but that will have to wait as there is still plenty to do before I reach that stage. In fact I’ve already mad a start in sheathing in the window. And it’s a good job that I don’t throw anything away, because I needed a few thin strips of wood to make a batten and here, hanging around in the house were the offcuts of the 10mm playwood sheeting that we used on the roof back in 2009.

shelving tonge and grroving head of stairs les guis virlet puy de dome franceHere’s a somewhat gloomy view of the reverse angle, showing the sloping part of the ceiling and one of the two shelves that I’ve fitted. There’s a bare wooden beam that’s exposed there at the back, and I’ll be repainting that in due course.

I solved the problem of cutting the tongue-and grooving down the length. The Ryobi Plus One circular saw on the softest setting saw to that, and without tears too

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Thursday 6th February 2014 – “OHH WHAT A BEAUTIFUL MORNING”

And it was, too. Just like a mid-March morning, with a lovely fresh wind, the kind of wind that makes you glad to be out and about in it – a feeling that I can’t describe but I’m sure that you know what I mean.

So today, what did I do? The answer is “not as much as I hoped”. I had to fit some battens and counter-battens on the ceiling at the head of the stairs so that the tongue-and-grooving will have a proper support. That meant that there were of course gaps between the battens and as I have said before, no money spent on insulation is ever wasted and seeing as how I had a few leftover slabs of 20mm polystyrene insulation, I cut them up and filled in all the gaps.

But then I had a surprise. Just as I was cutting the last piece, Liz turned up. She had been to Pionsat and it’s a couple of years since she was last inside the house and so she came to inspect the works, having heard all about the progress here this last couple of months. Anyway, we ended up having a chat and a coffee for an hour or so.

After lunch, I started to fit the tongue-and-grooving on the ceiling. That’s not as easy as it sounds as it’s in three dimensions and each length needs to be cut in two pieces – one of 850mm and the other of about 1185mm.

I say “about”, because it needs to be trimmed at one end to follow the profile of the plasterboarding, and once that’s done, then the other end needs to be cut exactly to size to fit over the top of the corresponding piece of 850mm. Not only that, one of the pieces needs to be holed to take the light fitting and this is where Brain of Britain realised that he hasn’t left enough free cable to put the light exactly where he wants it, and so we’ll have to compromise on that.

Ahhh well

The final lengths need to be cut down the lengths as well to fit the width of the ceiling and it was while I was setting this up that Cécile rang.
“If it’s not convenient right now, just tell me”
“Don’t worry – it’s never not convenient for my friends to call”
And so after chatting to Cécile for 10 minutes, I cut the wood incorrectly.

So I took another length of 850mm and cut that incorrectly too.

I’ve owned my Ryobi plus One jigsaw since August 2008 and it’s taken me until now to realise that the blade isn’t in the centre of the tool – it’s offset to the left by a couple of mm (the strangest design fault I have ever encountered). That means that when you cut down a length so far with the aid of a guide, and then put the jigsaw at the far end to come back to where you left off, you will be a couple of mm out.

This will explain a few of my more bizarre woodworking efforts, and why the door into this room looks such a mess. And it’s taken until now for me to find out why.

But I’ve had some bad nights just recently – trouble sleeping and the like and I reckoned that it was catxhing up with me, so I knocked off and came up here where I crashed out for a couple of hours.

And tonight it’s warm and windy – just like March. I’m all confused.

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Wednesday 17th July 2013 – WELL YOU MISSED …

… all of the excitement last night, that’s for sure.

I didn’t though.

At about 03:30 I was awoken by the most almighty crash. My first thought was that, after singing the praises of my stone wall to Helena last night, that the lean-to that I rebuilt last year had collapsed. It was definitely that kind of noise.

So heaving myself out of my stinking pit I went for a good walk around my property, taking a torch with me. and there’s nothing missing or damaged that I can see. So after that I went to bed, even though it was impossible to sleep.

This morning though, the old abandoned house stuck in the abandoned jungle plot next to the spring doesn’t seem to be there.

I can’t get to it to check, but the last time that I looked, back in January if I remember, it was certainly on its last legs, and so that may as well be that.

The proprietors are Parisians and they’ve been trying to sell it for years. I made the odd enquiry about it, but they want to recoup the money that they paid for it back in the 1960s, even though they haven’t been there to visit it for 30 years.

In that time, house prices here have collapsed, and now it looks as if the house has too.

false wall shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceI was a little optimistic about my plans to finish the shower room today.

I’ve finished the false wall by the shower, along with a slight amendment to detail, and fitted the sheet of plasterboard.

I’ve also fitted the rails around the wall from which the false ceiling (yes, tongue and grooving, in case you were wondering – which I’m sure that you aren’t) will be fitted.

From then on, though, I was busy making the framework for the false wall by the composting toilet.

And I’m not at all sure where the time goes because I haven’t finished cutting the joints, never mind assembling it, and it was 19:40. I dunno where the time goes, though.

I haven’t stopped working today and yet I didn’t seem to accomplish much. It’s a mystery.

Too tired to carry on, I had an early night (last week I would have said that 19:40 was a flaming late night – how times have changed over a week) and came up here.

For the radio programmes I wrote just over 1500 words on collecting mushrooms and almost 2800 on salient points to remember in the different types of relationships in French family life.

That took me from about 09:00 to 12:30 and from 19:45 until 21:00.

Then I finished for tea, and that is that until tomorrow…

.

 

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Thursday 3rd January 2013 – WHAT A LOUSY …

… day

Grey, wet, miserable, depressing

But that’s enough about me – the weather was even worse.

So with almost no solar energy today I didn’t do all that much. When I opened my eye and saw the weather, I closed it again and went back under the duvet.

And if it hadn’t been absolutely necessary to visit the beichstuhl I’d probably be there now. 

After breakfast and working on the website for a while I started on the floor in the shower room. But I wasn’t there as long as I might have been, and for a very simple reason too.

I will swear blind that I bought 5 packets of tongue-and-grooved flooring planks, but I’ve only been able to manage to find four – there’s one missing somewhere. And the result of that is that I ran out of floor with two planks to go.

GRRRRR!

So that means a trip to Montlucon and Brico Depot on Saturday, doesn’t it? I’m never going to finish this blasted flooring seeing as how all of the fates are conspiring against me.

To pass the rest of the time I started to sort out the firewood in the lean-to in order to make more space.

I could have cut it up as well but I have to do that outside and with it pouring down with rain it wasn’t much of a good plan. But there’s progress all the same.

This evening I had another meal the same as last night and it worked just as well, if not better.

Having a rip-roaring blaze at the beginning is definitely the key to cooking with the wood stove. It heats the oven up quicker and that cooks the potatoes better.

Basically, 2 hours for the spuds, 60 minutes for the sprouts and 90 minutes for the rest of the veg. The veggie-burger takes about 20 minutes or so.

I had a few phone calls too. Cécile called me twice and spoke to me for hours. She’s giving a dinner party tomorrow night and wants to know if I can help her tomorrow afternoon to prepare.

Seeing as I don’t have the wood to finish the floor, that seems like a good plan.

Marianne also rang up for a long chat and to tell me about her adventures at Riom hunting down old historical documents. One of these days when I’m not busy, whenever that might be, I’ll have to go with her.

As for me, this afternoon I telephoned the hospital at Montlucon to enquire about Bill.

The receptionist wasn’t all that forthcoming. After much verbal fencing, she expressed an interest in knowing who I was, and so I explained that I was neither family nor close friend but just an everyday run-of-the-mill friend of no particular significance.

She then said that she couldn’t give me any more information, but would I care to leave my phone number so that she can pass it on the Bill’s daughter – his next of kin

I don’t like the sound of that one little bit

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Tuesday 20th November 2012 – I’VE MADE A START …

shower room floor les guis virlet puy de dome france… on fitting the new floor in where the bathroom, or to be more precise, the shower room is going to be, and there’s one very unhappy bunny here.

The tongue-and-grooving is from Brico Depot and it’s a major mistake to buy anything from there.

5 packs of flooring I’ve bought, all of the same brand, all bought at the same time, and the packets are all of different thicknesses.

Not only that, the tongues of one packet don’t correspond to the grooves of the others either so when you firmly nail one lot down, the subsequent packet won’t slide properly underneath and you have to lever it up a little.

All in all, it’s looking quite a mess – nothing like the neat and tidy little job I was hoping for.

I haven’t finished it yet either because I ran out of light so that’s not going to be done until I come back from the UK, and I’m dismayed about that too.

This morning though, I made a start on the Radio Anglais Christmas Special that we do for Radio Arverne.

This is an hour-long programme, mostly speech but with some music as well and it doesn’t half take some writing. Today though, I’ve been researching and gathering material.

I’m not going to tell you the subject matter though – you can wait until it’s on the air.

Tomorrow, though, I’m going to be extremely busy.

In the afternoon Cécile is coming round to work in the garden in exchange for the work that I did for her last Friday.

Of course, I don’t want to frighten her away and so I need to do some tidying up, and that will take me all of the morning, and then some, I suppose.

Steam-cleaning the verandah is priority number one, and then emptying the composting toilet – that’s always a good plan too.

need to empty the verandah as much as possible, because for this winter I want to bring inside the pots of herbs and they are too heavy for me to lift on my own.

I suppose that I’d better go and have an early night then – I need to be fighting fit for tomorrow.

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Tuesday 13th November 2012 – I’VE JUST WOKEN …

… up 🙁

Yes, I went out like a light again in the middle of the evening and it’s hardly as if I’ve been working too hard either.

This morning after coffee I wrote some more stuff for one of the Radio Anglais programmes that we do – a delightful couple of pages on composting toilets, would you believe?

And then I went out to cut another pile of wood ready for the bad weather.

After lunch I carried on emptying the first floor and finally, at 18:00, I was in a position where tomorrow, if nothing else crops up, I can rip up the floor in what will shortly be the shower room.

It’s quite nice tongue-and-grooving but it has about 200 years of ingrained dirt from when it was the upstairs hallway – that is, until I turned the stairs around in November 2009.

It’s impossible to clean it – believe me, I’ve tried, and so it’s coming up and being replaced with new. Once that’s in and given a couple of coats of varnish, I can start on insulating the walls and then fit the plasterboard.

Yes, and I don’t know why, but I also seem to have been very popular today.

I’ve had four phone calls, from Cécile, Rosemary, Percy Penguin and Liz, although not necessarily in that order. Maybe its those that are wearing me out.

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Wednesday 15th February 2012 – THIS WATER ISSUE …

… might have solved itself.

And for several different reasons too.

frozen water drainpipe les guis virlet puy de dome francef you see that icicle in the photo here that I took a week or so ago (the weather was nothing like that today of course) it started to melt today. And so I simply stuck a bucket underneath it.

Meantime, I took one of those plastic drinks bottles, the type with a very long pointed neck, and cut the bottom off. Then I stuffed a load of fine fibreglass mesh up the neck.

Each time a bucket was filled, I poured it through my home-made filter into one of these proprietary jug filters and let it filter through there, and then I decanted it into my water container.

I managed to capture about 40 litres over the course of the afternoon and that’s eased the situation considerably.

However like most things, solutions don’t come on their own. Like London buses, after you’ve been waiting for hours, three turn up all at once.

And so it is with this. By the end of the afternoon the water butt had started to unfreeze itself.

Not that that’s a quick solution, because I looked inside the rear tank and that’s a frozen mass of ice, but I still managed 5 litres out of there as well.

And the third solution? Well, after all the freezing weather that we’ve had just recently, it’s p155ing down outside. All the snow will be gone by tomorrow if it carries on like this, and then we will be in the floods again. Then we’ll be having a different kind of water problem.

Despite a constant stream of interruptions today, I’ve now started on the final row of the tongue-and-grooving in the bedroom.

That involved finishing off the previous row, moving piles of stuff around the room, and then mixing some polyfilla to fill in the joins between the wood and the insulation that is already in the ceiling.

Maybe if I have a decent day tomorrow I can crack on with this. It would be nice to have it finished for the weekend.

One thing that has helped is that this row is by far the narrowest of them. When I’ve been doing the other rows and cutting down lengths of tongue-and-grooving, I’ve always been left with leftover bits that wouldn’t fit anywhere.

I’ve been labelling them with the size, and these are all fitting into the row that I’m doing now. This will save me a load of time cutting up full-size lengths.

For tea tonight I had ratatouille, green beans and baked potatoes. This time the potatoes were done properly and it was one of the nicest meals I’ve had for ages. It was definitely a good plan to move the kitchen up here for the duration.

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Thursday 24th November 2011 – I’VE NOT DONE …

… a great deal today.

I started off by sweeping out the front of the lean-to where I’d been working these last few days, to make a bit of space.

And once that was clean I started to cut up some of the tree trunks from the trees that I had cut down a few years ago. It’s late November and winter is of course only just around the corner, and there’s no point in having a decent wood stove if I don’t have any decent wood to put in it.

But the saw that I’m using isn’t up to much and I need to get a really expensive one.

But it was round about then that the fun started.

I had someone from Canada ringing me up about supplying him with product and so I had to sort that out. And that got me sorting out another pile of orders too for other things and I ended up spending about 2 hours on the phone.

Not that I’m complaining though. With a trade card and a SIREN (a French trade registration) I’m getting some astonishing deals all along the line and it’s about time I started to make a bit of money. So more power to my elbow, say I

In between the rest of the phone calls (yes, we were having another one of those days) I managed to put a few lengths of tongue-and-groove on the stud wall just so that it looks like there’s something positive coming out of today.

It’s a shame that the light goes so early otherwise I’d be still out there (and you would have a photo of it). It’s not like me to be so enthusiastic as this.

I could of course put light into the lean-to but there’s an issue with that. I can’t find my metre-long SDS drill bit that I need to make a pilot hole in the right place. And this is what I bought it for, would you believe?

Mind you finding anything at all around my place is next to impossible as I’m sure you all know already.

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