Category Archives: radio anglais

Monday 23rd January 2012 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… my money again today.

Yes, doing my “Imelda babe – going shopping, shopping for shoes” bit (and quite funnily, I was listening to Golden Heart, the album from which the above-names track is taken, on the way to Liz’s this morning).

The boots that I bought in a Hudson’s Bay trading post in Canada 15 months ago died a death over Christmas (the sole split) and the canvas shoes that I use for wandering around here aren’t really suitable for much.

And a chance glance across a busy road from the Auchan on the outskirts of Clermont-Ferrand revealed a sale on at a shoe shop

So I’ve now acquired a pair of black leather boots, not exactly what I wanted but they look fairly solid and 50% off the retail price of €59 made it look like something respectable, and they will keep my feet warm and dry for the foreseeable future.

But that wasn’t all.

They had some boots that are a kind-of cross between wellingtons and après-ski boots, with thick soles and fur lining and looking pretty solid, and all for €22 as well.

Having frozen my feet off at the football over the weekend and being up to my neck in mud around here as well, I decided that a pair of those wouldn’t go amiss either – for going to to footy and for working outside in the bad weather.

Two pairs of footwear – you really WILL be calling me “Imelda” now.

So what was I doing in Clermont-Ferrand this afternoon?

Well, we’d been to Gerzat this morning to record the radio programmes for Radio Arverne – spending a lot of the time talking rubbish as I predicted.

But I’m running low on soya milk and not having been to Montluçon and the Auchan there for a while, we decided to multi-task and visit the Auchan on the outskirts of Clermont-Ferrand, which is only a cockstride away from the road that takes us home.

And the rest is history.

Back at Liz and Terry’s, I had a really nice surprise.

You may remember that when we were doing the house roof back in 2009, we had Terry’s little cement mixer running here. It’s only small but it runs on just 375 watts and it ticked over all day comfortably on my electrical set-up here.

But it’s really too small for Terry now that he’s in business and so he’s acquired a big professional mixer that needed repair, and he’s now repaired it. The upshot of this is that “would I like a more-or-less permanent loan of the small mixer?”

Well, do bears have picnics in the woods?

A little mixer like that quietly ticking away all day while I do some important building work won’t half make my life easier and I have plenty of work for it in the summer, that’s for sure.

Aren’t I grateful?

This evening, I had the wood stove running hot, and garlic bread, pizza and rice pudding for tea were all cooked in the oven.

All in all it’s been quite a good day today. Hasn’t it just?

-4

Tuesday 20th December 2011 – I HAD ANOTHER …

… lovely tea tonight.

Baked potatoes and tortilla wraps with spicy beans. And once again it was cooked in the oven on the new fire, and once again it did an excellent job.

So much so that tomorrow night I’m going to go for a rice pudding and see what happens about that.

This morning I awoke well on time thanks to this new alarm clock that I have. It has a projector light that flashes the time across the room and makes enough noise to awaken the dead.

But printing off the paperwork for the radio station didn’t work – the new computer doesn’t recognise the printer and I can’t upload the drivers. I’ll have to see if I can do that by downloading them (which I can’t because all of Epson’s European sites don’t work).

So Radio Tartasse was done and then we set off through the driving rain to Gerzat. And as we drove over the Combrailles I joked to Liz that everyone in Riom would be basking in the sun in shirt sleeves.

They weren’t, as it happens, but the sun was there, and some blue sky too.

At Radio Arverne I had a premonition about the music we were to play and sure enough, in what could only be a gazillion-to-one chance, we had both picked a track with the same title. How bizarre!

We did the programmes for January and then recorded our Christmas special. That was a bundle of laughs, and what we did for the carols – well, you’ll find out on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Home into the hills and into the driving rain again. I lit the fire in here and that was that. I had no intentions of moving and so I didn’t.

But tea was nice 😉

-2

Friday 2nd December 2011 – IT’S FRIDAY …

… but it’s not Five o’clock, and it’s not Crackerjack either. But it is the last Friday that I’ll be spending here for a week or two. I’m hoping to go to the UK at the end of next week.

And despite having gone to bed quite late last night, that didn’t stop me being wide awake at about 07:00 this morning. This sleep thing is becoming ridiculous.

Liz and I arrived at Radio Arverne’s place in Gerzat at about 10:40 for our 11:00 appointment and eventually it was about 11:47 before we started recording.

We did the four Radio Anglais programmes for December and then Bernard sprung it on me. Would I write another Christmas Special for an hour, to be broadcast in … errrr …. 2 weeks time?

I shall have to get my finger out, won’t I?

We got back to Sauret-Beserve 20 minutes late after all of that and I shot off to Montel-de-Gelat and the sawmill to pick up a load of timber.

I had to wait around there for ages as well as they didn’t (despite what they said on the ‘phone) have any treated wood so they treated it while I waited, and that took ages too.

And while I was there I was chatting with the staff and it turns out that the office girl is the wife of the Montel goalkeeper whose photo that I took was published in the paper the other week, and the office manager plays for Pontaumur and one of my photos of him scoring against Pionsat was published a few weeks before that.

There were two clients there from Pionsat too. One of them had an old Transit pick-up that was clearly custom-made. A PTAC of 3.3 tons for a start – that’s impressive. And he had so much wood dropped in it that it was sagging right down at the back end and he crawled all the way back to Pionsat at 40kph. 

And when I returned home and unloaded my wood I realised that I had forgotten the demi-chevrons that I need to finish off the greenhouse.

D’ohhhh.

And so I went upstairs and crashed out for a while instead.

-2

Tuesday 29th November 2011 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… my money again.

And if I keep on spending it like this I won’t have any left.

First thing was to go to Marcillat in order to record the Radio Anglais programmes for Radio Tartasse with Liz.

And from there it was to Montlucon.

At LIDL I bought nothing out of the ordinary but at Auchan I bought as well as the usual stuff a little present for Rob and Nicolette for having looked after me, and also a battery pack seeing as all mine are duff. There it was on sale and I said that at €29 it would be a good deal. But with an air compressor included and selling at €22.95 it was an even better deal.

At Brico Depot they had the plywood that I wanted. And 2mm thicker, it cost €9 less than at the other place. And so I now have all that I need. I’m not sure why though because I don’t have the scaffolding to fit it now, as I said yesterday.

What I can be doing instead though is to build the greenhouse but would you believe I forgot to buy the perspex for the roof.

D’ohhh! That was no good.

There’s an issue over my tubing as well. I can buy it from the steel mill at Montlucon but would you believe that a huge place like that (so huge it has its own railway network and locomotive – which you have seen before) they don’t have a bender.They’ve given me an idea where to go and so I’ll follow that up.

And I have my window! Hooray!!!! That’s safely in the van now.

But here’s a thing.

You’ll have noticed without doubt that I have been strangely quiet just recently on the subject of the front door that I would be fitting to the house. But there’s a reason for that. Brain of Britain has done it again and bought a door that opens the wrong way. Mind you, it was at a give-away price in a sale so there’s no harm done there.

But a casual chat with the sales people at Lapeyre revealed that the “exotic wood” selection – the selection from which I have chosen all of my windows – is being discontinued in February. And as a result, they’ve started a clearance sale. The door that matches my windows – a big one with double glazing all the way down the front, is just €374.

That’s too good a deal to miss and so I have bitten the bullet. Now I shall have to get working.

At Rob and Nicolette’s I gave them their prezzy and thanked them for their help the other day. I was grateful for the effort that they took.

But with me forgetting all sorts of things today, this bang on the head doesn’t seem to have helped me any.   

-2

Friday 28th October 2011 – HOW LONG IS IT …

st gervais d'auvergne gorges de la sioule puy de dome france… since I took a pic from the birdwatching platform near St Gervais d’Auvergne just up the road from where Liz and Terry live?

Quite some considerable time, I bet.

I was up and about quite early (well, early for me anyway) this morning and after something of a hasty breakfast, in the words of the great Mars Bonfire I got my motor running and headed out for the Highway

st gervais d'auvergne gorges de la sioule puy de dome franceIt was a cool damp morning but it was heating up quite quickly (well, for this time of year anyway) and this was causing the mist to rise out of all the hollows.

It doesn’t half look impressive when it does that, particularly from up here, and you don’t need any guesses to work out exactly where the Gorges de la Sioule might be when it’s like this. It didn’t half look impressive and it’s one of the sights that everyone should aim to see when they come to visit the Combrailles.

Liz and Terry’s house is down there somewhere and sure enough, they were bathed in mist when I arrived.

Anyway, I picked Liz up and we went to Gerzat for the Radio Arverne sessions of Radio Anglais. We were there for just after 10:00 and so we went for a walk around the town for 20 minutes before Bernard turned up.

It took just over an hour to record the four sessions today – even though Bernard was rather … errr … confused and disorientated. He just now has rather a lot of editing to do.

Back at Liz and Terry’s, Terry and I had quite a long chat about things and then I came back here.

It was raining of course after lunch and so in a change of plan I’ve done a huge amount of tidying up on the ground floor and the first floor and it actually looks like something now to a certain degree. I’ve also done some tidying up outside and that has helped, especially as the vegetation is now dying down for winter and some lost articles are now coming into view.

And tidying up as well. How about that? And to tell you the truth I would have been tidying up this afternoon even if the weather had been absolutely gorgeous because there is a cunning plan looming in the background.

-2

Tuesday 25th October 2011 – AFTER LAST NIGHT’S …

… early retirement, this morning I was up with the cock.

But that’s more than enough about my personal habits.

I was up quite early and when Liz phoned me to make sure that I was awake, I was already tucking into breakfast.

At Radio Tartasse in Marcillat we did our programmes for the month of November and after a coffee together I came back home.

Working on the website again followed by lunch, and then I took some more roofing sheets off the lean-to and replaced them with a tarp. I also put something underneath the floor of the upper part of the lean-to to prevent any water that might infiltrate from falling on the washing machine that’s underneath.

After all of that I put up the ladder and started on chiselling out the old mortar at the top of the house wall.

However I wasn’t up there for too long. The wind sprang up again quite violently and then we had a huge black weather front that dumped 5 mms of rain everywhere. That wasn’t very good, and I left the wall to itself with all of that, thinking to myself what a good idea it was to protect the washing machine like that.

pointing stone wall lean-to les guis virlet puy de dome franceWhat I did instead was to go inside the lean-to and point some more of the inside of the wall that I had built up a short while ago.

It needs to be done some time or other and there’s no time like the present. Having something to do under cover when the weather is bad outside is always handy.

If you’ve looked at some of the earlier photos, like this one for example you’ll see the difference in this pic, particularly on the left side of the wall. You might have also noticed a hole in the wall as well in the left side of the back wall. That’s gone too now, all filled up with stones and properly cemented in.

And that was something that I was keen to do, especially with winter on the way. I don’t want the frost to get into it any more than it already has done

Tonight I finished off Liz’s vegan casserole and had some of her vegan chocolate cake. Isn’t it nice to have good friends?    

-3

Sunday 23rd October 2011 – TODAY I HAVE SEEN ….

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire us menetrol football club puy de dome france… what is probably the worst game of football that I have ever seen in my life. US Menetrol were such a poor side that they could only manage to score four goals against the disorganised rabble that was supposed to be the FC Pionsat St Hilaire 2nd XI.

There were three types of player on the field for Pionsat this afternoon. We had those with inclination and no skill (but nevertheless, hats off to them for turning out because clubs need willing players like this), quite a few with neither skill nor inclination, and far too many of those with skill but no inclination.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire football club us menetrol puy de dome franceIt was such a dismal showing that had I been in charge of the team, I would have gone home with the bus and left them to walk home.

But I’m not. And that was the root of the problem – there didn’t seem to be anyone in charge. And whoever it was who was supposed to be giving the orders was giving some pretty strange ones, that’s for sure. It really was an absolute shambles.

I shan’t say any more about it as it will be just gratuitous.

On the way down to Menetrol, I had the misfortune to be behind heaps of those kinds of drivers who think that 90kph is 70, 70 kph is 50, and 50 kph means that you get out and push. That started me off on the wrong foot anyway so it’s hardly a surprise that I was in a bad mood.

Afterwards, I went round to Liz and Terry’s to discuss the radio programmes, but we seemed to have spent most of the time dealing with lost hunting dogs.

Terry has very kindly lent me a concrete-cutting disc and a huge sledgehammer to remove this cattle trough, and Liz, apart from cooking a gorgeous tea, has made me up a food parcel. That is really lovely.

So tomorrow, I shall be removing cattle troughs and then carrying on with the pointing of the house wall. We are told that the fine weather will last until Wednesday.

-4

Saturday 22nd October 2011 – AND THIS MUST BE …

… something of a new record.

I went to St Eloy les Mines this afternoon, rather late as it happened, and put my washing in the launderette seeing as there was quite a pile that had built up.

Anyway, once the machine had set off, it announced that the cycle would take 40 minutes to do.

And by the time the 40 minutes was up, I’d been to LIDL and Carrefour and I was back in the launderette. And for what I had spent on the week’s shopping, I had change back from €9:00 as well. Now, as I say, this must be a new record.

But my new plan is that seeing as I have quite a lot of work to do these days, I’m going to be doing the radio programmes on Saturday morning and then shopping in St Eloy les Mines when I’ve finished. And that seems to be working anyway because in 3 hours of work I’d done all four programmes.

Yes, I reckon that if I don’t go shopping until I’ve finished, it’s a good spur.

This evening the 3rd XI match at Pionsat St Hilaire was cancelled as the opposition couldn’t raise a team. Instead,I went and watched the 1st half of the match at Marcillat. Although the AS Marcillat team play at what is nominally 1 level higher in the pyramid (they are in a different region) Pionsat’s Ist XI wouldn’t have too much trouble in dispatching them on a good day.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire football club puy de dome franceAnd talking of good days, Pionsat’s 1st XI played one of the numerous teams from Clermont this evening with a 20:30 kick-off, so I was back down there for the start.

They weren’t under too much pressure except down the left side of defence as usual and that was where they conceded a goal. But a substitution in the second half with a new player in the team shored that side up.

The central defence played splendidly with Alex and Julien in there – and Julien has improved immeasurably this season.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire football club puy de dome francebut with Cedric scoring early in the game and this new left-sided player scoring a second, following up a loose ball (and if he can play like this every week he’ll prove to be an excellent signing), as well as two or three goals disallowed, Pionsat were never really in difficulty. They won the match with plenty to spare. in the tank.

But the end of the game was rather ugly as the opposition lost their cool and we had a brawl near the end and another one after the final whistle and it was all unnecessary.

And then afterwards we had the draw for the league cup quarter-final.

And Pionsat drew …. the team that had just played this evening.

This should be quite some match.   

-3

Tuesday 4th October 2011 – I’VE BEEN DOING …

… real work today.

repairing lean to wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ve been working on the back wall – the one adjacent to the farmer’s field – of the downhill-side lean-to this afternoon.

As you know, some of it fell down ages ago and last summer when Terry and I were doing the work at Lieneke’s, I used the leftover cement and concrete in the cement mixer to start to build it up again.

Today though, I built up the remainder of the rear half of the wall and now that’s more-or-less finished.

repairing lean to wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceNot without some issues though – not the least of which was trying to find the outer demi-chevron, that had fallen off the wall sometime while I was in Canada. That eventually came to light in a pile of brambles in the farmer’s field.

I’ve even pointed part of the inner side of the wall to use up all of the mortar that was left. That means that tomorrow afternoon I can make a start on the front half of the wall and that’s not going to be easy because there is quite a bit of that missing. That’s going to need quite a bit of work to put that right.

This morning,I was up at some kind of respectable hour which was just as well as Liz and I were a-radioing at Marcillat for Radio Tartasse. We’re still doing “autoentrepreneurs” with them but we shall be moving on shortly to talk about other things.

I’ve also almost-finished my match report for the footy on Sunday and I hope that I’ll have that on-line tomorrow.

As an aside, we had storm clouds gathering today over here – first clouds I’ve seen for ages. It almost rained as well and that would have been a surprise – I can’t remember the last time it rained here. What an Indian summer!

-2

Thursday 29th September 2011 – THE PHONE RANG …

… at 10:00 this morning. And it’s a good job that it did too otherwise I would be still asleep even now.

So much for that early night!

It was Liz on the phone, reminding me about our recording session later doday. And had she not done so I would have gone there for 16:30 and not 14:30. No idea how come that time had entered itself into my head.

But anyway I was in plenty of time to pick her up and we made it to Gerzat with plenty of time to spare. And it’s a good job that we did too because my first task on arriving was to fix their computer which had stopped working. .

Once I’d organised that we could record our next four programmes.

We are using a different format from now on, though. We have 15 minutes rather than 10, and the programmes are divided up into four segments

  1. there are the events
  2. we have the supplementary information – for one week Liz does a recipe, a second week I do a gardening bit, and for the other weeks we discuss useful French phrases.
  3. we have music – English-speaking songs and such-like
  4. we have the legislation bit

And it was hot there too – the temperature displayed on the wall on the pharmacy round the corner was off the scale – more than 40 degrees and I could believe that too. We were sweltering. Late September too!

Liz cooked tea as well which was nice – it’snice being waited on hand and foot every now and again, especially with the delicious food that Liz produces.

Yes, as Golden Earring so famously said that beautiful evening on the beach in Scheveningen in the early 90s – “There’s one thing I want to tell you man – it’s good to be back home”.

-3

Tuesday 30th August 2011 – DAY ONE OF MY VOYAGE

I’m not sure if this should actually count as Day One because firstly, there wasn’t much of it and secondly, I didn’t actually leave the country. It was however they day that I hit the road (or rather hit the rails) and so for that reason I’ve included it as a fair candidate.

Having said that though, I did actually hit the road rather early. I was all washed up, cleaned up, tidied up (well, sort-of) and on the road for 09:45 because today is the day that Liz and I record the Radio Anglais programmes for the month of September. We did the Radio Tartasse sessions in the morning and then I drove Caliburn down to Liz’s and left him there, piling myself and the baggage into Liz’s voiture for the journey down to Gerzat and the Radio Arverne sessions.

When they were over she heaved me out at the railway station at Riom and that was that. And only a wait of 75 minutes for the train. Good job there’s a coffee machine here.

railway locomotive riom paris gare de lyon franceThis is the locomotive that pulled my train for Paris Gare de Lyon.

I sat next to a girl on the train up and we had a healthy conversation for at least 10 minutes before we worked out that we were both British. She was from Inverness and a student at St Andrews studying French for Scientists. She was spending a year’s exchange living in the language but she’d been in Aurillac for a month house-and-dog sitting.

Her family lives in the wilds and they have no mains electricity – just solar panels and wind turbines and so we had a good chat about that and I gave her a card.

We had the usual struggle across Paris with my giant suitcase and there has to be a better way to go to the airport than this – hitting the city in the evening rush hour with swarms of people and escalators out of order and miles to walk. I’m going to have to resolve this somehow.

At the airport, I dunno where this blasted shuttle bus has gone to – I have to wait about a year for it to turn up. And then by the time that I’ve sorted out everything at the hotel and gone for a walk, the only restaurant in this village here is closed. It only opens Thursday Friday and Saturday evenings and closes at 21:30. So that’s no use to me.

Nothing to eat tonight then. I hope that the rest of my voyage is better than this.

0

Friday 22nd July 2011 – IN HASTE …

… because I’m off to bed in a minute and I’ve forgotten to tell you of my adventures today.

I’ve been busy doing nothing (or very little, anyway) although it might not sound like it. But then again, spending all day talking isn’t very much like work to me, is it?

The morning was spent as usual working on the laptop, all nice and pretty and up and running with its new battery. And that’s almost as impressive as my galvanised steel dustbin.

This afternoon though, I went to Gerzat. You may remember from the other day that our radio recording session down there was cancelled due to this funeral, and so this afternoon was when we had arranged to go down and record it. I wanted it to be done before I hit the road.

I drove down to Sauret-Besserve to pick up Liz and off we toddled to Radio Arverne where we just for a change it all went according to plan.

We drove back to Sauret-Besserve where I dropped off Liz and said “hello” to Terry, and then I came back here.

A quick check-over of Caliburn and there we are. Tea-time and not very much else because I need to muster my forces. The next couple of days are going to be busy and I need to be on form. I believe that I have mentioned that all of my life’s work will come to fruition on Monday, if all goes according to plan.

0

Tuesday 28th June 2011 – And just for a change …

I was up before the alarm clock at 08:30 – dunno what happened there. But it meant that I was in plenty of time to go down to the bank and pay for the bits for my broken anemometer before going to Marcillat en Combraille to record the Radio Anglais programmes for Radio Tartasse.

The guy from the Danish company that sells the bits sent me a nice e-mail with all of the information that I needed to know – the IBAN account, the SWIFT number and all of that and so I duly printed it out and took it to the bank. The bank official took one look at it and said “what’s the company called?”. It seems that the information wasn’t as complete as I had thought.

And so after Radio Tartasse it was down across the Puy-de-Dome to Gerzat to record for Radio Arverne – but the major issue here was that the garage at St Gervais d’Auvergne had sold out of diesel. An enforced trip to Les Ancizes solved that issue but that took a good 20 minutes out of our itinerary leaving us with just enough time to grab a butty and a coffee at Chatel-Guyon.

While we were in the Radio offices we could see the storm break over the Combrailles and impressive was not the word. Magnificent is much better and it did really make us wonder what it was that we might be coming home to.

The Carrefour at Riom came up trupms again – not only did I do my shopping but they were selling off electric 12-volt coolboxes at €24:00 – not very big but big enough to fit in Caliburn’s footwell for when I’m on my travels and it’ll hold a good few items and (hopefully) keep them cool. But not only that it was having a sale of SatNavs and I now have a little Western European Mio Moov M305 – for all of €59:00, to replace the other one that mysteriously disappeared. It has speed camera warning installed but not only that, I can sign for a 3-year update of the speed cameras for €49:95 and maps of North America are available for €49:95 as well – meaning that I can sell the Magellan that I bought in Canada last year and get some of my money back.

giant hailstones manzar chateauneuf les bains puy de dome franceOn the way back home the devastation caused by the storm was impressive to say the least. We stopped between Manzat and Chateuneuf to take a pic of what looked like snow but it was in fact hailstones.

I measured them and they were about 20mm in diameter – and that was quite impressive too.

Back here, the temperature reached the high 30s but the storm had brought with it a total of 24mm of rain – and it’s still raining. It’s a mess here but then again the plants won’t be complaining. They will be loving it all.

But talking of coolboxes, I’ve been thinking again – which I know is dangerous. I’m using almost no electricity from the solar panels on the barn, except for the washing machine once a fortnight. And it’s a shame to waste it all. In addition, in a couple of weeks or so I’ll be moving them to their final position and adding the 4th panel that has been conspicuous by its absence.

It’s a shame to waste all of this electricity and so I have a cunning plan. From mystats I notice that in the year to 2009, which was the last complete year that I was relying on the panels over there, I generated 9000 amp-hours of electricity over there with 3 panels. So with 4 panels that should give me about 12,000 amp-hours in total. That’s in the region of 150 KwH. Now in that year about 40% of the days saw the batteries fully-charged, which meant that there was a good deal of electricity wasted. Add to this that with the solar panels in a much better position I ought to be getting much more electricity than I did back in 2009. Half as much again is not too much to hope for – I had 22,000 amp hours from each of the banks on the roof on the house – about 285 KwH.

Anyway, to cut a long story short “Hooray” – ed, I’ve been seeing some fridge-freezers – proper mains ones – that have a start-up motor of about 75 watts and (so they reckon) use about 135KwH on a normal daily basis – and so I’m wondering whether or not to splash out a bit of cash into a decent sine-wave inverter and small fridge-freezer, run it off the power in the barn and leave it in there.

That will be something to think about. But of course the most important thing to think about is where I’ll put it. You can’t even get a cat into the barn at the moment let alone swing it around.

-5

Tuesday 24th May 2011 – I know it’s not much, but …

home grown strawberry les guis virlet puy de dome france… it’s all my own and grown with my own fair hands.

Yes, the strawberries are coming into season and this evening for tea I had the four that have ripened so far. It’s impressive that I’ve got some as well after the devastating winter that we had.

It put the seal on the day too, because it was beautiful. Liz and I recorded our programmes at Radio Tartasse and Radio Arverne, and in between we went for lunch at the side of the River Sioule in Chateauneuf-les-Bains, in the glorious weather that we had.

We went from Chateauneuf to Gerzat by the scenic route through Blot and Charbonnieres and that was a gorgeous drive too – all in all it was an excellent day.

But there are changes afoot at Radio Arverne. As we suspected all along, SMADC has withdrawn its funding from our programmes. And it’s worse than that too because SMADC was leasing the radio aerial that transmits to the Combrailles, at €13,000 per annum. Radio Arverne can’t pay that and so it stops our programmes being broadcast to our own heartland.

However, all is not lost. There are a couple of other areas within range of the other transmitter that want to take the programme, and so could we continue the programmes but direct them there instead? We are open to offers, of course, but we can’t research any events to publicise because we have no contacts there. And so we’ve left it that we will still come, that we will produce our programmes, and that the regions that want to broadcast them will supply us with details of the events.

As well as that, they want us to prolong the running time of the programmes. Strangely enough, Liz and I were talking about that. We had the idea to talk about recipes, local Auvergnat ones for the Brits and British recipes for the French, and also some kind of gardening stuff – “what are you doing in the garden right now?”.

So we’ll have to wait to see what happens. it’s all confusing but then again nothing worth doing is ever easy to do.

-4

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 – What was so strange …

… about my posting last night was that the moment I pressed “send” there was a tremendous thunderclap outside and we had a storm – and I didn’t have any idea at all that one was brewing. We ended up with 7mm of rain and that’s about 80 litres of water in the water butts. I’m glad now that I worked on my day off.

And so this morning I needed to print off the papers for the radio programme and some other papers that I needed. Terry needed me to accompany him to the quarry for some intense negotiations, and that was effectively the morning sorted out.

At the radio station, they weren’t expecting us. According to the engineer, SMADC (the Societe Mixte pour l’Amenagedment et Developpement des Combrailles) are now not co-operating with the radio station. Nothing new there – the SMADC ceased to co-operate with us a long time ago – but I suspect some developments in this field in early course.

Back home I crashed out for a couple of hours yet again. I’m going to have to do something about this.

-2