Category Archives: Carrefour

Saturday 10th August 2013 – WELL, YOU MISSED…

… all of the excitement today, anyway.

You may remember that I told you yesterday that Barry Town had beaten the FAW hands down in the court case concerning the football club’s expulsion from the league.

Anyway, to day in one of the Welsh newspapers was a letter from a member of the FAW commenting on the case, and I have to say that in all my life I have never ever seen such an inflammatory, insulting, offensive letter.

Its contents, full of vindictiveness and hatred, certainly would have brought it into the realm of a “Contempt of Court” charge.

It provoked a whole hornets nest of comment from all kinds of people and I myself spent some considerable time drafting a letter of complaint.

And then what? Yes, the newspaper concerned withdrew the letter with a comment that the author denied ever having written it and does not subscribe to the views that are represented within it.

Frankly though, I cannot believe that a respectable on-line newspaper would have published a letter of such a type without making further enquiry.

If the editor didn’t, then he only has himself to blame for whatever might follow for, as night surely follows day, this matter is not going to rest here, given the amount of dust that has been spread around.

It wasn’t without its moments of humour either. I sent my mail to the editor of the newspaper concerned. It came back with “sorry I’m on holiday, please send your mail to (my deputy)”
So I resent the mail to his deputy. It came back with “sorry I’m on holiday, please send your mail to (the editor)”.

You couldn’t make up a thing like that.

At lunchtime I went off to do the shopping. I went to the Carrefour at Evere today and made a little diversion on the way.

If you remember from last Sunday, I took you all to the cemetery at Ixelles to see some of the war graves. I mentioned the Tir National, the old army firing range at Schaarbeek quite close to where I used to live when I had the little apartment in the Boulevard Reyers.

I told you all that the Tir National was used as the execution point for those found guilty of War Crimes by the Germans.

Many of the victims have been buried there, and although I did tell you that Edith Cavell was there, that’s no longer true.

She was disinterred shortly after the end of World War 1 and taken to be reinterred at Westminster Abbey and ended up being buried at Norwich Cathedral on 19th May 1919 as Annie so kindly informed me.

However, her name is there on this World War I monument along with that of the people who died with her, and plenty of others from World War 1. A mere thirty-odd, you might think.

One is more than enough but 30-odd does pale into significance when compared to the several hundred others from World War 2

Amongst these hundreds and hundreds of graves from World War II is this one of a certain Robert Roberts-Jones.

With a name like that you might be forgiven for thinking that he is a Welshman, but he is in fact a 3rd-generation Belgian and was a lawyer before he was shot in 1943.

Brussels was honeycombed with spy networks (for example, the Soviet “Red Orchestra” had its headquarters a brisk walk from where I’m currently sitting) and escape routes, called “rat lines”, which were used to dispatch escaping and evading Allied forces personnel and others into neutral territory for trans-shipment back to their units.

The most famous was arguably Andrée (Dédée) de Jongh’s “Comet Line”. This was however infiltrated and collapsed in 1943 and Roberts-Jones, one of the members of Comet, was arrested, tortured and executed.

He has a street named after him, at the back of the Russian embassy here and I often wondered, while I was driving down the street to pick up visas and the like, what the street referred to.

More poignant though are the “unknowns” here. Probably a hundred or so graves are marked as “unknowns”.

No-one will ever know who they are and what they did – they will be amongst the victims of what the Germans called Nacht und Nebel, “Night and Fog”, the name given to the method by which people were quietly abstracted from their environment and “disappeared” for ever, presumably after suffering all kinds of horrors ant the hands of their torturers.

-7

Saturday 3rd August 2013 – THIS PARKING THING …

… is getting out of hand.

As you can see, we’ve changed the car in the foreground (and several times too) but there’s still a good 6 feet or so of wasted space behind it.

As for the car in the background, that’s not moved now for over a week I reckon, still losing half a car’s length of space.

But apart from that I was up at the usual time, breakfasted, and then started sorting out the books.

And I reckoned that my ship had come in when I spotted a copy of “Si on Parlait des Miracles?” and, upon opening the flyleaf, the author had signed it with a dedication to Marianne.

So hot-footing it to an on-line second-hand book shop, I was going to make my fortune.

However, there are about 50 of these copies for sale there, and erery flaming blasted last one of them is signed with a perishing dedication.

I’m surprised that the author didn’t catch writers’ cramp.

Ahh well.

So on with the motley and as I was preparing to go out and do some shopping came a ring on the bell.

The agent immobilier was back with one of the people from yesterday and all of his family – including a young kid of about 5 so Strawberry Moose was once more in his elephant.

Once they had all piddled off I went to the shops but I didn’t stay long, especially as I had forgotten my coolbox. And the rest of the day has been one of relaxing – I even made myself a coulis of kiwi and soja milk.

So tomorrow is Sunday and it’s a day of rest. I’ll go for a walk and say hello to Marianne, I reckon.

-6

Saturday 27th July 2013 – THIS YEAR IS …

… turning into something of a disaster, as if it wasn’t enough of one already.

J J Cale has died today, so it has been announced.

Many people might not know who he is, but I bet that most of you will know Eric Clapped-out.

And if you do, you will know the tracks “After Midnight”, “Travellin’ Light” and “Cocaine”. Cale was the guy who wrote those tracks, although they made Crapped-on far more famous than he himself became. You can hear Cale singing them on the album Troubadour.

Yes, he“can go to paradise Maybe once, maybe twice. Travelin’ light is the only way to fly”. He won’t be letting it hang out after midnight any more though.

Ray Manzarek of The Doors has also died this year, as has David Bowie’s longtime bassist Trevor Bolder. Richie Havens, who was the opening act at Woodstock – he’s gone too and so has Alvin Lee of Ten Years After.

My rock music programmes on Radio Anglais are fast turning into a necrology. It’s dreadful. Who is going to be next?

In keeping with the depressing spirit of things we’ve had two monsoons today. One at round about 09:00 and the other one started about 15 minutes ago and is still going on (23:40).

More rain has fallen in these two deluges than I’ve seen for quite a while, and that’s saying something given the weather just recently and the rainfall that I’v seen in my life in the Auvergne.

I did manage to get out and about though – an afternoon at Waterloo – or rather Mont St Jean – and the huge Carrefour and the Media Markt across the road.

I’ve bought a pile of food and on Monday I might even make another one of my famous – if not legendary – potato pies but apart from that, I didn’t spend any money on anything.

Not through lack of willingness or lack of things to buy of course, but I forgot to mention that I have a tax bill here to pay, relating to the final year that I owned “Expo”.

Yes, property taxes chez moi in the Auvergne are about €75. Here in Brussels it was €1200. No wonder I sold up and moved when I lost my job.

I’ve also emptied a pile of stuff from here. A huge (and I DO mean “huge”) mound of papers and four sacks of Marianne’s clothes have found their way into Caliburn and next time I’m out and about I’ll pass by one of the container sites and heave the lot into the appropriate container.

Tomorrow though is Sunday and I’ll be having a day off. Then I must crack on big-time.

Apart from that, I had another dream. I had a wind turbine on a mast on my front lawn and it was going round flat-out with the blade flutter that you get on the plastic blades of the AIR 403 wind turbines. A crowd of people were watching it and there were a couple of TV cameras filming it, and at a certain moment they all climbed over the fence onto my property to have a closer look, to film it and to record the sound. I arrived a little later, just in time to see the invasion, and I had to chase everyone away. Zero, about whom I spoke the other week, also put in an unscheduled appearance somewhere along the line.

-10

Tuesday 23rd July 2013 – WELL I MADE IT

And if you ask me very nicely, I’ll make you one like it too – which is a story that I have told before, but don’t let that worry you.

I left home just after 21:00 – stopped for 5 minutes at the Carrefour at Montmarault to drop a little fuel in (I was going to fuel up at the Carrefour in Riom earlier but of course we went in Liz’s car instead), then 15 minutes at Melun for a total refuel and a stretch of the legs.

I arrived here at 04:05, which has to be something of a world record seeing as how it’s about 732kms. Good old Caliburn.

But I cheated really, because I’ve abandoned my traditional route over the mountains and despite the péage, these days I’m doing it all on the motorway.

Well, not quite.

I’m leaving the motorway at Fontainebleu, passing around the town and heading for Melun where there is a cheap petrol station, and then onto the N104 – the Francilienne – at the other side of the city.

That cuts a huge chunk off the journey and completely misses out the suburbs of Paris. It’s much less stressful and I’ve had enough stress right now.

Except of course when someone in a Porsche Cayenne is overtaking a long line of traffic, sees the radar, slams on his brakes and cuts in right in front of me. He got both barrels of Caliburn’s horn and when he pulled alongside me to … errr … remonstrate with me, he got what can best be called an “offensive gesture” too.

I was in no mood for messing about.

Anyway, I can’t believe that I left the apartment in Belgium in such a tip. I really don’t know what happened. It was as if I had been chased out by zombies and if Marianne had seen how it looked, she would have turned in her grave.

I went more-or less straight to bed and then up at 11:30, and a leisurely day recuperating. And also doing two big machine-loads of washing.

Now everyone makes mistakes of course, but what counts in life is how you get out of them. And here’s an object lesson in dealing with issues.

Tuesday night is cheapo night in the pizza place down the road – all medium pizzas at €5:95 and as I didn’t feel like cooking after all of my exertions, down I went and ordered a Country Vegetable without cheese.

When I returned (having picked up some wooden crates on the way back) I found that they had given me a ham pizza with cheese by mistake, so I rang them back to complain.
“Ahh – it’s you who had the ham pizza then. What’s your address?” which I duly told him.
5 minutes later the manager was round with my pizza. “I made you a large one, to make up for the inconvenience” he said, so I put some cheese on it and ate it all, musing to myself that “that’s how you get out of an embarrassing situation”.

Yes, hats off to them.

So an ealy night. It’ll be a day or two before I recover from the jet-lag.

Luckily tonight, I found Marianne’s cooling fan. And I needed it too.

-6

Saturday 27th October 2012 – WHO WAS IT …

… who laughed when I said the other day that winter was on its way here and that it would be snowing before much longer?

Well, there you are. This was what greeted me this morning.

It’s the first snow of the year and it’s still October and we’re still on summer time here here.

I was up nice and early with every intention of going to Montlucon as I told you yesterday. But the main reason for going was to go finish off the day with a swim in the pool at Neris-les-Bains;

But if anyone thinks that I am getting into a swimming pool anywhere in weather like this, they are mistaken.

Instead, I stayed in this morning and did some more paperwork.

This afternoon the weather changed slightly and we had an hour or two of glorious weather – hardly a cloud in the sky – and so I nipped into St Eloy-les-Mines.

In this weather you have to go and do the shopping when you can, so there I was, doing a quicka dash around LIDL and Carrefour, spending a grand total of €18 on the weekly food shopping bill

The other day coming back from Nan’s, I noticed that Caliburn seemed to have his brake lights stuck on.

An investigation revealed that it was the driver’s side bulb showing both filaments at night, so I went to have a closer look.

I took out the light units and saw that the nearside lights worked as they should. On the offside though, a close examination of the bulb revealed that the bulb’s shaft had fractured.

As a result, the two internal wires were twisting and the current for the rear light was passing through the touching wires, lighting up the brake light as well.

Pressing the brakes, the current for the brake light was simply running to earth down the fractured shaft of the bulb.

Anyway, a new bulb has resolved that problem and we now have rear lights and brake lights like we are supposed to. My first guess of an earthing fault wasn’t so far out.

This afternoon I watched some footy on the computer and then prepared myself to go to Marcillat en Combraille to watch the footy. It’s cup weekend in the Puy-de-Dome and as you know, FC Pionsat St Hilaire were eliminated a couple of weeks ago by Clermont Foot Auvergne.

But to cut a long story short … “hooray” – ed … there was an inch of snow on the ground and it was falling thick and fast.

That put an end to the plans for going out, and I shan’t be moving now until it warms up again.

See you in April.

-3

Saturday 6th October 2012 – IT WAS SATURDAY …

… today and to be honest, I didn’t do very much.

Up with the alarm as usual, and after breakfast wrote the text for the Radio Anglais rock shows for next month. That seems to be the current way of spending Saturday mornings these days as I try to organise myself so much better.

After lunch I went for a whizz around St Eloy-les-Mines.

LIDL now has acquired a bakery, like the LIDL in Commentry. It was the grand opening today and so they were handing out free bits of bread and also coffee to the clients.

Nothing of any such at Carrefour though, and in any case I just bought the usual items – nothing at all that was special.

It was my day for meeting people though.

In Carrefour I met some friends of my Dutch neighbour Lieneke and we had a lengthy chat.

In LIDL I met Michael from the footy club, and we had a lengthy chat too. And he had some exciting news.

The draw for the Cup was made this morning and FC Pionsat St Hilaire, for their pains, have been drawn against none other than Clermont Foot Auvergne. They were in the French Premier League not so long ago and now play in Division Two – only about 9 levels higher than FC Pionsat St Hilaire.

Even if they send their reserves, which is likely, it’ll still be the biggest day ever in the history of FCPSH. We’ll have to go all out to attract a bumper crowd.

This evening I went to see AS Marcillat play, and a more one-sided match I have never seen.

About 89 and a half of the 90 minutes were played just outside Marcillat’s penalty area and how Villeneuve only scored one goal is a total mystery to me.

Even so, it still wasn’t enough to win the game as during the 75th minute one of AS Marcillat’s players, the n°8, took the ball all the way from his own penalty area through about 30 tackles and into the Villeneuve box. His shot was blocked but another player following up slotted the rebound into the net.

Taking the ball out of the net and kicking it upfield was all that the Villeneuve keeper had to do during the entire match.

And me? I’m off to Cellule tomorrow for FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI match against AS Cellule. Michael thinks that we might be at almost full strength tomorrow and won’t that be a change?

-3

Monday 11th June 2012 – IT’S ASTONISHING.

Today, the weather was so much better. Only 14mm of rain.

So once again I awoke to the sound of a torrential downpour but no staying in bed today. We had to be a-radioing at 10:00 and I had a lot to do before I could set out.

But it wasn’t as if it mattered any. The woman who does the engineering for Radio Tartasse at Marcillat-en-Combraille forgot that we were coming and so we had something of a wait until she arrived.

The best-made plans of mice and men, and all that.

But eventually we managed to record our 6 weeks of programmes. Luckily I did 2 rock programmes before I went away and so they are up-to-date too.

Back at Liz’s, I was very kindly permitted to have a shower and to wash some clothes. This depressing, miserable weather has meant that I have had no hot water for a week and more, and so I’m really grateful for the good friends that I have.

No need to worry about quantity, as I have said before. It’s the quality that counts.

Down in Gerzat at Radio Arverne this afternoon we did another 6 weeks-worth of programmes and so that’s everything recorded until the end of July.

On the way back, we stopped off at the Carrefour in Riom to buy some of these ethylotests. The law in France from July 1st is that every car should have a breathalyser fitted for the use of the driver and the supermarkets are selling them for peanuts. I bought a kit of 2 for €2:00 and you can’t say fairer than that.

I also had another bit of good luck there.

Last year I bought a neat 25-litre 12-volt coolbox for Caliburn for €27:95 or something like that and it’s useful for when I’m out shopping and when I’m on my travels – I need a place to store the cold food in the hot van.

I drove all around Canada just now wishing that I had had one in the car there too, and here they are in the Carrefour again – this time for €24:90.

So I’ve bought another one and I’ll pack it in the suitcase and fill it with clothes or something next time that I go over and then I can leave it in my storage unit over there in Montreal to keep the cool food and drink in.

It’s MoT time for Caliburn too and so we called in at the testing centre on the way back. Caliburn of course passed with flying colours and so we are all happy

At the Anglo-French group it was nice to see Clotilde back from Annemasse.

Yes, I’ve been rushed off my feet today and not had a moment to myself. That’s why I’m blogging early – I’m off to bed in a minute for an early night.

-1

Saturday 25th February 2012 – AFTER MY TRIUMPHS …

… of yesterday, I celebrated by doing … errr … badger all.

That’s right. A nice lazy days today.

And I reckoned that I deserved one after all of the hard work that I have put in over the last week or so on my presentation.

Mind you, I didn’t quite do nothing at all. In fact I managed a little (but not much) tidying up and later went down to St Eloy les Mines to do the shopping this afternoon around Carrefour and LIDL. A couple of hours out around the shops and even that wasn’t exciting because I met no-one whom I knew and didn’t buy anything out of the ordinary.

And back here, I carried on with the rest of my Day of Rest – and see if I care.

Saturday 11th February 2012 – IT WAS COLD …

… this morning … "ohh what a surprise" – ed … 9.5°C or thereabouts up here at 10:00 am this morning.

But that really was no surprise really because at that moment outside it was a mere -12°C. This weather certainly is ridiculous.

Anyway a blazing wood fire had the temperature up to 18.5°C within an hour and that was the important bit.

I stayed in and cracked on with the presentation about the Trans-Labrador Highway that I’ll be doing for the village, and by 14:30 it was done.

At least the text and the graphics are. I just have to make a powerpoint presentation of the photos, and that won’t take too long.

From there I nipped into St Eloy-les-Mines and did some shopping. And I excelled myself. Some potatoes to cook in my oven, and also some more oven chips.

Saturday night might be curry night and it has been for as long as I can remember, but not when it’s cold enough outside that half a packet of frozen oven chips will stay frozen for a couple of days while I had the rest with a veggie burger and baked beans.

But in Carrefour there were some young kids running amok, nominally (but not actually) under the control of a young woman with earrings and piercings through the nose and chin and the like.

And when she spoke – yes, it was in English. and we came out here to keep away from people like that, snobs that we are. Jarspur and Hooray Henries one week, chavs the next week.

I picked my way delicately to Rosemary’s after that, eventually, and we had a good chat for a couple of hours.

and so back here where I have a big fire going and I’m not moving.

The word on the streets is that things shall warm up dramatically on Monday night. The bad news is that we shall be covered in snow though. If it’s not one thing it’s another.

And once you get started, you’ll be surprised at just how many other things there are.

-1

Saturday 7th January 2012 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… my money again.

And it’s not as if I have too much to spend either, but there you go.

In Carrefour in St Eloy les Mines I spent a mere €12 or so, most of which went on a jar of coffee seeing as I seem to be rather down on that at the moment, and won’t that be a catastrophe if I run out?

In LIDL I spent €25 or something – with nothing much to show for it except some wire brushes for the angle grinder. I’ll always pick up a few packs of those when I see them.

But there I met a couple of people whom I knew – some friends of Bill’s whom I had met at one of his soirées, and Jasper and his mum (who have featured previously in these pages) were also there.

But then went to Cheze – the hardware shop where the Intermarché used to be when I first came here.

The bread box was trashed in the hurricane so I need to make something new, and Cheze was the likeliest place to find some bits. I didn’t find what I wanted but I still spent €52 in there.

Yes, it was sale time there and even more importantly, a clearance sale. There was a big bucket of hardware like door knobs, adjustible feet, special bolts and so on, at 50 centimes a pack. I had tons of stuff out of there.

There was also a LED spotlight with a dusk-dawn sensor, powered by a solar panel, reduced to €8:00. That will make a handy work light or torch for when I’m down the garden late at night.

Pride of place though went to this beautiful machine – a chop saw.

I’ve been after a low-powered one of those for ages and I’ve hunted high and low but without success. But here at Cheze were three or four end-of-range chop saws, quite small and all rated at 1200 watts, all for the price of €34 each.

At that price I just had to have one, especially as there’s a 1200-watt inverter winging its way to me in the post even as we speak. After all the time I spend chopping wood by hand, and how easy it was doing the tongue-and-grooving back at Expo when I had the battery-powered one.

The width of the blade and the instability of the machines means that they aren’t ideal for precision work, but where precision cutting isn’t 100% essential, this wil ldo just fine, so I hope that it does what it says that it will do.

BUt I didn’t stay out long. It’s rained non-stop today, all grey and drizzly and depressing. I took advantage of the morning by writing the additional text for the radio programmes we shall be recording at the end of the month, and I’ve watched the odd film or two.

Tomorrow I’m going to start my presentation for the Trans-Labrador Highway.

I have to do that on Feb 24th, so no time like the present to get going.

-1

Saturday 24th December 2011 – I DIDN’T FEEL …

… much like getting up this morning.

I can’t sleep in Brussels and it’s pretty pointless trying, if you ask me. And so when the alarm went off at 08:30 I was already alive and kicking.

Having fallen off the end of the bed three times during the night doesn’t help much either and so I turned the bed round in the middle of the night. And so tonight it will be my feet that will fall out.

This morning we went shopping at the Shanti – the health food supermarket over the road in the Avenue Adolphe Buyl. Start as we mean to go on, I suppose.

After that I made a start on the work that we had to do. I’m not here merely to pass the time of day or to sit and put my feet up – I have plenty of work to do.

Another shopping trip, this time to the Carrefour at Waterloo (or, rather, Mont St Jean) for the stuff we couldn’t find at the health food shop was on the cards for later and after a coffee, we went to Chi Chi’s, the Tex-Mex restaurant down the road from there, for a Christmas Eve meal.

We arrived much earlier than anticipated for our booking, but there was a table free and so we didn’t have to wait around.

Back here later, we watched the Chronicles of Narnia II – Prince Caspian, which isn’t a patch on the first one unfortunately, and that was Christmas Eve.

And now I’m off to bed. I have to wait until tomorrow to find out what Santa has bought me.

-2

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.

And 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.

but 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 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.

On 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

Saturday 2nd April 2011 – BACK IN BELGIUM

After my vicissitudes on the road yesterday, I finally came to rest on the service area at Nivelles at about 03:00 – a 19-hour day (teachers, please take note).

At least it gave me the opportunity to have one of the best nights’ sleeps that I’ve had on the road for quite some time so next morning I was up and about and ready for anything.

Next morning I went round to Bernards to load up the Minerva. It’s not that heavy and we managed to push it onto the trailer without even the hint of a winch – really!

I’ve left the trailer parked up at Bernard’s house now waiting for me to go back to pick it up tomorrow late afternoon. I have plenty to do (like shopping and the like) and I don’t want to drag all of this around behind me through the streets of Brussels and anywhere else.

After spending 2 hours discussing solar panels with 2 guys from the Congo (it’s better than Nigeria I suppose) whom I met outside Carrefour, I did some shopping and then went to the flat where I half-loaded the van.

But you all missed the excitement there as well – and Terry would have loved this.

A van pulls into the private parking space of someone while it unloads some stuff
the owner of the private parking space pulls up behind and blocks them in – and then walks away
the owner of the van goes to fetch the President of the Conseil de Gerance
the President of the Conseil de Gerance accuses me of parking my van there (it’s a small white Volkswagen we are talking about here by the way) so we have “a frank exchange of views” about this and he won’t be coming to talk to me again.
the owner of the car says that he is going to leave his car parked blocking this van in – and obstructing the passageway – all night
The President tells the owner of the car “yes, you do that – it’ll serve these bastards in this van right”
The President and the car driver wander off arm-in-arm more or less, to the accompaniment of some ribald commentary from Yours Truly.
The woman from the next garage can’t get her car into her garage
The man in the previous garage can’t get his car out of his garage
The police are called.
Having stirred the pot by coming out with my usual round of … errr … helpful comments, I wander away.

Isn’t life exciting in Brussels?

And now just for a change, I’m in a small hoted in Ghent. I’ve been for a walk around and I’ve had some chips and a vegetable kebab and I’m okay. Here I’ll be staying until the morning.

It’s a departure from the usual procedure, I know, but I just fancied doing something a little different. And why not?

Tuesday 29th March 2011 – I’ve spent all day on the road.

We started off at Radio Tartasse to record their programmes for April. It was the usual disorganised performance there but we managed well enough.

Radio Arverne wanted us at 13:00 this afternoon and so it wasn’t worth going home. We went to Chateuneuf-les-Bains for a coffee instead. That was much more interesting.

At Radio Tartasse, which is much more organised we did 5 programmes in less than an hour, and then went off to the Carrefour at Riom for a butty, a coffee and a nosy around the shops where I bought some 100%vegan margarine for my garlic bread for tea.

Back here, I sorted out some screws and some of the seeds for the garden but my heart’s not in it right now. I’ve not recovered fully from the effects of digging all of these raised beds. It’s taking it out of me getting ready for planting. So with that in mind I knocked off at 17:30 and came up here for a rest.

I’ll have a lie-in tomorrow to see if I’ll feel any better, and then I’ll go out a-planting. I need to get the garlic and the shallots in place pretty quickly. And I’m away at the weekend too.

-3

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality