Category Archives: fcpsh

Sunday 15th November 2009 – I had a few surprises today.

car in ditch teilhet menatFirstly, on my way to the footy I came across a car stuck halfway down an embankment at the side of the road. And if there hadn’t have been a sapling in the way it would have been all the way down the embankment.

Now it’s true that where this incident took place is on a sharp bend, but the road between Teilhet and Menat is full of sharp bends and this one is no sharper than any of the others. So how come it was this particular bend at which it left the road?

Mind you, if it was going to leave the road, this is the best place to do it. The next sharp bend has a vertical drop of about 60 feet to the bottom.

I went down to look to make sure that there wasn’t anyone trapped in it – I mean, you never know. As it happened, it was empty but there was a lovely head-shaped impression on the windscreen just above the steering wheel. I bet someone has a headache today.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire combrondeSecondly. Pionsat’s third XI not only had 11 players including a real goalkeeper, they had 3 replacements and two others who didn’t make the team. Not only that, the two officials who had been sulking over something that was said to them in a moment of depression, they had patched up their differences with the others and so we also had a trainer and a linesman! Not that it did them any good though – they still lost!

Thirdly, I’ve bought myself a bass amp and speaker – a Carlsbro 45-watt combo. It’s not in particularly good nick – there’s a loose connection at the input leads, one of the speaker wires isn’t soldered properly and a couple of the potentiometers (volume and tone controls) need changing, but it’s only a fiver or so for the bits and half an hour’s work. It looks like it’s been left for years in the damp and then taken outside where the condensation has got at it. It still managed to rock the house though when I plugged the Gibbon into it.

It wasn’t cheap – €90 in fact, but it was the cheapest combo that I’ve seen in this area. And believe me, there isn’t a great deal of choice. I still have my stack (a 200-watt custom-built transistorised amp, a 200-watt Marshall valve amp and a 1×18 and a 2×12 cabinets) back in Brussels that I never thought I’d ever use again.

The other surprise is something that I found quite touching. As you know, I follow the local football team and take pics and write match reports of the games. Some of them are being used on a calendar for fund-raising purposes for the club but what is really nice is that they took a photo of me today as they want to put that on the calendar too. There’s also a chatroom on the internet for French local football and it seems that I am mentioned quite a bit with regard to the website. It’s nice to know that people appreciate so much what I’ve been doing. But now that I’ve finished my attic I need to bring the site up-to-date.

In other news, Liz, Terry and I had quite a chat about this digger. We’ve decided that discretion is the better part of valour and I’m going to write to this guy in Benin, thank him for his efforts, but tell him that we fixed ourselves up locally with a digger so we won’t ba able to complete the purchase.

And tomorrow, I’m back at work. My holiday is over.

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Saturday 14th November 2009 – I’ve just got back …

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire condat giat voingt… from the footy tonight. And for a change both sides won. Pionsat’s 2nd XI beat Condat Giat 1-0 and after that the 1st XI beat St Priest 3-1. What is even more astonishing is that following those results both of the clubs top their respective leagues. And who would have thought that after the mauling the 2nd XI received in the first game of the season against Pontaumur?

But at least the injury crisis is easing. Cedric reappeared up front for the 1st XI (and marked his reappearance with a goal) – the first time that he has played this season. And Michael was back in goal for the 2nd XI which means that with Matthieu not being on duty this weekend he’ll be keeping goal for the 3rd XI at Combronde tomorrow – the first time that they will have had a proper keeper for ages. I’m even told that they have a full complement of 14 (11 plus 3 subs) for the 3rd XI too and I haven’t seen that for months.

But we were lucky to get football today. This morning it was absolutely p155ing down at an incredible rate of knots and I was of the opinion that had it carried on, the games would have been off. But it brightened up a little in the afternoon while I was at the shops.

Talking of shopping, and talking of footy, I’m going to make another revision to my shopping schedule. Normally I go once a month to Montlucon for a mega-shop and the other Saturdays I just go into St Eloy. But Commentry (half-way between here and Montlucon) has some decent shops too – better than those in St Eloy but it’s farther away. Howver, some Saturdays there are two footy matches down the road – one at 18:30 and the other at 20:30 and I’m always in a rush for the first one of those but on the Saturdays when there is just one match the kickoff is at 20:00 and there’s plenty of time for that. So on those days, why don’t I go and do my shopping in Commentry in the early afternoon and then go the extra 10km to Neris-les-Bains and go for a swim and a shower? A good swim and a shower every fortnight will keep me clean and healthy.

And talking of footy again, I see that the Yellow Cowdenbeath stuffed Ingerlund tonight. Ha ha ha ha!

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Sunday 8th November 2009 – some of the views round here …

monts de combrailles riom st bonnet artonne… are absolutely stunning and one thing about following the football team is that I get taken to all kinds of places that I wouldn’t normally visit.

Today the 1st XI were playing at Artonne. That’s a small town down between Aigueperse and Riom. The main road – the N144 – goes between Montlucon and Clermont-Ferrand and basically follows the eastern edge of the Combrailles – the mountain range where I live. To the east is the Plain of the Limagne and then the Monts de la Bourbonnaise – the area where the Bourbon kings of France originated.

But between Combronde on the N144 and Aigueperse, the first town of any importance in the Limagne is an outcrop of the Combrailles and in places it has some of the most beautiful views in the area.

fcpsh pionsat st hilaire football club de foot artonneSo beautiful as the views might be, that is much more than can be said for the football, which showed one of its more ugly sides this afternoon. Pionsat’s players are mostly of small stature and rely on speed rather than strength and when they come up against big physical sides they can be quite intimidated. But today they let their football do the talking and won quite comfortably 4-1, whereas Artonne did their talking with their mouths and on two occasions with their fists and ended up with just 9 players on the pitch by the final whistle.

Still it was nice to be out and about even though the rain has been persistent for most of the day. A grey drizzly dismal November Sunday. I’m still waiting for a sunny day as I have tons of washing to do. It’s hard to believe how much the weather has changed over these last two or three weeks

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Sunday 25th October 2009 – It was 9:03 when I woke up this morning

I thought to myself that that can’t be right – and it wasn’t.

Well, it was because in fact the clocks went back this morning and we are now on real time, although by yesterday’s time it would have been 10:03 and that is much more like a respectable time to wake up on a Sunday.

So having breakfasted I had to do a CD of footy photos for Xavier. He has some friends who play for Cebazat and I had photographed them the other week so he had asked me for copies of what I had. And as I was meeting him at Beauregard Vendon where the 3rd XI were playing this afternoon I needed to get my skates on.

First stop though was the fete de la pomme at La Cellette. I’d been invited by Marianne so I went along to say hello. Antoine, Liz and Terry were there so we had a good chat and then it was off to the footy.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire beauregard vendonPionsat’s luck ran out today – they only had 10 players and not one of them was what could be called a goalkeeper. For much of the match Xavier was in goal and today’s pic features him diving to push a Beauregard shot round the post for a corner. There was precious little else to cheer.

On the way back home I went via the brocante at St Gervais. And what a waste of time that was. Most of the stallholders were Dutch and if you are a keen follower of my blog you will know that the problem with the Dutch is that they have no word for gratis. I was looking for a metal bucket or something similar to take away my ashes (well, not mine, the ashes out of the stove) but there was nothing that would do. Some stallholder had a battered aluminium casserole and he wanted €4:00 for it. It’s not very often I come away from a brocante empty-handed. Mind you, I met Gilles and Heidi there and we had had a good chat.

Back home I plucked up the courage to tackle that wiring job seeing as it was now dark. I took me about an hour to do it, most of which time was spent trying to fish the torch out from downbehind the battery box.

We’ll know tomorrow whether it works properly.

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Saturday 24th October 2009 – I have just seen …

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire montel villosanges…the most amazing game of footy that I have seen in years. In the driving torrential rain, 5 minutes to go and Pionsat trailing 3-1. Heads down, Montel-Villosanges on the rampage, crowds streaming out of the ground, etc etc.

And in a most astonishing and dramatic 3 minutes, Pionsat have three attacks and somehow, unbelievably, score 3 goals to end up the winners in a match that they never ever deserved to win.

Earlier in the evening the 2nd XI had played Menetrol and won 3-2 in a match that was scarred by controversy and had I been refereeing Pionsat would not have had two of their goals. For one of them, the Menetrol keeper takes a clean catch of a high ball but has come out with his foot up to ward off the Pionsat attacker. Now personally I think that if a keeper comes out with his foot raised then it’s “dangerous play” and if his foot does catch the attacker it really ought to be a penalty. You see this kind of thing in every match that you watch and even when there’s a collision a penalty has never ever been given. Yet tonight there was a collision and the ref gave the penalty. Like I say, quite right too but it would not have been given anywhere else.

Pionsat’s second goal I didn’t catch on camera. For the simple reason that I, like all of the crowd, like the Menetrol defence and like most of the Pionsat players except the guy with the ball, was waiting for the referee to blow the whistle in response to the linesman’s flag for probably the clearest offside I have ever seen. The linesman hurled his flag to the floor in disgust, and who can blame him? Normally the dubious decisions always seem to go against Pionsat so it’s about time they had some luck. But still ….

This morning I dodged the torrential rainstorm and went into Montlucon. At LIDL they were selling a video capture kit that enables you to plug your video recorder into your computer and copy al of your old tapes. I’ve been looking for one of these for years and at €19.95 it’s a bargain. I forgot more than I remembered at Brico Depot but I’ve got most of what I need now for my room and I’ll have to do without the rest.

And it’s still raining.

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Saturday 17th October 2009 – In a major departure …

attic floor concrete base woodstove… from my usual habits, I did some work this morning. I built a framework on the floor, lined it with a plastic sheet, and then concreted it. This will be a slab that will be tiled and the woodstove will be placed on it. Once I take away the framework, the slab will be held in place by the laminate floor that I’ll be fitting.

I’ve had to make the slab with a lot of stones so that it will knit closely together – after all, it’s only 2.5cms thick – but I made it too wet. There is nowhere for the water to drain away of course, with it being in a plastic sheet, so the water has floated to the surface and pockmarked it in places. But it’s not a problem as I’ll fill the pocks with tiling cement in due course.
fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire riom>After the shopping we had the footy tonight. And GRRRRRRRRR again to Pionsat. The match against Le Quartier was cancelled so I had a wasted drive down there and back again. I drove down again for the match at 20:30, only to find that it had kicked off at 20:00. As I got out of Caliburn, Riom broke down the field and scored, and as I walked into the ground, Pionsat went up the other end and they scored. I had also missed a penalty, but Riom didn’t miss it, and they ran out winners 2-1.

In other news – do you remember my footy photo from last weekend? It seems that the local newspaper, La Montagne, has published it. That’s a few of my photos the newspaper has used now. No money, of course (and I could do with some right now) but at least some of my work is getting an airing and they wouldn’t use them unless they thought something positive of them. And who knows where it might lead?

And tomorrow I’ll be tiling the back wall behind the slab. That’s where I’ll be stacking the wood so tiles will enable it just to be wiped down to clean. That’s a better idea than wallpaper. And that’s a novel idea too – working on a Sunday.

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Sunday 11th October 2009 – It was another beautiful afternoon…

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire cebazat… and I had a nice drive down to Cebazat, between Riom and Clermont Ferrand, for the footy. Finding the town was one thing – finding the ground was something else entirely. I ended up at what can only be described as a stadium watching a wimmin’s footy match while the locals asked around as to where the men might be playing. In the end I was directed to a public park on the edge of the town where there wasn’t even a pie hut Shock! Horror!

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire cebazatIt was a good game and Pionsat drew 2-2, which was a good result seeing as how injuries have decimated the side and they lost 2 more players during the game.

The match kicked off at 15:00 so I could even have gone to see the 2nd XI, who kicked off at 13:00 just down the road at Sayat. But with no alarm clock and waking up at …errr… 11:22, there wasn’t much hope of that.

The drive out was really nice. I didn’t switch the sat-nav on until I got to Pionsat so it took me via Manzat, St Hypocrite and that way, which is a beautiful run. I meant to stop and take some piccies on the way back but it brought me back up the N144 which is nothing like as exciting.

In other news, Rhys and I are well-known for our differences of opinion on the American political scene and we have long since agreed to differ. But in more shock! horror! news, we are in fact inaccord over one thing. And that is “what the hell has Obama done to merit the Nobel Peace Prize?”

Rhys thinks that a well-filled plain brown envelope changed hands, whereas I think that it was because he wasn’t the Bushbaby and someone wanted to rub the Bushbaby’s nose in the political dirt. But the Peace Prize is usually awarred to someone who makes a major breakthrough in some kind of inherent national or international conflict.

But giving it to someone who is just about to up the ante in Afghanistan and is considering sending in more troops to fight the indigenous inhabitants – it’s just insulting and offensive. The Nobel Committee should be ashamed of itself.

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Saturday 10th October 2009 – You would be amazed ….

french fire engine
… at the things you find lurking up side streets. Another one of my passions is old vehicles and so when I saw this beastie lurking up a side street in Montlucon today I just had to go for a nosey.

At first, from a distance, I thought it was a Russian GAZ lorry, a copy of the Studebakers and Chevrolets that the Americans supplied to the Russians under lend-lease during World War II but from close-up I don’t think it is. There’s no maker’s name on it anywhere that I could see so I could only be guessing as to what it might be. Although it looks vaguely 1940s-ish that’s deceptive too as Magirus Deutz were turning out lorries of this style as late as the early 1970s.

old french fire engineAll the visible accessories (headlights – that kind of thing) were “made in France” so I’ve no idea. It’s a 4×4 anyway and solidly built.

So in Montlucon I picked up my furniture and almost everything I needed for the attic. I forgot the air vents though – little plastic grilles about 2″ in diameter to cover up the airholes that I need to make. But I also made an excellent purchase – an “end of series” composter that was going for €10:00. Why I need a new composter is because of a change to the beichstuhl arrangements. I shan’t go into the gory details but in a bid to do away with the chemical contraption I am putting into effect an arrangement that involves a plant pot and some biodegradable bin liners. I’m sure you can work it out for yourself.

Talking of biodegradable bin liners, I discovered a new bio shop in Montlucon – just down the road from Brico Depot. Not as big as Amaranth but I drive past it every week so it’s worth a visit. Their biodegradable bin liners cost €5.51 for 25 – a major improvement on Auchan’s €6:00 for 15.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire equipe 3 Damien voyonAt the footy tonight Pionsat lost 3-2 in a hotly-contested match. But I dunno what Damian put in his tea tonight but he played a blinder in goal tonight and made a series of brilliant saves. We were all well-impressed with his performance. With a bit of luck he would have kept out the goals too – he managed to get a hand to all of them.

And Liz has a problem with her telephone and she asked me to ring France Telecom to report the fault.
“You have to say the magic words, Liz“
“I’m baking tomorrow!”

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Sunday 4th October 2009 – Chomp chomp chomp

The noise you can hear is me eating humble pie (not Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton) . Pionsat weren’t playing last night – I was looking at the wrong week in the agenda.
fcpsh fc pionsat st hilare football club de foot pontaumurThere was a Cup match this afternoon instead and it involved a drive down to Pontaumur, where Pionsat were humbled a couple of weeks ago, 8-1. And they put in a much-improved performance this week, only losing 5-0.

And what a match it was too! Famous not for the performance of the teams but the performance of probably the most eccentric referee I have ever seen. “I warned you about that in the first half” he yelled at a player who had only been on the pitch for half an hour. And when he awarded Pontaumur a (hotly disputed but in my opinion quite rightly so) penalty, he booked the … errr…Pontaumur goalkeeper.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire pontaumurBut highlight of the game was the phrase that he uttered to one of the Pionsat players – a phrase that you will only ever hear once in a lifetime and only then if you are lucky so it pays to be in the right place at the right time –
“Turn round number 14, so I can see the number on your back!”
At this point, and for the rest of the match, the bewilderment was total.

After that, I went round to Simon’s to pick up my wood-burning stove. And it’s such a dinky little thing too but if it does its job I won’t be needing any more than that.

In other news, I’m now a student of Oxford University. I didn’t think I could keep out of education for long and I’ve enrolled in this course. Never mind the status of the University offering the course, have you seen the price? A 10-point course with the Open University costs £155 if you are a British resident, but a whopping great obscene and offensive £420 if you live in mainland Europe. £180 for 10 points at Oxford is a bargain.

There are many former OU students living in Mainland Europe. Many of them have given up their studies simply because of the spiralling fees that the OU has imposed upon them. A paper from the OU that I saw in February 2007 planning to use European students as cash cows certainly came home to roost as students deserted by the bus load.

And that has given me an idea for the practical part of this course. Raping looting and pillaging was always going to be on the agenda but what I’m now going to do is to round up a bunch of disenchanted European OU students, dress them up as Vikings, grab hold of an old longship and sail to Milton Keynes and ransack the Open University campus. I shall set Mike D. a special task – he’s the one who will be sent to carry off Turdi de Hatred and sell her in the slave market down at the Gare du Midi in Brussels on Sunday morning. He might get a couple of centimes for her if he’s lucky.

And in other other news, that well-known and legendary artist-cum-rapper Tracey Eminem has announced that she is to quit the UK in a protest against high taxation. Her admirable stand has been backed by the entire nation who has rushed round to her house to help her pack her bags. It reminds me of the time back in the 1970s when it was announced that Dolly Parton had a skin rash on her breasts and was looking for a volunteer to rub the cream in. Of course, being the altruist that I am, I immedately volunteered for the post and went round to see her doctor.
“Very good, Mr Hall” he announced. “Take this jar of cream and go to the United Nations Building in New York”
“I thought she lived in Nashville, Tennessee” I said
“So she does” he replied. “But the United Nations Building in New York is where the queue ends“

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Saturday 3rd October 2009 – GRRRRRR at Pionsat

I went down to the footy ground tonight as there was a match at 20:00 – FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 3rd XI v Chatelguyon. But the place was all locked up and in darkness. No idea what was (or was not) going on there. Maybe the match has been rearranged for tomorrow but I’ll be having a run out to Sayat as the 2nd XI is playing there and I haven’t been to Sayat’s ground yet.

beautiful red sunlight puy de dome france But it was a nice drive down to the ground at Pionsat tonight and as I came round the corner to the eastern side of the mountain I was met with this most stunning sunset. Isn’t this impressive?

We had an old saying when we were kids –
“Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight”
“Red sky in the morning – Stoke on Trent’s on fire”
You can argue something like this here, can’t you? That direction is roughly Montlucon.

And talking of Montlucon I reckon I now have everything I need for my room. Even the glass, as Brico Depot had some sheets of perspex on offer at €17 for 80cms square by 4mm thick. I can make some nice windows out of that.

But highlight of today’s trip around the town was in NOZ – the end-of-range bucket shop where they were selling fast battery chargers for €3.90. They are just AA and AAA and take 800 milliamps and such is the rate of charge that they are rated as unsuitable for NiCads – just NiMH. I’ve seen (or felt) how hot NiCads can get in a normal fast charger.

The charger works off a DC adapter which – surprise surprise – is 12-volt.

And talking of 12-volt DC adapters, this next point is all Terry’s fault. We were talking a few days ago about televisions and how low-powered some of the flat-screen TVs are. In the Auchan I had a look at some of them and found a big cheap €275 flat-screen TV that is rated at 40 watts (that means it probably draws half that) and runs off 12-volt DC.

Now how much current does a DVD player draw?

At the Bio shop in Montlucon I bumped into Kate. Haven’t seen her for ages. She tells me that at the end of the month she is going back to the UK. Had enough of the quiet life, she says. It’s 10 years since she was last in the UK and so she will notice quite a difference. It won’t be long before she’ll be back.

But there are a lot of Brits returning to the UK just now. Financial issues play a big part in it. When I first came to the mainland the Pound was getting about 11 French Francs (I can even remember it being as high as 13) but with no raw materials for prime industry and no manufacturing industry to make use of the raw materials the Pound is at the mercy of world markets and it’s been taking a right hammering as the Arabs fight back against the west.

Whenever the West or the Zionists do something nasty to the Arabs the Arabs smile inscrutably and triple the price of oil. All the money then flows to the Middle East where they spend some of it on these new cities like Doha and so on, and the rest is then flooded into the banks of a country of their choice. The banks, awash with cash and needing to generate the interest to pay the Arab depositors, lend it out on increasingly high-risk ventures that return the most interest.

When all the money is actively engaged, the Arabs then ask for it back. The banks need to attract more money from elsewhere to replace the money the Arabs want back so they have to offer higher interest rates, the loan repayments thus go up, people can’t afford to repay, the banks foreclose and find themselves with a load of valueless assets and the economy goes tits-up.

This is 21st Century warfare and you can all see just how effective it has been. The West and the Zionists are still fighting a 19th Century war (and hopelessly losing, but that’s another matter entirely. What odds would you have had on Hamas smashing the Zionist farces a couple of years ago?) and they do it every time and they don’t learn from the previous encounters.

Anyone remember the turmoil of 1992? And the collapse of the western economies and the 3-day week in 1973 just after the Yom Kippur War?

And here the West is, threatening Iran. The economy hasn’t recovered from the most recent crisis yet. What will happen when oil triples in price next time?

So all of these expats are retreating to the UK because their money isn’t going as far as it used to in Europe. But what they haven’t realised is that it’s Europe where things are much more stable and it’s the UK where the economy has collapsed, and they are confronted with what for them has been rampant inflation in the UK over the last few years.

When I left the UK I always fuelled up at Dover as fuel was 2/3rd the price than on the mainland. Now it’s the other way round – everyone fuels up at Calais. And it’s the same for most other products too.

House prices are now starting to return to their previously extortionate levels in the UK and as most of the ex-pats sold their houses to fuel their new lives abroad, where are they going to live if they go back?

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Saturday 26th September 2009 – YOU MISSED …

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire puy de dome france… all of the excitement tonight.

Freezing cold autumn weather, a Pionsat win and a draw, debatable referee-ing decisions, a series of mysterious yellow cards flashed at no-one in particular, and for the first time ever, a referee losing his temper in the middle of a match.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire puy de dome france And if that wasn’t enough to be going on with, we had a whole raft of hotly-disputed decisions, a couple of fierce arguments, a punch-up, one of the best goals I’ve seen for ages and a couple of errors that schoolboys would be embarrassed to make.

Yes, we have exciting times out here in the wilderness of rural France. It’s much more fun than watching Manure Knighted on the box.

This morning I went into Commentry and didn’t I have a lucky find in one of the crud shops? Remember yesterday when I dropped my tape player down two storeys in the house? well they were selling a portable bicycle accessory tape player with built-in stereo speakers for 5 euros. It works with an external 6v DC socket too. Can’t be bad at that price. I can’t wait to try it out.

Back home later this afternoon, I did another load of washing. I need to get up-do-date before winter. The cold even now is starting to threaten.

And no footy tomorrow. What on earth am I going to do?

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Sunday 20th September 2009 – IT WAS A LOVELY DRIVE …

… out to Briffons this afternoon. It took me about an hour or so to get there – Espinasse – Biollet – Pontaumur and then up into the foothills of the Mont Dore and the Puy de Sancy. Had the weather been any good it would probably have been fair to say that parts of the drive might have been spectacular, but in fact there was an almost constant drizzle and restricted visibility once I’d passed Pontaumur.

briffons perpezat hanging cloud mont dore puy de dome franceThere are some delightful settings for football grounds around here but I reckon that Briffons probably beats them all to date.

Even with the low rainclouds ( and I bet we are pretty well high up here) the view can be said to be spectacular, as I’m sure you must agree.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire briffons perpezat matthieu malnar puy de dome france
It was Pionsat’s 2nd XI playing today, and Briffons are in Division 1 (one step higher up) of their pool so I was filled with some trepidation following the mauling last week at Pontaumur, and once more Matthieu in goal had to work hard to earn his corn, as you can see in the photo.

But I needn’t have worried. Jan, the first-choice centre-half, was back in the defence and Sebastien was playing in his habitual centre-forward role

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire briffons perpezat puy de dome franceIt was amazing how much more solid the team looked with just those two changes (although there were a couple of other team changes too).

The teams were pretty evenly matched for most of the game and Pionsat ran out as winners thanks to a typical 2nd XI goal – hoof over the top of the defence and a quick forward running on, beating the offside trap. But they had to work hard for it and fully deserved the victory.

Tomorrow I’ll be back in the attic fitting the battens and insulation on part of the last wall. Then I have to work out the layout of the stairs and the door into the room. Poncing will have to wait for a couple of days.

Which reminds me – the French verb for “to wax skis” is FARTER. So when I’ve finished the attic I can go down to the ski slopes at Superbesse not too far from here, get a job as a ski repairer and spend the winter poncing and farting to my heart’s content.

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Sunday 13th September 2009 – WELL, I MADE THE WRONG DECISION THERE.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire equipe 2 pontaumur puy de dome francePionsat’s 2nd XI had won the third division championship at a canter last year. The defence was pretty shaky but the attack was phenomenal and they had swept everyone aside.

So when they ran out onto the pitch for their first match in the 2nd division with 3 or 4 people whom I didn’t recognise, a couple of players who had been in the 3rd XI last season and hadn’t inspired me too much and the star forward playing at centre-half, I had a sense of foreboding.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire equipe 2 pontaumur puy de dome franceAs for Pontaumur, they had finished 2nd in the second division last season and were unlucky not to win the championship. I’d seen them play Pionsat’s 1st XI in the cup last season and they had made it look easy. So that made my sense of foreboding even worse.

And sure enough, Pontaumur were 3-0 up before Pionsat even touched the ball. It was 6-0 at half-time and the final score – 8-1 – was something of a let-off for Pionsat.

Mind you it could have been worse. Pionsat’s ist XI were playing at Miremont just down the road. Miremont had just pipped Pontaumur for the 2nd Division championship last year and were promoted to the 1st Division. Pionsat scored with the 3rd kick of the game and at half-time they were 8-0 up.

Seeing as how close were the two matches we did suggest that the teams swap games for the second half – the 1st XI coming to Pontaumur and the 2nd XI going to Miremont. The game at Miremont finished with an incredible 12-1 scoreline in favour of Pionsat. And that is unbelievable. I wish I had gone there instead.

Yesterday there was the most incredible coincidence. The highest temperature in my little room was 21.9 degrees. In the attic it was … er … 21.9 degrees. The lowest temperature in my room was 18.6 degrees and in the attic it was … er … 18.6 degrees.

And this morning, in the verandah (which I’m using as the kitchen while I live temporarily in the kitchen) there was a dead mouse. Surely my cooking isn’t as bad as that?

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Saturday 12th September 2009 – GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire equipe 3 neuf eglise puy de dome franceThe footy season commenced this evening and Pionsat’s 3rd XI (who were in action aganst Neuf-Eglise’s 2nd team) started where they left off at the end of last season. Damian in goal with his teflon gloves and a 3-0 defeat.

The 1st XI are in action at Miremont and the 2nd XI are in action at Pontaumur tomorrow afternoon. Both away from home and I haven’t been to either ground before so I’m rather spoilt for choice. I can go to Pontaumur again as their 3rd XI are in the same division as Pionsat’s 3rd XI but seeing as it’s the 2nd XI’s 1st game in Division 2 following their promotion, I reckon I’ll be wandering off there to give them my (im)moral support.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I went into Montlucon today and spent a record low 200 Euros at Brico Depot.

And there is a good reason for that. Most sheets of construction material are of a standard size – 2.40 metres long. And short wheelbase Ford Transits are 2.42 metres long in the load bed to take this into account. So I have absolutely no idea why sheets of insulation-backed plasterboard weigh in at 2.50. It’s totally illogical.

I need about 20 for my attic but of course they won’t go inside Caliburn with the door shut and you can’t drive 30 kms with both the back doors wide open, and you can’t leave them in the back of the van until you need them. So if you stand them sideways upright with just one door half-open you can get 13 in which is enough to be going on with, particularly as you have to unload them and put them somewhere (like standing upright outside the house covered by a tarpaulin).

And they are big and awkward to manoeuvre. There’s no way I’ll be getting these up the ladder into the attic in one piece. I’m going to have to cut them to shape outside and then get them up into the attic. And where I could in theory fit a whole one, it’s still going to have to be cut in at least half so I’ll be able to handle it safely.

Mind you, the spending spree continued as I ordered my bed-settee (340 Euros) and my occasional table (I don’t know yet what it is for the rest of the time) and I had to pay a 25% deposit. It’ll all be ready for early October which is my deadline for doing the attic out. A lot of money for a bed-settee you might think, but I’ll be spending a lot of time on it and so I may as well be comfortable.

They also had a really comfortable office chair (like the old one in Brussels that I have curled up and slept in on numerous occasions) and a really dinky miniature gas cooker which has caught my eye for the future.

And as luck would have it they were having a sale of bed linen at the Auchan and I now have 2 quilt covers, 4 pillow cases and 2 fitted sheets for a grand total of 25 Euros. And all in matching colours too! All I need now is a room to put it all in.

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