Category Archives: Les Guis

Friday 12th February 2010 – I’ve not been feeling myself today

“Quite right too – filthy habit” – ed. I woke up with a headache and couldn’t get out of bed. And when I finally got up I couldn’t get my breath – even climbing the stairs left me quite exhausted. After breakfast I started on some more plasterboarding but it couldnt make much progress as it was wearing me out.

By 13:30 I had to call it a day and go and lie down. In fact I crashed out for a couple of hours. Liz rang me up to see how I was and Terry battled his way here through the snow (it’s carried on snowing non-stop and I’m up to my waist in it) to pick up some Ford Transit snowchains that are lying around here.

But I’m not moving. I fact I didn’t make myself any tea tonight. I’m going to just stay here and sleep it off.

In other news this webhosting thing isn’t going to die down any time soon and more correspondence has been received.

And as I said elsewhere –
1) having had an “encounter” with this webhosting service my own experience is that despite the manager’s verbal belligerence the truth is somewhat different and it was interesting to see how quickly the manager caved in when OUSA banged the big stick back in April last year. No question about legality, no question about defending customers’ rights and the privilege of free comment despite all of the previous hype from several years ago, OUSA banged the big stick and the manager jumped. And jumped by deleting files from the server, of course, without even notifying the owner of the files that they had been deleted. Now how illegal is that?
Now just imagine the situation where all of the OUSA branch files are in one place on one web server managed by one manager who has “previous” of caving in to OUSA. Any time someone posts something critical of The Powers That Be, all TPTB need to do is to wave the big stick at the manager and the manager is likely to simply remove the files with no warning if past experience is anything to go by. No court order necessary, no solicitors consulted, no right of appeal. Signing up to this offer is effectively giving OUSA the green light to censor all of your websites with no right of appeal. Editorial control of all of your websites in the hands of a OUSA Executive Committee sycophant – it’s an Executive-Committee dream come true.

2) I’ve also been told the price of this contract. It’s a commercial rate of £120. Now I reckon that there are over 200 sites likely to be affected by this – and all for £120. As you can imagine, its something that isn’t sustainable at that price. It won’t even cover the cost of the hard drive let alone the cost of the server and the administration. I give it four weeks at that price.
But on the other hand it could be £120 per site. And that’s not a commercial rate at all! My four sites cost me a total of £178 and two of them, as you know, are huge with tons of traffic. Hostgator will do you a website hosting for $4.95 per month – or about £40 per annum. When I managed OUSA Belgium’s website it was hosted on Bravenet for ZERO pounds per annum if you didn’t mind the odd pop-up every now and again. I don’t call £120 per site a commercial deal by any stretch of the imagination.
But do the maths – about 200 sites each paying £120 – that’s a turnover from OUSA funds of £24000, which is an awful lot of money when your organisation is struggling for cash to the extent of trying to ban disabled people from attending the annual Conference. It’s also a very healthy turnover for any company to show in its books and accounts, even if at the end of the accounting year it plans to hand it all back.

It makes you wonder what the purpose of it all is supposed to be.

-2

Thursday 11th February 2010 – One of the major problems …

… with doors that open outwards is that when there is a heavy snowfall you can’t open the door. And so with the …gulp…18 cms that fell through the night I ended up having to use the front door in order to visit the beichstuhl this morning.

Then it was to shin up onto the roof and shovel the snow off the solar panels again (and in fact I did that a couple of times throughout the day).

But the temperature was against me again. Last night it dropped to minus 9.1 and this morning it was minus 6 outside. In the verandah it was minus 5.4 and in the house it was minus 4.8. You can’t work in these conditions so I came up here, put the fire on and read a book for a while. By about 1100 it had warmed up sufficiently for me to continue putting the plasterboard on the false wall but I could only keep it up for a while before my hands froze on the metal tools.

What is interesting is that before I insulated the floor in here, a temperature of minus 9 outside caused the temperature in my room to drop to 2.8 degrees. After doing the floor a similar temperature outside would lead to about 6.8 degrees in here. With starting to tongue-and-groove the downstairs ceiling it was 9.4 degrees in here this morning. So the sooner I can do the entire ceiling the better. And, of course, if all of the insulation is keeping the heat inside the attic then it will also keep the external heat out and thats encouraging for when I start to heat up the inside of the house.

Doing the stats tonight I noticed that the total snow that fell today was 28 cms and that’s a record for a single day. I’m properly snowed in now and I can’t see me going anywhere for a while.

In other news I’ve been sent a … errr …. document (or copy thereof) about this webhosting thing that I told you about yesterday. The document is dated 4-6 December 2009, which is some seven weeks after I received an e-mail from the same webhost saying “We are yet again moving servers. This time for the last time as we are getting out of the hosting business …..The move will take place in November (2009)”. And so OUSA is somehow being asked to go into some kind of partnership with a company to provide a service that the company abandoned a couple of weeks previously. And, of course, money is to change hands in this respect.

Now leaving aside the self-expressed lack of technical capability to deal satisfactorily with the issues that arise and which I described yesterday, just what the hell is going on?
1) If the company is still conducting its business of webhosting, why is its manager telling me that it isn’t?
2) And if it is to restart its webhostiong business after having ceased (very unlikely as the last communication that I had with this company – in January 2010 – was to the effect that the cession was definitive), do the successors to the previous business know about this?
3) And what were the terms of the cession to trade which resulted in existing customers being passed over to the successor company? Will the webhost be hit with some kind of legal complication that could see each individual OUSA website being hit with a demand for more money under a service agreement with the successor company in respect of a “restraint of trade following cessation”? In other words, a sale of goodwill?
4) And given the self-expressed lack of technical competence and my own experience with this company, how will all of these OUSA webmasters react if all of THEIR files, e-mails and contacts lists were to disappear into cyberpsace?
5) And if the web host gives assurances that this won’t ever happen again, and I remind them that I received the same promise TWICE – a promise that was filled with empty air – how much weight will the webmasters attach to it?
6) And if the webhost does manage to fulfil its promises to provide an uninterrupted service, what reasons could the webhost advance that it couldn’t do it for me over the last couple of years and thoroughly messed up my service through a mixture of incompetence and petty vindictiveness?

And I note from the document that I have in my possession that the amount to be charged is “the current commercial rate and will be renegotiated annually when the 12 month contract expires”. I wonder if anyone would like to hazard a guess about what is likely to happen at the end of the 12 months, and how many websites and associated files are still going to be intact next January?

I smell one big, enormous rat in all of this. There’s something clearly not kosher about the events surrounding this company over the last couple of months. Kicking all its existing clients off, telling them that it’s closing down while at the same time negotiating a completely new deal with a whole new raft of clients.

Yes, sign the contract at your peril.

You have been warned.

-4

Wednesday 10th February 2010 – I’m cracking on …

… with my cupboard at the back of the stairs. If you look closely you can see that as well as plasterboard all round, it has a ceiling and a light. The ceiling is of course tongue-and-grooving for several reasons namely
1) it hides the polystyrene insulation stuffed between the joists
2) it’s easy to fix when you are on your own and there’s no-one to hold up the plasterboard while you screw or nail it
3) I have plenty of it lying around and I’m rather short on plasterboard.

The light is a recessed fitting (it needs a 40mm hole) with an MR16 fitting – in other words a 12-volt capless halogen fitting. But as keen readers of these pages will know, LIDL sells 12-volt LED lights with MR16 fittings. And at 1.2 watts per bulb and they don’t half chuck out the light I shall be using them. It’s not wired in to my circuit as yet and it won’t be for a while but at least it will be in position once Ive varnished the t&g.

So that’s tomorrow’s job and it will be followed by me tidying up a little (yes, Terry) and then starting on plasterboarding the false wall that I’ve built. But I shan’t be starting that right at the wall. If you look at the horizontal, you’ll see that it has a let cut into it. That’s where I’ll be putting the framework for the fitted wardrobe. That part of the wall will be done in hardboard. I’m going to have a fitted wardrobe right across the back wall in the bedroom.

In other news, I’ve received something of a communication that has caused my eyes to pop out and I’ve had to re-read it half a dozen times. There’s definitely something weird going on. It seems that one member of the Executive Committee (probably the only one as it appears that over this last few weeks all of the others have resigned due to not being “given” the posts that they wanted in the forthcoming reshuffle or something like that) has offered to host the OUSA website.

Now won’t that be exciting?

I’ve had personal experience of this web hosting, as followers of my blog will recall in graphic detail. It’s probably useful to recall them –
1) regular and relentless changing of server hosting causing all of my stored e-mails and my address books to disappear into cyberspace every year.
2) arbitrary deletion of files by the “I have never been in favour of censorship” manager of the hosting company because she doesn’t like the content
3) The webhosting manager proudly announcing “you have any information that the others won’t publish? Send it to us and we’ll publish it – we’re not afraid” and then caving in at the first attack.
4) arbitrary suspension of the website simply “to attract my attention”.
5) sending out bills for renewal and then deleting the mail during a server change before it’s had time to be opened and read – and then deleting the website without notice because the bill hasnt been paid.

The of course there was the incident back in the Spring of 2006 when the “I do object to unfounded allegations of stalking” above webhosting manager posted the personal details of a website holder (thankfully not mine) into a public forum to which 200,000 people had access.

I could go on. And on. And on “not with a bayonet through your neck you couldn’t” – ed.

But that’s not the best bit. Back in November this particular webhost suddenly announced that it was closing its doors. And in a subsequent phone call I was told “I no longer have the technical expertise to deal with the problems that arise so I’m closing down and passing all of my work on to someone who is more technically-capable“

So how come this particular technically-challenged ex-webhost is offering to host the OUSA website? It sounds like a recipe for total disaster if you ask me.

OUSA should feel right at home.

Unless of course I am reading this report totally wrongly.

Or unless someone is telling me a huge pack of porky-pies.

But then nothing surprises me any more. I recall the particular incident when X’s details were posted in a public forum and he was simultaneously accused of all kinds of things (simultaneously of course, his “rival” for an elected position was being wined and dined and “offered accomodation” by the Returning Officer in the election but that is of course by the way). I asked the person concerned in leaking this information why she was doing it.
“It’s called ‘negative campaigning‘” she replied. “We’ll do anything to stop him being elected“. (Yes, I have all of my hard drives from 1999 here now).

And so he duly wasn’t elected and OUSA chose in his place a convicted pedophile to lead the organisation. That was one campaign that backfired a little, didnt it? Or maybe that might have been the aim. Anything is possible in OUSA.

But then again we fast-forward to 2009. Due to one thing and another, X is sumoned before a disciplinary hearing. And guess who volunteers to chair it? Absolutely! Never mind “prior knowledge” – never mind “parti pris” the world’s favourite webhost gets the job.

And I wonder if you can guess what the disciplinary committee decides?

Dead right. Candidate X “shall not be eligible to stand for any elected post within OUSA…” . I bet you never would have guessed it, would you?

And in other other news it’s snowing like hell outside. I’m prepared for another seige.

-6

Tuesday 9th February 2010 – This radio programme is taking shape

We were out at the SMADC offices today – the SMADC being something like Syndicat Mixte pour l’Amenagement et Developpement des Combrailles – where we discussed our tactics for the radio programme. Christian was there with his floozy and I was there with Liz. I have plenty of ideas and Liz approves of them and as far as the SMADC and the radio station go, then I don’t imagine that they will care less as long as we do it.

Apart from that, this morning I cracked on with my plasterboarding and it’s all but finished now. All I need to do now is to join things up with the tape and then fill over it. Of course I have put my jointing tape somewhere safe – so safe in fact that I can’t find it now. That’s a badger! But as soon as I find it and tape things up I can start to do the ceiling – with tongue-and-grooving. I can do that on my own and I don’t have any inhibitions as to how it’ll look.

And Claude came round. Yesterday finished him off for good and he wants to pause until Monday. He’s getting his son up over the weekend to move the heavy objects ready for us to load on Monday. But on Monday Terry is giving blood, Tuesday Liz and I are in studio and on Wednesday we are all at the bank. This timetable for moving Claude is shrinking rapidly.

-8

Monday 8th February 2010 – We started on Claude’s removal today

And so well did we do it and so well did we pack the vans that everything that was prepared for today was in the vans with space to spare on the first load and we had to go scratching around for stuff to make the trip worthwhile. And it’s amazing just how much stuff you can pack into a couple of Ford Transits.

For the second load we took the fitted kitchen that had been hawked all around the South of France and is destined to be hawked all the way back there again even though it has seen far better days , and also another huge pile of boxes. The thing that worries me in all of this is that this is the end of day One (we finished after the two loads because there was nothing else ready to take) out of Five and the apartment is pretty full. By the end of day Five I’m just wondering how Claude and Francoise will be able to fit in there.

Tomorrow is a day off as Liz and I are going to see the guy from SMADC to talk to him about building permits in France. That’s going to be the subject of our first radio programme. It’ll give Claude and Francoise a chance to pack up some more stuff (if they stop throwing boxes at each other) so that on Wednesday we can have a really good go at this moving lark.

-6

Sunday 7th February 2010 – We’re back in the usual routine.

A nice lie-in on Sunday morning interrupted by a torrential downpour. So out of bed by 09:45 (which is early for me as you know) and breakfast followed by tidying up the verandah. After that it was back up here and try out the new power supply for the old Lenovo that gave up the ghost back in the summer. Hunting around the other day for a replacement I came across one on eBay at a grand total of £7.45 plus £3.50 postage. And much to mysurprise it actually works! So now I can recover the data that wasn’t included in the last back-up.

This afternoon it was down to St Eloy to watch Pionsat’s 1st XI play the Miners. And they lost 4-1. Mind you the scoreline is a totally unfair reflection of the result and they were so unlucky – they hit the woodwork three times. But in truth they offered litttle up front with no Cedric, even though the Nord Combraille goalkeeper was a pretty busy man rushing out after all of these through-balls. Pionsat had a patched-up defence and an injury to Yann made things even worse. By the time the final whistle went, Pionsat’s back-line consisted of Gregory the left-winger playing at left-back, Sebastien who plays midfield for the 2nd XI at centre-half partnered by Pierre from Brico-Depot who usually plays on the right wing, and someone who I had never seen before playing at right-back. Nevertheless it was a really good match and I quite enjoyed it despite the scoreline. Two of Nord Combraille’s goals were absolute peaches.

That wood-burning boiler that Terry bought does not weigh 270 kilos. In fact it weighs in at well over 300 and it’s blasted heavy and awkward. But with the aid of two scaffolding planks and a carpet we got it into the kitchen. It’s just as well as it’s Claude-moving starting tomorrow and Terry’s van needs to be empty!

+10

-9

Saturday 6th February 2010 – We all went shopping today

Liz and Terry wanted a new wood-burning voiler for their house and so yours truly was co-opted onto the buying committee in order to lend his translation skills and his muscles. And it was just as well as the boiler weighs in at 245kg – about a quarter of a ton.

But shopping with Terry is … errr … exciting. The liveliest moments are when Terry knows absolutely and definitely what he wants but Brico Depot doesn’t have it in stock and can’t see why he wants it anyway. But in the end we sorted something out and tomorow when the tiles have dried out we can unload the boiler and put it in the kitchen. I’ve had spinach for tea in preparation.

And it’s that time of year again. The footy season has restarted and the 3rd XI were in action against Marcillat. Pionsat had 11 players, Marcillat turned up with only 9 and even so Pionsat were at one stage 3-1 down. The final score was 3-3 but only thanks to a somewhat “severe” penalty and a load of injury time, mystery time and Manchester United time. The Marcillat players were furious at full-time and I have to say that I can understand their position.

Tomorrow afternoon it’s the local derby against hated local rivals Nord Combraille and the Miners are hosting the game in the big super-stadium. That’s luxury for you. I’ve not seem a footy match in there yet so there’s a first.

And I’m up to my neck in mud and rain again. It’s just like old times.

+12

-9

Friday 5th February 2010 – Well, we’ve done it now!

This afternoon we signed the compromis for these houses in Montaigut. Mind you, it’s not all plain sailing as you might imagine with anything involving me. Firstly the houses are situated in a historic area (in fact,just round the corner is the blacksmith’s where Joan of Arc had her spurs made) and so the town has the right to match any offer made on any property in that area. Mind you the town is flat broke so that’s unlikely to happen but I bet they’ll soon find the money if they get to hear that there might be a possibility that I might be moving in there.

Secondly the properties have already been sold elsewhere. However the guy can’t get a loan (and looking at them, it’s no surprise) and so he has renounced his offer, but nevertheless he needs to give his formal agreement.

Nothing is ever straightforward, is it?

Completion is set to be the end of April so the major plan currently is
1) finish Terry and Liz’s kitchen on rainy days
2) point the outside wall of their house on dry days
3) change my barn roof
4) go to Brussels and have a blitz on my apartment in Jette and put it on the market.
5) come back and start on these houses

So that’s the plan for the next three months anyway. You can see what I mean about being busy.

Talking of being busy though, I’ve finished insulating this cupboard space, put the horizontals in and now I’ve started to plasterboard it. It won’t take at all long to finish now and when I’ve done that I can put some shelves in there to store anything that needs to be kept clean and tidy.

And whule we are on the subject, Terry and I have been discussing my lighting. Terry is refusing to get involved in my electricity ( well, he is an electrician and he does have his professional pride) and he is quite impressed with these 12-volt LEDs that I’m using (and they had a few more on sale in LIDL today). So much so that he agrees with me that a mains (230-volt) lighting circuit is pretty redundant. So what am I now going to do with all these light bulbs that I’ve been collecting? But I’m not all that bothered. It’s saved me a lot of work and it is rather unnecessary.

And who was Joan of Arc? Why of course, she was the wife of Noah.

+12

-10

Thursday 4th February 2010 – We had a really good go at Terry’s kitchen floor today.

After we emptied the kitchen we set out to do the tiling. We had something of a production line going, with Terry measuring, me cutting and shaping and then him laying. As well as that, I was mixing and carrying.

And it’s amazing but once you get into a rhythm it’s amazing just how much you can do and we would have had it finished if the light and the weather had held up.

Of course there were lentilburgers involved in this, and also vegan chocolate cake so I am well-satisfied with today.

After tea we sat and synchronised our diaries. The lengths that we are having to go to now that things seem to be moving around here. I don’t know where I’m going to find the time to fit it all in.

But one job we can delete from the list for the moment is Claude’s removal. They switched on the water and the gas this afternoon in his new apartment and the boiler exploded. So “don’t call us – we’ll call you”.

-7

Wednesday 3rd February 2010 – The really big problem …

… with making offers on properties that are for sale is that when the offer is accepted unconditionally, you always wonder just how low you could have gone. And this was what happened today. So I am now a half-owner of two more houses in the local area – or at least I will be on Friday when the signing takes place. Normally when you sign for a house here you pay a compromis – or deposit and it’s almost always 10%. The estate agents want us to sign on Friday but it’ll take a few days to round up all of the dosh so we suggested we delay the signing for a few days. But ohhh no –
“Could you manage 5%?“
Clearly they aren’t intending to wait until we sober up. It’s either a case of if we wait until Monday to sign, the houses might fall down over the weekend or else the people at the estate agency need to eat this weekend.

Rhys was wondering, with all this talk about letting them, whether we were going to let out the rooms by the hour. I said that if we were to do that he could come and be the receptionist. We would supply the high heels, fishnets and basque but he would have to supply his own whip. There would also be the question of taking the sheep for a walk every morning.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I had another really good day of electricity and so I had the electric heater on for three hours. It increased the temperature by 4 degrees and with it being an oil-bath radiator it was still keeping the room something like warm even at 18:00 – three hours after I’d switched it off.

I’ve finished lining the walls of this cupboard place with the insulation blanket stuff and I’ve started to fit the plasterboard. Another day would see that all finished but I’m going to be a tiler’s labourer tomorrow. Terry is tiling his kitchen floor and needs to complete one half of it so that he can move the gas oven over. Liz is going out so I got the short straw. What with all of this moving for Claude, signing for houses, preparation for this radio programme we are doing and all of this our plans have become somewhat shaken up.

And if that wasn’t enough I hear on the grapevine that there might be a chauffeur’s job coming up for a couple of months. It’s enough to drive you to drink.

-9

Tuesday 2nd February 2010 – I’ve had another one of these days …

… where I haven’t done very much. Life seems to be conspiring against me right now.

I was awake long before the alarm went off – in fact I had to crawl out of bed to go for a Gipsy’s but it was far too cold to stay up so I went back to bed until the alarm went off. At least, that was the plan but for some reason or another it was 10:04 when I came to my senses (such as they are).

I didn’t have time to have my breakfast either for while the kettle was boiling the phone rang. It was the Mairie ringing up – could the woman doing the census come round and take my details? So she and her minder came round (they’ve clearly heard all about me) and took down my particulars. It was a good job I had put clean ones on. But the French census is a lark – they just want to know your age, place of birth, profession, education standard and your employment as well as something about the conditions in which you live. Vastly different from the UK where they want to know more about you than you know about yourself.

After that, someone from the Conversation Group rang up with a chagrin d’amour. I suppose that I should be pleased that people feel comfortable in confiding their problems to me. It’s a pleasant change from being totally ingored – the usual state of affairs.

I managed an hour or two on the wall but it was then time to go off to Montaigut to look at these two houses. One is supposed to be livable in a certain fashion but the other one is merely four walls and a roof. We had a good poke around and as you might expect the “livable” one didn’t live up to expectations – damp penetration being one of the major problems. And from the corner of the roof that was supposed to have been fixed. But we had a good chat afterwards and some serious discussions took place, with the result that for better or for worse we placed an offer on the properties – suitably balanced to cover the cost of re-redoing the roof (I made sure that the estate agent was aware of the defect) and putting right the damage. The way we see it, the more time we spend discussing the situation the longer it’s going to take us to make a start. And all the time with inflation at 3% and bank interest at just 0.5% the longer you wait the more the real value of your savings melts away before your eyes. The quicker we can find something suitable and start to invest our labour into it the better.

After that, it was 17:00 when I came home and I didn’t feel like starting work again just for an hour – which was just as well as Claude came round for a chat and he was here for over an hour. I’m going to have to put in a good day tomorrow.

-7

Monday 1st February 2010 – You might be excused for thinking …

… that Sunday’s lowest temperature – minus 8.2 degrees – was blasted cold. But that wasn’t a patch on last night’s minus 9.8. It was the coldest night of the winter so far and almost reaching the depths of minus 10.4 – the figure recorded in January last year which was the lowest that I have ever seen.

Even more impressive was the figure recorded in the verandah which was minus 8 degrees. And that is definitely the lowest figure that has happened in there. In fact it was still so cold this morning that the water in my glass froze while I was cleaning my teeth.

It was also bright and clear with a beautiful sunshine – so much so in fact that everything was fully charged by 11:00. That prompted me to run the heater again in the attic but this time the weather was ready for me and it immediately clouded over and started to snow. Serves me right. But at least it warmed up. Mind you it felt warmer in the bright sunshine at minus 5 than it did in the damp and cloudy plus 1.

Round at Claude’s, he’s definitely out of it. So he made enquiries about the cost of hiring a van for 5 days and he’s going to engage Terry and his van for equal terms. Terry and I will move Claude and Francoise – I reckon we can do it in less time than they will.

This idea I had about hotwiring this wattmeter into my system – I’ve abandoned that. Taking the thing apart revealed just how badly it was assembled inside and at the first sign of any serious manipulation (“personipulation please” – ed) the solder for one of the wires on the PCB broke and the wire fell off. I reckon that if I’m going to go down this hardwiring route I’m going to need something much more solid than anything made in China and sold by LIDL.

This afternoon I started to put the insulation down the walls of the cupboard that is the gap behind the stairs. I want to get that finished pretty quickly so I can put some shelves in it.

At the Conversation Group tonight Liz and I spent most of the time chatting about this radio programme we’ll be doing and also about these CREFAD courses such as we went to on Friday evening. There’s one or two that interest us and they are presented simultaneously at Pontaumur and St Gervais.
“Which one are we going to?” asked Liz
“Whichever one Katrine is taking“
“Ohhh yes?” exclaimed Liz. “Chasing after her, are you?“
“Indeed I am” I replied. “And I’m just hoping that I can remember what to do when I catch her“.

+11

-8

Sunday 31st January 2010 – Absolutely shocking!

Yes! You may or may not believe this but I have had some electric heating on in the attic this afternoon.

This morning was the day I’ve been waiting since November to have – a real Alpine winter’s day with brilliant blue skies and a hard crispy frost. Despite not going to bed until 03:00 I was up and about at 09:30 with the sunlight streaming in through the windows. First job was to get on the roof and shovel the snow off the solar panels. And that’s a job I won’t be doing much longer as I’ve found a place that does 12-volt trace heating especially for this kind of thing. As you might expect, it’s nowhere near Europe and it isn’t in the USA either but in Canada. They are used to this kind of thing. 5 watts per foot and I need about 35 feet of it so that’s about 175 watts in total. 5 minutes of that will shift as much snow as you like and I’ll get my charge back in no time.

After breakfast it was round to Claude’s to do another van load but he reckoned that the roads are impassable and in any case just a quick glance at him told me that yesterday finished him off for good. He won’t be lifting another box of belongings and so he needs to think again. I’ve made a suggestion to him but it’s up to him if he accepts it. It’s still amazing though, with everything that he has done for everyone else in the past for everyone in Virlet and when he needs help they just totally ignore him.

So back home to find that the batteries in the house and in the barn are fully charged and it’s only lunchtime. Shame to waste the surplus solar energy so I dug up an old oil-filled 400-watt electric radiator and plugged it in – and had the pleasure of watching the temperature in the attic rise by 5 degrees while I caught up with more correspondence.

Yesterday in LIDL I bought one of those plug-in wattmeters for mains current – the type that you plug into a mains plug and you plug the appliance into it and it tells you how many watts and amps the appliance draws. They are of course much more versatile than that and I have lots of plans for it so I took it apart for a nosey. And as I thought, it’s an interated circuit with two wires in and two wires out. So I just cut the wires off the plug and socket bits and then I can hard-wire it into my circuit. It makes data recording much easier.

In other news, the UK is now officially out of recession. At long last – the last “major” western economy to do so. The value of the Pound Sterling is steadily rising in world stockmarkets too. Earlier this afternoon one Pound reached 2.3 Maldive Island Seashells and 1.9 Zimbabwean Bongo Beads.

-8

Saturday 30th January 2010 – I found today quite moving….

…in more than one sense of the word.

I woke up this morning and the first thing that needed to be done was to shovel snow. The blizzard that was down the south side of the Font Nanaud last night had made it over the crest of the range and had deposited three inches of snow chez nous.

And once I had cleared the snow away from off the solar panels and off Caliburn I went round to Claude’s. And this is where the moving came in. Dunno if you remember a few weeks back when I told you that someone had had some good news and I couldn’t say any more at the time but now I can and it’s that Claude has sold his house and he’s moving. His house is bigger than mine with a nicer plot of land and with a small extra house as well and he’s been slowly renovating it whenever funds have allowed. But last summer he had to have open-heart surgery and that has put paid to his plans for good. So he put his house up for sale and he sold it – and for the asking price too with no reduction. The only downside of that is that the purchasers wanted occupation as quickly as possible and so he hasn’t had time to find anywhere permanent. He’s come across an old empty apartment on top of an industrial premises in St Eloy and that’s where we’ve started to move him into.

Much as I’m pleased for his good fortune in selling his house at top price, I shall nevertheless miss him. He’s been a very good friend and neighbour and he’s helped me out loads of times, especially when I was taken ill down here in October 2003. That’s something I shan’t quickly forget.

We should have been footying tonight – the second half of the season getting under way after the winter break – but there was no chance of that. At about 16:00 it started to snow heavily again and we’ve had about 4 or 5 inches so far. It’s going to be more like ice hockey down the road in Pionsat if anyone bothered to turn up. But you can’t do anything in this weather except stay in. I’m supposed to be moving more stuff for Claude tomorrow but the weather is going to have a big say in the likelihood of that.

-6

Friday 29th January 2010 – Today was another day …

…when I didn’t do a lot. Sleeping through the alarms and waking up at 10:15 didn’t help for a start!

But then it was bright outside (well, whatever light was passing through the clouds) and nothing registering on the charge meters so first job was to shin up on the roof and clean off the solar panels. I can’t wait to get some trace heating wire up there so I can melt the snow rather than brushing it off.

And while I was up there Claude passed by. He wanted a good chat and he was here for ages so it was gone 12:00 before I could even begin to think about breakfast. But never mind – I started off again by doing some more weeding down the garden where my new vegetable plot will be. I couldn’t keep it up for long though because it was freezing outside – one of those damp biting colds that go right through you no matter what you are wearing.

After lunch I started on tidying out where I’m going to put this cupboard but Claude came back again to borrow the phone and for another chat, so I ended up doing not very much.

This evening I went round to Liz and Terry’s to take Liz to this meeting in St Priest. It was organised by the SMADC and the CREFAD, and there was someone from the BIRC (pronounced “BERK”) there, but no-one from the SPANC or the SMUT. It was to talk about tourist ideas and to discuss them with several practicioners and a few experts but like most of these meetings, everyone is there to promote his or her own venue. And of course, I’m no different than most of them. Networking is a vital part of community interaction.

But I’ll tell you something – if you were to program into a computer a list of all of the physical characteristics of my ideal woman and the girl (Katrine) who organised the meeting were to drop out of the slot at the bottom, I would not be disappointed in the least. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve been struck in such a way. I probably won’t be able to sleep tonight now! I’m now wondering when CREFAD’s next meeting is!

On the way home there was a blinding blizzard of a snowstorm and I inched my way back at 25mph (40kph) – that is, until I crossed the Font Nanaud, the pass through the mountains about 5km south of Pionsat. Once I was over there the snow dramatically stopped and there wasn’t a drop to be seen. It was astonishing.

+11

-10

EPIC HALL

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