Category Archives: Les Guis

Tuesday 29th December 2009 – Errr … yes …. quite!

So I finished the lighting in the stairwell this morning as you can see. There’s a 12-volt LED light now illuminating where the entrance hall is going to be.

. Once that was done I looked at the list of other small jobs to do. One of them was to fit a piece of insulation over the top of the battery box and seeing as that golden thingy was up in the sky I reckoned that this was a good time to do it.

So I removed all of the rubbish from off the top of the wooden lid, cleaned everything out, and while I was about it I checked the batteries – I haven’t done that for a while.

There are 10 batteries in the box – they are all Hawker 92-amphour sealed gel batteries. 9 of them were all nice and cool and simmering away nicely. The tenth was boiling hot and it you look closely you will see where the case has swollen up. This is pretty serious stuff. It’s the first battery in the bank and it’s quite clear from looking at this that the business of handling 250 amps of current per day during the summer has proved to be too much. It’s boiled, the plates have swollen and made a short circuit inside. The short circuit has created resistance to the charge and that resistance is being dissipated into heat and hence the battery is warm and why the charge in the rest of the batteries is down.

Just at that moment a friendly grey cloud blew over the sun and cut off the solar energy so I did a swift disconnection, removed the battery and subsituted another one. And straight away the battery voltage went up 0.4 of a volt.

I’ve rerouted the cables so the positive lead goes into one battery and the negative lead goes into another and that will help to circulate the current a little better but I think that I’m going to have to reconsider my configuration. I can generate a theoretical maximum of about 75 amps but a more practical expectation is about 50 amps. 50 amps seems to be too much for one battery so I’m planning on reverting to the original idea of having two banks of batteries with each of the two banks of solar panels charging up its own bank of batteries. The bus bar, that connects everything together, instead of being between the control panel and the batteries, will have to be sited after the batteries. That will involve more cable, with a greater potential for voltage drop, but unless I can think of another way then that will have to do.

After lunch I made a start on the jungle but I wasn’t there for long. Claude came round for my assistance with his trailer wiring that he coulsn’t get to work. So the rest of the afternoon was spent rewiring his trailer.

And in other news, here is the reason for the latest attempt at airline piracy. One western country wants to remove another civil liberty from its citizens so it needs to create a panic in order to scare them sufficiently so that they will fall for it hook line and sinker. I’m not quite sure what kind of pervert it is that wants to spend all day looking at naked bodies but if this is going to become law I’m going to insist that the people operating the scanners are completely starkers so we can get our own back by looking at them in the buff.

Of course the way to respond, if this ever happens, is to whip up a scandal of our own by accusing all of the airport staff of being pedophiles anxious to have a sneaky look and the naked body of some unsuspecting minor. That should whip up quite a storm, and quite right too.

-7

Monday 28th December 2009 – I dunno why it is …

…. but when I say “a few little jobs” they turn out to be what seems like major engineering projects.

As you might have guessed it rained down in torrents today, 9mm of it in total. So a “work inside” day it was. First job was to rig up some lighting in the stairwell. Now leaving qualified electricians out of the equation, Terry, how long does it take to cut into a wiring circuit, wire in a lightswitch top and bottom and paired to two-way, and add a couple of light sockets? A couple of hours? So why has it taken all day and I’m still not finished? I was quite happily threading three single strands through some conduit and I noticed that it was 13:34. Where did the morning go? And the afternoon went quickly too, much quicker than the work did. Funny thing was that I don’t remember having any difficulty or being stuck on any part of the job. I must have been caught in a timewarp somewhere.

And I also seem to have broken the Ryobi flourescent light and that’s a tragedy. That light has fallen down stairwells, fallen through holes in the floor, had spanners drop on top of it and it’s functioned perfectly. Yet on my way downstairs earlier and I caught it on one of the verticals and that was that. I’ll have to find another one, or work out how I can fix it.

So tomorrow I’ll finish off the light fittings and then do a couple of other things. I’ll see how long I can spin them out for.

And in a change to the weather forecast, sun is now forecast for Friday and Saturday. Well, we’ll see.

In other news, I see that we have had another person setting fire to his shoe in an aeroplane and being overpowered by the passengers and crew. But as I said at the time of the “Richard Reid” incident and I’ll say it again here – there’s much more to all of this than meets the eye. If these guys had really wanted to bring down these aeroplanes they would be setting fire to their shoes inside the toilets where no-one could overpower them. There’s something else going on here and I’m trying to work out what it is. But whatever it is, a serious attempt to blow up an aeroplane it isn’t.

-2

Sunday 27th December 2009 – How about this …

… for sheer utter laziness? The farthest I have been today is to walk across the courtyard to the barn to check the solar energy being received over there (10.4 amp-hours). Apart from that, a couple of times up and down the stairs and that is basically that.

But as it’s the last day of my holiday until Thursday I reckoned I deserved it. I start work again tomorrow. There’s a couple of little jobs I need to fix and then it depends what the weather is doing. If it’s raining I’ll be starting on the kitchen. If it’s fine I’ll be dragging the two halves of old Ford Transit, the old Cortina and the Mercedes out of the hedge and beginning on the site of the new vegetable plot. If you have a look at image 25 on this page you’ll see the Cortina and the Merc. That’s where I’ll be putting my plots.

Mind you, I reckon it will be “working inside”. The long-range forecast for the seven days is that for six of them there is a risque de pluie. The only day that is any different is Saturday when there is a risque de neige. Who says that the weather round here isn’t reliable?

-6

Saturday 26th December 2009 – Yesterday’s weather …

… was almost as I predicted. I awoke to bright sunlight and I thought that my luck might be in

But true to form, it clouded over round about 11:00 am and that was that, I reckoned. Mind you, in a departure from the usual trend it cleared at about 16:00 and we managed a half-hour or so of fine weather and so on

Through the night it remained perfectly clear, with a heavy frost and so on. Millions of stars in the sky. And today – yes today was the day I have been waiting for as we ended up with one of those Alpine winter days. Still a fair amount of cloud about but also 120 amp-hours of solar energy – more than I’ve had in total for the last 10 days I reckon. That’s more like it.

And all that I did today was to go to Bills at le Quartier for his Boxing Day do. He cooked an excellent nut roast and as an added attraction he gave me the remains in a doggy-bag and that will keep me going for quite a while.

And talking of dogs, the Hound of the Baskervilles was in good humour today.

Not very exciting news as I’m sure you have noticed. But who cares? I’m on holiday. And this is how I’m going to stay for a few days until I restart work. I deserve it.

But I also have to go into Montlucon on Wednesday as Caliburn’s tyres have now come.

-5

Friday 25th December 2009 – And a Merry Christmas to all my readers.

That was what used to be written on the banner of the kids’ comics such as the Beano and the Dandy back when I was a kid. But I remember it more being scrawled upon the wall of the public lavatories at Crewe Bus Station back in the 1960s. Yes, I have fond memories of the toilets at Crewe Bus Station – it’s where I learnt a good deal of anatomy simply by reading the notices and looking at the pictures drawn on the walls.

There was a good deal of good poetry too – forget your Stephen Spenders and Louis MacNeices – what gem have they ever written that could possibly compare with the lyrical rhapsody of

It’s no good standing on the seat
The crabs in here can jump six feet
And if you think that that is high
Go next door! The b@$t@rd$ fly!

It knocks Wordsworth’s flaming daffodils into a cocked hat, I can tell you.

So much to my surprise I was up and about by 09:40 this morning. Even more surprising because I didn’t go to bed until gone 04:00. And today, I have dome exactly zilch. I’ve not even made lunch and dinner – just sitting here nibbling on bits and pieces.

The most strenuous thing that I did was to wander over to Caliburn and rescue the cake that Liz made for me. And isn’t it magnificent? It’s almost too good to cut, isn’t it? Nevertheless, half of it is now in a Tesco storage container downstairs in the verandah and the other half is up here in a Tesco storage container.

And it’s delicious too! It’s far too nice to eat. It was really thoughtful of Liz to make it for me.

I’ve also unpacked the weather centre that I bought. That will have to wait for a few days to be installed as it’s quite an operation. It also requires, would you believe, 10xAA batteries to work it altogether. I need to go and have a hunt around to see what I have.

And that was that! And I don’t care either.

And once again, Season’s greetings to all of you. Thank you for your support.

-5

Thursday 24th December 2009 – The one thing …

… about the drive down to Liz and Terry’s is the view from the birdwatching site just outside St Gervais d’Auvergne.

Although of course it’s always the same view, the different weather and lighting conditions make it seem totally different each time I drive by.

Although the snow has all-but-gone around here and even the Puy-de-Dome is bare, the Mont Dore and the Puy de Sancy are still plastered with the white stuff and look quite impressive.

This morning I had a lie-in until about 10:30, but I reckoned I needed it, being awoken by a torrential downpour at about 05:00.

So after a leisurely breakfast (I’m on holiday, remember) I bit the bullet, donned the chemical suit, the gas mask and the rubber gloves and cleaned the fridge. The fridge hadn’t been switched on for a few weeks (firstly as an electricity economy measure and secondly, who needs a fridge in this weather?) and was looking like it hadn’t been switched on for a couple of decades.

After lunch I read a book for a while and then went off to Liz and Terry’s as they had invited me round for the evening, which was nice of them. What was even nicer was never mind the vegan chocolate cake – Liz had baked me a vegan Christmas cake complete with icing. That was ever so nice of her and I am well-impressed.

And to tell you about the weather today, and how perverse it is. All day we have had heavy grey clinging cloud that has cut down once more the electricity I have available. But onn the way home tonight the skies were perfectly clear, thousands of stars, lovely bright conditions.

Why can’t we have this weather in the daytime? It’s about 4 or 5 times now that this has happened while I am in “energy saving” mode due to the overcast conditions since November 26th.

And you just watch tomorrow – as soon as the sun rises over the valley across the way, the clouds will close right in and I’ll be struggling again. It’s really getting on my nerves.

-12

Wednesday 23rd December 2009 – I thought that I would post …

… a pic of the completed stairs on the ground floor. It’ll take my mind off the gruesome weather.

I woke up this morning to that weird golden thing in the sky and not a cloud in sight. So I quickly shinned up onto the roof and onto the roof of the old Luton Transit to brush the snow off the solar panels to take advantage of everything.

But I needn’t have bothered for 10 minutes later the wind changed, a whole heap of cloud came over and blocked the sky. We had 10mm of rain!

And as I type I have the long-range weather forecast up and every day for the next week is totally overcast with rain forecast. Monday and Tuesday we are promised 15 and 16 degrees. They say Centigrade but I bet it’ll be more like Fahrenheit.

So I stayed in and shovelled up tons of rubbish and piled it up elsewhere and I now have a path through the rubble to the stairs. it’s impressive. I also tidied up a few things and sorted out the wood. You can see the door that I bought in the Brico Depot sale. That’s for the front – lots of glass to let in the light. Light is at a premium around here.

At lunchtime Francois came round, with a woman in tow. He was amazed at the progress since he last visited here in September. This woman is renovating and she is interested in recycled materials and Francois had told her about my reccycled plastic slates. She was well-impressed.

This afternoon I started to tidy up the verandah which I use as a kitchen. But my heart wasn’t in it “No surprise there – it’s a cleaning job” … ed – and at 17:00 I called it a day. And then crashed out up here for an hour. All this work has been taking its toll of me.

-6

Tuesday 22nd December 2009 – This weather is getting on my wick

I Woke up this morning to a minor heatwave – in fact it reached 11 degrees outside at one point – there was no snow anywhere and that weird golden thing was in the sky. Of course it didn’t hang about for all that long and it clouded over again.

Meanwhile I cracked on and in wow! whoopie! mode, I’ve finished all of the stairs. I fitted the rails for the final step at the top angle of the stairs down to the ground floor and then scrounged some wood to make the treads. After that it was a mega-clear-up and then I cut down the stringers for this builders’ staircase that I’m going to fit down to the ground.

I’d got it on my temporary workbench to assemble and I quickly learnt to throw away the instructions. It’s all very well following them if there are two of you but when you are on your own you need to think again. I drilled some screw holes in the sides where the treads would be, then laid one stringer flat on the workbench. I “invented” a small trestle of about the stairs’ width and put that over the top and put the other stringer on top. After that I inserted the treads, tacking them in with screws as I was going along, and when I reached the end, clamped it all together with my two large speed clamps.

By now it was dark but I was on a roll so I rigged up a light using the Ryobi flourescent light, and then turned the stair assembly over onto the other side, made sure the treads were correctly positioned, and then screwed them from that side. I turned it back over, tightened up the screws that I’d tacked in place, released the speed clamps, and that was that.

It took just 15 minutes, a spirit level, the drill with the drill bit, the drill with the screwdriver bit, a handful of screws and some packing pieces, and the stairs were installed.

And now I’ve knocked off work for the festive season.

It was pouring down with rain this evening but at about 21:00 it all went quiet. When I went downstairs for tea I discovered the reason. The temperature had dropped to 2 degrees and it was snowing like hell!

And talking of snowing, I’ve ordered Caliburn’s Christmas present and I’m spending more money on him that I spent on me! One new road-going tyre and two Michelin Alpine snow tyres. I’ll need them in this weather. I just hope that the weather holds off enough for me to get to Montlucon to have them fitted.

-2

Monday 21st December 2009 – Temperature inversion is a wonderful thing

When I got back from the Anglo-French meeting tonight, the warmest place was … errr … outside. 7.5 degrees, a whopping 2 degrees warmer than in the verandah, a massive 7 degrees warmer than in the kitchen, and 3 degrees warmer than in my attic.

Yes, we’ve had a sudden thaw. My attention was drawn to it at about 13:00 when I heard a noise that sounded like a railway train passing overhead. I turned round and saw a huge sheet of snow slide off the roof. So I went outside, and it was WARM – the first time it’s been warm for over a week. I was humming and hawing about going out tonight but the thaw decided it – off to the shops before they close and stock up on things that I might need if I get snowed in again.But as things stand I am more likely to sink into the swamp that has been created outside.

And today is the first day in about 100 years that we haven’t had any precipitation. I suppose that that is something to celebrate. But that is truly astonishing for with the temperature inversion we have heavy grey clouds and so sod all solar energy.

Mind you, just now there isn’t a cloud in the sky and it’s totally clear. But of course that’s because it’s night-time. It won’t be like this in the daylight, that’s for certain. I’m convinced that the sun is never going to shine again.

-3

Saturday 19th December 2009 – Sometimes I wonder …

… how far I might have made it in the world if I had had the ability to think straight!

This morning I woke up in the freezing cold and still more snow so the first thing that I did was to brush off the solar panels, or as far as I could reach anyway. As the snow continued to fall I had to do it a couple of times and although I was getting a charge off the first bank that I was keeping clear, the second bank had too much snow on it to register and so I was pretty much regretting the waste of energy when suddenly it hit me! So I rushed downstairs and sorted out the chimney sweeping brush, and then back upstairs and onto the roof.

It’s not very good and it’s difficult to wield but it’s better than nothing and it was just as well that I had a go because at about 16:00 that golden thing came out and hung around for half an hour or so – and we struggled up to 25 amp-hours of charge, the most I’ve had for a while.

I should have gone shopping today as it is Saturday but the snow put paid to that idea. There’s no point going out in this kind of weather if you can manage as you are. I was also supposed to go to a birthday party tonight and I was really looking forward to going, but there isn’t just the snow to contend with, the temperature had dropped to minus 6 while it was still daylight and it was still snowing! God knows what it will be like at midnight coming home. But it’s so cold that the kettles, that I filled from the water butt after smashing the ice, froze to the concrete floor and the tin of peas and carrots that I opened yesterday and put the rest in a container for tonight – they were frozen solid.

So today in between keeping the solar panels clear I carried on with the Stairway to Heaven. I’ve fitted two more uprights as you can see – this is where the turn in the stairs will be. I’ve started to fit the rails that carry the treads and if the weather is too bad to go to this Carol concert tomorrow I’ll be finishing them off and hunting down some scrap wood to use as the treads. It won’t be long now until it’s finished.

And once that’s done I’ll be fitting the stairs in to the ground floor. There’s two that I need to fit that I’ve already cut, and I have a cheap builders’ staircase that I’ll use for the rest. That shouldn’t take much longer either and my plan to have them in for Christmas may well come to pass.

Friday 18th December 2009 – I wondered why it was dark this morning …

… when the alarm woke me up. The skylights in the roof had about 3cms of snow all over them.

And so after breakfast I went for a wander around and a bit of a photography session. You can see how much snow fell during the night, and it was still chucking it down as I was a-wandering.

After my little perambulation I rang up Liz and spoke to her about the proposed group meal. We had a good chat for half an hour or so. They had had the snowplough down their lane at 10:00 and by 11:00 it had all snowed over again.

I was having charging issues in this weather so I shinned out of the side window with the yard brush up onto the roof and brushed the snow off the solar panels where I could reach. That generated something and I had to do it a couple of times during the day. I’m going to have to work out a remote way of doing that in due course. Heated trace wire seems to be one possibility.

I went to brush the snow off the panels that are on the roof of the Luton Transit and which power the barn but I couldn’t find the ladder – half of the old wooden green one. it was there last winter and I do remember lying it down but it seems to have disappeared. I wonder if I lent it to someone. I had to improvise a ladder to get up there and brush things down.

I started to fit the turn-round step in the Stairway to Heaven but I’ve hit upon a major design fault. Not that this is any surprise – I was wondering how it was that I have managed to avoid that fate so far. I haven’t allowed for the height of the extra beam that I fitted. It’s not a major issue and I can work round it by having several angled turn-round steps in the corner that will drop me nicely underneath it. It just means that I could have better-managed my staircase. Ahh well.

And at 14:00 precisely that strange golden thing appeared again – and loitered around for about 10 minutes before it started snowing again.

This afternoon Bill rang me up and invited me to his house for Boxing Day. He’ll be having some friends round. That was nice of him. He was telling me about the over-60s dinner that his village organised and to which he was invited. He said that never mind the hairdos, most of the women had had a good shave. It wasn’t the “blue-rinse brigade” that I used to deal with when I worked at Shearings but the “blue chin brigade”. I blame it on all of the hormones that they pump into the cattle round here.

Claude came round for a chat too and he was here a while. We heard the snow-plough arrive and dashed out just in time to see it disappearing back up the lane. It had managed to get within 50 yards of me before it pliddled off, leaving me still snowed-in. But then again it’s much closer than he got last year when I was left snowed-in for four days.

But all of that explains why I haven’t done too much today. I cut another vertical and cut a couple of lets into the beams to take it. And much to my surprise it fitted absolutely perfectly and went into tension without even being screwed in. Now I call that an achievement! If it goes light tomorrow I’ll screw it in. It will be nice to see what I am doing.

Meanwhile, it’s now 28 days since we had a day without any kind of precipitation at all. Today was enough snow for the equivalent of 5cms of rain. And apart from that one morning last week it’s now been 22 days since I’ve had a decent amount of solar energy and 6 days since we had any temperature above freezing point. It’s starting to get on my nerves.

-2

Thursday 17th December 2009 – "In the bleak midwinter frosty winds made moan ….

…. earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone”
You know, I had no idea that Christina Rossetti lived here in the Combrailles. Last night the temperature outside dropped to -7.1 and in the heat exchanger it plummeted to -10. Consequently in order to get through the ice in my water butts so that I could have some water, I went in search of the pickaxe.

Now that a wind has sprung up blowing the snow everywhere the temperature has warmed up to a balmy -1.5. It might even struggle up above freezing point tomorrow if we are lucky – the first time since Sunday afternoon.

This morning I actually managed to hear the alarm and so I was up and about comparatively early. I went straight into St Eloy to purchase my Christmas present at LIDL and luckily they still had some in stock. Of course I can’t tell you what it is as I don’t open my presents until Christmas morning. On my way to St Eloy that weird golden thing put in an appearance for 10 or 15 minutes and then it was back to the snow again.

From there I went round to Pionsat to speak to the new owners of the “Queue de Milan” where our group meets on the first Monday of every month. It turns out that the previous owners had forgotten to mention us to him.
“Do you eat here then?” he asked
so I explained to him about our group and how, as it happens, he might be able to do something for us for our Christmas meal.
The conversation then turned to other matters and one of the subjects we discussed was the football and how they were discouraged by the previous owners. With the ground being right next to the hotel I reckoned he should do his best to talk to them.
“Will they eat here after the match then?”
Ahhhhh – right. Not a hotelier, not a bar keeper, just a restauranteur.
Pionsat is a typical small Auvergnat town of maybe 1200 people if it’s lucky. It’s true that there’s no other restaurant for a good few miles but then again the place is hardly heaving with people. A place like the “Queue de Milan” should be the focal point of the area with its hotel, its bar, its little salle de fetes and, yes, its restaurant. It should be all of those things. The previous owners tried to run it as just a restaurant, closing down the bar as the football ground turfed out and things like that, but that of course went tits-up. So if the new owners are trying to follow the pattern then it will end in its own logical conclusion.

Which of course reminds me – the “Queue de Milan” being the hotel-restaurant for the area. Many people are now getting into the detailed planning for Christmas and looking for places to eat out over the festive season. Many ex-pats such as myself live in deplorable circumstances in the middle of house renovations and the like. This is the time that family and friends like to be together and if you don’t have the facilities to lodge your guests you stick ’em up in the local hotel.

So it’s no surprise to anyone for me to tell you that the “Queue de Milan” is closing down tomorrow and reopening on the 4th January once the festive season has ended. And they complain that the business isn’t paying. It beggars belief.

After that I went round to Claude’s. He’s finished with my acrows (he’s only had them for 8 years) and he’s also found the rotavator attachment for my brushcutter, the three-wheeled lawnmower and a few other things. So Caliburn and I went round to pick them up. And what a surprise! He’s been tidying up and found in the pigsty his reserve stock of metal window shutters. They are now surplus to requirements and so he heaved them into the back of Caliburn. That was really nice of him!

So having got the morning out of the way this afternoon I fitted the vertical that I was trying to fit in the dark yesterday – it’s amazing just how easy everything is in the daylight when you can see what you are doing. I followed that by cutting and shaping another vertical which I then installed. And that then split up the vertical length by a good foot. Luckily it’s split outward from the joint so that the weight is still being taken by the unsplit part. I drilled and screwed it to keep it together but I’m fed up of this awful crappy wood from Brico Depot. This is the second one that’s split on me. Someone ought to take the quality control manager outside and shoot him.

Tomorrow I’ll be cutting and fitting the three last beams and once they are in position I can do the remainder of the stairs. I also have some floor to fix as well – I narrowed the stairwells as you might remember so the part between the old beam and the new beam needs to be floored over. That has to be done before I fit the second half of the stairs.

And I also have to go to Glastonbury in the very near future. Someone had seriously annoyed me and they and their entourage are going to be on the receiving end of a really good kicking.

-7

Wednesday 16th December 2009 – The Stairway to Heaven …

… now has five steps in it! I started this morning to fit the second upright and much to my surprise and amazement it was in in about 15 minutes. It didn’t need much shaping at all.

That made me feel so much better than I was yesterday – even more so after I’d fitted the rails for the two extra steps, and once the treads were in then it was better still.

I’ve made a start on fitting one of the uprights for the final row – the one where the turn will be in the staircase – but once again I ran out of light. If I hadn’t missed my aim when employing Ashley (my rather large wooden mallet) to fasten one of the beams and I’d have hit the beam that I was aiming for, I might have had some electric light. Guaranteed for 40,000 hours, these LED lightbulbs, but I’m sure the guarantee must exclude being wallopped to smithereens by a wooden mallet.

And I suppose that had I heard the alarm at 08:00 this morning instead of sleeping through until 10:00 I might have fitted the new uprights long before it went dark.

Mind you, a strange thing happened today. Round about 13:30 this weird golden object appeared in the sky. It only stayed around for about 15 minutes and then it started snowing again. I wonder what it was. I have vague memories of seeing something similar but it was so long ago that I can’t remember what it was.

In other news, have you seen the latest headlines? NATO has gone cap-in-hand to the Russkies to beg them to lend some helicopters to use in Afghanistan to crush the Taliban.

Of course, back in the old days those of you with long memories will recall that NATO armed the Mujahadeen (which was what the Taliban was called in those days) to attack the Russians and drive them out of Afghanistan after the Russkies had invaded that country. And now NATO, having invaded Afghanistan in its turn, is begging the Russkies to come and help them fight against the Mujahadeen (or Taliban) that is armed with the weapons that NATO gave them all those years ago.

NATO’s humiliation must now be complete. Are there any further depths that the west can plumb in this disgraceful and obscene invasion?

-1

Tuesday 15th December 2009 – Today was one of those days …

… where nothing seemed to go right. it was freezing cold this morning and I was absolutely right about the weather – totally grey and overcast and only 4.5 amp-hours in total.

I don’t know why anyone pays any attention to the weather forecast around here – it’s so easy. All you need to do is to look out of the window. If you can’t see across the valley then it’s raining. If you can see across the valley then it’s going to rain.

So Terry came and the sink wasn’t any use for him but he did help me to move the plasterboard and I forgot the gas bottle. After that I finished cutting the lets in the verticals, in the pitch dark because it’s impossible to see anything in the gloom. After lunch I fitted one of the verticals and it took me hours. It’s not very-well done but I was freezing cold and fed up. I drilled right through the join and into the wall so I could fit an anchor bolt that would tighten everything together and hold it to the wall but the bolt stuck and wouldn’t go right in – and then I couldn’t get it out either. Trying to lever it out with a crowbar and I dropped the nut and I can’t find that now.

Then I fitted the battens and the insulation but by now (like 15:10) it was far too dark to properly fit the counter-battens. Dark at 15:10 – it’s depressing – so I did a bit of tidying up and then smashed my way through the ice in the water butt to get some water.

It was 6 degrees in my attic – which might not sound a lot but it was minus 5 outside and getting colder by the minute. And it’s still grey and miserable outside. We are stuck in this deep westerly depression which is a very rare phenomenon. It’s almost as deep as the depression I am stuck in. At least if it was an easterly depression we were stuck in there would be some sunlight.

-1

Monday 14th December – It’s gone flaming cold now

Yes, outside it is minus 4 and I shudder to think what it might have been if we didn’t have this thick cloud cover. Yes, another thick cloudy day which means that I’ve had no solar charge yet again. I wonder when the sun is going to come out. According to the weather forecast banner on my website we are promised a clear sunny day tomorrow but knowing the weather and the weather forecasting around here I’ll believe that when I see it. It also promises me minus 9 as well tomorrow and I’ll believe that – one day last January we had minus 15.

This morning I wasn’t in a hurry to wake up but once I was up and about I discovered that all of my water has frozen up. That’s the trouble with storing the rainwater above ground. It was a bit icy yesterday and I was going to defrost it after the football and fill all of the kettles but with the match being delayed it was too late when I got home. Luckily I have a couple of litres that I’ve filtered and that will keep me going.

And so I started cutting the lets on two more pillars but Claude came round for a natter instead. And then it was round to Liz and Terry’s to give them a hand followed by the Anglo French group in St Gervais. When I got back home, it was just 4.5 degrees up here in my room. But it’s amazing just how quickly the place warms up with a bit of heat.

And I’ll be going to bed soon. Terry is on his travels tomorrow morning and I have an old stone sink to give him. While he’s here he’s going to help me lift some plasterboard upstairs to the first floor and carry my gas bottle round to the side of the house. He reckons it’s going to be an early start. I don’t much like the sound of that.

-4

EPIC HALL

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