Category Archives: Les Guis

Sunday 13th December 2009 – the secret is out!

I now know why it is that Pionsat’s 3rd XI struggle in the 4th Division of the Puy-de-Dome league. Here they all are in the pre-match warm-up!

But seriously, I battled my way across the Combrailles through the heavy snow around St Pourcain to get to Effiat in time for the 13:00 kick-off. Pionsat’s players had beaten me to it, and there we were, kicking our heels. Effiat had changed the time of the kick-off to 15:00, but had omitted to inform Pionsat. And so we all had lunch while we were waiting.

Last night, leaving Pionsat’s ground, I bumped into Gregory who was just arriving. He plays up front for the 2nd XI and sometimes for the 1st XI and he’s a pretty useful player. But he wasn’t playing last night.
“I was working 2-10” he told me when I asked.
“Will you be playing tomorrow (that is, today) then?”
“No” he said, with an air of bewilderment as if no-one had ever asked him to play for the 3rd XI before when he was unavailable for the 1st or 2nd XI.

So at Effiat, who should be in the dressing room but Gregory who, having made enquiries and discovered that the 3rd XI were struggling to raise a team as usual, had graciously offered his services.

He didn’t break much sweat, it has to be admitted, but then again he didn’t need to. He scored the first two goals in the opening couple of minutes and then concentrated on spraying the ball around to the other players to give them a chance. After Pionsat had scored their 5th goal (remember, this is the team that does a lap of honour if they ever manage to win the toss) he decided that he had done enough and went off for a shower, leaving the rest of the team to it.

I’m hoping that this might set some sort of precedent and maybe encourage a few of the other 1st and 2nd teamers to help out the 3rd XI whenever they are available. They could certainly do with a helping hand every now and again. Pionsat’s 3rd XI scoring 5 goals and winning at a canter! Who’d have thought that?

And so it was back home though the doom and gloom and snow and ice and sub-zero temperatures (it’s minus 2 outside just now) and low batteries (I’ve had no charge at all for a few days now). I’ve got the fire on and I’m not moving now!

-5

Saturday 12th December 2009 – Never mind the …

… snows of winter covering our land,, I have the first snows of winter covering my water butts. Not very much, I agree, but snow just the same. And more is forecasted for tonight and tomorrow. I’m stocked up with wood and gas and food so I don’t care.

This morning was another morning where I only vaguely heard the alarm and I woke up properly at 09:21. Mind you I was having a very exciting dream – I’d killed two people and I was having everyone in a house sleeping on Ford Cortina rear seats while I was off to Chester to look for an ex-girlfriend. I tell you what – my dreams are much more exciting than real life.

Shopping today wasn’t very exciting though and LIDL didn’t have anything special, although I bumped into Robert the drummer and his wife. I remembered to go to the library though and ascertained everything that I needed to know about joining. They have a reasonable selection of books on the area and I reckon that I might spend my Saturday afternoons after shopping in the library making notes on things in the area so I can update my website.

Rhys and I were talking about this the other nigbt – there’s tons of stuff on the web about all kinds of things but firstly much of its authenticity is sometimes doubtful, and there’s a considerable volume of knowledge that hasn’t made it to the net. I regularly search for old and obsolete history and travel books to glean facts about places that I’ve visited so I can add things to my travel web pages. For some reason there doesn’t seem to be a big market in second-hand books of that nature in France.

Tonight I was at the footy. There were two matches, the 2nd XI against Biollet St Maurice and the 1st XI against Bromont Lamothe. As well as goals we had all sorts of other things that really have no place on a football field. Both Bromont and Pionsat’s 1st XI finished with 10 on the pitch – Pionsat’s 11th player being carried off and Bromont’s 11th player being ordered off and had there been an official referee for the Biollet game, Biollet would have been lucky to have finished with anyone on the pitch.

But I’ve been invited to attend the football club’s annual dinner, which is very nice of them and I appreciate the gesture. I can bring a friend too – I just wish that I had one 🙁

-14

Friday 11th December 2009 – I now have three stairs …

…into my attic – It’s becoming a veritable Stairway to Heaven, isn’t it?

You can see the additional step and its cantilever outriggers. And seeing as there was 1m92 headroom over the head of the stairs to the ground floor once I had fitted the step, I decided to extend it so that it now makes a handy shelf for storage.

The step itself is at a nice height to step off the step ladder There’s none of the mauling and messing around like I had to do on the ladder. So I’m totally puzzled as to how I managed to spill a load of coffee on the step when I have been safely manoeuvring a full mug of coffee up a ladder for the last month or so.

So having done that, I set out to measure up for the rest of the stairs. Now I don’t know if you can recall any ancient legal documents – before the days of computers – where amendments had to be made manually. And different coloured inks were used to amend the amendments and so on. Well on the pillar where I was making the measurements I have red blue and black ink and pencil markings. But now I’ve decided on where I want everything and if my visitors don’t mind steps of 29cms then it takes just 10 steps to get into my room with a footprint (minus the angle of the turn) of just 54.5 cms, which is pretty impressive!

So this afternoon I’ve been cutting pillars and beams and on Monday I’ll be installing the first two. Well, I won’t – Terry needs a hand and I owe him plenty of favours so on Monday afternoon I’ll be tootling off there. I’ve heard a rumour that Liz might be baking.

Im other news, I had a couple of shocks this morning. Firstly I do vaguely recall hearing the alarm go off at some point but it usually does this at 5-minute intervals throughout an hour starting at 08:00 with another alarm clock joining in at certain moments. It’s not at the first crack that I haul myself out of bed – I usually have to wait for a while to wake up so I didn’t pay much attention to the alarm at first. The next thing that I remember was that it was 9:24. Did I really sleep right through 2 alarms for a whole hour?

And there was this strange golden thing in the sky and the sky around it was all blue instead of the traditional grey. That was surprising. I was disappointed that my prediction last night was all wrong. But as the morning developed I realised that it was all a question of a sense of timing and by lunchtime we were all properly overcast.

Tomorrow is St Eloy shopping. I wonder if I’ll find anything exciting there. I forgot to check the special offers at LIDL

-4

Thursday 10th December 2009 – Now if I could cut joints as well …

…as this every time, I wouldn’t have to do it any more as I would have made so much money that I would be paying people to do them for me.

It’s a three-way joint as you can see and it’s come out perfectly. Even more impressive is the fact that I cut it by hand with not a power tool in sight. In fact I’m working entirely by hand and battery power at the moment. It’s not that I’m running out of battery charge on the solar panels but today was another miserable day for electricity generation with a low cloud hovering over here all day and there’s no point in wasting the current on electric saws when a hand saw, a mallet and chisel and a battery-powered drill can do everything that I need.

In fact I’ve not had a decent amount of solar energy since 26th November. What wouldn’t I give now for some of that current that I couldn’t accept in the summer? It’s clear skies and thousands of stars outside right now but of course it’s night-time. As soon as the sun rises, you just watch the clouds gather.

But back to the plot. About 5 minutes after I had fitted that joint, I took it out and replaced it with something else due to a slight change of plan. And that joint wasn’t anything like as good. Much more to my usual standard.

And I now have two stairs fitted anyway, thanks to a discovery of a large offcut from when I did the flooring in the barn. I’ve taken down the ladder and I’m now using a stepladder and the two stairs to get into here. It’s a climb though – about 3 feet off the top of the ladder and we were discussing this on Facebook, a few of us and I reckoned that I could put an intermediary step by way of a couple of cantilever outriggers.

And then it hit me! “Good!” – ed. As soon as I said “cantilever”, I worked out exactly how I am going to build my stairs and it’s so simple that I’m surprised that I haven’t thought of it before. And I can use up tons of the scrap wood that’s lying around here too. Getting my stairs in for Christmas might not be as far out as you might think. Yes, if the French can build a cantilever viaduct not 30kms from here and I’m already planning on building a flying staircase for the ground floor on the “suspension” principle, then there’s no reason why I can’t build a staircase on the cantilever principle up here.

I made a major discovery too. A few weeks ago I bought a job lot of screws from LIDL. They are good value and the boxes are very handy. And it just so happened that I needed to use some of them today. And blow me up if they aren’t torx drive – and the box came with a couple of torx bits inside too. And I tell you what – I’m well-impressed with how easily they screw in and out with not a hint of a slipping driver. I could be sold on this idea.

So tomorrow I’m going to fit the third step here and then start on the uprights that I need to fit so that I can crack on with the stairs. Things are looking up LOL.

In other news, this is the page that has been attracting hits to my site. The other day the hits went up from the 180s or so to 302 and judging by the page counters, it was this page that they were visiting. There’s no evidence that they came from a search engine or a link – it seemed to be all “direct hits” so someone has circulated the page around. I’m intrigued as to who it is and what it is that has caught their eye and whether there will be a follow-up.

We shall see.

-4

Wednesday 9th December 2009 – Have you ever had one of those days ….

…. where everything you do turns out really well, where it seems to last for ever and you don’t want it to stop?

Well, today was nothing like that.

I woke up to torrential rain again and even worse, it was pitch-black outside. We had a pathetic total of just over 5 amp-hours worth of power, off almost 1200 watts of panels. That gives you some indication of the weather. Back in the heady days of August I was generating 250 amp-hours per day on occasions. Wasn’t that a long time ago? I’m up to my knees in mud again and I’m wondering if this rain will ever stop. We’ve had 18 consecutive days of rain and more is forecast for tomorrow.

And the blasted baker left the lid off my bread bucket so when I went to get the bread at lunchtime it was a soggy mass and I had to dry it in the oven so I could eat it.

I didn’t take a pic today because quite frankly there isn’t much to see. I put the insulation down the stairwell (or at least the stairwell where the head of the stairs will be) and then sat down to work out how to fit the stairs. After much deliberation I’ve binned the idea of reusing the sides of the existing stairs. I’m not sure what the guy was drinking while he was cutting them but I wouldn’t mind a pint of it myself. The treads and risers aren’t equal, and they aren’t vertical and horizontal either. I’m going to fit the cheap builders’ staircase up to here and I’ll think again about the ground floor staircase – I might see if it’s possible to recut the sides of the existing stairs for that.

-5

Tuesday 8th December 2009 – I’ve put all four verticals …

… for the head of the stairs now, as you can see.

I’ve also taken out one of the original uprights so that the doorway upstairs is now totally resting on my two uprights.

You can see to the right of the photo a roll of this space-age insulation stuff. Tomorrow’s task is to line the stairwell with that stuff so that I can complete the head of the stairs on both levels.

I had a strange phone call today.
“Congratulations, Mr Hall. You have won a major prize.”
“Very good. You have my address. Post it to me”.
“Well, actually, you have to come to our meeting at Evaux to collect it”
“Not at all – you have my address. Just post it to me. I don’t understand why you are waiting.”
“We have to verify that you are retired and in receipt of a pension. That is your case, isn’t it?”
“That’s a bit forward of you. You don’t ask questions like that to someone you hardly know. When we’ve met each other a few times and we are about to get engaged then you can ask me these questions”
I can keep that up all night – but it’s sad, isn’t it? I actually look forward to the junk phone calls just so I can have someone to talk to.

In other news, 2 items have caught my eye today.

Firstly, Al-Qaida is being blamed for a bomb attack in Baghdad. That’s extremely exciting, for when Saddam Hussein was in power he refused to tolerate Al-Qaida and had expelled from Iraq anyone offering them any kind of support. It seems that the Anglo-American aggressor/invader/oppressor has allowed them back into the country.

The second bit of news is that the country that has supplied the most refugees to the EU is … err …. Iraq. 22% of all refugees in the EU last year were Iraqis. Now unless I have missed something obvious, I understood that one of the reasons for the Anglo-American aggressor/invader/oppressor invading Iraq was to promote a regime change to get rid of a tyrant/oppressor so that all of the Iraqis could live in peace and security. So now that Saddam has been gone for a few years and we have a western-style democracy, why is everyone fleeing the country? Shouldn’t they all be happy now with their Saddam-less democracy? Or is this something else that the Anglo-American aggressor/invader/oppressor has totally ballsed up?

And in other other news, I also keep statistics on visits to my website and yesterday I had over 100 more visitors that the usual daily average. I’ll have to wait til later to see what page it was that they were all visiting but it’s certainly exciting all of this.

-3

Monday 7th December 2009 – I’ve fitted one of my verticals

You can see it in the photo – dead centre of the image up against the wall. Only one vertical though.

I woke up this morning to hear the rain lashing down on the roof again just like the other day. And just like the other day, even though I’m working inside, it’s not very encouraging. I’m wondering when we might have a dry day.

So when I eventually got out of bed and had my breakfast and went up to the first floor where I’m working, it was so perishing dark that I couldn’t actually see anything.

That prompted me hurling out of the window all of the old pallets that were in the pile against the wall and which you may well have seen in other photos. Some were broken, but others survived the fall and so I extended the pallet path that I laid 2 years ago. What with the marsh that’s developing outside, it seemed like a good idea.

So that was the morning accounted for, and in the afternoon I cut and fitted the vertical. It takes hours to do them as they need to be millimetre-perfect and so that involves cutting the lets slightly undersize and then filing them out to fit.

Tonight at the Anglo-French group we had a couple of new arrivals joining in – a French woman and an Austrian woman. They are Buddhists and have come here to be close to the Buddhist monastery in the area. Those of you who remember my blog in its previous home will remember my visit there one Sunday afternoon. And Marianne, the local journalist who sometimes comes to the meetings – she liked my pic from last night and intends to use it to illustrate an article on the village. Not that there’s any dosh in it but if it’s in the paper the villagers will see it and they might be interested in having a copy for themselves. It’s worth a go.

The proprietors of the Hotel in Pionsat where we meet have announced that they are leaving imminently – where to, they don’t know. You need a special kind of mentality to run a place like that and you can’t do it if you have small children and want a family life. Someone is taking over so our continuity is assured. But not so at St Eloy. You may remember that we were locked out of our venue the other week. It seems that the tenants (they were only tenants, not owners) have fled, leaving behind something of a financial muddle. We’ll have to find somewhere else in St Eloy now. Antoine is on the case.

And tomorrow I’ll be carrying on with the verticals if I can trouble myself to climb out of bed. The weather forecast is “no change”.

-9

Sunday 6th December 2009 – Christmas is coming …

… and everywhere is starting to be decorated. This is the little village of Le Quartier not too far away from here and you can see that they are having a good go at the USA-style of house decoration.

They’ve a long way to go and a lot to learn compared with some of the houses I saw on Long Island in 1999/2000 and I’m not sure whether I ought to be pleased that they are making an attempt to brighten the place up or dismayed that they are selling out to the USA again.

But you would never guess that it’s so close to Christmas. It’s 8 degrees outside and raining. We haven’t had a dry day since the 20th November, over 2 weeks ago. It has snowed though, so I’m told. Claude mentioned it the other day and I was totally sceptical except that Terry and Liz have also mentioned it. But I’ve seen nothing at all.

I came through Le Quartier on my way back from the footy. There were 3 matches this weekend, the 1st XI away at Lapeyrouse, the 2nd XI away at Beauregard Vendon and the 3rd XI at home to Montfermy. And of the 9 points on offer they managed to get just 1 and to everyone’s surprise the team that got the point was the 3rd XI. The other 2 lost. What would have been the odds on the 3rd XI getting more points than the other two teams combined? Good for them!

Tomorrow I’m going to be fitting the verticals in the stairwell. That’s going to keep me out of mischief for a while.

-5

Saturday 5th December 2009 – I’m all nice and clean for a change.

90 minutes in the swimming baths at Neris today followed by a nice warm shower – did me the world of good and when I change the bedding in a few minutes it will be wonderful. I’m going to have a nice lie-in as well tomorrow morning and make the most of it.

Montlucon shopping this morning, and I spent a fortune. Mind you, much of that was stuff for Christmas so it’s not unexpected. But I didn’t get myself a present though. Strange as it may seem, I couldn’t think of anything that I wanted and there definitely isn’t really anything that I need. I did however find some interesting DVDs in NOZ, the cheapo rubbishy shop that sells all kinds of end-of-range stuff. Their music selection is at times pretty good. Most French people haven’t heard of many obscure British or American musicians – that’s how I managed to buy that Nice triple-album a couple of months ago. But today, in the music DVD selection they had a huge collection of DVDs of live concerts. Most were rubbish but there were concerts by Tom Petty, Steve Winwood and by Steppenwolf. So at €3:50 a time I’ll be having a megamusic session on Christmas Day.

I’ve got some better prices for my new tyres too – a saving of about €40 and that includes Michelin “Alpine” winter tyres as well. Even at … errrr …. €360 for three tyres I reckon I might go for this.

This evening I saw Pionsat’s 3rd XI draw 1-1 with Montfermy. And they will be kicking themselves for the 2 points dropped rather that the one point gained, for Montfermy were by far and away the worst side I have ever seen and Pionsat’s 3rd XI had some good players out this evening too. And for once the defence played an immaculate game with the central defenders being in position and not wandering away for the whole of the match. They should have demolished this side.

Anyway, an early night beckons. And so does my clean bedding.

-8

Friday 4th December 2009 – If you look closely at this pic …

…you will see not only the wall painted white (that I did last night) but a new vertical that I’ve fitted – where I’ve uprooted some of the floor.

Well, it isn’t exactly fitted but merely stuck in position for now.

This morning I did some tidying up and so on and had a look at the batteries in the barn. One of them is going a bit duff and although I haven’t identified which one it is yet, I’ve identified the bank that it’s in and isolated that.

I’ve also been playing “hunt the tools” and collected up a few that were hanging around.

Claude came for a chat too and was here for about an hour. As you know, he had his open heart surgery back in the summer and since then he’s been told that he needs to walk 4 miles each day. For the last couple of days he’s been in hospital having a check-up so I asked him if that was his 5000 mile service.

This afternoon I cut the lets into the new beam and then had a look at where I’ll be putting the bedroom wall. That’s important as the lower half of the “U” shape of the stairs to the attic will be fastened to the verticals that will support the new bedroom wall. So I measured up where the central pillar will be – the one that the bedroom and bathroom doors will pivot around, and that’s the one that you can see in the image. The bathroom door will be between the two new verticals and the bedroom door will be to the left of the newest vertical.

In other news, I wanted to mention something about catchy soundbites and cliches. They are quite good when used in unexpected and novel ways but quite often they become hackneyed and banal. In other cases they are used totally out of place and when they do, they become ridiculous. Just like the one used yesterday by Baroness Ashton, the EU’s new Foreign Affairs spokesman (that’s all she is – a spokesman. She won’t have any influence at all on policy).

There was a kamikaze attack on a gathering of students in Somalia and she described it as “a cowardly attack against civilians“. Now I don’t know about anyone else reading this blog, but I wouldn’t call a kamikaze attack “cowardly”. I certainly haven’t the courage to do it, and I doubt if Baroness Ashton has either. If she would volunteer to undertake one I would gladly withdraw my accusation, but in the absence of such an announcement, the only word that I can use to describe her statement is “pathetic”. If this is the best spokesman that the EU can come up with and if this is the finest example of her speeches, then I cringe for the future of the EU. How can anyone take seriously an organisation that employs someone to make such stupid statements?

I suppose she thinks that it’s really brave of someone to sit in a bunker 5000 miles away from the action and presses a button to launch a rocket that kills civilians, or flies at an altitude of 50,000 feet and presses a button that drops a bomb that kills civilians?

But on this subject I want to draw your attention to a paragraph from a book that I have recently been reading. It concerns a man who undertook to wear a greatcoat loaded with explosives and detonate it – and himself – in the middle of a meeting. The author describes him as a man of “high courage and self sacrifice”. Definitely not cowardly at all.

So who was the author and what was the book? Well, the author was, would you believe, a westerner. Now isn’t that a surprise? He is Anthony Cave Brown, a journalist and historian. And in his book Bodyguard of Lies he is actually describing an attempted suicide attack on Hitler.

So there you have it – a westerner attempting to kill someone we don’t like – “high courage and self-sacrifice” but someone with a brown skin killing people about whom we neither know nor care – “cowardly”

I don’t know if you remember the episode “General Hospital” in Blackadder Goes Forth when General Melchett talks about the leak of information from the hospital
“One of our spies (brave heroic fellow!) says that one of their spies (filthy rotten bounder!) ….“
and we all laughed at that because it was funny. But here we are 20 years later and it’s all becoming true to life. As I have said before and I’ll probably say again, the blatant hypocrisy of the western world is totally staggering. No wonder no-one in the vast majority of the world (the 80-odd percent who aren’t westerners) can’t take seriously anything that we do and doesn’t believe a word that we say.

And for Baroness Ashton as EU Foreign Affairs spokesman opening her account by saying something so stupid and ridiculous, and also so hypocritical, I really do despair for the future of the west. We don’t stand a chance.

-6

Wednesday 2nd December 2009 – If you look very carefully …

… at today’s image you will see the horizontal beam that I fitted yesterday. That will give you some kind of indication as to how wide the stairs up to the first floor will be. They will be fitted between that beam and the wall in the background – although there will need to be an allowance for the width of some insulation and plasterboard.

You can also see that I’ve fitted an upright into position in the new beam. This is level with the door into my attic on the floor above, and is where the head of the stairs will be for the floor below. To the right of the upright is where the bathroom is to be fitted – you can see the window that will be incorporated into there.

Yes, I’ve fitted one upright. And that will be the only upright that I’ll be fitting for a while too. The uprights are called chevrons – 63mm x 75mm and they need to be at least 4m long. Although the height between floors is only about 2m90, the chevrons need to project some way below the level of the floor so that I can secure the head of the stairs to them. And search as I have done all of the afternoon, I cannot find anywhere my stock of 4m chevrons. I’ve found the 3m and 3.5m ones, but not a single 4m one and that’s a perishing nuisance. I’ll have to wait until I go to Brico Depot at the weekend.

Mind you, while I was searching for the chevrons I discovered my missing beam. It was in the barn in the stack with all of the other new, unused wood. What a silly place to put it! Who on earth put it there?

Tomorrow I’ll be fitting the beam against the wall (if I can find my anchor bolts) and cutting the lets into it to take the verticals (whenever it may be that I will find them). I’ll have to think of something else to do on Friday which is a shame – I was hoping to have all of the verticals in place for this weekend so I could make a start on the stairs on Monday.

But then again it isn’t as if I don’t have anything else to do round here, is it?

-3

Tuesday 1st December 2009 – I woke up this morning …

… to the sound of heavy rainstorm cannoning off the roof, the barn, the windows and just about everything else in the vicinity (this sounds like a rather good blues song, although I haven’t had the blues since I started taking the Prozac). That was at the usual time of 08:00 this morning.

Even though I’m working inside, it’s still not the kind of weather that you really want to wake up to so I turned over and went back to sleep.

At 09:10, the next time that I surfaced, it had stopped raining so I decided to raise myself from the dead. And this was the view from my window.

You’ve heard me talk about the hanging clouds that sometimes hover right over the mountain. Well, this is one and it was a good one. 7.5mm of rain we had, and badger all electricity (although not absolute zero like a few weeks ago).

On a different topic I do recall saying to my loved one that I would never let her down. But since I’ve moved into my attic, it’s just as well that I remember to let her down every morning as I seem to be attracting a stream of visitors coming to inspect my living quarters. Today, Liz came round after her French lesson to see what I was up to. She even brought some vegan ginger cake with her, left over from Saturday’s chantier. It’s nice to have visitors round even if it means that Randy Raquel has to be deflated every morning.

She’s the second one of that ilk that I have had. The first one – we were having a discussion about Uganda when I accidentally bit her. She … errr … broke wind and flew off out of the window. I went to the local edition of Ann Summers to get a replacement.
“Do you want a normal one or a Muslim one?”
“What’s the difference?” I asked.
“You don’t need a foot pump with the Muslim ones. They blow themselves up“

Today I fitted the beam in the floor. It took ages as you need to very carefully make the lets in the existing beams so that the new beam is a tight fit. It takes ages to drill out the lets, chisel them to slightly undersize and then file them to perfection. Then cut the beam to slightly oversize, file it down to perfection and then whallop it into the lets with a huge sledgehammer. Finally drill through the original beams into the new beams with a 3mm drill and then whack a pile of 5×200 nails in through the drill holes to hold everything in place.

And I know why the beams that I fitted in the attic floor were too long and too deep – the one that I fitted in the floor today is too shallow and not quite long enough. How on earth did I manage to do that? And I still can’t find the missing beam. How do you lose a beam that is 4m x 20cms x 6cms?

Tomorrow I’ll be cutting and fitting the verticals. I need four of those but I can only do two of them as I don’t know where the other two will be until I start to fit the stairs in.

And in other news, I had the pompiers round selling calendars. The one I bought is an organiser-type that gives you a space to write appointments in. It also gives the Saints’ Days, and I see that my birthday is the day of St Modeste. Now how appropriate is that? My overwhelming modesty had always let me down – if it wasn’t for that I would be absolutely perfect.

-7

Monday 30th November 2009 – And even more Fiat Lux

Yes, we now have lights on the first floor of the house. 2 x 1.2watt LEDs that illluminate the stairwell so that I can work in the dark.

And it works too – there I was, slogging away quite happily this evening until I suddenly noticed that it was 18:30., half an hour after knocking-off time.

Now that’s what I call “enthusiasm”, don’t you think?

But even with the lighting in the stairwell you can’t see the stairs. For the simple reason that they are no longer there. First job this morning was to take them out.

The treads and risers are pretty naff but the sides are fine and I’m planning to reuse those, although not to the same width. The risers are 17mm and the treads are 21mm, which means that for every 1m of height you need 1.26m of footprint. But what I’m planning to do is to invert the sides so that I have treads of 17mm and risers of 21mm, meaning that for every 1m of height I need 85mm of footprint. It’ll make the treads quite narrow but I can put a 3mm overhang to make 20mm and in any case it’s not as if the attic will be in daily use once I’ve completed the rest of the house.

But I’m going to have to get a move on and do the stairs, otherwise I shall have to take further steps to get into my room.

This afternoon I rewired the temporary wiring – it needed to be moved to another location now that I’ve removed the stairs. I can’t fit it permanently until I’ve done all of the room dividers on the first floor so it’ll be staying like this for a while. And that was when I put in the lights.

Tomorrow I’ll be putting in one of the beams (would you believe that I can only find one of the two that I bought?) and then fitting the uprights.

In other news, the trial of John Demjaniuk has made a start. And isn’t it a total farce? They’ve been hawking him around the world trying to find a crime to pin on him. He’s a Ukranian national and is alleged to have committed a crime in Poland. So how come the Germans are trying him? What is the claim to jurisdiction?

And the evidence is based on the testimony of “a now-dead Ukrainian”. This is going to be an exciting cross-examination as defence counsel and Demjaniuk all sit round a table, hold hands and try to get a glass to move around.

Not one single inmate of the camp is going to give evidence against him – all of the evidence is “circumstantial”. And what help has Demjaniuk been given to trace witnesses from 65 years ago to help his defence? And if they are all dead, will the prosecuting counsel and the plaintiffs all join hands around the table to try and contact them?

It’s a total embarrassment, this trial. Absolutely shameful. I don’t know how anyone in their right mind can drag such a case into court. It’s a desperate attempt to lynch a dying man who has already been found “not guilty” of one bunch of war crimes – and by the Zionists too! And they don’t give up lightly. Ask Adolf Eichmann (just get your family together, join hands around a table etc).

There ought to be an international outcry about bringing to a Court of Law a desperate case such as this. It reminds me of a western, the name of which I forget, that I once saw.
“We’ll make sure that we give the prisoner a fair trial. And then we’ll hang him from that tree over there“.

There are times when I’m ashamed to be a human being.

-8

Sunday 29th November 2009 – I should have gone …

… to Manzat today to see the 3rd XI play against the home side. In fact at 14:00 I got myself ready to go, and just before leaving I had a final glance at the itinerary, only to see that kick-off was at 13:00, not 15:00 as I had thought. Ahhh well.

But to make up for it, here’s a pic of the footy from last night when Pionsat gave Charensat a good spanking.

And so, due to the pouring rain that we were having, I stayed in today and worked on a pile of photos and a pile of dictated notes that had accumulated over the last couple of months, in the hope that I could finally get myself up to date.

And that was it, really. I didn’t do anything else. For once in a while it’s nice to have a lazy day and do nothing at all.

-7

Saturday 28th November 2009 – I had a nice surprise this evening.

Not quite as nice as the surprise Pierre had, but nice enough none-the-less.

There I was, quietly watching the football like I do, when Elodie (the young girl who works at Auchan and who persons the Pie Hut at the football ground) whispered in my little pointy ear “it’s Pierre (the footballer who works at Brico Depot)’s 21st birthday today and we’re having a surprise party for him after the game. Would you like to come?”

Now I don’t do social occasions as you know but firstly Elodie invited me and I think she’s cute. I have a little soft spot for her (her mother has a soft spot for me as well – in her case it’s the Goodwin Sands but I digress) and secondly it’s nice to be invited to close social arrangements in the village such as this. It’s not quite “come to my house and sleep with my daughter” but that will surely come. Give me another 50 years or so.

We were about 10 or 12 at Liz and Terry’s and did quite a bit of pointing although we didn’t go up to the top of the scaffolding – not with this howling gale that was blowing around. I spent most of the day pulling a primeval forest out of the cracks in the stonework.

We did tons of work – mostly in the morning. In the afternoon things went slower due to the extra weight that we were carrying. The food was gorgeous as usual.

And as suspected, no-one said anything to me at all about “witness X”. Isn’t that a surprise?

Talking of the football, I remember saying that Pionsat’s 2nd XI wouldn’t find it so easy in the 2nd Division as they did in the 3rd last season and the thrashing that they received on the opening day of the season went to reinforce that opinion. But tonight I have seen the worst team that I have seen for a while (anything in Division 4 excepted) and how Pionsat only scored 5 and how they let Charensat score 2 is a mystery that will stay with me for ever.

The 1st XI played hated local rivals St Gervais and drew 4-4 in a match that was filled with scandal, controversy, dubious tactics, dubious decisions and a sending-off for a headbutt. It was freezing cold all evening with this piercing wind
(“what did you say?” – ed)
(“piercing – what did you think I said?”)
but the action on the pitch warmed up the pretty large and voiciferous crowd, and of course a good time was had by all. Nothing like a bit of excitement and controversy to liven up a freezing cold Saturday evening.

-11

EPIC HALL

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