Category Archives: Les Guis

Thursday 12th November 2009 – KEEN FOLLOWERS OF MY MIGHTY ORGAN …

…will know that a few of us around here have been on the look-out for a decent mini-digger. And so when one made its appearance on a French classified ads website we had to look at it.

First thisg was the price – about 2/3rds of what it’s worth even if it’s in rough condition. But this is a modern one with all of the accessories and in excellent condition. Hmmmmm. So I sent an email to the vendor who wrote back with all kinds of glowing details about the machine and gave me his phone number to ring him back with any questions.

002 299 7600030

I didn’t recognise the number but I dialled it anyway. There was a strange dial tone and then I had my contact – with a really heavy African accent. Even more Hmmmmm.
“So where do I go to see the machine?“
“Don’t worry – we’ll bring it to you“
“Well, I’m not going to pay for it if I don’t like it or if it doesn’t match up to the description“
“It’ll be everything you want – don’t worry“.

Now I’m quite prepared to believe that this digger is genuine, just as I am prepared to believe in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and the likelihood that OUSA will employ a disabled black male member of staff. And when Rhys told me that he’d tracked the number down to Benin – which is close to Nigeria in case you hadn’t already guessed – and this particular guy, then I’m intrigued to see how this scam is going to work out.

Talking of Rhys, he is playing one of those World Domination games on Facebook. He tells me that he needs 217,000 soldiers to overcome Namibia. I’ve told him that he and I could do that on our own. And then we would go and fetch Terry and do Angola afterwards.

And in other news, I hear that Caligula and her horse are to appear on television on Sunday evening. Unfortunately the programme clashes with a showing of Dr Who, so it won’t get much of an audience. But you’ll know when they come onto the screen – you’ll see all of the Daleks rush to hide behind the sofa.

-4

Wednesday 11th November 2009 – I thought you might like to see …

… some of the damp that has infested my little room downstairs. I moved away a pile of plastic boxes from against the wall and this was the sight that greeted me.

There’s lots of plaster and cement that has dissolved itself off as well. I shudder to think what it would have been like if I hadn’t bonded the surface with white acrylic paint.

It looks pretty depressing, I suppose, but you have to remember that it could have been worse. It’s only just over two years ago that I was living in a tent – the legendary camp camp – and this has to be an improvement on that.

Today was the day that I had been waiting for for about two weeks – a day of really bright and continual sunshine. So I spent all day catching up with my washing – two machine loads worth and there’s plenty more besides. Only a shortage of washing powder prevented me from doing a couple more.

In between working the washing machine (it’s a manual, not an automatic) I was bringing things upstairs. Liz says she can’t wait to see my room all nice and organised but she would be disappointed if she were to come round today – there’s stuff everywhere. But at least I now have a kind-of wardrobe and some clothes storage up here so it’s definitely looking more like home.

-3

Tuesday 10th November 2009 – I’ve had another day today …

… where I’ve done very little. Mostly bringing stuff up from downstairs and giving it a good clean as you have no idea just how musty and dusty everything has become through being in my little room down there. In fact I reckon that I could do with a good dusting down and de-musting as well.

I’ve also been discovering stuff that I had forgotten all about. That’s the one good thing about moving – all the things that you find.

But I’ve also been having one of those days where I can’t get anything very much to work. My old laptop broke down in the summer – the external power supply packed up and I’ve not been able to find a new one (anyone have an old Lenovo power supply unit anywhere?). I bought an external caddy and fitted the hard drive into it so that I can copy the data. “Plug and play” they say, but will it work? Will it ‘eck. I’ve even been e-mailing the manufacturers and they aren’t able to help all that much. We’ve now got it down to having to initialise the hard drive so that the new laptop can pick it up, and I’ve worked out how to do it, but when I click on the button to do it, I get a “device not ready” error message. In “properties”, I get a “this device is working correctly” message. Someone is speaking with forked tongue.

And that’s not all. I put my new lens onto the camera today – and nothing! Now it’s an old manual SLR lens but it should still work using the manual settings on the camera, but not at all. Aparently you need to set it up in the “menu”. Now anyone would think that there would be an option “use manual lens” in the menu, but of course there isn’t. You need to scroll through seven screens before you find a “disable automatic ring fitting” and when you do that, that’s only the first of several steps. I’m onto step 4 but it’s getting late and I’ll look at the rest when I’m awake tomorrow.

But there’s some kind of hope yet – for when I was finding things that I had forgotten about I came across the original lens for the camera – the one I discarded not long after I bought the thing. And that, would you believe, stops down to f1.7, which is even lower than the new one. The max focal length is only 70mm so the images will need to be cropped down and that will reduce the quality, but the quality is so poor anyway that it won’t make much difference and in any case, with a need for only half the light of the current lens, I can tweak the quality by means of the camera settings (faster speed, lower ISO setting etc). There are two night matches on Saturday so if I can’t get the new lens working I’ll have a go with the lens that I uncovered and see what difference that makes.

-5

Monday 9th November 2009 – Today has set an all-time new record …

… of electricity generated around here with my solar panels.

I started keeping statistics back in August 2007 and I can safely say that today is the first-ever day since then that a total of ZERO amp-hours has been generated. I’ve had days where I’ve had 0.2 and 0.3 amp-hours, that kind of thing, but never a day with zero.

But a look at the temperature senders in the heat exchanger, the greenhouse and the cloche will tell you why. Maximum temperature was 5.0 – minimum was 3.5. Yes, we had absolutely no sun at all so the temperature never rose by anything worth recording, and there was so much cloud cover that there was no radiation back into the atmosphere once it went dark.

You’ve seen photos in the past of the Gorges of the Sioule with the low cloud hanging around in the gorge. Today was one of those days where the low cloud was all over the Combrailles and just hanging around, stationary, with not even a breath of air to move it on. It’s just like a heavy, clogging mist or fog. We get plenty of those in late autumn and winter but today’s was a special one.

Another record was set at the Anglo-French group this evening where just three of us turned up. Bill, Mark and Yours Truly. Hardly surprising as I could hardly see my hand in front of my face for much of the drive to St Gervais.

I stayed in today – doing a little bit of desultory moving, writing up my footy notes and talking to Rhys on the computer. Rhys is having “issues” with someone on a photography forum who is posting comments that can only be described as “unpleasant” – and that’s an understatement. The aforementioned poster is stalking Rhys in cyberspace, which is a pretty unpleasant thing to do.

The internet is a magnificent tool that has opened up whole new horizons for many people, and given many people a platform to air their views – a platform that simply wasn’t available in their former lives. It’s a sad fact that many people simply didn’t have a life back in the technological stone age but the internet has given them a whole new outlook. On the internet you can be whoever you want to be – superhero, cybervillain – and “no-one knows that you’re a dog”. Most people can handle themselves quite correctly in the new form of media but it’s sad to relate that there are always a few people whose existence to date has been so depressing that the internet has brought out the worst side of their characters. People who are so oppressed and depressed in real life that they cloak their inadequacies and the like by becoming over-aggressive on the ‘net – purely and simply because they know that they won’t get their teeth kicked in and that they have a large and wide-ranging audience.

It’s a maxim that if you wouldn’t say something to anyone to their face, then you shouldn’t say it on the internet. Not abiding by those rules is simply the worst form of cowardice. You might be wondering why it is then that I say so much about other people on here. The fact is, of course, that I’ll quite happily say it to their faces and be proud of it. I do recall the time that I was summoned to appear before Turdi de Hatred and Lisa arson back in January 2008 – which regular readers of my outpourings in its previous existence might remember. I took along Liz Ayers to hold my coat and we will both remember how the interview opened.
“Although there is no statutory obligation to do so, we are allowing you to bring a friend as we don’t want you to feel intimidated” said Turdi.
I turned to Liz and noticed that she was absolutely p155ing herself with laughter.
“Don’t laugh, Liz” I urged. “This is deadly serious. We both know a girl (called Seanalee as it happens) who is frightened to death of clowns“.
To this day, and probably to my dying day, I still do not know how they failed to notice the dictaphone that I put on the desk.

-5

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

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

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

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

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

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

-6

Saturday 7th November 2009 – I almost did something today …

… that I haven’t done for over 10 years. That is – I went to the swimming baths for a swim. I’d done my monthly shop around Montlucon with plenty of time to spare and on the way back I stopped off at Neris-les-Bains where there is a public swimming baths. I’ve been there before during last winter to take my showers there but I really fancied a swim. And I always carry a holdall in the van with some washing stuff, some clean undies, a towel and a pair of trunks.

And of course, as you might expect, it was closed for the week for pool cleaning.

Neris is an old Roman spa town. It’s quite pretty and genteel – the kind of place that you would take your maiden aunt for afternoon tea. There’s a thermal baths there – something along the lines of Malvern – where you can go for a relaxing cure. It’s pretty good for the stress, so they say. So I wandered along to see if they could fix me up with a shower or something, seeing as I was here.

“Actually, we are closing today” said the receptionist.
“When are you reopening?”
“The 27th of March” she replied. You can see that it was my lucky day.
“Can I come without an appointment for a shower or a bath without signing up for a cure?”
“Certainly“
“So how much would that cost?”
And when she told me the price, I needed to sign up for a cure in order to recover from the shock. Prices start at €53:00. And here I am, complaining about €2:90 for a shower!

She gave me a leaflet with all of the details of the cures that are on offer. One of the things that they propose is a mudbath. Dunno why anyone would expect me to sign up for that – with all of the rain that we have had these last few days I have my own private mudbath just outside the front door. Admittedly it doesn’t have marble walls and floozies handing round the towels, but it doesn’t cost … gulp … €334 either.

Mind you, I do recall the time that I sent Nerina to have a mudpack applied to her face. They reckoned it would improve her appearance.
“Has it worked?” she asked when she came back
“Absolutely” I replied, “but it’s all worn off now“
Mind you, she enjoyed herself while she was having a weekend at this spa. She phoned me up to say that with all the treatments she had had, she was feeling like a new woman.
“So am I” I replied

This evening I went down to Pionsat to watch the 3rd XI play Thuret, but the ground was totally in darkness. You can see that it was my lucky day today! From the top of the hill just round the corner from me I can see right across the valley and I noticed that the floodlights were on at Marcillat’s ground, about 12 km from here so I drove over there instead. Some of Pionsat’s players were there watching Marcillat play Montvicq and they told me that the match had been rearranged for last week and the team had actually won! And I missed it too!

Marcillat play in Allier’s 2nd Division. That’s the same level as Pionsat’s 2nd XI, but the quality of football was probably lower 3rd Division based on Puy-de-Dome standards. Pretty much agricultural stuff. Marcillat won 5-1 (Montvicq’s goal was a Marcillat “own goal”) without breaking sweat, and I don’t think that Montvicq would score if they were still playing now with Marcillat having been off the pitch for the last two hours.

Anyway, tomorrow I’m going to watch the 1st XI at Artonne – I’ve never been there for a match. And that reminds me. I was in Brico Depot today and one of the assistants came over and started chatting to me quite socially.
“Who on earth is this?” I asked myself.
Anyway, after a lengthy discussion he asked “are you coming to watch us tomorrow?” Ahh yes. Pionsat footballer. What with Pionsat FC pie hut attendants working at the Auchan and footballers working at Brico Depot, I can see that I’m going to have to be on my best behaviour everywhere that I go. That’ll be quite a change.

+10

-10

Friday 6th November 2009 – I haven’t finished moving in yet.

You’d be astonished at just how much stuff you can fit into a room thats just 2.8m by 1.7m, I can tell you.

What I have been doing is installing the library up here. This is about half of it, and you have to agree that it’s amazing what you can do with a couple of planks and a small pile of bricks.

And I’m glad that I brought the books up – it wasn’t before time. Some were on a raised shelf, others were in plastic boxes,but some were on a wooden bookcase. This has a plinth that’s about 60mm high yet the damp in my room had penetrated the wood to such an extent that the books on the bottom shelf had suffered. As I’ve said before, I’m surprised I didn’t catch pleurisy with the amount of damp that was in my little room.

And the awful smell that was down there – I reckon it was damp wood and soggy books because it seems to have come up into here now. At least it’ll have a chance to dry out.

You can see the hifi on the top shelf. It’s a little cube that is in fact a radio and a slot that takes SD cards. And seeing as most of my music these days is in *.mp3 format and I use SD cards for all kinds of things, this is ideal. It came from Curry’s in the UK and cost £17.99.

The reason why I was so keen to buy it was that it runs on 12volt DC so it’s just the job for here. The speakers were pretty awful and they soon were binned in favour of these that I picked up in a clearance sale in Montlucon.

Next to it is the Ibanez acoustic bass. When I came to live down here full-time in 2007 I rediscovered the urge to start playing again and in the absence of mains electricity an acoustic bass was in order. It took me ages to track one down.

Next to it is the legendary Gibbon – a Gibson EB3 short-scale bass the same type as used by Jack Bruce of “Cream” fame. It’s a 1964 model and I bought it in 1975. It cost me a fortune back in those days and I sold my soul to buy it. It’s pretty well-travelled and even so, I”ve been offered what amounts to a King’s ransom for it, sight unseen. It’s sat in its armour-plated wooden crate for the last 20 or 30 years with hardly ever seeing the light of day but I reckon it’s time to bring it out into the open and give it an airing.

I’ve also found a heavy-duty curtain to hang over the glass door. The temperature dropped in here last night but in my nice snug little bed I was warm and comfortable. But this flaming bed – comfortable indeed it is and I had a really good night’s sleep. But when you flatten down the back of the settee to make the double bed the bed bit overhangs the base. So when you roll over to the edge of the bed to get out, you reach a point where the bed overbalances and throws you onto the floor. It took me quite by surprise and the air was as blue as the walls of the room. With some of the language that I used, it totally redefined the meaning of “a rude awakening”.

-4

Thursday 5th November 2009 – Tonight’s image …

… features part of the new chez moi complete with bed settee and occasional table (I’m still wondering what it is the rest of the time when it’s not a table).

So after my lie-in (well, it was in fact earlier than usual when I woke up) I assembled the table. That was exciting, I can tell you. It looks quite nice and trendy – totally out of place with me, and assembling it was, well, something of a challenge.

Then it was the bed-settee’s turn. And I’m disappointed with this, given the amount of money I paid. Fair enough, it’s better than the one I have back in Belgium, but it cost 3 times the price so it ought to be. But it’s not all that strong. If I ever get Percy Penguin in here when she’s got a head full of steam, it won’t last five minutes. But neither would I, so I don’t suppose it makes any difference. But I’m keen to see how I feel tomorrow morning after a good sleep on a decent mattress.

But talking of Percy Penguin, I am reminded of the time that she and I went on a skiing holiday back in 1993 (you could say that our relationship went downhill after that). I went to the doctor’s before we went, to see if he could do anything for me.
“What you really need to do is to pray to God, Mr Hall” he said
“Why’s that?” I asked.
“I’m a doctor” he replied. “My job is to heal the sick. It’s his job to raise the dead“.
He did give me some viagra, though, which was kind of him. But I clearly didn’t swallow it quickly enough. I had a stiff neck for the whole week.
And I had a friend who died of an overdose of viagra. It took two weeks for the smile to fade from his face, and four weeks before they could put the lid on the coffin.

I have the gas heater up here now – something of a disappointment as I was hoping for the woodburning stove to work – I’ll look again at this in the near future and follow Krys’ idea from the other day which I think is a likely solution. Struggling up with the heater and the gas bottle was something. later on this evening, struggling up here with a full gas bottle becuase the one that I had just taken up had run out – that was something else.

I’ve reassembled the desk as well and I’ve started to move my other stuff up. I’ll be finishing that off tomorrow. And I’ve noticed that while it’s colder in here than in my little room downstairs, it’s not as uncomfortable by any means. The damp in there was clearly affecting me and you should see how it’s affected some of the stuff that was leaning against the wall.

And as for the quiz last night, raise your hands if you DIDN’t guess “music” or “the hi-fi”. That was as expected the first thing that came up here from downstairs.

-4

Wednesday 4th November 2009 – Well, folks – here it is!

And about time too, I hear you say. One attic duly completed (more or less).

If you look very closely you can see that all of the skirting board is fitted, even in the little cupboard. And the room was emptied and brushed out by 18:15 too.

Tomorrow is going to be cleaning and tidying, and then moving in. And I’m going to have 10 days off and put my feet up to relax.

It goes without saying that a great big thanks is due to Terry, who came along, got me motivated and got me started on the roof back in July.

A big thanks too goes to Liz, who kept me going with supplies of vegan chocolate cake, to Dave who came to join in for a couple of days, and also to Rhys and Krys who kept me at it with loads of virtual cyber-support.

And we really put our backs into it too. It’s very hard to imagine that it was only on the 18th of July that the attic looked like this.

So here’s a little quiz to keep you all going until tomorrow.

I said that tomorrow I’m moving into the attic once I’ve cleaned it. The bed-settee, the desk and the coffee table are already up there. What you have to do is to guess which domestic item is going to be the first to be moved up there from anywhere else. An easy one if you know me – not so easy if you don’t.

As for this evening, we had an exciting jam session in a living room in Montaigut. I took the acoustic bass as I don’t have an amp and speaker for the Gibson but I needn’t have bothered – the living room was like something out of a who stage set, complete with soundproof room for the drums. Michael had only ever played once before with other people – I haven’t played with anyone else for about 30 years, but the drummer would have been out of my league even back in those days. His mane won’t mean anything to you but he was formerly the drummer in Gong – Daevid Allen and Pierre Malherbe’s group from the 1970s. Strangely enough, he’s interested in getting together again so when Michael comes back from the UK I’m going to teach him the basics of 12-bar blues and we’ll take it from there.

Meantime I need to talk to Trixi about some singing lessons. Last time I had to sing in a rock band Sue Willett gave me some lessons and some tips – but I’ve forgotten those.

What a day!

-7

Tuesday 3rd November 2009 – You’re probably looking at this photo and thinking ….

… “what’s going on here? Has he been reading the instructions or something?”

Well, that has been precisely the problem. I HAVE been reading the instructions (or looking at them anyway – it’s a kind-of schematic diagram) and unless there is something wrong with my eyesight, the instructions are totally wrong.

And the benefit of a good sleep and a nice hot mug of coffee is that you can have a really good think.

In the diagram (and I’ll scan it and post it up sometime) it’s quite clear that you lay the lengths down so that the large part of the tongue is flat on the floor, and you insert the small part of the tongue on the next piece into the groove. But, as I found out this morning, if you lay the lengths on the floor so that the small part of the tongue is facing towards you, you can slide the large part of the tongue on the next piece underneath the small part of the tongue on the first piece, and it all clicks together (with some amount of brute force, it has to be said)

And once I threw away the instructions and did it my way I had three-quarters of the floor laid. There’s just five rows left to do and with a bit of luck I might get those done tomorrow morning.

But even so, I’m still glad I’m not fitting this stuff in my flat in Brussels. You still have to nail this stuff to the floor (so it’s a good job I didn’t run the wires underneath the floor) and in Brussels I have concrete floors with water pipes running through them. Give me tongue-and-grooving any time.

In other news, the weather has been atrocious. 13mm of rain, damp and clammy atmosphere, a record low of electricital energy. Winter is finally here. We had a fantastic summer so I suppose I can’t complain.

And in other other news, Manure Knighted struggle to a draw against CSKA Moscow tomight. Their equalising goal is scored “deep into injury time”. By that, do they mean “injury time”, “mystery time”, or “Manure Knighted time”? it’s all becoming a bit of a joke at Old Trafford where games always seem to be played out long after the 90 minutes whenever Manure are losing – to give them a chance to pull back an equaliser. You’d have had your shirt on it tonight.

-4

Monday 2nd November 2009 – This perishing flooring …

… is getting on my wick.

I know now why it was reduced for sale at Brico Depot and why there was so much of it. Most flooring is just plain good old ordinary tongue and grooving and it slots together quite nicely. This stuff has “our special patented interlocking system” and that should have set the alarm bells ringing in my head. There’s nothing wrong with tongue and grooving and there isn’t any point changing it, especially for “our patented” system which, as far as I can see, doesn’t work.

It clicks together nicely on the shortest ends – on the longest sides it’s quite a struggle even with Ashley, my super-heavy-duty mallet; but you try to do both together. It’s now four times that I’ve had this floor restarted in an attempt to get it fitted properly. I’ve now resorted to cutting off the ends of the clips, nailing it to the floor on one side and twisting it in on the other. It sort-of fits but it looks untidy but I’ve got to the stage that I knew that I would reach sooner or later, namely that I can’t be bothered to waste any more time and I just want to be in there and settled down no matter what.

And who can blame ne with this weather? It’s pouring down with rain tonight.we’ve had 13.5mm of rain so far this evening and my water butts are overflowing. A far cry from the end of September when we went something like 15 days without any rain.

At the Anglo French group tonight no-one could remember whose turn it was to animate the evening so I had everyone playing charades, miming the use of tools used in DiY. Everyone entered into the spirit of things although Gilles did get carried away with his impression of a chainsaw – cutting Mark’s hand off was going a bit too far, I thought

-4

Sunday 1st November 2009 – I’ve finished the painting …

…and I’ve even started to lay the flooring. So much for my Sunday day of rest.

But the flooring needs to come up again. I was under the impression that there were only two different patterns in each packet but there are in fact four, so I need to re-plan how I’m going to lay them.

There was some paint left over to do the final wall, but I wasn’t sure whether there would be enough. So I added a cup-full of white paint and stirred it in. It didn’t go much lighter and it seemed to spread much easier too, so I wish I had done that from the very beginning. And when I finished, there was a cup-full of paint left over. And moving-in day looks much closer and I can’t wait.

The paint was described as “odourless” but it flaming well isn’t. The fumes have given me a headache which doesn’t seem to want to go and I’m off to bed in a minute.

But not before I tell you that I’m meeting this drummer on Wednesday.

-3

Saturday 31st October 2009 – I had another working day today.

This morning I masked off everywhere in the room and then went off to St Eloy for the shopping. I spent up in LIDL – they were having a musical day so I bought a couple of guitar stands and a guitar tuner.

Also buying a guitar stand was Michael – I haven’t seen him in ages.
“Do you play?” he asked me
“Yes – bass guitar” I replied.
“I’ve started to play electric guitar” he said

So we had quite a chat about guitars and music and other exciting stuff. I told him I was planning to get back on the road, and it turns out that he knows a drummer that lives near to him. He’s going to put me in touch with him
“You can come and join in too” I suggested
“I don’t know enough chords” he replied
“Look – Status Quo toured for 30 years and they only knew three chords!“
“I see what you mean“
I might be on to something here.

At Carrefour my favourite shop assistant (she’s the spitting image of a girl I used to work with) was there. But she’s had her hair cut!
“Who cut it for you?” I asked
“The coiffeur at St Pourcain” she replied
“Doesn’t he like you then?“

Back at home I spent the afternoon painting, as you can see. Half of the room is done, and I’ve used half of the paint. So it isn’t going to get a second coat any time soon. I’ve brushed it on too rather than rollered it – to make it go farther.

Krys’ suggestion of cream would have been an excellent choice but it’s a bit too late now. Blue will have to do. It’ll get the rest tomorrow and if I run out I can do one of the walls in white.

And while I was up on the ladder doing a complicated bit the blasted phone rang. I scrambled down, lowered the ladder down again and climbed down to the phone but just as I got there the perishing thing stopped ringing.

Once I’d finished the first tub of paint I cleaned myself up a bit and set off for Clotilde’s, who was having a farewell evening before she goes into hibernation at Annemasse. But I must have driven around Lapeize about three times and I couldn’t see her house. Nowhere with plenty of cars parked outside. Even some local yokel couldn’t set me right for her house so after gnashing my teeth I came back home again.

As you know I don’t do “social stuff”. It takes me a whole load of effort to get out of my house but it’s one of the things I need to do so I force myself. But it’s twice now I’ve been to some social event like this where the directions have been … errr …. rather vague and I’ve ended up not going. maybe it’s fate trying to tell me something.

In other news, LIDL has been having a British week and selling loads of traditional British stuff, most of which I imagine has never done anything more British than watch an episode of Coronation Street on satellite TV in some factory in South Korea. One of the things that they have on offer are boxes of Jelly Babies.
And do you know how you can tell which of a box of Jelly Babies are the illegitimate ones/
The answer is really easy.
If you turn the box upside down, all the b@$t@rd$ fall out.

-6

Friday 30th October 2009 – I forgot …

… to take a photo of yeasterday’s efforts so I took one first thing this morning.

You can see my paste table – two trestles and a couple of bits of OSB, but saying that it’s a paste table is somewhat of an exaggeration seeing as what I’m doing is actually pasting the walls instead. So you might as well say that it’s a cutting table.

But this fibreglass wallpaper is awful and I hate it. It’s making me itch, which is one thing, and it’s dreadful quality stuff. But at least it’s cheap and easy to hang when you are on your own

But I’m useless at wallpapering and I hate doing it. I remember the time when the long-suffering Nerina asked me to help her to wallpaper and paint the walls in Gainsborough Road back in 1991.
“I hate decorating” I said. “Whoever invented decorating wants f***ing!“
“That’s not what you said on our wedding night” she replied. “You said that whoever invented f***ing wants decorating!”

This is today’s photo and you can see that it’s taken in the evening as it’s dark outside, if you look through the door. The four LED lights give quite a pleasing effect to the room, don’t you think?

If you look closely you can see that all of the walls are now papered and ready for painting, which I may well do tomorrow seeing as there’s no footy this weekend.

And if you look closely you can’t see the scaffolding tower that has been up there since we had no roof on the premises back in July. With the now-redundant woodstove in position you can’t manoeuvre the scaffolding around the walls and in any case the step stool is a little higher and much easier to move around.

In the wooden boz is my bed-settee and I can’t wait to set it up. I’m looking forward to having my first night’s kip on it and that can be any day now.

-5

Thursday 29th October 2009 – I’ve been poncing today…

.. and I’ve got most of the walls pretty smooth but there’s still a little bit to do where I had to do some patching.

Once I’d done the patching though I started to sweep out the room and almost dropped a ton of rubbish and dust onto the top of Claude’s head – he’d popped round to inspect the work. We had a long natter about this and that – he’s got to go back to hospital in a few weeks time for a check-up. What with all of the walking that he does these days I told him it was his 6000-mile service.

This afternoon I had a really weird phone call. It was from some woman – I forget her name, not that it meant anything to me as I don’t know her anyway – who lives in Les Coursieres, a hamlet about 2km away from here. Apparently she is buying some furniture from Germany mail-order and they have asked her for her e-mail address. She doesn’t have one so she wants to know if she can have mine to give them!!!! I dunno why it is but my fame seems to be spreading around here just now.

Once I disposed of that I started on the wallpapering. I’ve done about a third of it and tomorrow morning, after finishing the poncing, I’ll do the rest. But it’s looking much more like a home now.

In other news, on Tuesday Terry and I were discussing football and how all of the fun seems to have gone out of it. We said that even the hurling of abuse at opposition footballers seems to have gone out of the window and that there would soon be nothing left to go to the matches for. Of course, what with truth being stranger than fiction, no sooner do we discuss it than there is a news article about it. Football as an interactive spectator sport is dying, more’s the pity. All I can say is that I will stand in the centre of any football stadium you care to name for 90 minutes every Saturday and let 50,000 football fans say whatever they like about me and my family, for just a quarter of the money that Craig Bellamy gets, the big wimp.

-5

EPIC HALL

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