Category Archives: Les Guis

Thursday 22nd May 2014 – I’VE BEEN OUTSIDE …

… in the garden again today.

Despite another late night, I was up at the usual time this morning and it was once more difficult to concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing. I must do something about this and learn to discipline myself better, especially as I can no longer afford that woman in Soho …

Outside though, first job was to empty the beichstuhl. And it needed doing too. That’s all in the compost now, quietly festering away, and there’s a nice, clean beichstuhl ready for the morning. That will be a delight.

Afterwards I went in search of scrap wood. I needed some old laths, of which there are plenty around – it’s just a case of finding them and that took me hours as well.

During the lunch break, the weather broke and we had another torrential rainstorm. After my butty, I ended up in the lean-to doing a little tidying up and then did some concreting in the living room. Years ago I dug out a hole in the floor so as to take the batteries that I use. Once I’d done that, all nicely made-to-measure, they discontinued the model that I’ve bee using and so I have some larger ones. And so I need a larger battery box, hence the concreting.

The rain eventually stopped and so I went back outside. And with the old laths that I had gathered and some fencing that I had bought, I made two bean frames. They are now planted in the garden and all of the peas have been sown, as well as the very first double-row of beans.

I’ll be making some more bean frames tomorrow and sowing another load of beans. They seem to do fine in my garden so I need to encourage them.

-2

Wednesday 21st May 2014 – I HAD A BETTER …

… night’s sleep last night. Going to bed before midnight always helps and I wish that I had done so tonight instead of typing this perishing blog at 02:15 because I can’t sleep.

Even with having been out and about on my travels during the night, I woke up all bright-eyed and bushy tailed and after breakfast set about the web site. i’m on the last lap now, out on the icebreaker smashing our way through the pack-ice in the Gulf of St Lawrence in mid-May 2012.

After that, I attacked the mega-cloche and gave it a good weeding. You’ve absolutely no idea how much rubbish has grown in there in the last 3 or 4 weeks, but it’s all out now. Once it was ready, I planted the tomato plants that I had bought from the supermarket at the weekend.

After lunch, I weeded around one of the pea and bean beds, the one that already has a few peas in. Some of them have germinated (but many others haven’t) so I filled in the gaps with some pea seeds that I’ve had in a damp paper towel since Monday.

There were plenty left over too so I repaired another pea and bean frame and sowed another two rows, one either side. With any luck, they’ll grow and tangle themselves in the netting and keep on going upwards. I need to make a few more frames for peas and a pile more for the beans, and I’ll look into that tomorrow..

We had an incredibly windy day – gusting up to almost 50kph throughout. And it’s one of those days where the bigger wind turbine produced more than the smaller wind turbine. As I’ve said before, it’s a fallacy to think that you receive more charge from a more powerful wind turbine. The more powerful the motor, the bigger the magnet there is inside it so the more force that you need to overcome the resistance. That’s why in low-speed situations (and nowhere is any much lower then here) the 70-watt turbine almost always produces more than the 400-watt one.

Except today, of course.

And I was a little too optimistic about that battery that I installed the other day. One of the cells has boiled up today and distorted. So now it’s on 5 cells only until I can get round to sorting some more out.

-2

Tuesday 20th May 2014 – YAWN

Yes, I had a bad night last night. I was editing sound clips and the like when I happened to glance at the time – 03:45.

It ws about 04:00 when I finally went to bed and i had a very disturbed night, but I still managed to wake up and be out of bed before the cacophony of alarms finished at 08:00.

However it ruined my day quite considerably. I couldn’t concentrate on my website work and in the end rang up Rosemary for a chat.

Outside, I dug over the two potato beds, fitted the new raised bed and then planted all of my potatoes.

I checked over the seeds in the small greenhouse and I’ve planted some more lettuce and leeks. Nothing much survived my two weeks away. I then watered all of the plants (that’s why we’ve had a torrential rainstorm tonight) and soaked everything in the greenhouse.

Only a short blog as I’m shattered and now I’m off to bed. See you in the morning.

-3

Monday 19th May 2014 – I FORGOT YESTERDAY …

… to post this photo of the football, and it was only when talking to Cecile that I remembered.

This is Charensat’s first goal but never mind that for a moment – look at Charensat’s n°12 on the extreme right of the photo.

You’re quite right – it IS a girl. Charensat brought with them a couple of substitutes, one of whom was female. And with there being no official from the Puy-de-Dome league present, no-one saw any good reason why she shouldn’t be allowed onto the field.

That’s one of the good things about playing against Charensat – people are out there to have a good time. Not like the thugs from down the road at Montel-Villosanges who appear regularly (and always in a bad light) in these pages.

Having forgotten to switch on the alarms this morning it was 08:45 when I heaved myself out of the stinking pit. And after breakfast and the compulsory couple of houes on the web pages, I went outside to tackle an urgent job.

Just before I went away, bank two of solar panels in the barn began to lose its charge and finally it gave up the ghost. I hadn’t had time to look at it though.

When I returned, everything working off bank two was thoroughly dead so I resolved to look at it today.

I ran all kinds of exhaustive tests and eventually came to the conclusion that there must be in “incident” in one of the cables that runs between the junction box on the panel mounting bracket and the charge controller.

So after lunch I disconnected all of the wiring and then went to hunt down a new set of cables. Eventually I had a brainwave. I had some 10mm exterior pair cabling in a waterproof sheath. I’d used that to connect up the wind turbine when it was on the other end of the barn, so I went to track it down.

That wasn’t as easy as it should have been either, but I found it and installed it (and that wasn’t as easy as it sounds either) and now it’s all connected up.

And, much to my surpsire, working fine.

So I wonder what has happened there. I can’t think that a mouse has eaten the insulation on the old wiring as it’s sheathed in flexible trunking, but one never knows.

Just as I knocked off (I took 10 minutes to plant my courgettes) Cécile rang up. Perfect timing. We had a chat for an hour and I made tea.

And now I’m off tobed – to see if I can finish this dream from last night where I was in an old wreck of an American convertible that pulled to the left quite savagely when I braked.

-2

Sunday 18th May 2014 – WHAT ON EARTH WAS I DOING …

… being awake at 07:35 this morning? And a Sunday too? This kind of thing is unheard-of.

And not only that, I’d had a late night too and I’d been on my travels during the night (don’t ask me where – I fogot as soon as I woke up) as well. So I dunno what was going on.

Anyway, I had the whole morning on the computer with Audacity and it now does what I want it to do. Having seen (and heard) the shambolic mixing that Radio Tartasse does of my live concert rock shows, I’m now going to be doing my own. I had a fiddle around with the next one and I now have 58 minutes of perfect continuous sound stream with no interruptions or pauses or clicks. It’s properly balanced too.

Not only that, I’ve found on the internet a couple of websites that have classic radio shows so I’ve been downloading a few streams of programmes and editing out some suitable soundbites to use on the radio. I always like to have special guests on my programmes and have little conversations with them.

The football wasn’t quite as successful this afternoon. Having given it maximum effort last night, it was a very thin team that went out this afternoon – no substitutes available and in the heat, a couple of players wilted and the team ended with just 9 players.

Charensat had packed their team with a couple of first-teamers (not that anyone can complain – Pionsat would have done the same in similar circumstances) and in the end the score was 2-2. Kevin was in goal and played a blinder, making a couple of excellent saves at vital moments and I really don’t understand why he won’t play in goal more often.

Matthieu was hurt in a tackle and limped from the field in the final minute and from the free kick, his brother Vincent, from 45 yards out emulated his brother by blasting the ball through the wall and through the keeper into the net for the equaliser.

So this evening I did a little tidying up with the green boxes that I bought from IKEA in Brussels. However, I can’t see the difference and I dunno why.

Anyway, back to work tomorrow.

-4

Saturday 17th May 2014 – TOTALLY ASTONISHING!

Yes, Pionsat go to Lapeyrouse, 3rd in the table, to continue their desperate struggle against relegation whereas Lapeyrouse desperately need 3 points to keep their slim promotion hopes alive.

First things first, though. It was nice to see Matthieu finally back where he belongs – between the posts of Pionsat’s goal. Two years, is it, since he broke his leg?

, Lapeyrouse scored three times, but even more astonishingly, Pionsat scored 4 times. Two of them were throroughly excellent goals and Nico’s will be goal of the season I reckon.

Frederic’s opener was another superb opportunist effort out of nothing and the fourth goal (I didn’t see who scored it) was down to Frederic’s perseverence on the goal line chasing after what looked like a hopeless cause.

Had St Priest lost this evening, Pionsat would have been safe but they managed a surprise draw at St Gervais. This means that Pionsat need 1 point next weekend (against Lempdes who have already achieved promotion) to be totally safe, unless St Priest drop points at home to Beauregard.

But Pionsat can look at 2 totally silly, needless goals that they conceded the other week – that has what has made them suffer. Had they won that match instead of lost it, they would have been home and dry a few weeks ago. It’s the story of the last couple of seasons.

So I had another disturbed night in which I was very active on my travels, but it was all wiped away as soon as I woke up so I can’t remember where I was. But I did another rock programme for Radio Anglais this morning to put myself out in front a little.

I went shopping in St Eloy and bought nothing special except some tomato plants seeing as I have just one that seems to have run aground now and stopped growing. But back home with solar water temperature at 30°C, I chucked 5 litres of water out of the dump load (for that was a healthy 62°C) into the tank and had a most delicious shower. Now I’m all clean and smelling of coconut.

I’ve also continued my play around with Audacity and I’m making progress. Trouble is that large files are taking so long to load and are thus so slow to edit. I need to work on something that has a built-in DVD drive rather than an external drive. Maybe that might speed things up.

Finally a word for Bangor City who progress into Europe next season after their victory over hated local rivals Rhyl at Nantporth this afternoon. Let’s all hope that they can find the consistency that they need to make some progress in the Europa Cup. it’ll be nice if they can make it to round Two.B

-4

Friday 16th May 2014 – AT 04:00 AM THIS MORNING …

… I was thinking about doing the washing up. Yes, I’d had my first coffee for several days, hadn’t I?

Even more surprisingly, I was wide awake at 08:30 and even now, at 01:20 the following morning. Ahh well.

So what did I do today?

The answer to that is “not very much” – although that’s not true. I’ve been hard at it all day working on the next round of Radio Anglais programmes and I’ve done a great deal too. Not only that, I’ve finally managed to make Audacity work like I would like it to (but I would still prefer to have “Polderbits”), dealt with a pile of correspondence, handled a notional complaint from a descendant of a historical with whom I’m at odds, and helped someone out over a prehistoric Timothy Hackworth boiler.

And if that isn’t “not much”, then nothing is.

-2

Thursday 15th May 2014 – I KNOW THAT IT ISN’T MUCH TO WRITE HOME ABOUT …

… but my home is my home and I didn’t realise just how comfortable I am here.

I had a little something of a late night last night and what with having switched off the alarms it was 11:10 when I surfaced this morning. And ask me if I care?

But I was out and about on my travels last night. I was living in a room in a large house in Margate with some other people and I was offered the chance to have one of two self-contained units in a converted shop right on the sea front at Cliffsend, with 220 metres of private beach. Even though residential permission was not yet accorded, I slung my hook and slunk off there and installed myself. Getting to my private beach wasn’t easy but it was my private beach all the same.

A friend then telephoned to tell me that the company that made the shingles for the roof hand just gone into liquidation and we would not be likely to be able to obtain any more, but it seemed that the owners had anticipated something like this for there as a huge pile of shingles at the back of one of the rooms so we were assured for every eventuality.

So when I finally did raise myself from the dead I had breakfast and caught up with a huge load of things that had been building up on the laptop, seeing as how I’d been without internet access for a week – this blog being one of them.

Huge reams of photos to upload too – about 400 from over the last 7 days, and many of them needed editing too.

I didn manage to go outside – in fact I nipped into Pionsat for some bread and one or two other little things.

But that’s about all really. I’m never at my best the first day or two back home as you know. I’ll have another lie in tomorrow and see hw I feel after that.

Wednesday 14th May 2014 – ISN’T IT JUST LIKE HOME?

Here I am at one of my regular overnight specs at Clamecy and I woke up this morning to find ourselves (well, myself, for I was alone here apart from Strawberry Moose) swathed in a hanging cloud. It’s just typical of my adventures.

All I need now is a snowstorm and I will be fine.

In the night, though, I was in prison. I’m not sure why but anyway there I was. And it was something of an Open prison too for we were allowed out without surveillance to go to operas and dinners and so on. Bizarre. And then we learnt that Prince Harry had died – quite gruesomely it appeared, blown up in some kind of terrorist attack.

First stop on our travels this morning was the town of Clamecy. That’s always been one of my favourites – a real medieval planned town that was a nightmare to drive around before they put in the by-pass 12 or so years ago.

I had a good hour there for a good explore around and I have to say that it lived up to my expectations in every respect. I wasn’t disappointed at all.

The only downside of my visit was that I’d picked one of the two days when they were digging up some of the streets to replace the electric cables. Almost every photograph has a couple of workmen and a pile of building materials in it.

Such is life.

Varzy is the next town along the road. There’s a by-pass of sorts here, with several sharp turns in it that are quite challenging to a modern lorry, that is shown on a map of the area that I have that was dated from the 1930s.

It was therefore no surprise for me to find another one of these quiet, abandoned Medieval towns off the beaten track.

There’s much more to Varzy too than you would think at first glance and I spent a good hour or so here prowling around.

There wasn’t however anything particular to discover although I did make a little comment to myself that I don’t think that I have seen so many cats in one place than I have here. There was even one on the roof of an abandoned building.

After lunch I carried on along the road and discovered a ruined chateau, a neolithic hill fort with the remains of a medieval castle therein and a few other things like that, and this brought me to the town of Prémery.

That’s another town that has been by-passed a good while ago although the main road through it is certainly not as tight as many other places that have to date been overlooked.

Prémery has always been a town that has aroused my curiosity although, now having visited it, I can’t see why because there is nothing special of any note. It has a medieval chateau but then so do many other towns.

The chateau at Guérigny is a little different however. That was built at the time of the Renaissance by the looks of things and by the time that the Revolution put an end to things like this, it still hadn’t been finished. It became the offices for the iron and steel foundry in the town – a foundry that was contracted to the French Navy to supply all of the ironwork, including anchors and the like, for the ships.

The foundry closed down in 1971 and now the chateau is abandoned and overgrown.

Here, the rain that had been threatening for much of the afternoon finally burst into action and for about 45 minutes moving around was impossible. I managed however to fit in a couple of other things and was finally back home by 20:00 this evening – a day or so ahead of schedule.

And, as Golden Earring once famously said, “it’s good to be Back Home”

-2

Sunday 4th May 2014 – I HOPE THAT YOU ALL HAD …

… a happy Star Wars day. Yes, May the fourth be with you, all of you.

As for me, I had a Happy Star Wars day, and for two reasons too.
Firstly, I had the first produce out of my garden. Only a handful of lettuce leaves, nothing to get too excited about, and especially since they were from bought baby lettuce that was planted and grown on, but garden produce just the same and it tasted beautiful.
Secondly, I had my first soalr shower of the year. And admittedly the water was only 26.4°C so I had to add 5 litres of hot water, but that solar hot water came out of the dump load for surplus electrical energy so it was all mine anyway. And besides, it was the first go in the new shower cabinet and that was exciting too.

Yes, you’re right. Surplus electrical energy. We finally had the day that we were promised for yesterday, with beautiful sunshine and not all that much cloud in the sky. And about time too.

And I missed some of it as well. With it being Sunday I had a long lie-in until 09:40 for which I was very grateful. Then after breakfast I carried on with the web pages. I’ll get them up-to-date if it kills me in the process.

After lunch I swept out the rear of Caliburn and now he’s clean and tidy. He has a bed – the one that I shortened the other day – suspended from the sides, and a matress abd clean bedding and it’s all looking quite comfortable in there.

When I had finished tea I washed up, finished loading Caliburn and then hit the road. 21:30, it was when I set off and by 02:00 I was somewhere between Paris and Lille in a service area having stopped off for 10 minutes to fuel up and pour some coffee out of the flask for me.

And now I’m going to try out the bed.

-1

Saturday 3rd May 2014 – I’VE BEEN A LITTLE PREMATURE …

… about these batteries, so it seems. The problem has been that it’s not been quite dark when I’ve taken the readings and when I’ve been out the next morning to check, the sun has been up for an hour or two, so the voltage reading is being distorted by the amount of energy being received.

However, it’s possible to program the charge controller to show Minimum Volts, and that’s what I’ve done. And that reading isn’t anything like what I was hoping it to be. But the barn is lit by a few of these 1-watt LED lighting strips and they are plenty bright enough even with a lower-than-expected voltage so no harm is being done. The batteries are certainly good enough to power them and I don’t need anthing more than that for the time being.

So apart from that, what else?

I had a late night last night and so it was a struggle to crawl out of bed this morning. But I did, and at a reasonably-respectable time too.

And I worked on the web site too and uploaded a pile of pages – the effort of the last couple of weeks on the North Shore of the St Lawrence River. If you go to this page and follow all of the links, you’ll see the … gulp … 18 pages that I’ve uploaded.

And I’m nowhere near the end quite yet either.

This afternoon I’ve been tidying up a little. That’s right – only a little. As you know, I’m off on my travels on Sunday night as I have a few things to attend to in Brussels. And for that I need to find a few papers and a Bank Card – hence the urgency.

Anyway, much of the stuff has been found and I can now head off tomorrow night in reasonable peace, once I’ve cleaned out Caliburn. The back of the van is in a desoerate state after having had all of that mess inside it.

So apart from that, not much else to tell you about. I haven’t done too much else.

What is a real shame though is that my little attic doesn’t look very much different after my tidying-up session, despite the two bags of rubbish that I took out. All of this is very depressing.

And the glorious, clear skies that the weathermen promised us today. Ptah!! That’s very depressing too!

-1

Friday 2nd May 2014 – I’M CLEARLY …

… in the wrong line of business, that’s for sure.

I went round to Rosemary’s and loaded up her old zinc guttering and downpipes into Caliburn along with the btteries and aluminium and then after having given her a hand with a few little jobs we set off to St Ours les Roches and the metal factor.

We didn’t have enough to be put on the weighbridge so we had to unload it and sort it by hand, which took about 45 minutes, and then weighed it on some smaller scales.

And then off to pick up the money.

And then to pick myself up off the floor and walk out waving a cheque for … errr … €363:23. Yes, I’m clearly in the wrong line of business.

Mind you, we were lucky to get there because round about St Angel I head a rumbling from the front end as if a tyre was about to go. The noise worsened, without the loud bang however, and the steering didn’t seem to be affected, but at the first available opportunity I stopped for a look.

At first I thought that a wheel bearing had given up but in actual fact the wheel had worked loose – nothing more than that. So I tightened it back up.

I also checked the other wheels and about half the wheel-nuts had come loose, so i’ve no idea what was happening there. So they are all retightened now and I’ll check them again in early course.

Back at Rosemary’s we had home-made soup and a chat, and then I nipped off to do my shopping to save me coming out tomorrow. In the Intermarche at Pionsat I met Rob and Julie and then Keith and Clare.

It was all happening today again.

-2

Thursday 1st May 2014 – THIS BLASTED WEATHER …

… is getting on my wick; Non-stop rain again for the I don’t know how manyth consecutive days. 7.5mm today. Well over a week since I last saw the sun and yesterday, I had about as much solar energy as I would get in a wet winter weekend in Weymouth.

On the positive side, though, the two batteries that I put in the barn seem to have sprung into life. We had a little more solar energy today and they have not only charged themselves up but they seem to be holding the charge too. That’s a little relief and means that I’m not so rushed about doing the new floor in downstairs and installing the mega-batteries.

Still, that’s a job that is high on my list for when I come back here.

Apart from that, I had a nice early night last night and when I woke up – to the sunshine – I thought that this would be a good day. I lay in bed for ages reflecting on this and that and then decided to haul myself out of bed as it was late enough.

This was when I found – to my chagrin – that it was just 07:15 – even earlier than if I had set the alarm. That filled me full of gloom, I can tell you.

With it being Bank Holiday I’ve not done a tap of work. i’ve been up here all day working on my website and slowly pulling myself along the North Shore of the Gulf of St Lawrence. I’ve no idea whan I’ll reach the end, but then I’ll have plenty more stuff to be dealing with.

Not only that, I’m making plans for my annual trip to Canada. Looks like I’ll be going as usual round about the end of August and I’ll try to fit in another trip around the Trans-Labrador Highway if I can. Lots of stuff that I missed out on my first trip that I need to fill in.

Wednesday 30 April 2014 – POOR CALIBURN!

He’s a bit down on his springs at tha moment.

And that’s hardly surprising either because inside there are 29 industrial batteries and about 2 cubic metres of aluminium – that being the bodywork off the 2 caravans that I scrapped here a few years ago.

I rang up the metal factors at St Ours this morning and they are interested in it all and so that’s where it’s all going on Friday afternoon.

Once I’d finished the website work I went off and started to round up the batteries. And then I had to check them over. There were three or four that still had something left in them and so I’ve done some battery-swapping in the barn. That’s left me with a decent battery that I’ve fitted in Caliburn to work off the solar panel on the roof rack, and that will come in handy.

All the rest have gone into the back.

Once I’d done that I started to look for the aluminium. And that wasn’t easy either as that was all over the place too with all kinds of weeds and trees growing through it. But I’ve gathered up as much as I could find (which was certainly more than I thought that I had) and that’s all loaded up too.

The local farmer with the wind turbines came round too. He’s decided to cut his losses and sell them if he can. I said I’d make certain enquiries.

All of that while it was pouring down with rain. 16mm we had today, most of it down the back of my neck.

And now I’m cold and wet, just like the weather. I’m going to have an early night now and it’s Bank Holiday tomorrow so no alarm clocks for me!

-1

Tuesday 29th April 2014 – I WAS UP …

… before all of the alarms had finished going off today. That’s keenness for you and it shows just what an early night can do for you.

It was a gorgeous day too at that time of morning. But it didn’t last. As I was working on the website again it started to rain and that’s what it’s been doing on and off all day.

after the website I went out to plant the raspberries and strawberries that Liz gave me yesterday. That meant hoeing the bed right through from one end to the next and then adding a pile of sand to lighten the soil.

Once I’d raked and hoed all of that well in, I could plant everything, and now they are in. And to take me up to lunch time, I hoed the onion and shallot beds.

I was in no rush after lunch as we were having a rainstorm. But once it died down a little I popped out and put the secon coat of wood treatment on the raised bed that I made the other day.

I’ve also been working on Caliburn. The back is all cleaned out nicely now and I’ve rebuilt a bed for the back. I’ve been using the old hammock-type of attachment that was a fifth bed in an old caravan that I broke for spares ages ago. But that gave up the ghost a while ago.

But then I had a brainwave. When I was living in a caravan I cut down a bed to fit in an odd corner and I’d forgotten all about it since I scrapped that caravan too. I resurrected it, cut it to fit the rear of Caliburn, fastened it all together with some angle brackets and aluminium strips riveted in position, and then made a cradle out of the old hammock supports.

It works a treat too, and I’ll be very comfortable on that bed, for I’m going away next week for 10 days or so, I reckon.

-2

EPIC HALL

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