Category Archives: Les Guis

Thursday 13th March 2014 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER DAY …

… where I’ve not been in too much of a hurry to leave my bed.

I put that down to still being awake at 03:45 this morning, and so getting up at … errr … 10:20 is not too unreasonable.

I’ve hardly done any work either – well – not that kind of work anyway. The house remains practically untouched. But noticing when I went downstairs that the batteries were aleady fully-charged, and at 12:30 there was 50.5 amps going into the dump load and the wires were pretty warm, that called for action. I plugged an extension cable into the overcharge circuit and wired the 12-volt fridge in. That calmed everything down a little. The water still got hot (68°C) but the wires stayed cool-ish and the fridge worked.

I’ll leave it like that until I fix up the new batteries that will replace the existing creaky ones and then I’ll wire in the fridge into the permanent circuit for the summer.

I threw out some food and veg peelings that I had forgotten to deal with before I left here (some of them could have walked to the compost bin on their own) and then unloaded part of Caliburn. For lunch I went to fetch the bread – to find that the boulanger had forgotten to come on Tuesday, and that was really the only reason why I had rushed home.

I had to go down the road to the Intermarché at Pionsat to buy a baguette.

GRRRR!

This afternoon I updated the Trois Rivieres pages of my Canada website

. I took a pile more photos of the town when I was there last year and so they needed to be added on and the commentary written. I’ve also reviewed a few subsequent pages of my drive down the Chemin du Roy

and that has spawned a couple of new pages too.

So I’ve not been idle.

But I do realise now why I try not to work on the computer between 19:00 and 21:00. I get so carried away with what I’m doing that I forget to make tea and I end up going hungry.

And it’s 5 years since my dear friend Liz departed. I can’t believe that it’s been so long. I hope that she is sleeping peacefully. My abiding memory is just before she went for her operation, she was making out a list of names.
“Are these the people that I need to contact to let them know your news?” I asked.
“Ohh no” she replied. “If it all goes wrong, this is a list of the people I’m going to come back to haunt”.

-4

Wednesday 12th March 2014 – NO PHOTOS TODAY, PEOPLE.

Yes, you can tell that I’m back home. And nothing exciting ever seems to happen around here and I never seem to do anything worth recording, especially as, having disconnected all of the alarms today, it was … errr … 12:20 when I crawled out of bed.And if it weren’t for the fact that I needed to visit the beichstuhl I would probably still be in bed right now.

It usually takes me a day or so to recover from a journey such as yesterday’s (I’m not as young as I used to be) and so a day of rest isn’t such a surprise really. And there was such a lot going on through the night (and the morning) that most of it slipped through my fingers. But I do recall running some kind of detective agency such as that of Hercule Poirot, and I had three girls working for me. The youngest was telling all of us about a superb proposition that had come her way and how it was going to make her a fortune, but it was the kind of proposition that had “SCAM” written right across it in illuminated capital letters and I really thought that, having worked for me for three years, she would know better than to fall for something like this.

I didn’t quite do nothing though. With over 160 amp-hours of surplus electricity by 15:00, water temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater off the gauge and temperature of 34°C in the verandah, I treated myself to the second electrically-heated shower of the year.

And not only that, there was enough hot water left for a shave too and for the washing up as well. And there was enough of that seeing as how I made a mega-lentil-and-green-pepper curry. On the gas stove too. The temperature up here in the attic topped 20°C today – a waste of time lighting the woodstove – I’d be burnt out of the room before the stove was hot enough to cook on

And do you remember the charge controller that packed up last year and mysteriously started up the other week? Well, it’s just as mysteriously stopped again..

-3

Tuesday 11th March 2014 – I’M BACK HOME NOW.

Pulled in at 21:10 tonight after a long drive back from the Pyrenees.

I can’t leave Rennes les Bains though without showing you my digs for thr last few days. That’s it over there in the background, the building there with the red shutters. And my very comfortable room was the one wiht the open window.

I told the owner that I might be back later on and he gave me a card. “Give us a ring to let us know”.
Absolutely – and then they will have time to arrange a quick holiday, or to close for redecoration or the like.

But this photo will give you an idea of what Rennes les Bains is really like.
“The smoking of anything other than tobacco is strictly prohibited on the terrace”.

Rennes-les-Bains is one of these places that, for no reason at all (because house prices are not cheap like the Combrailles) seems to have attracted a huge “New-Age” community. It would do my head in after a while if I had to live here.

I followed the Lady Who Lives In The Sat-Nav as far as Castres and then followed the signs to Albi. And then I turned off the recommended route as I wanted to make a deviation.
Ever since 2004 when it opened, I’ve been trying to get to the Millau Viaduct and I’ve never actually managed it. Something has always cropped up.

But today in Albi I picked up the signs and even though this meant a late return home, well, here I am. Driving across the aforementioned.

And doesn’t Strawberry Moose take a good photo?

Anyone who knows the southern slopes of the Massif Centrale will know of Millau. There’s a major Route Nationale that runs from Bordeaux and the Biscay coast over the Lyon and Switzerland along the valley of the River Tarn, and there’s a major Route Nationale that runs north-south over the mountains between Paris and the Western Mediterranean coast of south-west France and Nothern Spain.

These two roads collide at a little roundabout in Millau and it is no joke to say that people have sat here without moving a wheel for five hours as the traffic snarls itself up well and truly.

The first time I came here I didn’t know about this. I gave up and went for a coffee. Ever since then, I’ve come at night.

All that changed in 2004.

Plans had been proposed on several occasions for a way of dealing with the traffic but ultimately they bit the bullet and set to work to build what at the time was the tallest road bridge in the world. Opened in December 2004, it turned Millau into something of a tranquil backwater, much to the relief of the residents.

It’s a magnificent structure, a maximum height of 343 metres above ground at its highest point, and one of the pillars, at a height of 245 metres, is the tallest pillar in the world.

And, incredible as it might seem, once it opened there was an outcry from certain local businesses that their takings had dropped since the building of the viaduct.

There’s no pleasing some people.

Travelling north on the A75, I stopped off to visit another iconic viaduct along the way. This time, it’s a railway viaduct, the magnificent Viaduc de Garabit, situated in Ruynes-en-Margeride in the Cantal.

And there’s not another viaduct in the world like this. It is magnificent.

Everywhere you go in this country, you only have to look at ametal structure and someone will tell you that Gustave Eiffel (he of the Tower fame) built it.

In this case they would be right for once – at least, in the general scheme of things. Inspired by the engineer Leon Boyer, it was Eiffel’s company that built it and it took four years, from 1880 to 1884 although, rather perversely, the viaduct was finished before the railway line.

It is still open for traffic too, which is quite astonishing seeing how much of France’s railway heritage has closed down, and even this was closed for a short spell a couple of years ago.

I had quite a chat with an old woman who told me that her grandfather had helped build it as a boy. She reckoned that in 5 years time the trains will have gone from here “just 3 or 4 passengers on each train – 50 years ago we had 3 or 4 hundred”. Now, there are just two passenger trains and one goods train each day in each direction.

It will be a shame if it does close down though. While you digest the view from the aforementioned lady’s back garden (with grateful thanks), I can tell you that it’s 122 metres above the base of the river and is almost 565 metres long.

And in case you are wondering (which I’m sure that you are), there are 678,768 rivets in the construction.

Since 1965 it’s a Monument Historique.

That’s not all though. The valley underneath, that of the River Truyère, was dammed by the Barrage de Grandval in 1959, for hydro-electric purposes.

But someone has pulled out the plug as you can see, much to the dismay of the boat owners and the guy who owns the water sports concession.

Not for me though. We can see the original road beidge that was drowned as the valley was flooded. I bet it’s not every day that this has seen the light.

-2

Tuesday 25th February 2014 – I’M NOT HERE

Well, not ALL here anyway. But you knew that already, didn’t you?

I’m not there either – although I was earlier this evening. This is the Viaduc de la Roche-Taillende, colloquially known as the Viaduc des Rochers Noirs, and it’s near the town of Lapleau in the Corrèze.

You may not think it looking at that tight curve to enter the viaduct, but I’m actually standing on the bed of a disaffected railway line. It’s another one of these metre-gauge tacots, or “rattletraps”, a narrow-gauge railway line similar to the one that we’ve seen at Marcillat-en-Combraille in the Allier, but this one ran between Ussel and Tulle in the Corrèze.

There was a speed limit of 15kph on the line which is hardly surprising given the tightness of the curve, and also the fact that we have a suspension bridge which is quite a rare type of construction for a railway bridge.

Just like chez Liz and Terry, the railway disappears off into a tunnel on the other side of the river, but that is all fenced off.

Until 2006 you could actually drive through there in a car but unfortunately the Conseil Départementale has put a stop to all of that.

I merely contented myself with taking a few pictures – there wasn’t anything more that I could do unfortunately.

I did however go for a little bit of a climb and I was glad that I did, because the view from up on a rocky outcrop towering a couple of hundred feet above the viaduct was stunning, to say the least, even if it did wear me out climbing up to here.

This photo does show you the lengths that they had to go in order to build the viaduct and it’s hard to think that this line didn’t open until 1913, by which time it had effectively already outlived its effectiveness with the coming of the motor-bus but nevertheless it struggled on until as recently as 1960, which is quite an achievement for a metre-gauge tacot.

While I was up here I took a few photos of the stunning scenery.

The viaduct spans the Gorge de la Luzège at a height of 92 metres, or 126 metres if you count the pylons, so I’m quite high up and the view of the gorge is amazing.

It’s a shame that the weather was so dreadful though – it’s been raining non-stop and I’ve forgotten to bring a raincoat with me.

Serves me right.

Coming here brought me (via the Pionsat Post Office to post Cécile’s letters) over the Plateau de Millevaches on the border between the Creuze and Corrèze.

Apart from the snow that I encountered, the plateau is famous in that it was effectively a “Free French” area during World War II. There is a great deal of resistance souvenirs in the area, including this plaque to commemorate the parachuting-in of members of the 3rd Regiment SAS who organised the French Resistance in the turbulent times after D-Day.

There are poignant souvenirs too – memorials to victims of the occasional sweeps by the Gestapo and also the town of Tulle itself just a short drive away, where the Das Reich Panzer Division of the SS strung up almost 100 locals from lamp-posts in the centre of the town as a form of reprisal for terrorist attacks.

And that’s not all either.

I saw a sign that said Ruines les Cars and with Cars being French for the kind of coaches that I drove when I worked for Shearings, I went for a look to see what it was all about, but instead I found myself in the middle of a Roman villa and huge Temple from the 2nd Century AD.

Of course, you are not allowed to say “Roman Remains” here in France. Everything has to be “Gallo-Roman” because the French don’t accept (rightly or wrongly, I dunno) that the French civilisation of the turn of the Common Era was any less inferior than the Roman civilisation, and I’ve seen some healthy fights at some of these archaeological meetings that I sometimes go to.

Talking of ruins of cars, another thing that caught my eye was this. The remains of an old car abandoned in a forest.

No maker’s plate or anything like that on it, so no idea what it might be, but it has a wooden chassis sheathed in steel, and it’s clearly the type of car that had real wings and a lift-off body. With its steel wheels, all of that dates it to the early 1930s I reckon.

If you have any ideas what it might be, let me know. But there isn’t much to go on, I know.

From here I headed off down the hill and towards civilisation. I ended up in the town of Tulle where I planned to find a hotel but was singularly unsuccessful.

And to my own surprise, I didn’t take a single photo of the place and I ought to have done, because Tulle is one of the saddest places in French modern history.

Following the Normandy Landings, the local Resistance troops had risen up and seized control of the town from the Germans. Just as they were preparing to deal with the final German holdouts, the 2nd Waffen-SS Panzer Division Das Reich appeared on the scene on its way north.

The result was that 99 civilians, many of whom had no connection with the armed uprising, were strung up from lamp-posts in the main street and a considerable number of others were brutally tortured

So with no hotel that I could find in Tulle, I’ve moved on to Brive la Gaillard where I’ll be spending the night.. I’ve no idea where I’ll be tomorrow.

-2

Monday 24th February 2014 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!

Yes, here I am – another year older and deeper in debt. And having reached a ripe old age, getting riper as I get older, I suppose that I ought to think about growing up.

So having had another late night last night, I woke up and hung around in bed for ages until I reckoned that “if I don’t get up now then I never will”, only to find that it was 08:45. So much for my body clock!

But last night I was in Crewe with my taxi business and I was round at the house of one of my regular passengers up on Bradfield Road, a woman who always had a cab to go to one of the pubs down West Street. She had a friend around, a woman who was a widow whose husband had died 9 years ago in a pub in West Street, having been sloshed about the head with a house brick. This woman had fallen victim to a scam whereby some mad had come from either Alfreton or Ilkeston to seel joints of mmeat “like this one here” – taking the money on the promise of delivery the next day but of course no-one would ever see again. Another adventure had befallen this woman at the hands of this meat salesman, but this is neither the time nor the place to discuss it.

So after breakfast, it was to work, even though it is my birthday and thus usually a day off.

I have many requests from my friends, some of which are phyxically impossible of course, but others which require an element of work. This one today was “for God’s sake, have a shower”. But if anyone thinks that I was going to stand outside in this wind in nothing but my birthday suit they are mistaken but it was 23°C in the verandah and that called for positive thought.

I threw out the old woodstove that Claude gave me – and it went out in several pieces and a pile of dust in fact. Then a load of other bits and pieces followed, many of which went straight in the bin. And by the time that I had finished sweeping up and tidying up, there was a space about 2mx1m at the far end of the verandah that was clear. I ran up a rope and then hung a shower curtain to it.

After lunch I found the wooden rails that I stand on when I have a shower outside and put them in the verandah, mixed up a bucket of warm water from the home-made 12-volt immersion heater (which was on 66°C) and cold water out of the water butt, and … I had a shower.

Nice and warm it was too, especially as it was in the verandah and it would have been perfect had I had a low-debit 12-volt pump in working order. I ended up using a jug to pour the water over me, but nevertheless a shower it was, the first of the year at home, and I feel so much better for it too.

Cécile sent me a present of sweeties (thanks very much) and an envelope to send her any post that she has received, so I went round to her house to see if there was anything (and I made use of the washing machine too – so clean bedding tonight as well!)

I’d been invited round to Liz and Terry’s for tea (thank you very much) but stopped off at the site ornithologique as there was a magnificent view of the Puy de Sancy and the Mont Dore covered in snow and with clouds reflecting the profile of the skyline.

Liz had cooked a curry with trimmings, followed by chocolate and avocado mousse which was delicious.

And then back home via picking up the washing, which is now hanging up outside as we are having another day of no rain so far (i’m the eternal optimist of course). But Sunday was the first day without rain since, would you believe, 9th January – 6 weeks ago!

Qo now I’m off to bed after my exertions of today. I wonder where I’ll end up tonight!

-6

Sunday 23rd February 2014 – PHEW!

No wonder I’m so flaming tired all the time, if last night is anything to go by.

There I was in South-West London, renting a room in a house and to reach the area of London where the house was, there was a zig-zag climb up to a plateau rather like the way in to Marcillat from the Montlucon road only, of course, all built-up and urbanised.

I was talking to a girl who was something to do with a business, down at the business premises at the foot of the climb, talking about the house in which I was living, and she was expressing her astonishment that here in the inner suburbs of London there was a house that had three wind turbines powering all of the electricity (I do actually have three wind turbines here).

The conversation was interrupted as I needed to go to Brussels in Belgium. There, I met Anne-Marie in a café half-way up the Boulevard Léopold II near to the Simonis transport hub. She was wanting to see more of the parts of Brussels that she didn’t know, and the area of Molenbeek and Koekelberg (served by the Simonis hub) is an area that I know quite well.

But Anne-Marie. She joined the EU at about the same time that I did and was part of this little group of us that went around together. I had quite a soft spot for her and we went on a couple of skiing trips together. She would have been a good partner for me, I always reckoned, as she had a knack of bringing my feet back firmly to the floor whenever I went off on one of my regular flights of fancy. But as is usual, though, I would have been far too much hard work for someone “normal” and so nothing ever happened. Another “one that got away”, the lucky girl.

But let’s return to the issue at hand. Despite all of the contemporary stuff that was going on in the Boulevard Leopold II, it was in fact early 1914 and the eve of World War I. Some German notable, von Something zu Somewhat, was there trying to negotiate something with some Belgian politicians and my task, if I chose to accept it, was to find out who he was and what he was doing and who he was negotiating with and why. On the eve of World War I, everyone in Europe was nervous.

So once I had ascertained his name, I contacted MI6 to see if he was “known” to the British authorities. I didn’t receive a reply but it turned out that the principal reason why he was there was that he (only a young guy) had made a young girl pregnant because he needed a child in order to inherit something. But this girl was not ready to have herself “announced” to all the world. Therefore there was some machination about producing the baby, with a spurious mother, and producing the real mother at a later date.

I suggested that he should have produced a spurious baby as well and saved all of this pantomime, but this didn’t go down too well at all.

After all of that running around Northern Europe for 100 years when I should have been sleeping, I didn’t feel too bad about staying in bed until 10:10 this morning. And after breakfast I just mooched around for a while.

There should have been some footy this afternoon – I had a choice of the 1st XI at Lempdes – about a 90-minute drive away – or the 2nd XI at home against the Goatslayers, both kick-offs at 13:00. Of course, I chose the Goatslayers at home, and so of course the match was postponed, as I found out when I arrived at the ground.

But with the glorious summer weather today (180.1 amp-hours of surplus solar energy, 66°C in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load), firstly I aired all of the bedding that I use in Caliburn – it’s been in its suitcase in the barn since early November, and secondly, I had a look at Caliburn’s auxilliary electrical circuits.

The solar panel on Caliburn’s roof rack hasn’t been charging up the second battery for a while and neither has the split-charging relay that works off the main battery. It turns out that the cheap charge controller that I bought years ago in the UK has burnt itself out. Luckily, in one of these solar briefcase kits that I bought years ago and which broke when it fell off the LDV’s roof, there was a charge controller that was now sitting around doing nothing. Consequently, that’s now wired in the circuit and seems to be working.

As for the split charger, after much furkling arouns and bad temper and cursing, I found that there was a poor earth connection. Once that was all cleaned up and greased and sanded, that now works as it should.

But with having almost dismantled the auxilliary electric circuit, I decided to tidy it all up. It really was such a mess. Now it’s all shipshape and Bristol-fashion, bolted to the bulkhead as it should be, and out of the way of where I’m likely to trip over it. But I’m still not all that happy – I can do much better than this and I will do too.

But me? Working on a Sunday? Things are getting to me, aren’t they?

And this evening, no pizza. Not that I can’t make one, but that the temperature up here is 18.4°C, and that’s with no heating on either. If I light the fire I’d be melted out long before the pizza would be cooked.

This winter is thoroughly crazy.

-6

Saturday 22nd February 2014 – THERE’S NO FOOTY TONIGHT …

… either and so you can imagine just how p155ed off I am today. The season is miles behind already and it doesn’t look as if we’ll ever catch up. We’ll still be playing this season’s matches at rhe start of next season.

With having my little hour or two yesterday at the end of the afternoon, it was again gone 03:00 before I went to sleep. Therefore a 07:30 start this morning was … errr … facultatif, as the French say. But once I did rejoin the land of the living and had eaten my breakfast, I sat down and did the next Rock programmes and the Additional Notes for the next set of information programmes. If I can make good progress then so much the better.

With having been to the Intermarché at Pionsat yesterday there was no need for me to go to the shops today and so I stayed in. I’ve been running an Anti-virus scan on the computer seeing as how it seems that for some reason the program was switched off for a while. And so far, after 13 hours and 7 minutes, it’s done about 55%. That’s depressing, right enough.

I actually went out of the house three times today. Twice to fill the kettle for coffee and once to take the stats. Apart from that, I haven’t moved from in front of here. And I don’t intend to either.

I will however have to take the stats downstairs, which I shall do in about 10 minutes. And then I’m off to bed. An early night for a change – or, at least, what passes for an early night for me.

-3

Friday 21st February 2014 – I WAS WATCHING …

… Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince last night. And so consequently all through the night I was running around at Hogwarts.

Yes, three bad nights of sleep in succession – no surprise that I crashed out for a couple of hours when I returned home late this afternoon.

But as for Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, that’s a perplexing film. It’s full of holes, more like a succession of scenes with no interlacing connection rather than being a continuous film.

Scenes start off at random in the middle of action, so you don’t know how the actors arrived at the situations and emotions that they are expressing.

I realise that you can’t cram 700 pages of novel into just 151 minutes of film, otherwise you’ll end up with something like One Eyed Jacks, where the original director’s cut ran to well over 5 hours, but nevertheless there was tons of stuff that was irrelevant that could have been left out, just as there was tons of stuff that was relevant that should have been included.

But two things came to mind during this film –

If Professor Dumbledore were to put on the market the magic wand that he used to tidy up Professor Slughorn’s house, he would … errrr … clean up. I would give all that I had, and more, to own something like that where a simple flick of the wrist would finish the repairs here and have the place all spick and span.
Ginny Weasley is ordinary, banal, boring even. Whyever didn’t Rowling develop a romance between Harry Potter and Luna? She has much more character and personality than poor Ginny and would have been an ideal foil for Harry to bounce his ideas around. She’s definitely my favourite character in the films and, ironically, when there was one of these apps on a social networking site to “answer 30 questions to find out which Rowling character you are”, I came up with Luna. No – I’m convinced – Rowling got it all wrong. The ideal partner for Harry Potter should have been Luna.

So once I had woken up and crawled rather unwillingly out of my stinking pit, I crawled even more unwillingly off to Marcillat-en-Combraille to record the rock programme for Radio Tartasse, and when Liz arrived we recorded the English-language information programmes.

From there, we went on to Liz and Terry’s fir an early lunch (and that car was still in the ditch after all this time) and then on to Gerzat and Radio Arverne for the other lot of programmes.

By this time I was about flaked out and so I didn’t even stop at Liz and Terry’s for a coffee on the way back. I managed a stop at the Intermarché to do my weekens shopping (save me going anywhere tomorrow) and that was about that.

But I need to find a proper sleep rhythm from somewhere.

-10

Thursday 20th February 2014 – I THOUGHT FOR A MINUTE THIS MORNING …

… that we were going to have a nice day. And so while I was in the verandah making coffee I hung the washing outside to dry in the wind (it’s still not dry since Monday evening).

However … you’ve guessed it. That was the Kiss Of Death and within 15 minutes it was teeming down with rain again, just like always.

So where did I get up to today?

All of the plasterboard is on the outer wall, and I’ve also fitted it at the head of the stairs. That meant cutting and fitting a set of counter-battens of course, as well as putting a second layer of that space-blanket insulation on the outer wall. This house will be the best-insulated in the whole of the world – and quite right too. No money ever spent on insulation is wasted, as I have said before. And that’s even more relevant as fuel bills rocket up to the roof.

Once that was out of the way, I trimmed off the floor in the attic so that it’s now flush with the beam that I fitted in 2009 (and I can’t think why I didn’t do that years ago) and I’ve faced off the beam with some of the pine shelving that I’ve been using to make the risers for the staircase. And in fact it looks quite neat.

I wish that I could say the same about the plasterboarding though. It’s a total mess and there are at least two pieces that need to be taken off to find out what on earth is going on underneath them. Both of them 10mm; both of them screwed to the same counter-batten – so why is the top one about 5mm proud of the bottom one?

Apart from seeing loads of places where I really should have done so much better with these stairs, I won’t ever build another staircase on outiggers and cantilevers like this one. Itwas by far and away the quickest way to build it when I was in a desperate hurry to move into this room back in late autumn 2009, but fitting the insulation, the counter-battens and the plasterboard has been an absolute nightmare. If I had realised that it was going to be as difficult as this, I would have ripped out the staircase last week, plasterboarded the walls in one go (probably have taken me an hour) and done the stairs another way.

But still, you live and learn.

-4

Wednesday 19th February 2014 – I THOUGHT THAT I WOULD SHOW YOU …

… a photo of the staircase as far as I have got today, because for the next couple of weeks this is as far as I am going.

There are 8 stairs in position as you can see – that is, 8 treads and 7 risers, and all are properly battened. For the first time in this house, it’s felt as if the stairs really are secure and solid.

I had to move the light that illuminates the stairs down to the ground floor, and then I had to carry out another major task. If you look to the right you’ll see where the plasterboard stops a huge beam bolted to the side wall of the house. I fitted that in 2009 and you’ll notice that the bolt heads are proud of the beam. They need to be set in flush and the easiest way is to use a hole cutter over the heads, make a recess, and then tighten up the bolts further. But do I have a heck as like hole cutter that fits over the bolt head that doesn’t have a spindle-centring drill? So after much ado about nothing, I had to unbolt the nuts, drill pilot holes all round, chisel out a recess, refit the nuts and then grind off the surplus lengths with the angle grinder.

No wonder it took me ages.

But anyway, Now I have one of the plasterboard pieces on the wall to the right, and I can do the rest tomorrow and see how far I can reach.

Terry rang me up and wanted me to contact Lieneke. Much to my surprise, she’s here right now and so we had quite a chat to catch up on what we missed. And then later on I made one of my legendary lentil-and-green-pepper curries and that will see me through to the weekend. No point in working if I don’t have to.

-4

Tuesday 18th February 2014 – I HAD AN AFTERNOON OUT …

… this afternoon. This involved moving a pile of stuff with Caliburn and so first job this morning was to empty Caliburn and then to put away everything that I had been storing in him. And that took a while, I can tell you.

I then swept him out too, and repaired one or two electrical bits and pieces that needed fixing. So at least he’s now clean and tidy in the back.

Next on the list was hanging out the washing, and then to clear out a space at the side of the existing compost bin and put there the one that I bought last year in this Government composting scheme. ONce I had done that, I could empty the beichstuhl, such pleasant jobs that I have around here.

So I picked up Marianne and then we went round to Bill’s to load up Caliburn and then went off to Montlucon and the salerooms. On the way we called at LIDL as they were having another LED light sale. This time it was the 1-watt lights that I use, and at €2:99 each now. They had 6 in stock, and now they have none at all.

We went to Brico Depot too where I bought some more wood and some heavy duty varnish for the stairs. You can tell that this is now becoming really serious.

Anyway, we ended up in the cafe at Leclerc having a coffee and a chat and then it was back home via the fresh veg shop. And I had to take in the washing as by now it had started to rain.

Yes, it’s all happening here now.

-5

Monday 17th February 2014 – I SEEM TO BE COLLECTING …

… photographs of cars in ditches these days. On my way to Liz and Terry’s this evening, there was another one on its side in a ditch just outside St Gervais d’Auvergne. And judging by the state of it, it had slid along the ground on the other side for quite some distance too. No idea what had happened there.

But yes, we’re in the studios on Friday recording the bext instalments of Radio Anglais and so we were rehearsing this evening. A little later than usual as I had to show someone around Cécile’s house at 17:30. And if any proof were needed of how small the world is these days, then this will surely count for something. As soon as the guy stepped out of the car, I said “But I know you, don’t I?” And indeed I did as well – he’s a footballer from Miremont, a club that plays in Division 3 of the Puy-de-Dome league and a regular opponent of Pionsat’s 2nd XI up to last season.

I picked up Cécile’s post too (she had 2 letters) and while I was there I took advantage of her washing machine.

But as for today – totally astonishing. Up until about 15:00 there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and I had an excess of 184 amp-hours, pretty much a record for all time, never mind just February. It took the water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater to 61°C which, from a standing start, is pretty impressive too. In fact, if I had had the shower cabinet which I keep on meaning to build, I would have gone for a shower this afternoon.

As for the work on the house, there is nothing more soul-destroying to be working on a plank of a stair tread for an hour, cutting it in 11 different ways so that it fits to perfection exactly where it’s supposed to go, and then finding that you’ve cut it upside-down. Doing that once, the other day, was bad enough. But doing it a second time, like this morning, well, that’s just inexcusable.

But now I have 6 treads and 5 risers installed, and just one more of each will be enough for now as that brings me round to the bottom corner. From here downwards involves heavy engineering such as replacing the floor, but what I need to do, the whole purpose of this, is to put the plasterboard onto the wall of the sairwell, and I can do that when I’ve done my final step.

-8

Sunday 16th February 2014 – SUNDAY AGAIN …

… and so in accordance with principles laid down for a long time, I had a nice lie-in (until 09:45) and since then I haven’t done a tap of work.

That is, I finished the radio programmes that I started yesterday, and then carried on rearranging my file storage system, and you’ll be amazed at how much room I’ve freed off on the external drives and there’s still plenty to go at yet.

Apart from that, I left the house just three times – twice to fetch water and once to fetch some wood. And that was that.

It wasn’t like that during the night though.

I was on the western seaboard of the USA and I got to hear about a safe that was being installed in a house so that the owner could put all of his valuables in there. I waited just until the safe was inaugurated and then went round there armed with a 3-metre length of 27mmx27mm lath (I’ve a few of those here as it happens). I attacked the safe installer with the piece of wood and I shot the householder, then made my escape with the loot.

Outside the house was a car with three people – 2 women and one man – who were waiting for me. I hopped into the car and said “where to?”, to which one of the women replied “Green Bay, Wisconsin” (home of the Packers as it happens).

Howeverwe were being picked off one by one by the Police and eventually there was just me, on foot, at the border between the USA and Mexico. I crossed into Mexico, and as I walked through the little fenced alley in no-man’s land (or “no-person’s land” as the legendary Turdi de Hatred once called it) I was admiring a llama grazing in a field. At the Mexican border I was admitted but the young Border Immigration officer wouldn’t stamp my passport. He said that just for a day visit it wasn’t necesary. However I insisted, saying that it would be a useful indication of my presence as well as being a nice souvenir of my visit and eventually he agreed to stamp it.

But why does all of the excitement happen through the night?

-3

Saturday 15th February 2014 – I SHOULD HAVE BEEN …

… at Marcillat tonight for the football. However, the ground is situated right on the crest of a scarp slope about 6 miles from here and the floodlights are clearly visible from the end of the lane, and when I reached the end of the lane, I could see nothing.

I drove as far as Virlet from where the ground is even more visible just across the valley, but there was no change – still total darkness – and so I turned round and came home.

Mind you, it doesn’t surprise me. We had torrential rain again today and it’s probably about 6 weeks since we last had a day of no rain at all. I’m up to my knees in mud around here and so I imagine that it’s just like this at the football ground at Marcillat.

Even more intriguing – when I went out to take the stats just before going to bed last night the temperature was an astonishing 13.5°C. Mid-February too! It was more like mid-April outside last night. This “winter” that we are having is totally crazy.

Today, I wasn’t in a hurry to leave my stinking pit, and after breakfast I made a start on what was left of the rdio programme that needs writing. However, I lost interest halfway through and ended up carrying on the sorting out of all the files on the various external hard drives hee, punctuated by a bried visit to the Intermarché at Pionsat for supplies for the weekend – I’m going to Montlucon on Tuesday so I’ll do a major shop there for the rest of the week.

But it was exciting through the night, I’ll tell you. It was my turn to be in a wheelchair and I was racing through the streets of Halifax (Yorkshire, not Nova Scotia) in the snow at speeds of up to 45mph through the traffic, allowing for the momentum of the downward slopes to carry me back up the steep hills. Excitement wasn’t in it! If I could maeket a game like that, you can forget your amusement parks!

-4

Friday 14th February 2014 – NOT ONLY DID I …

… finish the stair tread that I started last night, I’ve fitted a couple of risers and fitted the battens for a third one.

First job, though, was to re-route a couple more electrical cables and the telephone cable that were in the way, and that wasn’t a job of five minutes either. They were one of the first cables that I fitted and so, as you would expect, in the following 4 years all kinds of cables have been threaded in over the top of them.

But with the new treads, and the risers in at the top two stairs now, they are about 100 times stiffer than they were before when I just had scrap off-cuts of wood as treads, and no risers at all. It’s all looking quite good and I can’t wait to restart work on Monday, and I bet it’s been a good few years since I said anything like that.

But I shan’t be doing too much on Monday as someone is coming to view Cécile’s house in the late afternoon. And on Tuesday I’m taking a pile of stuff to Montlucon for the sale room there (nothing of mine, of course. I don’t have anything worth selling) so it’s going to be something of a short week.

-3

EPIC HALL

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