Category Archives: Les Guis

Monday 11th November 2013 – IT’S REMEMBRANCE DAY TODAY …

… which is a Bank Holiday here in France, and so I remembered to switch off the alarm and have another lie-in. It’s been a while since I’ve had a proper Bank Holiday day off.

It dropped below freezing point last night outside too, the first time at this end of the year, and I’m not surprised because it was a glorious day today – not a cloud in the sky. There was 134 amp-hours of surplus solar energy too and so the home-made electric 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load was in action again.

I had a nice leisurely morning tidying up a load of files on the computer and then carried out what is probably the most disagreeable task that happens round here, and that is to empty the composting toilet. Down at the composting bin, the first time for probably 6 months or something, I was well-impressed. What had been a horrible soggy mass of I don’t quite know what (well I do, but this is a family website) I was greeted by a nice dark brown earthy, crumbly soil mixture. So that is clearly working.

I’m also having charging issues in the barn, and have been for quite some time. The Charge Controller seems to have given up the ghost and no charge has been passing through it for quite some time, and consequently the batteries there are somewhat empty. But it was a shame to miss out on all of this lovely solar energy that we were having and so I made up a cable with a crocodile clip at each end and for a couple of hours I by-passed the charge controller by using this cable, and that put a little life into the batteries and we actually had some light in the barn this evening.

I’ll have to remember to do that more often, in order to give the batteries a chance to build themselves back up again. But that’s the second Charge Controller that’s failed in there. Something isn’t quite right, I reckon. I’ll need to check and see what it is.

-6

Sunday 10th November 2013 – THERE’S ONE THING …

… about owning a bright yellow van, and that is that everyone knows who you are. So at about 12:15 when I was on my way to Villosanges, a red saloon car suddenly sat on my tail and started desperately flashing his lights.

It turned out to be Fabien from the football club. It seeemed that the heavy rain over the last few days has caused the river at Villosanges to burst its banks and seeing as how the footy ground is right at the side of the river, the ground is now under three feet of water. So that was that.

Mind you, listening to the weather this morning, I didn’t feel much like going out. In fact I didn’t feel much like getting out of bed either, but then again it’s Sunday and Day of Rest so there’s no problem with that.

I had a late breakfast and did some desultory cleaning up here – the typical Sunday stuff – and then I went off for the footy. The bakery in Pionsat is open on Sunday mornings and so I went in to pay my respects and restart the bread round that I cancelled when I went off to Brussels. No point in me going every day or every other day to buy my bread when I can have it delivered for less than the cost of the fuel to go and fetch it. And it was shortly after this that I was turned back.

Back here, I made some butties and did a little job of work. I’ve been buying loads of CDs just recently and keen readers of this rubbish will recall that a good while ago I had bought some CDracks from IKEA. I’d put up four of them but now the collection has overflowed, so I installed a fifth one. Just one more left, so I might make a little trip to IKEA in due course to buy a couple more.

After eating my butties I went off to Terjat. I’d heard that the 2nd XI were playing Premilhat at 15:00 and as you know I try to get out and see Turgid whenever there isn’t any local football here.

This was a match that had everything. Torrential rain, sleet, hailstorms, as well as bright sunlight. But the howling wind was pretty much a constant and made play from east to west rather a tricky proposition.

It also had a few other features as well, including a right hook that would have put Joe Frazier to shame and which put the Terjat right-back into the dressing room iwthout any help from any of his colleagues. This led to controversy, as you might expect, for at this level (the basement of football as far as I’m concerned) there are no bookings and no sendings-off. The offending player was taken off by his captain, but a substitute ws sent out and this threatened to bring the game to an unceremonious end.

However, wiser councils prevailed. The referee blew for half-time a minute or so later, and at the start of the second half, it was clear that Premilhat had returned to the field with just 10 men.

Playing with the wind in their favour but with 11 against 11, Terjat were only trailing by 3-0 at half-time. But playing against the wind and against one man less, they were completely overwhelmed and let in another 4 goals, to lose by 0-7.

The fact that the score was 0-7 is laregly due to the Terjat goalkeeper who was effectively playing on his own against 5 or 6 Premilhat forwards and made probably 7 or 8 high-quality saves that would not have been out of place at Conference North level, and also due to the Premilhat attackers who missed a penalty, who hit the woodwork four times and who missed a load of sitters. If Premilhat had scored a dozen, no-one from Terjat could have complained.

Worse, though, is that Valentin, one of the heroes of Pionsat 2nd and 3rd XI’s valiant struggles, is now playing for Terjat, in his usual role out on the wing. He was an excellent player for Pionsat’s lesser sides but here he had a match that he would rather, I’m sure, forget completely. Not through any fault of his own, but simply that his colleagues were totally incapable of getting the ball forward to him.

I said to him after the game “what on earth are you doing with a team like this?”, for there’s no doubt that Terjat are the worst team that I have ever seen so far. And here I was – it was less than 8 days ago that i’d been watching a team that is playing in the Europa League.

Back here I lit the fire and made myself a pizza in the oven, and then watched some gridiron before going to bed. Tomorrow is a bank holiday so I’m going to have another lie-in.

-7

Saturday 9th November 2013 – DUNNO IF YOU REMEMBER …

… a couple of years ago and I posted a photo of the local village shop in Ronnet which had caught fire and burnt out.

The owners moved to other premises in the village with their shop and opened a little café-restaurant there too. But that’s not lasted too long, because this was what I discovered when I went through Ronnet at midday today.

We’ve had another fire and all of this seems to have gone for a Burton too. Even more importantly, when the first place caught fire they had a tarpaulin up and over it almost as soon as the flames were extinguished. Here though after the fire at their second premises, they seem to have abandoned everything to its fate and that seems to be that.

Yes, I was in Ronnet today, on my way to Commentry for shopping, and rather later than intended too. I’d heard the alarm go off but I decided that, seeing as how I’m still recovering from my exertions, I was going to have another morning of rest.

But what a beautiful morning it was though, not a cloud in the sky and the batteries were fully-charged by 10:45. I emptied some more stuff out of Caliburn and tidied up some more in here, slinging some filled rubbish bags into the van and then went off to Commentry, via Ronnet.

Christmas isn’t too far off and so I’ve started buying Christmas nibbles today. And nothing else of note or excitement, except that at Centrakor I picked up a couple of small pepper mills on special offer, to use for grinding my cardamon seeds and so on, and also some waxed table cloth. That was what I wanted, because I don’t want to ruin this new table when I use it as my kitchen worktop up here.

As the weather deteriorated, clouded over and started to rain, Neris was next, and the swimming baths. Ages since I’ve been there and it was freezing in the building. About 25 of us poor souls braving the extremes, but at least I’m clean for once.

So now that I’m back home I can return to my usual haunts and habits, FC Pionsat St Hilaire being one of them, and tonight the Ist XI were taking on Chatelguyon.

I had to get dressed for it too as it was freezing outside, although the rain had stopped. And it’s as well that I did for nothing that happened on the pitch served to warm me up at all.

PIonsat started the stronger and were peppering the Chatelguyon goalmouth and it was no surprise that they took the lead. A beautiful cross across the goalmouth from Nico and Pavel, this new Polish striker, volleying in a superb shot at the far post.

In that opening spell wre had shots kicked off the line, shots pounded into the woodwork and shots put wide when it would have been easier to score and I can’t think how it was that they missed. Pionsat were threatening to run riot.

They were however living dangerously at the back and it was no surprise to anyone that Chatelguyon equalised – with just a few minutes to go before half-time.

A break down the left wing saw a Chatelguyon forward clean on with the ball and although Michael managed to get down and stop the shot he couldn’t hold on and as the ball ran free from his grasp, another Chatelguyon forward following up had a pretty simple tap-in and that, dear readers, was that.

The second half started just like the first half. Pionsat came out of the trap like a rocket and for the first five minutes had Chatelguyon pegged right back in their own half and under something of the cosh.

We had the Pionsat missed chances, the woodwork peppered with shots, the Chatelguyon keeper making some excellent saves, and then the unbelievable happened.

Well, it isn’t unbelievable if you have been following what I was writing about the matches three and four years ago. Back in those days Pionsat were struggling because they had a defence that had a tendency to switch off and gp to sleep at important moments, and this was exactly what we had here.

And it didn’t happen just once or even twice, but FOUR TIMES, would you believe, and what looked like a comfortable Pionsat victory turned into something of an absolute rout as they went on to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

I felt sorry for Michael in the Pionsat goal. He’s not a goalkeeper but with injuries to everyone else he’s in there keeping goal and doing his best.

No one could fault him for any of the five goals that he conceded, but with two Pionsat centre-backs standing too far apart so that an attacker can go straight down though the middle for a one-on-one with him, what is he expected to do?

We had two of those, one after the other, and that was followed up by two balls over the top of the defence when the Pionsat defence was pushing too far forward and not quick enough to get back. For the fifth goal we had Michael on his own against three Chatelguyon attackers and no-one can do much about that.

Back home, I was skyped by an old friend of mine, telling me that he’s moved house. He has, but his wife hasn’t, meaning of course that their marriage of some considerable number of years has come to an end. That’s really sad news as between them they made quite an impressive couple with many qualities. But I suppose that it’s none of my business except to dole out the sympathy.

-5

Friday 8th November 2013 – GUESS WHO …

… spilt his mushroom and lentil curry all over the floor of the verandah this evening? And that was a shame because it was even nicer than on the two previous nights. Ahh well.

Anyway, this morning I had another one of these lie-ins – I’m taking it easy until Monday when I’ll be starting work in Earnest – and after breakfast I carried on with the tidying up. Another two sacks of rubbish have been filled and I’ve also been sorting out a huge pile of papers that have now been filed away correctly and I’ve collected together a pile of stuff that needs to be taken outside into the barn.

I’ve made a few useful finds too, not the least of which being the business card for the car wash that I used in Montreal in 2012 and was trying desperately to find a few weeks ago when I was there. I’ve added the address to the list in the Canadian notebook

Strangely enough though, despite all of the work, you can’t see much difference – in fact, the place looks even more untidy than it did before. Even worse, places that were comparatively tidy, such as the what will be the bedroom, are now starting to look cluttered. I’m not quite sure how that is possible but then again anything is possible when I am trying to tidy up.

This afternoon it was far too wet to go to work outside and so in a rare departure from normality I started to tidy up a few boxes on the ground floor. They had been in the way for over 2 years. Curiously (or maybe not), a lot of the stuff went straight into the bin. I can’t think what possessed me to bring it back here from Brussels when I sold Expo. Pressure of time, I suppose. But now I can actually move around much easier on the ground floor and if I spend another hour down there sometime, I might even have free passage all around the place. You never know.

I’ve also tidied up around the stairs and the landing so there’s even a free run up to my attic without stepping on anything. It’s all looking terribly impressive around here now, except of course in the attic 🙁

-4

Thursday 7th November 2013 – I’VE BEEN A BUSY BOY TODAY

Yes, high time I started work again around here. And even though I had something of a late-ish morning I still managed to do a good session before lunch.

First off, I repaired the woodshed. The corrugated iron sheets blew off while I wasn’t here and all of the wood is soaking wet. But I’ve rescued the sheets, nailed them down this time and used some bracing struts, and then covered it all over with an old tarp that was lying around not doing very much. That might hold it for a while until I can build the new one across the yard.

While I was outside I did some tidying up too and also a pile of weeding outside the house. It now looks as if someone is actually living here.

But that’s not all. The kitchen in the verandah was in a desperate condition and so I’ve tidied up in there and given it something of a superficial clean. At least the sink is empty now and unblocked which is a great improvement. Next task was the chest of drawers up here. There’s a screw retainer missing from one of the sides and so the drawers were dropping out of the runners. I emptied that, turned it upside-down to see what was needed and then fixed that.

After lunch, I emptied a couple of boxes out of Caliburn and dealt with those and seeing as I was in a good mood and having done a good day’s work I treated myself to a film. The Cannonball Run is 90 minutes of mindless mayhem but it’s a film that I can sit and watch time and time again, simply for the fact that it’s clear to see that the actors involved, and good actors too, are thoroughly enjoying themselves making it. As well as that, though, I keep a little database of film quotes and this film has contributed more one-liners to my database than any other film that I’ve ever seen. Who can forget immortal phrases such as “You wouldn’t last five minutes in a New York subway” or “It takes brilliance and years of hard work, and you wouldn’t understand any of that”.

Anyway, it’s beddie byes time now. See you all tomorrow

-4

Wednesday 6th November 2013 – AFTER SOMETHING OF A LEISURELY MORNING …

… in which it was something like 10:00 when I crawled out out my stinking pit, I started to work. But I do have to say that it was nice to wake up at home in my own bed with all of my own things around me. You have no idea just how much I’ve missed all of that over this last 10 months or so.

So what have I been doing? The answer to that is that being fed up of living in a tip, I’ve grasped the bull by the horns and there are now 5 sacks full of waste paper from up here as well as 2 sacks full of ordinary rubbish. And I can even see the top of the coffee table, which is very good news indeed.

I’ve also made a conscious decision that I will no longer use paper to light the fire. Having used firelighters for the last couple of times of fire-lighting, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is much less ash in the fire than there ever was before, and also the glass window of the fire isn’t tarring over as much. So that is going to be a little progress. It makes more waste paper here to be disposed of, but that will mean all the more for the recycling bins.

Another thing that I’ve done is to clear the kitchen table up here. I have the old white table that I used as a wallpaper pasting table and it’s in a pretty disreputable state. Covered with clutter of course and so I’ve sorted out a lot of that and when I finally reach it in the van, I can bring up the nice table and chairs that I liberated from Marianne’s and they will look quite nice in here. I’ll need to buy one of those oiled table cloths because I don’t want to ruin the tabletop but I can do that on Saturday at the shops if I go to Commentry.

Finally, I’ve been sorting out the web-hosting issues that I’ve been having just recently. I’ve been told that the management of the web-hosting company that I’ve been using have all left their posts, meaning that the company will eventually run down and close, with the loss of all of the data. One of the employees however, with whom I’ve had dealings with before, has accessed the company’s server and saved all of the files to his own server and so we’ve been engaged this last week or so (hence the “outage” of my organ) setting everything up. However, we did hit a snag. The guy dealing with my webhosting tells me that it seems that my domain name had expired and the credit card, which was linked to the domain name via an automatic renewal, has also expired, consequently the registrars were … errrr … proving difficult. Of course, that brought everything to a standstill until I contacted the registrars, and the following conversation ensued –
“Yes, your domain name has expired”
“When?”
“11th April 2013”
“So why didn’t you automatically renew it?”
“Well, your credit card has expired”
“When did my credit card expire?”
“Err … 30th September 2013”
“So what happened between 11th April 2013 and 30th September 2013?”
“Err … can I call you back?”
“No – I would like an answer now, especially as you have been giving my webhosts some very misleading information about my financial situation”

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that my website is now back on line and all seems to be hunky-dory, for the moment. But it really was starting to be just like the bad old days of 4 or 5 years ago when my then-webhost thought it clever to impress her new masters by using her power over my website as a weapon.

I hope that we aren’t going back to those days.

-6

Tuesday 5th November 2013 – I’M GETTING TOO OLD …

… to sleep across the front seats of Caliburn these days.

Despite the ignonimity of having to stop for a sleep on the way home, and despite having taken precautions of rescuing two small cushions, one to wedge down between the seats and the other to use as a pillow, I still had the worst night’s sleep that I have ever had. I managed to avoid the cramp from the last time I slept in Caliburn, but I had an enormous pain in the neck all night and I’m not sure why. I just couldn’t get comfortable.

Still, I had had 8 hours or so of “rest”, if you can call it that, and that totally surprised me, but anyway I took to the road in a driving rainstorm (so much for the beautifully clear evening we had had last night but I did think that “driving” was quite appropriate) and with the odd stop for roadworks and for food at the Carrefour at Montmarault, I was back at Pooh Corner by midday.

I’ve unloaded a few things … "just a few" – ed … but I’ve spent most of the day chilling out and catching up on the sleep that I’ve lost. I’ve also lit the fire – the first of the year of course, and for two reasons too. Firstly, it was cold in here – at just 11.2°C and dropping, and that’s below the threshold for the fire. Secondly, I rescued some dry wood from Marianne’s and all my wood outside is thoroughly soaking due to having been exposed to the rain for the last 6 months. Consequently I need to dry it out, and sticking a load of it over a hot stove is the easiest way to go about doing that.

And with that, I crashed out yet again, and that was that.

-2

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 – I’M SUPPOSED TO BE TAKING IT EASY …

… today, but you wouldn’t have thought so. First on the ‘phone was Rosemary. Her roofer is staying on for a day or two and so he’s going to have a quick go at her barn. Of course, we took the scaffolding down on Sunday, so could he borrow my roof ladder?

So at 08:30 they were here at Pooh Corner to take it away, and from there it all went downhill. Marianne called me to remind me of an errand that needed doing in Brussels and about which I had clean forgotten. Then I had two other calls in quick succession and I can’t now remember who they were and what they wanted – such is advancing age.

Then I had another task to perform. Seeing as how I’m not leaving until this afternoon now, I went to put another plan into operation and that involved meeting an estate agent in Pionsat. We had a pleasant morning out, but this idea that I have will not come to fruition, which is a shame, as there is a major stumbling block with my idea.

Back at Pooh Corner I fell in with Lieneke and Guus who are here for a week, and we had quite a lengthy chat. It’s always nice to see friendly people – they are in quite short supply here. And Raoul the cat put in his first appearance of the autumn. Checking up on his sources of food supply for the winter, methinks.

I loaded up the van and after a brief repos I set off for Brussels. And I got well on my way before I realised that I had forgotten my passport, and so I had to come all the way back again. I made it as far as Melun where I stopped for fuel and also for a bag of chips and a vegetarian pitta. I’m going for a little luxury in my old age. Another sign of old age is that I only made it as far as Valenciennes, a good 90 minutes short of Brussels, before I pulled off for a kip. I’m clearly not as young as I was. Consequently I didn’t make it here until about 02:30 – to find a major change about the property and also the fact that the internet is disconnected – more of which anon.

+25

-6

Monday 21st October 2013 – HERE’S SOMEONE WITH A SORE HEAD

This was what greeted me this morning on my way round to Cécile’s house. Someone clearly not paying enough attention last night.

Its not the first time that Ive encountered a car in a ditch of course. Keen readers of this rubbish will recall that on my way to the footy at Combronde a few years ago I encountered another one in a ditch near Menat. On that occasion the driver would indeed have had a headache as there was a head-shaped dent in the windscreen just above the steering wheel, but in the case of this car there was no such evidence (I did look).

But just for a change I was up early, as I needed to be. First stop was fuel at the Intermarche at Piosat, and second was at Marianne’s to pick up Cécile’s keys. Then, passing by the car in the ditch I went on to her house.

At the top of the Font Nanaud there was this spectacular site waiting to greet me. Usually, quite early in the morning, there’s a hanging cloud that sits in the Gorges de la Sioule and when you pass by the Birdwatching Centre beyond St Gervais, you can see it.

Today though, it had well-overflowed the Gorges and St Gervais, just down there in that valley, was totally overwhelmed. I hadn’t seen it that dramatically before.

Once I’d sorted out Cécile’s affairs I went off chaud-pied to St Gervais to pick up Liz who had taken the Punto for its controle technique, and we shot off to Gerzat to record the Arverne sessions of Radio Anglais.

That wasn’t as easy as it might have been eiter as Bernard had forgotten that we were coming, and then everything that could possibly go pear-shaped did go pear-shaped and if we had had the time I would have done it all over again.

I took Liz for lunch afterwards as she deserved it, and then I came home. I should have gone to Brussels this evening too but what with a very late night last night (I can’t believe how stressful it is these days dealing with other people’s problems when they don’t really want them dealt with) and I wasn’t up for a 750km drive through the night.

I went to bed instead.

-5

Sunday 20th October 2013 – WHOSE SILLY IDEA WAS IT …

…to set an alarm clock for 08:00 and ON A SUNDAY MORNING too?

Well, actually, it was my idea. When I was at Liz and Terry’s the other day, Terry mentioned that he had a scaffolding to take down on Sunday morning and no-one to help him. Right at that moment, Liz was poised over me with a plate of vegetable curry in one hand and a slice of ginger cake in the other, and so my spirit consequently wavered, and here I was at 09:15 heading across the countryside to Rosemary’s.

At that time of the morning, with the rain that we had had throughout the night, there was a gorgeous mist rising serpent-like from the Gorge de la Sioule and I would have taken an photograph or two of it in order to regale you all, but that was when I discovered that I had forgotten my camera.

After a coffee (thank you, Rosemary), we attacked the scaffolding and we soon had it down and in Terry’s trailer. Terry then asked me, rather disingenuously, if I wanted to come for lunch. I said that that would be very nice, to which Terry replied “good. You can help me unload the trailer”. Drat! Foiled again!

So after unloading the trailer we had soup and bread. And I was supposed to go to the football at Montel but I didn’t have the camera and in any case I wasn’t in such an energetic mood, so we chilled out for a while.

Back here, it’s Sunday and pizza night. And then I had Cécile on the ‘phone for over two hours. It seems like she has forgotten something important at her house, and would I mind …

-5

Saturday 19th October 2013 – THERE HAVE BEEN A LOT …

… of changes around here – it’s amazing what cam happen when you’ve been away for as long as I have.

Steaming down the hill past the quarry at Montaigut on my way to the shops at St Eloy this afternoon and I came shuddering to a halt. That’s because a new road, and of course, a new road junction seem, to have miraculously appeared.

I’ve heard a great deal about this proposed new road – it’s something that’s been proposed for quite a while. For years, heavy lorries from the quarry have struggled through the medieval streets of Montaigut, snarling up the traffic and rattling the houses, and all of the local inhabitants are thoroughly fed up of it.

But not any more. While I was away, a new road has been consrtructed that by-passes the village and goes off to the N144 on the outskirts.

There, the traffic is not obliged to enter into the village at all and that will please everyone.

It will please me greatly too. I often need to take the N144 and then turn off for Montmarault and in order to do that I have to go down some quite narrow windy roads with, more often than not, the sun full in my face at the most inopportune of moments. Now I can just steam on down to here and then hang a left on the new road, and I’m there in no time.

There’s another part of the road that is in the throes of being built. That part will take you onto the road that leads to Pionsat, and that’s another piece of road that should have been built centuries ago to by-pass the village.

All the traffic on there, if it isn’t going to the village itself (which is highly unlikely as there is nothing in Montaigut tha Pionsat doesn’t have) is going to the motorway at Montmarault and so is being channelled through the village and as anyone will tell you, traffic in Montaigut can sometimes be impossible.

No, when they finish this, it should be a good thing.

However I am getting ahead of myself. This morning I was intending to go to Montlucon but I’d seen some interesting stuff that would do for the radio programme, so I wrote a couple of thousand words on the tax changes that took place in July.

After shopping, I went round to Marianne’s to catch up on all of the latest news, and then to Cecile’s to unload Caliburn of the stuff that Cecile had chosen from the other Marianne.

We had footy this evening too. Pionsat’s 2nd XI were relegated to the fourth Division at the end of last season and are doing fairly well here. Tonight they were playing the Miners of St Eloy but they would only muster a team of 10 and which was not a particularly strong team either, with several faces missing from the squad.

They started off brightly, with the Pionsat n°9 ( a guy called Fred, a new signing) playing a total blinder up front and looking as if he could take on the entire Nord Combraille side on his own.

It didn’t however work out like that as Pionsat couldn’t keep going, being short-handed like that.

The Miners gradually came back into the game and eventually the goal that they had been threatening to score for quite some time went into the back of the net, despite the best efforts of Christophe who seems to have taken over the goalkeeping jersey on a permanent basis, given the illness, injury and retirement of everyone else around the club. There have been quite a few changes over the last two seasons.

Nord Combrailles scored a second goal late in the game to put the issue beyond doubt.
But that wasn’t quite the end of the story, because this guy Fred, who had quite impressed me throughout all of the match, was still going at the final whistle.

Here he is bursting through the Miners’ defence right on the final whistle, shrugging off a few strong tackles, and putting a shot across the face of the goal beating the keeper easily. But it hits the post and bounces to safety – about the third or fourth time that he had hit the woodwork. He would have been my man-of-the-match on any day of the week in any team, that’s for sure.

Even more astonishing was the weather. We were all standing on the terraces in shirt sleeves. This was one of the nicest October nights that I can remember.

-9

Friday 18th October 2013 – IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG …

… for the battery issue to resolve itself. I’m not going to pretend that I’ve brought all the good weather back with me from Greece, but there’s no doubt that once the weather eye cottoned on to the fact that I was back, the weather has improved no end.

Yesterday I had 200 amp-hours of solar energy and today the batteries topped out to such an extent that I had almost 40 amp-hours of excess charge. Thats good news in itself. but it’s clear from the performance and the statistics that I’ve been keeping is that one of the batteries is on the point of handing in its hat. I have all of the new batteries that I bought – they are still there waiting and so when I finally return from Brussels (I’m heading off there early nrxt week) I’ll change them all over.

This morning though I was off to Marcillat and Radio Tartasse for today’s recordings of “Radio Anglais”. I did the rock programmes and then Liz joined me for the information stuff. We went for a coffee and chat afterwards and then I came home.

First job was to fix the letter box. You may remember from ages back that strange things have been happening to it, and when I came back from Greece it had been propped up against one of the cars in the car park. I spent a pleasant 10 minutes anchoring it back in the ground where it can stay until I have more time to deal with it.

After lunch I started work on another series of radio programmes. We’re recording the “Radio Anglais” programmes for Radio Arverne on Monday and the text needs to be written for that, but I also need more topics for discussion as the pipeline is running low. There were a variety of taxation changes in July this year so I’ve started to do a programme about that lot.

Apart from that, not an awful lot has happened. But I’m not in a rush to start anything because if I’m heading up to Brussels on Monday or Tuesday, it will be just something else that I’ve failed to finish and I have enough projects like that already on the go.

-6

Thursday 17th October 2013 – I’VE BEEN BACK AT WORK TODAY

Not much though – just gradually easing myself in.

I had a couple of radio programmes to write for Radio Anglais – for the rock music shows that we broadcast onn Radio Tartasse. It took me a while to find the hard drive with the music on before I could start anything, but that’s all finished and up and running. I’m using a few songs from the enormous pile of CDs that I bought earlier. Did I mention that I bought no less than 20 CDs from various second-hand stores in Canada and the USA?

For the live concert, I’m treating my listeners to a surprise in December. Together with Neil Young and Warren Zevon, I’ve been taking an enormous amount of mickey out of one particular group. Due to tragic circumstances that unfolded, maybe it’s not a very clever thing to continue it these days and so as a kind of homage, I’ll be playing a concert, the tape of which I discovered in a Salvation Army charity shop in Presque Isle, Maine. Rare is not the word unfortunately, but nevertheless there’s quite a twist in the tail of this concert.

Anyway, that took me the best part of the mornng, particularly as it took me an age to make the external CD Drive function properly.

This afternoon I’ve tidied up in here and reconfigured things a little. Tidying up was exciting of course, but I’ve not yet managed to make my new laptop work with the wifi on the Livebox here. However, as I discovered, it does work of an ADSL cable, so I’ve had to move my office around a little so the cable can reach the laptop.

I’ve also been doing another web page. A musician called Thom Swift has seen my sample pics of his performance at the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival and wants to see more of them. The easiest way is to do a web page with them all on, and so I’ve been working on that. It’s not finished yet but hopefully I shall have it done tomorrow.

I need to get my pages up on line asap.

-8

Wednesday 16th October 2013 – MEANWHILE, BACK AT POOH CORNER …

… I did a very silly thing. Or rather, I forgot to undo something rather silly, and that was despite my best intentions too.

Before I set out for North America I had every intention of disconnecting the fridge and wiring it into the overload circuit. That way, if we were to have a long spell of heavily overcast weather, it wouldn’t run down the batteries.

But guess what? I totally forgot to do it and we have indeed had a long spell of heavily overcast weather. Consequently, I’m struggling for electricity.

That was what I found this morning when I returned home. I had the best night’s sleep for absolutely ages round at Liz and Terry’s, and after a breakfast of coffee and toast I hit the road for Pooh Corner, stopping at the Intermarché at Pionsat along the way.

Back here though, having seen what I forgot to do, I’ve gone into emergency mode. Everything is disconnected except, as I write, a 1-watt LED light and if that fades out I have a Ryobi lantern standing by. There’s one battery that is fully-charged (I keep that on a separate circuit) and that I put for a top-up via the solar panels in the barn and later in the night I’ll drag it across here. I can wire that into the circuit and disconnect the main battery bank quite easily so there will be some power, and then in the morning it can go back into the barn to be charged up while the battery bank in here is reconnected.

Apart from that, I’ve spent most of the day on the sofa crashed out. The after-effects of my marathon voyage. I’ll have a good rest and then tomorrow I have a radio programme to write.

That is, of course, if I have any electricity. What a silly thing to do.

-5

Monday 26th August 2013 – WELL, I MADE IT TO THE AIRPORT

But it wasn’t half touch and go, I’ll tell you.

I didn’t manage to get anything in the way of sleep last night either, because I couldn’t find the keys to my storage box and my safety deposit box in Canada.

Desperate times call for desperate measures and so I put a couple of batteries for the Ryobi angle grinder on charge. It’s as well to be prepared, and that will sort out the men from the boys of course. After that, desperate measures were called for and I started going through all of the waste bins.

I’m glad I did because I found my missing personal telephone directory NOYE TO SELF – have a word with Cécile about her method of tidying up. I found lots of other disagreeable objects but no keys and at 08:52 I called it a day and started to pack everything away.

However, I had a thought. I definitely remember putting the keys in a zipped pocket and they ought to be in the zipped pocket of my “Canada Electrical” bag. But I didn’t remember opening the suitcase after I locked up the storage unit. I’d tipped out my sac banane where there are about four zipped pockets, and the keys weren’t there either of course, but there was a zipped pocket on the computer and camera hold-all.

And sure enough, with just a couple of minutes to go, I emptied that out, and there they were! Phew! That was a close shave!

So at Radio Tartasse I recorded two months of rock programmes, then Liz and I did 6 weeks of “Radio Anglais”. I stopped off at the Pionsat Intermarché to buy a pile of bread and salad and I’ve made a mountain of butties – I know all about the closed restaurant round the corner from my hotel and I have my suspicions about Air Transat and their choice of vegan food. It’s as well to be prepared.

After taking Julie and Clare’s furniture out of Caliburn, I garaged him right round the back of Liz and Terry’s where he can stay quiet for 6 weeks or so out of the way and be good.

Liz kindly prepared lunch, a salad and bread, and I shaved my head with the hair trimmer. There are First Nation Canadians, or Amerindiens, around by where I’m going and I’ve heard all kinds of stories about the Malicete. I’m not leaving them anything to pull off. Anyway, after all of that, we went down to Gerzat in Liz’s car to record 5 weeks of “Radio Anglais” for Radio Arverne.

That was for once quite straightforward and then Liz dropped me off at the station in plenty of time for my train.

I’ve no idea what make or model it is – I shall have to refer to my Jane’s Train Recognition Guide for that, but I can tell you that it wasn’t as rattly or as bangy as the one last time I came here. And as nothing at all exciting happened during the voyage, we arrived in Lyon, and Lyon is much more civilised than trying to go via Paris. I had time to eat some butties and drink a coffee.

In the TGV though we were like sardines. I was lucky in that I boarded early and so I managed to grab a place on the difficult rail halfway down the carriage. Anyone who came after me was struggling for luggage space. It really is ridiculous – why don’t they have a luggage van and a baggagiste on each of the trains? That would make everything so much simpler.

And a good 25 minutes late, due to a tardy connection, we hurtled off into the night with kids screaming and all kinds of things. And not even a place to swing a cat. I hate to think what this would be like on a Saturday evening.

That 25 minutes ended up as being a whopping great 44 minutes by the time that we arrived at the station at Terminal 2, and although that might seem like bad news, it is in fact the first bit of good news that I have had for about a week because it entitles me to a refund of 25% on my ticket – something that I shall be following up with vigour.

Up in a crowded lift from the first floor to the fifth floor and into a heaving mass of people waiting for the hotel buses. Last year I stepped out of the station and onto the bus – this year I think that everyone else’s bus must have done 5 or 6 trips before mine came. But at least that had dispersed the masses and we were a mere 12 on the bus.

Having now had a shower (and we aren’t talking about the OUSA Exeecutive Committee here), configured the new laptop for the internet and downloaded a pile of files as well as a FTP program, I can post this load of rubbish and go to bed.

-12

EPIC HALL

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