Category Archives: Les Guis

Saturday 22nd June 2013 – MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE …

les guis virlet puy de dome france… house I was confronted by vegetation the like of which I have very rarely seen.

It’s all very well with “the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye” but I bet that the weeds round here aren’t so far off that right now.

There was no path down to the house either and with nothing with which to hack my way through the brush I had to wade my way through the shrubbery, being nettled and brambled all the way.

Not very pleasant at all. and while I could just about make my way in via the verandah, it’s out of the question to go in by the front door.

I suppose that what I should really have done was to ask someone to nip round with the strimmer, or strim round with the nipper – one or the other. But it’s too late now.

As for the house itself, it’s as if no-one has lived there for a hundred years. Cobwebs and all kinds of things all over the place. All in all, very depressing.

However, I do have to say that I did feel at home there, more than anywhere else, and how I wish that I could go back on a permanent basis. I can’t wait for all of these issues in Brussels and elsewhere to be finished.

I also made a startling discovery too. I was looking for the keys to the barn and after a while I did discover them – in one of the barn doors, which was wide open.

Yes, and for about a month or so too.

I remember going in there to pick up a bottle of stuff to drink before setting off for Fromentine and then Brussels last time I was there. Ahh well …

Another depressing item is that my printer is not working. It’s already only printing in blue but now it’s not printing anything at all and I was there for half an hour trying to fix it.

I never seem to have any luck with printers – Pooh Corner is littered with all kinds of abandoned printers that have never seemed to keep going for long.

But at least I now know how I’m going to do the shower room. It involves the abandonment of one of the projects that I had in mind but it can’t be helped.

For that particular project, I need another 10cms on the width and while it is possible to invent a work-around, it involves all kinds of contortions with the plumbing and the pipework and at the end of the day, it just isn’t going to be worth the extra effort.

It won’t look as nice as I wanted it, but then again, since when did I ever care about aesthetics?

-2

Saturday 25th May 2013 – There’s a strange round object …

… out there in the sky. It’s a golden orange colour and it hurts my eyes when I look at it. Also, the sky is a funny colour. There are parts of it that are a strange blue colour, not the usual grey that I am used to. It’s absolutely weird.

Not like yesterday, though. Fighting the snow and the rain, I emptied Caliburn. And while there wasn’t a great deal of stuff that I threw away, the fact that it is all tidied up inside means that there is tons of space inside. And that’s good news.

After that, I went off to Pooh Corner and sorted out Caliburn’s summer tyres ready for changing. He has his MoT on Monday morning and then I’ll be changing them over and putting the winter tyres in store. I found the mountain bike that needs to be taken over to Rosemary’s, and I also sorted out my CDs and started to fit the CD racks that I had bought in IKEA in Brussels. The first time I’ve seen some CD racks that actually do what I think that they ought to do.

Back here though, a bit of bad news. Cécile’s mother has had another funny turn and so after Caliburn’s MoT we are hitting the road, but to Fromentines, not to Brussels. I’ll have to drop Cécile off to catch the ferry out to her mother’s island and then I’ll have to head off to Brussels from there – a mere 880kms again.

It’s all happening here.

-1

Friday 4th January 2013 – IN A CHANGE …

… to the advertised programme, I’m not actually at home right now.

I was this morning though, and it was one of those mornings where nothing much out of the ordinary really happened.

After breakfast, I cracked on with the website for quite a while and then had a few little jobs to do here and there around the place.

Once lunch was out of the way I went round to Cecile’s to help her prepare for her do tonight. That took a while because her preparations are much more thorough than mine ever will be, and she’s far more adventurous too when it comes to cooking.

We were four at the table, all enjoying ourselves which was nice, and then after the others had left we did the tidying up.

The one thing that can be said about more preparation and more adventurous cooking is that it takes much longer than it should (in my opinion anyway) to clear up and wash up.

And when you’ve had a very late night with company, it’s even later still by the time that you have finished.

I was exhausted too and didn’t feel up to driving home and so I ended up staying the night.

Serves me right.

0

Thursday 3rd January 2013 – WHAT A LOUSY …

… day

Grey, wet, miserable, depressing

But that’s enough about me – the weather was even worse.

So with almost no solar energy today I didn’t do all that much. When I opened my eye and saw the weather, I closed it again and went back under the duvet.

And if it hadn’t been absolutely necessary to visit the beichstuhl I’d probably be there now. 

After breakfast and working on the website for a while I started on the floor in the shower room. But I wasn’t there as long as I might have been, and for a very simple reason too.

I will swear blind that I bought 5 packets of tongue-and-grooved flooring planks, but I’ve only been able to manage to find four – there’s one missing somewhere. And the result of that is that I ran out of floor with two planks to go.

GRRRRR!

So that means a trip to Montlucon and Brico Depot on Saturday, doesn’t it? I’m never going to finish this blasted flooring seeing as how all of the fates are conspiring against me.

To pass the rest of the time I started to sort out the firewood in the lean-to in order to make more space.

I could have cut it up as well but I have to do that outside and with it pouring down with rain it wasn’t much of a good plan. But there’s progress all the same.

This evening I had another meal the same as last night and it worked just as well, if not better.

Having a rip-roaring blaze at the beginning is definitely the key to cooking with the wood stove. It heats the oven up quicker and that cooks the potatoes better.

Basically, 2 hours for the spuds, 60 minutes for the sprouts and 90 minutes for the rest of the veg. The veggie-burger takes about 20 minutes or so.

I had a few phone calls too. Cécile called me twice and spoke to me for hours. She’s giving a dinner party tomorrow night and wants to know if I can help her tomorrow afternoon to prepare.

Seeing as I don’t have the wood to finish the floor, that seems like a good plan.

Marianne also rang up for a long chat and to tell me about her adventures at Riom hunting down old historical documents. One of these days when I’m not busy, whenever that might be, I’ll have to go with her.

As for me, this afternoon I telephoned the hospital at Montlucon to enquire about Bill.

The receptionist wasn’t all that forthcoming. After much verbal fencing, she expressed an interest in knowing who I was, and so I explained that I was neither family nor close friend but just an everyday run-of-the-mill friend of no particular significance.

She then said that she couldn’t give me any more information, but would I care to leave my phone number so that she can pass it on the Bill’s daughter – his next of kin

I don’t like the sound of that one little bit

-2

Wednesday 2nd January 2013 – IT WAS BACK …

… to work today.

First time since I’m not sure when.

However, first task was to start on the web page for my visit to Lévis (that’s pronounced “Layvee”, not “Levi’s”) which is across the St Lawrence from the city of Québec. That was a brief excursion on a ferry across the St Lawrence in the middle of the afternoon during my walk around Québec.

It’s usually a bad sign for me to encounter a ferry and I’m never in a good humour, because every time I see a ferry, it always makes me cross.

Once that was out of the way I had a marathon wood-chopping session. I’ve used up a pile of wood over the last couple of weeks and so it needed to be replaced.

That took quite a while and created a nice pile of sawdust for the composting toilet.

It’s also made a nice little space in the lean-to and I’m hoping that I can crack on with that idea. I’d love to have enough space in there for my little workshop by the end of winter

Finally, I carried on with the floor in the shower room, and I’ve worked out why there’s a problem with the floor levels. It seems that with the wisdom that only Brico Depot can conjure up, the grooves are off-centre.

Now that wouldn’t particularly matter if the off-centre was consistent on each plank but in fact, while a pack might be consistent, the batch isn’t.

And that’s just plain ridiculous because there’s a planed side and a rough side, so you can’t even turn the planks over in order to even out the centres.

For tea this evening I tried a little experiment.

As well as starting off the baked potatoes in the oven, I chopped up a few sprouts and carrots, put them in a pyrex dish with some water and put them in the oven too.

Add a veggie burger and onions and garlic in a baking tray and use some of the veg water to make a gravy and I had a magnificent evening meal. Just like a king, in fact.

A wise move indeed, buying this little stove as I have said so many times before.

And setting up a little kitchen in a corner here, that’s working too.

-2

Tuesday 1st January 2013 – THAT’S THE HOLIDAY …

… over, then

Tomorrow I start back to work, and there’s plenty to do as you might expect. It’s not been doing itself while I’ve been idling.

So accordingly I had the final day of my DVD marathon session.

There’s still plenty of films to watch but today I’ve seen easily the best film that I’ve seen for ages and ages. An ageing Robert Mitchum starring as Raymond Chandler’s ace sleuth Philip Marlowe in Farewell My Lovely.

At first I didn’t think that he was going to be as good as Humphrey Go-kart and while he acts in a different way, it’s hard to see how Go-kart could have improved on the role.

There’s an “unexpected”  twist right at the end but Yours Truly was well ahead of the pack and had this one nailed from about halfway through, but it didn’t detract from the enjoyment of the film in any way.

So now it’s off to bed and an early start for tomorrow. I need to get a move on.

-2

Monday 31st December 2012 – A HAPPY NEW YEAR …

… to all my readers.

A heartfelt plea of course, but not from my heart, but from the heart of whoever it was who was responsible for all of the “artwork” on the walls of the Gentlemen’s Rest Room on Crewe Bus Station back in the 1960s.

I remember all of the artwork so well, being an impressionable young lad back in those days and I owe my magnificent Grade 2 ‘O’Level pass in Biology back in 1970 not to the teachers who helped teach the course, but to whoever it was who was responsible for the drawings in the aforementioned.

My success in the poetry syllabus of the English Literature ‘O’ Level I also put down very much to the efforts of whoever it was who was responsible for the text of the illustrations.

Who can forget the heartfelt cry of
“It’s no good standing on the seat
The crabs in here can jump six feet
And if you think that that is high
Go next door – the b@$t@rd$ fly”?
Move over, Tennyson.

Which reminds me – my poetry teacher, Mr Simpson, once asked me “will you read a short extract from Alfred Tennyson?”
To which I replied “Certainly sir. ‘Fred Tennys'”

But back to the gentlemen’s rest room. I also remember the heartfelt wail of
“Here I sit, broken hearted;
Spent my penny but only f@rted”
and considered that it wasn’t a patch on my own juvenile retort of
“Broken hearted, here I sit
went to f@rt, had a $h|t”

And that also reminds me of another extract from days of yore when Alan Fearon once shouted out “I’m going for a $h|t”
to which I immediately retorted “you leave my brother alone!”

But enough of the misplaced humour for now. After two days of doing nothing at all and a third one coming right up tomorrow, I do sincerely wish you all a very happy 2013, and I wish for all of you in the coming year everything that you wished for everyone else in 2012.

Best wishes to all of you.

-1

Sunday 30th December 2012 – IT’S SUNDAY …

… and it’s also the day before a Bank Holiday too, so this gives me a double reason to sit around and do nothing.

Well, actually, tomorrow isn’t really a Bank Holiday at all, but when I look back over the year and see just how many Bank Holidays that I missed, with having to work and all of that, then tomorrow flaming well is going to be a Bank Holiday and I intend to enjoy every minute of it.

So I started as I meant to go on – which was to lie on my palliasse until something ludicrous and then have a late breakfast.

Followed by … errr … nothing at all.

We did manage lunch, and I even cooked a pizza for tea but that was about the limit of my strenuous activities for today.

And I can’t say that I’m sorry about that either. High time that I took care of myself.

0

Saturday 29th December 2012 – I went swimming today.

And how!

And the reason for that is that on the informal weather scale that I keep, this morning was classed as “scattered clouds” but this afternoon was classed as “glorious”. Nothing in the heavens to stop the sun streaming down, and I had the amount of solar energy that would have been expected in the summer.

So after a lie-in I finally finished off the Quebec pages after all this time and these are now on line. After that, it was a quick thrash around the shops in Commentry and then off to the swimming baths at Neris-les-Bains. And for a change it was reasonably warm in there and I’m nice and clean, and I’m looking forward to a good sleep tonight.

All in all, a very quiet day. I’ve been having a few of those just recently. I’m saving my strength for the new year.

-3

Friday 28th December 2012 – I SOMEHOW OVERLOOKED …

… to write up my notes last night before going to bed. Letting things slide a little, I am, just recently

I really don’t know what you pay me for.

Once again, I started off the morning working on my tour of Québec.

And once again I’ve been distracted in the afternoon.

I noticed yesterday when I was following her that one of her car sidelight wasn’t working. She has her Controle Technique (the French MoT) due next week I told her to bring the car round this afternoon and I’d have a look at it.

Changing the bulb didn’t resolve the problem, so I had a look underneath the bonnet. Replacing a fuse that was conspicuous by its absence resolved the sidelight issue fairly smartly, and there were one or two other little things that needed fixing, so I organised those too.

That was followed by a Hitchcock film (Cécile is as much a film buff as I am) and two and a plate or two of pasta and beans

One of these days I’ll restart work on things around here.

I promise I will.

-3

Thursday 27th December 2012 – WELL, I WAS …

… going to start back to work today.

Honestly.

I admit that I had had something of a leisurely morning in a kind-of half-hearted working on my Quebec web pages and that I was gradually winding myself up to the idea of making a start – and then the telephone rang, and that was that.

Apparently, Cecile had just won a set of gates on eBay but on going to pick them up, she discovered that were too big to go in her car.

It’s a good job that I had spent half an hour or so emptying out Caliburn the other day, so like the true superheroes that we are, Caliburn, Strawberry Moose and I dashed into the nearest telephone box to put our underpants on outside our trousers.

Having done that, we dashed to the rescue.

Perhaps it’s here that I should interject that my brother always used to wear his underpants outside his trousers. But that wasn’t because he was a superhero, it was because he was two sandwiches short of a picnic.

A drive out to Doyet (way the other side of Commentry) was reimbursed by the offer of an evening meal, for which I’m always grateful as you know.

And then, after another marathon session lighting her stove we ended up watching episodes of “The Twilight Zone” until quite late.

I shall just have to start work tomorrow now.

Won’t I?

0

Wednesday 26th December 2012 – Happy Boxing Day.

02:45 it was that Cecile left last night – nothing like a good evening with pleasant company – and by that time I was well ready for bed.

And so this morning, having remembered to switch off the alarm, I managed a lie-in until all of 09:45.

After breakfast, part II of the DVD marathon continued, and continued for most of the day too.

Lunch was the usual salad butties, and the Boxing Day dinner was the reheated leftover veg from yesterday, fried in an olive oil and mustard sauce of my own making (delicious, even though I say it myself) with a vegan burger.

Pudding was, as you might expect, more Christmas pudding and the left-over vegan cream.

How about that fr a nice, lazy Bank Holiday? High time that I had a lazy day like that. Does me the world of good.

But tomorrow I suppose that I had better start back to work. No peace for the wicked.

-3

Tuesday 25th December 2012 – THE FIRST NOEL…

… the Angels did say was at about blasted 07:45 this flaming morning.

That’s because despite it being a Bank Holiday and accordingly a Day of Rest, where nothing ever moves before perishing midday, Brain of Britain here forgot to switch off his sodding alarm clock, didn’t he?

Still, the early start gave me plenty of time to relax and open my presents.

Lots of DVDs, CDs, books and computer stuff. All a man could desire – except for Kate Bush and Jenny Agutter of course, but you can’t have everything.

And once breakfast was out of the way I sat down for the start of my marathon DVD session.

Lunch was the typical Christmas Day lunch – nibbling on bits and pieces, and then having had a suitable repose, I prepared the veg for the evening meal.

Boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, carrots, endives and sprouts – all cooked in the steamer.

Cécile came round in the late afternoon, just in time for Carry on Don’t Lose Your Head.

Not my favourite Carry-On film but one that she would understand, with lots of visual humour. High time, given the state of globalisation in the world today, that I started spreading around the spirit of Carry On humour.

So a few more films, a Christmas meal (the aforementioned plus seitan slices in onion gravy, Christmas pudding and vegan cream followed by coffee and Christmas cake), and a good chat, she went home and I went to bed.

0

Monday 24th December 2012 – Merry Christmas everyone

I hope that Santa brings you everything that you deserve this morning.

As for me today though, I’ve had the best fire here this evening that I have ever had, and I’m so delighted. After the usual breakfast and bits and pieces I dismantled the stove pipes. I’ve ruined about three brushes and all kinds of things, but it was necessary as the pipes were totally choked with ash and tar and all kinds of stuff. Hardly an air passage in sight, no wonder that the fire wouldn’t draw.

Anyway, the pipes are now thoroughly cleaned, jointed and reinstalled exactly as they should be, and the fire this evening burnt beautifully, even demolishing a large log on the lowest air setting. Even more exciting was the fact that the glass in the window remained mostly clear with hardly a trace of soot. That’s a first.

Apart from that, I wrapped up the presents and toddled off to Marianne’s to deposit hers. We had quite a chat too for a couple of hours, and that was quite pleasant.

So that’s it. Tomorrow I’m supposed to be having a day off but that’s unlikely as, if all goes according to plan, I’ll be having visitors and so I’ll need to cook. That will be exciting.

Anyway, Merry Christmas to you all.

-3

Sunday 23rd December 2012 – Sunday is a day of rest …

… although that wasn’t the case here today. I couldn’t even manage to lie in after 08:45.

After breakfast and some work on the computer I carried on tidying up in here. After all, I might be having visitors here in early course. And then, after a few hours of working on the Quebec website, I emptied Caliburn of all of the stuff bought in the UK the other week, and put it away. That was not as easy as it sounds, I’ll tell you.

However we finally had the day that I had been awaiting. Gorgeous, blue sky with scattered clouds and 70 amphours or so in each of the two solar banks on the house. That has cheered me up a little and it would be nice to see more of that for the next couple of days if possible. It’ll make the batteries look much more healthy.   

-3