Category Archives: Les Guis

Wednesday 20th June 2012 – AFTER THE USUAL …

… couple of hours on the laptop I went off to Rosemary’s for the afternoon.

On the way there thought I had a couple of interesting encounters, firstly with the German guy – Heidi’s husband or partner or something – who lives over the back here, and then with Francois Carriat who lives at Barrot.

Francois was full of energy as usual – “on your way back, drop in. I could do with a hand”.

On my way around to Rosemary’s, I came across this memorial. I can’t think why I hadn’t noticed it before, because I’ve been up and down this road quite a bit.

Many people criticise what the perceive as the lack of resilience of the French population to the Germans in World War II.

Leaving aside the question that I don’t recall the British civilians of the Channel Island doing too much to resist the German occupying forces – even down to the extent of sitting on their hands in starvation conditions for 9 months after the war had passed them by, the real fact is that there was quite a considerable amount of French resistance!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the numerous plaques that we have seen scattered around the countryside honouring people who were fusilés – shot – or decapité – decapitated – by the Germans, and we’ve seen the cemeteries at Ixelles and Evere in Belgium.

I wonder how these critics would cope if they were running the risk of being shot or decapitated every day.

Round at Rosemary’s we made some space in her barn, put my door in there and loaded up Caliburn with the rubbish, as well as a few bits and pieces that she knew that I would like.

Then we had a coffee and a chat to put the world to rights as we usually do.

I brought the rubbish back here because I have some stuff here that needs throwing away …{thud] …[thud] and I can heave that into the back of Caliburn and make just one trip down to the dechetterie at Pionsat.

Francois certainly did need a hand too. He’s had a rotavator in his small field and turned it into some kind of market garden, and a friend offered him “some” tomato plants. This “some” turned out to be about 150 and they were about 10 inches high with flowers on them.

Anyway, to cut a long story short …”hooray” – ed … Francois did the planting and I followed on behind with the watering cans and we managed to plant most of them before it went dark.

For my trouble Francois gave me a dozen for which I am grateful, and also a chili plant.

Not only that, he fed and watered me too, and we had a good chat about all kinds of things. Including the fact that tomorrow there are four groups of musicians who will be roaming the Streets of Saint Gervais d’Auvergne playing in all of the bars.

Now that sounds like a fun evening and so I might just as well go out and see what’s going on.

-3

Tuesday 19th June 2012 – WE’RE BACK …

… in winter again§

Yes, folks. it’s been raining for most of the day. And quite heavily too at times. To such an extent that sod the shelving! I’m going to build myself an ark!

But not so heavy that I couldn’t nip down the garden and see what was happening in the vegetable plots.

And here’s a complete surprise.

If you look very closely at this photo you will see a pile of light green shoots rearing their ugly heads – or rather their very pretty heads – through the soil.

Yes indeed, the Indian corn that I had brought back from Canada and for which I paid just 33 cents for a packet, has burst into life in a major way and this is so impressive.

I planted them very closely together thinking that I would be lucky to have half a dozen but it seems that almost all of them have come to life. This is so impressive.

Even more bizarrely, the bean plants that grew this year, all … errr … four of them, all of which looked a short while ago like they would be struggling to survive, have burst into life as well.

They seem to be throwing tentacles everywhere too. Not has-beans by any means!

In fact later this morning after I had finished on the laptop, I went to gather some wood to make a climbing frame for them, but I was beaten back by the rain. That will have to wait for another day

After lunch, seeing as it wasn’t possible to work outside, I mixed a pile of polyfilla and sealed all of the joints and screws on the plasterboard walls of my little cupboard. I want to crack on with that.

The plan is next to sand it all down again, add another layer of polyfilla, sand that down, paint the walls with some of that cheap pinky-orange indoor crepi stuff that I bought ages ago, lay the flooring, and then build some shelves in there.

That will give me a place to put everything and hopefully tidy up a pile of stuff out of the way so that I can continue in the bedroom and the shower room.

I hadn’t finished either.

You may remember that last summer I cut down a pile of herbs and hung them up to dry in the attic, where they have been simmering away for the last 10 or 11 months.

Today I decided to pot them all.

The chives didn’t work. That was just like dry grass, but the mint, lemon balm, tarragon, rosemary and tansy worked fine and now they are all in jars.

The lemon balm smells gorgeous, it really does. I just wish I knew what to do with it now Maybe sprinkle some of it on a salad – I dunno.

Tomorrow afternoon I’m going to Rosemary’s. She needs help tidying out her barn and seeing as my house door will be living there for a while it seemed only fair enough that I should help her make the space.

In exchange she’s offered to come round for an afternoon next week and help me weed my garden.

That should be fun. I often lack motivation when I’m on my own. Two of us doing it should accelerate things quite nicely.

-1

Monday 18th June 2012 – I WAS POINTING …

… this afternoon. And I’ll be pointing it out to you in a series pf photographs so you will be able to see my point.

Well, it’s either pointing or jointing, one or the other, whichever takes your fancy.

Now that I have some sand here I was able to mix up some lime mortar and so I spent much of the afternoon on the roof of the lean-to filling the joint between the new lean-to roof and the stone wall of the side of the house.

There were a few big gaps too, but I put some plastic sheeting down – the type with nylon reinforcement – and filled over that.

Tomorrow I’ll need to put a second coat on there, as well as putting some rubberised paint over one or two of the galvanised nail-heads that are exposed. And that will be the roof finished.

And so will I be too!

For the rest of the afternoon I cemented up the joint in the outside wall.

The rendering on that wall went, of course, up to the old wooden chevrons that fell off a long time ago. I’ve put stronger timbers on the roof and so the chevrons are higher up the wall, if you know what I mean.

I infilled the gap with a load of brick ends, stones and so on but the rendering still needed to be brought up by about 30 cms, as well as a few cracks making good, and that’s what I was doing until I noticed the time.

Yes, 19:10. 10 minutes after knocking-off time. You can tell how much I was enjoying myself.

This will also need finishing off tomorrow and when it’s all dry I can treat all the new woodwork.
… “what to?” – ed.

Once that’s been attended to I can push on and build up the side wall to the roof beam, leaving of course a space for a window (if I remember – not like I did for the roof).

The aim from there on is to put a balcony there at the front, so that I can enjoy whatever view I might have. But that’s something of a longer-term project.

This morning though, I was working on a few web pages of my voyage to Canada just now. There are three days’ worth, namely

You may not think too much of the content, especially Day Two, because what with me being in an airport terminal or three I let loose some pretty good and pretty explosive rants. You ought to know just how stressed out I become in airport terminals.

It’s a good job that I always travel alone.

You might think that when I calm down and review everything that I write, I would moderate many of my comments (I dictate the events of my voyages onto a dictaphone as they are happening or immediately thereafter) but I won’t ever do that.

The whole point of what I do with the rubbish that I churn out is to capture the excitement of the moment. The stress and tension is all part of the excitement and there wouldn’t be any point in churning out anything that has been edited.

You might also remember me a year ago posting a photo of a plant and asking if anyone could identify it.

It’s back again this year. And back in spades too, and when Liz was here the other day she took away a cutting to show around her friends to see whether any of them could identify it.

Clotilde seems to think that it’s a plant called tansy. And if it is, then that’s a surprise because I don’t ever recall buying any.

She reckons that it’s useful as a companion plant as it has a high success rate in repelling Colorado beetle, and as an ant, mosquito and tick repellant.

Another use for tansy was to rub meat with the tansy leaves to repel worms and to prevent the meat from spoiling.

And it seems that the first president of Harvard was buried in a coffin packed with tansy leaves, and when his coffin was opened 200 years later everything inside – the tansy leaves as well as his own corpse – was in an excellent state of preservation.

Another, less publicised, use is to dispel the occurrence of flatulence prevalent in vegans although it is highly toxic when eaten to excess.

It seems that this tansy, if that is indeed what it is, is going to be a very useful plant.

-1

Sunday 17th June 2012 – IT’S SUNDAY TODAY!

And that’s the day when I usually do a little informal tidying up in my little room to try to make the place look a little respectable.

And so why, you wonder, is it looking like a total tip right now?

The answer is that I have been busy doing other things, and that has created a mes entirely all of its own.

I’ve sorted out the Prolectrix USB record turntable that I bought hundreds of years ago in ASDA in Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK.

It has been sitting in its box for all of that time doing nothing in particular and as the summer, when I normally have loads of spare electricity, is slowly passing by, I reckoned that it was time to do something about it

I discovered a box with “LPs” written on it clearly visible in the European Cardboard Box Mountain downstairs when I was doing some tidying up a while back and so I brought that up here and unpacked it.

And this is where the problems started because despite what was written on the box it was full of all kinds of other stuff too. And all of that, I’m afraid, ended up scattered all over the floor as I’ve been rather preoccupied.

Had the thing worked right out of the box as I imagined it might, I woud have been all done and dusted a long while ago but it took ages to figure out how it all worked.

Nothing happened at all when I switched it on and don’t say “why didn’t you look at the manual … "PERSONual" – ed …?” because it didn’t come with one.

Ohh yes, I surfed the internet to look for one, and did 100 other things too, including changing all of the fuses and eventually after much binding in the marsh I hit on the solution.

The reason why no notice light comes on when you switch on the power is because there isn’t a notice light. And the means of starting up the turntable is to take the arm off the arm rest and move it across to the album.

The sound doesn’t come across in the USB cable either. There’s a built-in cable with two RCA plugs, and while I have do an RCA lead with a stereo jack on one end, the RCA connectors on that lead are also plugs.

And I don’t have a plug-to-plug converter lead.

As for the program that comes with it – “Audacity”, it’s called, I don’t think too much of that either. No automatic track-seeking, no automatic scratch and rumble filter.

In other words, all of the editing has to be done by hand, and that will take forever.

Oooooh for a copy of Polderbits or something similar. When I had a copy of that for recording my tapes onto CD, you could hardly tell the fact that it was not an original CD.

I’m going to be hard-pushed to do that with this program.

-3

Saturday 16th June 2012 – I HAD A DAY OUT TODAY.

In fact I went to Montlucon.

And even though I had a late-ish start I was still out and round and back earlier than usual.

The impetus was that you my remember me receiving a text to say that my new front door needs picking up, and if I didn’t get a wiggle on I would lose it. So offI went to pick it up.

It’s not very substantial at all, being just a sheet of double-glazing with a wooden frame around it, and it’s not going to be used for ages yet. But the reason why I chose it when I did, for those of you with short memories, is that it’s the same style as the windows that I bought for the house and the range was discontinued at the end of March.

The fact that it was the cheapest double-glazed door has nothing whatever to do with the argument, of course.

My luck was in too. At the Amaranthe health food shop there was some soya cream that had gone past the sell-by date and so they were giving a carton away to each customer. That will do very nicely for a mushroom and onion fried rice later in the week.

At at the rubbish shop (NOZ, for the benefit of the foreigners) they were selling a load of flavoured rice milk at just €0:75 a litre. There’s a nice long sell-by date on those and so of course there are now none left in the shop.

Almond-flavoured rice milk on my breakfast muesli – that has to be the way to go.

And Dammi if I didn’t find some of this on sale at NOZ as well.

It’s a multi-vitamin, multi fruit drink. And I had a good look at the list of ingredients and, sure enough, it contains vitamin B12. being a vegan as you know,
I have lots of issues about my vitamin B12 intake so I’m always on the lookout for different food items that might contain it.

And with a name like this, it ought to be good too!

It was piping hot too – hottest day of the year for me and so I really fancied a swim, but I had left my swimming trunks back at home. Never mind – Auchan was having a sale and so for €5:00 I treated myself to a pair of new ones.

I took the plunge and went to the Centre Aqualudique at the back of Montlucon. I’d heard a couple of good reports about it.

And it was certainly a far cry from Neris-les-Bains – tidal pools, a fast-flowing current, bubble-massage seats in the pool. And many more people there than at Neris so there was much more to see.

Ohhhh yes – I still chase after the women. The problem is though that at my age I can’t remember why.

€5:00 admission though – and that’s quite a difference from €3:20, and nothing like as intimate. I’ll just have to save the Centre Aqualudique for special occasions such as midwinter when it’s far too cold to be at Neris-les-Bains.

At the Brico Depot I bought 4 demi-chevrons and 3 sacks of sand. And you might be wondering why. The demi chevrons because I want to put shelves up in this cupboard downstairs and I want to do it the next time the weather is bad, without having to wait for a trip to the sawmill for the wood.

And the bags of sand?

There’s some sealing joints that need to be made on the roof of the lean-to that I fitted earlier this year. I’ve no sand here and so I need to dig out the Sankey trailer, change the wheels, trundle down to the quarry, load the trailer, bring it back here and bag up the sand.

With having the sand here I can have the job finished before I’ve even changed the wheels on the Sankey.

But I hate the people at Brico Depot. I loaded up Caliburn and then went off to pay for it “you need to bring your vehicle here” said the girl in the office. Walking 20 metres was clearly too much for her.

And so I brought the vehicle to the door and she came out – and then started chatting to a fork-lift truck driver.
“When you can spare me the time, if it’s not too much trouble for you” I said, and so she shrugged her shoulders to the driver and slumped over to me to check my load.
Yes, the staff at Brico Depot needs a collective smack in the mouth. It’s just like being back in Belgium and how I hate that country.

Back here I sat down to watch a film and the next thing that I remember was that it was 20:00. A long time since I’ve crashed out like that too.

And for the football we watched a team of bouncing Czechs pole-axe their opposition to advance to the next stage of the UEFA Nations Cup.

-1

Friday 15th June 2012 – TODAY WAS MUCH …

… more like a normal day.

I woke up with the alarm clock (no wonder it was noisy in bed), had breakfast, did some work on the computer and apart from the guy who came to pick up some parcels, that was about that for the morning.

But I’m glad all of the parcels have gone as I now have a little space.

And just as well too because I had a text message – my door is ready.

Rosemary has very kindly said that she will keep the door safe for me but I still need to pick it up, and that means emptying Caliburn of all the stuff I bought at IKEA at Christmas – hence it’s just as well that I now have the space where I can store it.

What I actually bought at IKEA was a trolley load of bits and pieces – all left-over or shop-soiled stuff – for €10.

I always pick one of those up if I can, and that particular lot that I have in the van is an excellent example because

there is a load of side panels for wardrobes, cupboards and the like with all of the holes pre-drilled in them for shelves and drawers and so on. Very useful, these, and I have plans for them.
there is a pile of sprung bed laths that I need
there is a pile of sides and doors from display furniture. You can make nice shelves in the shed with those.

Yes, it’s always a good plan to buy a load of that stuff when you see it.

I’ve done a pile of weeding along the pathways too and it’s much easier to move about now. It’s really only scratching the surface of course but it’s all progress anyway.

And while we are on the subject of weeding, I noticed that the potato beds were looking overgrown and so I spend an hour on them pulling up the rubbish. And you’ll be amazed how different all of that looks now.

The biggest advantage of raised beds is that the soil has not been compacted because you don’t walk upon it – in fact the thorough hoeing and raking that it had before I went away coupled with all of the wet weather means that even the biggest and toughest weed can be pulled out easily by hand without any problem whatever.

From there I went on to pull the old caravan window off the plot in which I had sown some beetroot.

You couldn’t see anything in there apart from a mass of weeds but once I had pulled a pile of rubbish out, there were in fact quite a few beetroot sitting in there doing what beetroot do.

But that has confirmed something – quite a few seeds that I planted, like the beetroot and the brassica, I covered over with some kind of glass covering, and they have taken well. Other stuff that I planted and didn’t cover, they haven’t done so well.

There must be a moral in that.

In other news, I’ve been quietly seething about the Royal Bank of Scotland. I sent some instructions to them ages ago to do something and they replied with a whole host of reasons why they should not do it.

This afternoon I made up my mind that I really ought to take some drastic action, involving pick-axe andles and napalm, but even as I was speaking to myself the phone rang – and it was THEM!

Talk about timing!

And as for my steamed meal; I didn’t have that tonight. We had footy instead and I need a free evening to start with that.

-1

Thursday 14th June 2012 – I WAS LYING …

… on my palliase this morning, wide awake, thinking that I really ought to heave myself out of the aforementioned stinking pit. I have a lot to do and I’ve been letting things slide rather

And so after about half an hour of musing, I had a glance at the time. All of 07:10. It’s been a long time since I’ve been up and about voluntarily at that time. That early night last night must have done me some good.

It’s also been a long time since I’ve breakfasted and been for a walk and started work before the alarm clock at 08:15.

walk! Yes! It’s been a beautiful day today – a real and proper summer one. So much so that the water in the solar water heater reached 36.5°C and this evening I had my first solar shower since before I went to Canada.

The water in the 12-volt immersion heater (a black plastic storage box with a 12-volt electric element powered by the excess solar energy once the batteries are fully-charged) reached 69.5°C and so we had electric hot water to wash the dishes this evening.

And that’s not all – at least for now anyway.

while I was rummaging around the other day I came across an object that I had forgotten – a small 400-watt steam cooker. There are two banks of solar panels on the barn and they are almost always fully-charged. One of them is wired up to a 600-watt inverter and so if this weather keeps up I’m going to have a go at cooking some steamed vegetables and see what happens then.

As you know, I’m trying to get away from bottled gas. The new woodstove has given me some considerable help in this direction for the winter, but it’s clearly impractical to use it in the summer. The electric steamer, a slow cooker, and – who knows? Maybe even a microwave oven? That would work in summer if only it would stop raining.

This morning I had a pile of packing to do – another load of stuff to be shipped off to Canada in this little business enterprise. And it’s a good job that I have loads of old advertising flyers round here – the electric shredder shreds them all up nicely and the shreds make lovely padding inside the boxes.

I’ve also made a start on the web pages for my voyage to Canada just now and I’ve put the first one on line. I’m going to be doing this from now on – not waiting for a pile to be ready – just add them on as they are done.

This afternoon I did a pile of tidying up – emptying the bedroom of some of the stuff that I don’t need and putting it upstairs in the lean-to now that there’s a roof on it.

And then I emptied the cupboard at the back of the stairs so that I can work in there and do something with it, such as to store another load of stuff and get that out of the way of me tripping over it.

I even managed a huge pile of weeding on the path too while I was wandering around.

It’s all starting to look a little more healthy here now.

-1

Wednesday 13th June 2012 – BLIMEY!

This is early!

But I’ve finished everything that I need to do and I’m not sure now how to go about killing time until later. I might even go and have an early night just for a change.

And I’m not sure what’s going on either, because if anyone were to ask me what is it that I’ve done today, the response would effectively be “badger all”!

It all started to go wrong when the alarm clocks rang this morning. “Just another 5 minutes” I said to myself, and the next thing that I knew was that it was 09:40.

Mind you, the weather was gorgeous at that time of the morning and so I profited by having a leisurely breakfast – interrupted by a knock on the door. That was Liz, who had brought back the rest of the washing that I had left there on Monday.

As a reward, she departed with some oregano and tarragon, because all of that is going berserk at the moment.

But that reminded me – the washing that I did on Monday was still in a plastic bag in Caliburn and so seeing as it was a lovely day, I hung that out to finish off drying.

And wasn’t that a big mistake? Cue the big black rain cloud and that was that.

And while I was discussing the washing situation with myself the phone rang. Rosemary – “they can’t fix the wheel on my car today and seeing as I’m at a loose end I’ll come round and help you do some weeding”.

That led to a hasty tidying up and so on around here. Must exhibit some dignity and pride.

But of course when Rosemary arrived she brought with her a few more rain clouds and so we sat around drinking coffee and chatting for most of the afternoon. And she also departed with some oregano and tarragon.

I have a great deal of work to do and I cant really spare the time to lounge around but nevertheless time spent with friends is never wasted. I’ll just have to work twice as hard tomorrow, won’t I?

And thanks, Joy, for your little note about the spray bottles for the vinegar mix. I’ll give that a go when (if ever) the weather dries up. It’s too wet for anything right now.

-1

Tuesday 12th June 2012 – IT WAS A …

… much better day today.

A mere 3.5 mm of rainfall fell today, and given what we have had just recently that’s a positive drought.

This morning though I was on the computer and finally finished the spell-check on my notes from Canada.

You might be wondering why I was using a spell checker, but apart from the obvious reason, it also has a multiple-entry correction facility. And the speed at which I transcribe my notes from the dictaphone there are always the same faults and typing errors and the multiple-entry correction fixes all of those in one keystroke and that saves me ages.

Next thing was to go into my text editor program.

I use Note-tab instead of Notepad, and for a few good reasons too

it has multiple-page facility, which Notepad does not have, so I can have a dozen pages open all at once
it has a library facility. That means that you can build up your own library of common phrases or keystrokes and use just one click to insert the block of text instead of typing it out each time
There’s an excellent find/replace facility too. If you want to change – say, an é letter into its alt-code for web purposes, or change a name from Mike to Michael in a huge block of text, tabbing through the find/replace facility does it far more quickly than you would do it by hand. How long would it have taken to change the … (gulp) … 745 cases of e-acute manually one-by-one?

After that I went off a-gardening.

I’ve had some bean, pea and sweetcorn seeds soaking since Saturday and they needed planting before they go rotten. And the pea seeds were already chitting too.

This meant “weeding” and to my delight this was much easier than I had anticipated. The ground was so waterloged and the raised beds were working so well that the roots of the weeds were not in very deep at all and came out quite easily.

I did the bean and pea beds in no time at all.

But this was where I discovered that I had been rather too quick off the mark. When I returned from Canada I had checked the beans and peas and noticed that next-to-nothing had come up – hence the soaking of another batch of seeds.

But after weeding, I reckoned that the peas must have been slow germinators as there are now about a dozen or so rearing up their ugly heads, not to mention all of the seeds that I had just been soaking.

Anyway, I planted everything all ready for the second phase of gardening, and I also found the old pea frame. I gave that a going-over and then installed it over the pea bed to give them something to cling to.

You can also see one of the bean beds in front of the pea bed, a potato bed to the left, a compost bin to the right with a blueberry bush in front.

It did rather remind me of the story of the Crewe and Nantiwh Borough Council workmen, and the foreman ringing up the clerk of works on one particular job that they were on –
“the men’s shovels haven’t arrived yet on this job. What are we going to do?”
The clerk of works replied “tell the men to lean on each other until they arrive!”

In other news, I’m having phone issues again. The phone that I bought from a brocante three years ago for 50 cents seems to have given up the ghost. I have another Belgian phone that I could use to replace it but I don’t have a French (or a generic) phone cable – the one for the broken phone is a special type made just for that phone and isn’t interchangeable.

After much searching, I decided to buy a new phone. And this wasn’t as easy as it sounds either. The cheapest ‘phone is €9:99 but there is a €6:50 postage fee from amazon.fr.

There were quite a few others to choose from but the one at €15:50 comes with many more facilities and is also on special offer – free delivery, and so that makes it cheaper than the cheapest. So that’s on its way now and hopefully my phone issues might be at an end.

I did once have a spare phone but I lent it to a girl who used to live around here but she has moved – twice as it happens – and so I won’t ever be seeing that again, will I?

-1

Monday 11th June 2012 – IT’S ASTONISHING.

Today, the weather was so much better. Only 14mm of rain.

So once again I awoke to the sound of a torrential downpour but no staying in bed today. We had to be a-radioing at 10:00 and I had a lot to do before I could set out.

But it wasn’t as if it mattered any. The woman who does the engineering for Radio Tartasse at Marcillat-en-Combraille forgot that we were coming and so we had something of a wait until she arrived.

The best-made plans of mice and men, and all that.

But eventually we managed to record our 6 weeks of programmes. Luckily I did 2 rock programmes before I went away and so they are up-to-date too.

Back at Liz’s, I was very kindly permitted to have a shower and to wash some clothes. This depressing, miserable weather has meant that I have had no hot water for a week and more, and so I’m really grateful for the good friends that I have.

No need to worry about quantity, as I have said before. It’s the quality that counts.

Down in Gerzat at Radio Arverne this afternoon we did another 6 weeks-worth of programmes and so that’s everything recorded until the end of July.

On the way back, we stopped off at the Carrefour in Riom to buy some of these ethylotests. The law in France from July 1st is that every car should have a breathalyser fitted for the use of the driver and the supermarkets are selling them for peanuts. I bought a kit of 2 for €2:00 and you can’t say fairer than that.

I also had another bit of good luck there.

Last year I bought a neat 25-litre 12-volt coolbox for Caliburn for €27:95 or something like that and it’s useful for when I’m out shopping and when I’m on my travels – I need a place to store the cold food in the hot van.

I drove all around Canada just now wishing that I had had one in the car there too, and here they are in the Carrefour again – this time for €24:90.

So I’ve bought another one and I’ll pack it in the suitcase and fill it with clothes or something next time that I go over and then I can leave it in my storage unit over there in Montreal to keep the cool food and drink in.

It’s MoT time for Caliburn too and so we called in at the testing centre on the way back. Caliburn of course passed with flying colours and so we are all happy

At the Anglo-French group it was nice to see Clotilde back from Annemasse.

Yes, I’ve been rushed off my feet today and not had a moment to myself. That’s why I’m blogging early – I’m off to bed in a minute for an early night.

-1

Sunday 10th June 2012 – FLAMING JUNE?

It’s more like blasted November right now.

It’s been flaming raining all flaming day. 17mm (not cm, Krys) has fallen so far and a quick referral shows that since I came back from Canada there has been only one rain-free day.

I woke up at 09:20 (and that’s early for a Sunday, isn’t it?) and heard the torrential downpour that was going on outside. That was enough to make me turn over and go back to sleep and there I stayed until a much-more-reasonable 11:30.

No point in getting up in this weather.

After breakfast I watched a film while I reviewed the latest edition of the magazine that I receive that gives me info that I need for the radio programmes.

A few likely topics in there as well as a few extra questions to add to the “20 Questions” that I keep in reserve for if ever we are caught short-handed for news.

After lunch I started to tidy up a little in here. Only a little – I can’t get the hang of this “tidying-up” lark. But I did make a useful discovery.

The wooden box that you may remember me building to keep the fruit and veg in makes a useful and quite comfortable seat and so I’ve moved that into the kitchen in the verandah where it ought to be, and put a load of stuff in it.

This evening I went round to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse the radio programmes. 6 weeks for each of the two radio stations. That should take us up to the end of July which is comforting, and keeps us out of mischief.

Liz made some really nice chick-pea and spinach curry as well as a really tasty cake.

I asked Terry if he could order some ink for me for my printyer seeing as how I have run out, but he did better than that. A few of us bought the identical printer a while ago, one of these Epson SX115 all-in-one machines that were on special offer at €49.

While they work just fine, they are rather sloooooow. So Liz, who has to print out loads of stuff for her teaching, has bought a new laser printer that does 17 pages per minute rather than the Epson’s 17 minutes per page (that really is unfair – there is nothing at all wrong with these Epsons in an ordinary domestic environment, especially at that price and at the price that the ink refills are available).

Conseuently I’ve ended up with a box of inks and a spare printer, for which I am extremely grateful.

And it’s still flaming raining.

-5

Saturday 9th June 2012 – HOW EMBARRASSING.

I was invited out to a party tonight and even though I’m not particularly sociable as you know, I try to make a point of going – it’s the only way that I’ll ever meet new people. And there would be someone there whom I was looking forward to meeting.

But anyway, after a leisurely start I set to work on the radio programmes for the next 6 weeks. And in a fit of unbridled enthusiasm I’d finished everything that needed doing by about 19:00.

Rather late I know if I’m going partying, but I wasn’t going to stop in mid-flow.

So while I was washing and shaving I threw together a mushroom fried rice to take with me, and then I leapt into Caliburn and set off for the entertainment.

It was when I reached St Fargeol that I realised that I didn’t have a clue where I was going. Bane of Britain had forgotten to enquire.

I knew the name of the people whose party it was and so I asked around in the village. No-one knew of them and so I looked in the phone book, with the aid of one of the natives, but they weren’t listed in there.

And so I went for a good drive around to see if I could find a place with plenty of cars but that drew a blank as well.

What a shame. I was quite looking forward to it too.

Ahhh well.

-2

Friday 8th June 2012 – I WAS UP …

… this morning at 08:30.

That was surprising seeing as how it was well after 04:00 and starting to dawn when I went to bed, never mind to sleep.

What was the spur to my leaving the depths of my darkest pit was a phone call telling me that I was going to have a brief visit. I had a few things to do before then, tidying up being not the least of them either.

After that, it was off to visit Rosemary. She’s had car issues and needed something sorted out at the garage, but didn’t understand what the guy there was telling her.

And so yours truly was summoned to appear …

Rosemary lives in one of the most beautiful parts of the Gorges de la Sioule and the view from the road up to her house is phenomenal – it’s well worth the price of the drive up to visit her.

But anyway, we sorted out her garage man and that part of the story ended happily ever after.

Seeing as I was out and about and I am going to be busy this weekend I nipped to LIDL in St Eloy-les-Mines and did some shopping for next week – no sense in me going out tomorrow if i’m out today.

This afternoon I steam-cleaned the kitchen area of the verandah. Well, some of it anyway. It was in a pretty sorry state.

But I think that I ought to spend some time in my busy schedule doing some kind of cleaning up. The place is looking unhealthy after my long absence just now.

-1

Thursday 7th June 2012 – YOU MAY REMEMBER …

… that we discussed weedkiller the other day.

Joy suggested a 50-50 mix of vinegar and water and so I tried it. And you can see the result.

A pile of burnt and scorched grass. And so there’s clearly some mileage in that idea,

Thanks, Joy, but I shudder to think about how much vinegar I’m going to need.

This morning it was work as usual on the website but I didn’t get much done due to a couple of lengthy and complicated phone calls that led to a lengthy form-filling session.

All of that made me late for my trip with Marianne and while Liz was wishing me all the best for the afternoon and me saying something like “knowing my luck it will pour down with rain” we suddenly had the most terrific thunderstorm and cloudburst.

Right on cue, you might say.

And so I picked up Marianne and off we went for a good wander around Chateau-sur-Cher.

The village is so named because the remains of a Gallo-Roman fort were discovered on the promontory overlooking the River Cher, on the spot where the church sits today.

It’s certainly an impressive site for a defensive fortification – surrounded on three sides by a very steep climb and I can understand why the Gauls would have chosen it

not only were there some interesting sights to see around the village and around the river, but that we were also directed to an intact chalk-oven and to an outcrop of a coal seam somewhere out off the beaten track on the way back to St Hilaire-près-Pionsat.

The chalk oven took some finding and that’s hardly a surprise. You can see that the chimney is all overgrown with all kinds of everything and you really did have to know where it was before you could see it properly

But it was totally fascinating, as a good exploration confirmed once I’d been able to hack my way through the vegetation into it.

It seems to have been built from a kit or something like that, because the fire bars are noted with Roman numerals – presumably indicating the position and order in which they should be assembled.

I’ve never seen that before.

Apparently the coal seam that we visited 2 years ago and about which I posted on here breaks out in a few other places in the Combrailles.

We had a good scratch around in the vicinity and, sure enough, we found some evidence. Not worth coming here with a mechanical shovel though – the Highways Department’s sign erectors would have been here a long time ago had it been worth the effort.

There are even some mining remains where someone had a go at trying to exploit it, but they are all overgrown apparently (as if the chimney was not) and so we need to wait for winter to hunt for those.

Highlight, for me at least, has to be this beast sitting here abandoned inthe garden of an abandoned cottage in the village.

It’s a Cadillac DeVille, one of the “fourth generation” models from the early 1970s I reckon, and what is significant about it is that according to the maker’s plate under the bonnet it’s actually a “Bienne” – a Swiss model made in that town where general Motors had an assembly plant for 40 years until 1975.

But scrambling over vehicles like this brought back some very happy memories. How poor Nerina must have suffered.

Meanwhile, in other news, I’ve run out of black ink for the printer. I’ll have to see if Terry can order some more for me.

-1

Wednesday 6th June 2012 – WHAT HAPPENED …

… to this morning?

I was up early for a change – before the alarm went off in fact – and had an early breakfast.

But I dunno what someone must have slipped into my coffee because the next thing that I remember was it being 13:57 and my coffee was stone cold.

I’ve no idea at all what happened there. Ahh well.

Mind you it was 03:00 when I went to bed and then I had to leave the bed twice during the night – one to go and ride the porcelain horse and the second because it suddenly occurred to me that I had left outside the house the parcels that I had wrapped yesterday and it was pouring down with rain.

A torrential rainstorm in fact, so it was just as well that I had taken the precaution to wrap them in bin liners and seal them up very well, because that managed to protect them from the worst of the weather. A good idea, that was.

This afternoon I carried on the weeding.

Joy recommended using a mixture of vinegar and water and so I tried a sample plot of that to see what happens.

Another idea that someone had was to use old newspapers, publicity leaflets and the like to cover over the paths and that should suppress the weeds there. I can then spread broken slates (of which I have plenty) everywhere.

Seeing how well things like planks and bits of wood suppressed weed growth while I was away, and seeing how many old newspapers and publicilty leaflets there are hanging around here, there has to be some mileage in that too and so I’ll give that a try.

Rosemary rang up today as well. She needs a little help over her car and seeing how she has some porridge oats for me and that she has offered to store my new front door for me until I’m ready (whenever that might be) then it’s only fair that I pop down there on Friday and see how she is getting on. By all accounts it sounds like a buckled wheel and I know a place in Montlucon that supplies them.

Tomorrow I’m out with Marianne a-wandering around Chateau-sur-Cher. We’re photographing historical bits and pieces over there. I bet we’ll have a rainstorm.

-1

EPIC HALL

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