Category Archives: Les Guis

Friday 13th April 2012 – I can’t remember now …

… what it was that I did this morning. One thing that I do remember however was sleeping through the alarm clocks and waking up at 09:35, and it’s been a long time since that happened.

I did spend some time on my web site again and did some more work, but round about 11:30 I must have been distracted because I’m having one of these mental blanks.

After lunch however, the interesting stuff. I phoned up my travel agents in Belgium and told them of my holiday plans. I was on the phone for about an hour because what I’m trying to do is not easy and neither is it straightforward. The net result of it all is that they have all of the details and they’ll work something out and call me back tomorrow. Or at least I hope that they will.

After that I went outside and dug over one of the beds that I’ll be using for root vegetables. and that wasn’t straightforward either. I put a plank across the beds to stand on while I dig the beds over, but this plank broke one of the sides of the bed. That caused a halt while I went to search for a suitable plank to cut down to size to remake the bed.

But anyway, that bed is dug over and properly hoed, and I’ve put two rows of carrot seeds and one row of beetroot seeds in, in order to see what happens. I don’t have any parsnip seeds, which is a surprise. What is also a surprise is that there seems to be tons of tiny plants in the bed, which look just like seeds that have germinated quite recently. And they look too focused to be weeds. I’m trying to think what they might be. It was brassica that was in there last year – did something run to seed maybe? Anyway, I’ve pulled most of them out but I’ve also left some of them in so that I can work out what it might have been. I’ll probably come home to a bed full of dandelions or something.

I checked over a few other beds too. The new potatoes are stirring now and so are the garlic bulbs. The peas too are looking as if they might be doing things but the beans are as yet quite quiet. Pride of place though must go to the brassica – the sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower. Those seeds were planted about three weeks ago, thoroughly watered and left under a black plastic sheet to keep the moisture in place and to heat up the soil. The result of this is that they seem to have gone berserk and there is brassica everywhere in the rows that I sowed. It obviously suites them under there.

Anyway, Liz will be coming to pick the strawberries while I am away. I’ve told her to help herself to brassica too. The rows will need thinning and so the thinnings may as well go into her garden.

Anyone else want any brassica?

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Thursday 12th April 2012 – I still didn’t …

… get very far with my holiday plans today. I was rather sidetracked.

I was asked if I could remove a gas tank from behind a house this morning. An unusual request, you might be thinking. And you are probably right. Even more so when you realise that it wasn’t meant to be physically moved – but removed by the means of what is commonly called “airbrushing it out” on a computer.

Of course, back in the old days I used to spend a great deal of my time doing that when a couple of friends and I ran “Shitesports” – a weekly review of affairs in football, and I was the correspondent for the “League of Wails”. Some of you might even remember the legendary “Juan Kusov” under which name my articles were published. Ohhhh happy days!

Anyway, so I set to work on the photo and “airbrushed out” the offending article, even though an airbrush is a tool that I never ever use when I’m doing something like this and I can’t understand why it’s called “airbrushing” anyway.

And here you can see my finished article. One gas tank suitably removed.

I had to do another photo as well, and what with having a letter to write (or, rather, translate) for someone it was after 17:00 when I finished. This is the kind of thing that takes hours to do, but nevertheless it’s worth it when you can make a good effort.

But once I’d finished everything I went back outside and carried on potting. All of the herbs are now done too, but I’m not expecting much to come from them. Some of the seeds looked pretty sad. Still, they won’t grow if I don’t plant them, that’s for sure.

And seeing as there was still a few minutes left before knocking-off time, I raked out the last two herb bins to remove the weeds and dead plants. And there I was a few weeks ago complaining that I don’t have any mint. Raking out the bin where the mint used to be, I was pulling tons of it out. And in the dedicated mint bucket, cutting off and pulling out the dead bits revealed quite a bit of healthy growth. So it’s not all bad news.

Back up here, I couldn’t resist having another little play. Many of you have seen my … errr … “composite photos” – I post a few on here every now and again, especially when I’m recounting the adventures of Strawberry Moose, and so in a little fit of boredom I knocked up another composite photo, just to keep my hand in.

Of course some people will argue that it’s not a composite photo at all but that some aliens really did land in the Auvergne one day last winter and they will use this photo to prove it. But never mind – I wished I had something better to do as well.

But iat did rather remind me of the little girl catching her daddy in the shower.
“What’s that, daddy?” she asked, pointing to the obvious.
A rather embarrassed daddy replied “ohhh … errr … it’s a spaceship, baby”
“It’s not very big daddy, is it?”
“No love, but it gets bigger when it gets near Mars”

But some more work for me to do has come through this evening, and I’ll need to do that tomorrow. I’m not ever going to book this holiday, or finish my garden. But then why should I complain? I complain quickly enough when I don’t have any work to do. I ought to be thankful.

-3

Wednesday 11th April 2012 – It’s been another …

… busy afternoon on the gardening front. First job was to make some potting compost to plant my seeds into. This ended up being 12 measures of sterile compost from a supermarket bagful, 4 measures of dry sand and 2 measures of dry wood ash. And if anyone has any better ideas about making a compost for sowing seeds I would be absolutely delighted to hear it.

So once I had done that I went and collected a load of those plastic pots that soya desserts come in. Already nicely washed, I piled them together in heaps of 10 or so, heated up a baked potato skewer until it was red-hot, and then poked it through the heaps of pots four or five times to make drain holes.

Once the drain holes were pierced, I washed the pots again and then filled them with my seed compost, and planted all the “fragile” seeds, like aubergines, peppers, chilis, cucumbers, courgettes, gherkins and a few other things too. And with what was left, I prepared a few seed trays and put leeks and lettuce in them.

There is a reason for all of this. For a start, why the soya dessert pots? The answer to that one is that they come in all varieties of shapes, sizes and colours. And I am heavily into colour coding. I can tell by the different colours, shapes and sizes of the pots that the seeds in them are all of the same type of plant.

The second reason is much more interesting. I’ve decided that I need a holiday, and so I’m planning to go away. And while I’m away Liz is going to babysit my plants in exchange for half the crop, which I think is a good deal in anyone’s terms. That’s why there’s the rush to do the potting up.

And so this morning I was planning my holiday, and the logistics of it are proving to be a nighmare – it’s nothing like as straightforward as it ought to be. But then this evening while I was tidying up, I had a brainwave about my trip and so I’ve spent most of the evening sitting here with an atlas. And I reckon that I can do this in another fashion.

So tomorrow I’ll be scrapping everything that I have done so far and starting again.

Tuesday 10th April 2012 – I planted my spuds today.

Yes, that’s two raised beds worked over and thankfully they didn’t need much. I realised in fact that I’d dug them through a couple of times in February and so one needed just a once-over with the fork whereas the other one managed with a quick hoeing. And that made a change – usually it takes an age to dig over one of the beds.

There was some garlic from last year growing away quite happily in there too, and so I’ve left that for now. No point in disturbing it when it seems to be doing so well. i’ll pull that up when I pull up the spuds in the autumn.

The shallots and onions that I planted earlier this year are doing well too. Nice regimented rows of shoots bursting out of the soil. This year’s garlic and the leeks aren’t doing anything though – I suppose it’s too early for them.

I also planted another row of peas and another of beans. The earliest row of peas looks like it might be doing something although the rest – and the beans – are not doing anything yet.

But that was all that I did in the garden and I knocked off early – at 18:00. It was teeming down with rain on and off and I ended up soaked to the skin and thoroughly miserable. I sat up here, watched a film and wrapped myself up in the quilt to try to warm myself up. It wasn’t very nice.

But this morning I was up before the alarm and breakfasted before the second alarm went off. And I’ve been working on my website again. High time I caught up on that. But the next time we have a sunny morning and I can run the inverter early on, I’ll update the Radio Anglais blog now that I’ve finally managed to find an mp3 converter program that seems to work.

-1

Monday 9th April 2012 – On the way back from the footy …

… there was a really good view of the Puy-de-Dôme in the distance from the top of the brow of a hill near St Priest. It’s been quite some time since I posted a photo of the Puy.

So what was I doing out at St Priest? The answer is that as there was no local football at all this week I had to cast the net rather wide, and I ended up at St Priest. To my surprise, the 1st XI of St Priest don’t play in local football but in regional football. That’s about 3 levels higher up the pyramid than Pionsat’s 1st XI. Anyway, they were playing in the Cup against a team from down south somewhere and so I wandered over there to watch.

The match wasn’t as good as I was expecting. St Priest were deservedly beaten by a better team, even if the opponents didn’t have much idea in the final third of the field. St Priest were rather lacking all round although they had their chance – hitting the bar and the post and a couple of their forwards taking one step too many with the ball, or trying to do the difficult thing when the simpler thing would have been much more appropriate.

After that I went round to Liz and Terry’s to drop off some stuff, and I was treated to tea which was very nice. And not just tea, but a doggy bag too – and home-made hot cross buns. Aren’t I the lucky one?

And this morning? Well, to be honest, 11:15. Say no more.

-3

Sunday 8th April 2012 – Well, apart from the fact …

… that I have a splitting headache and I’ll be off to bed in an instant, I had another afternoon out. If I’m not careful I’ll be making a habit of it.

But with it being Easter I had a day off and did absolutely nothing at all. Highlight was watching a DVD of a Nosby Stills and Crash concert that has been hanging around here for years. I’m going to have to find a good program on the internet to rip the sound-track to use on the radio programme.

But before anyone says anything, because it has been mentioned in the past, there are no issues with doing this – ripping sound tracks and the like – because with it being a bona fide radio station (in fact, all of those for whom we contract are) they pay a licence to the Performing Rights Society or whatever the French equivalent of that, and so whatever they broadcast (which includes our programmes and the contents thereof) is covered. Just so that you know.

In fact it rather reminds me of the time back in the 1980s when I was driving a tour bus for Shearings Holidays and showing a copied video-cassette of Carry On Camping to the passengers. This passenger came up to me and said “I’m going to report you”
“Why?” I asked
“Isn’t that a pirated video you are showing?”
“Well, as a matter of fact it is”
“Well I’m going to prosecute you!”
“No you aren’t” I told him
“Why not?”
“Because what you do is that you report me to the copyright holder and the copyright holder sues the owner of the coach – as they have the vicarious liability of the actions of their employees”
“So who owns the copyright of the ‘Carry-on’ films?” asked my passenger
“The Rank Organisation” I replied
“And who owns this coach?”
“The Rank Organisation”
Mr know-it-all then went and sat back down again, suitably deflated.

I hate doing this kind of thing to people, but sometimes, it does have to be said that anyone who sticks his head above the parapet deserves to catch all of the flak.
This afternoon, Marianne rang me up. If you remember from last year, the town of Pionsat has bought a derelict art-deco maison de maître in the town with the aim of demolishing it and building a new salle de fêtes. We went round to have a good look at it at the time.

It seems that they have now started to dismantle it and Marianne noticed that the rear door had gone so that people could now enter into it without the key to have a good look around. Was I doing anything?

Needless to say, I don’t need to be asked twice, so off I shot into town and we went for a prowl around.

I took loads more photos to add to the huge stack that I took the last time I was here, including this splendid one of the village of La Cellette right across the valley with the magnificent La Cellette viaduct on the long-abandoned Montlucon-Gouttieres branch of the Paris-Orleans railway in the background

After our little clandestine wandering we then went for a wander around the outskirts of the town looking for the traces of the ditch that brought the water from the river down to the old water-mill as the owners of the mill want to restart the water wheel.

After much protracted searching we managed to trace the entire track all the way back to the river. It’s been fairly well damaged and needs quite some expense to bring it back to a decent state.

As well as that, Marianne also gave me a pile of press cuttings from the local paper – all stuff that I had contributed over the last year or so. I keep a file of that kind of stuff – you never know when it might come in handy.

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Saturday 7th April 2012 – I managed to get out today

Yes – I made it into St Eloy for some shopping – such is the highlight of my life. Mind you, I spent a few bob. Another plant sale, and so I bought three soft fruit bushes – two redcurrants and one blueberry – a tray of 12 cauliflowers and a tray of 12 lettuce.

Another thing was that a few months ago LIDL had on sale a kind or remote speaker that looked like a mushroom. It takes a micro-SD card, but also there’s a small jack that fits into a small headphone socket and there’s also a USB connector for charging up the internal battery and running the sound system off a laptop computer. They were on sale for €12:99 and I was humming and hawing about one, but today they were reduced to €9:99 and so I bought one.

And honestly, I’m impressed with it. The sound is really good, much better than I expected. And I’m looking forward to trying it with a micro-SD card when I’m working somewhere. But the main reason for having it is that the phone that I bought in Canada takes a micro-SD card and so I bought a 16GB card, recorded all of my music onto it, and used the phone as a walkman-type of thing. I wasn’t impressed with the earphones though and so I can plug this speaker into the phone and listen to it like that.

And so back home, in between the phone calls, I planted the cauliflower, the fruit bushes and 6 of the lettuce. I’ll give the other lettuce to Liz on Monday for her to plant.

This morning though, I went through the magazine that I received in the post and made a list of potential radio programmes that I can do. There must be a good half-dozen that I can squeeze out of that. And then I finished the one that I was doing, adding a bit more stuff that I came across that was relevant, and finishing off the additional notes for June. I’m cracking on with this.

Another thing that I needed to do was to transform a few radio programmes from *.wav format to *.mp3 format. And it took ages to find a freeware utility to do it. I had all sorts of difficulties doing that.

Now here’s a thing. You may remember that a few weeks ago I bought a copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
and so I went to watch it tonight on my new TV. And what surprised me is that the list of languages for subtitles available on disc is English, French and Dutch, whereas the spoken languages available are English, French and …. errrrr …. Flemish. Now I have never seen that before. The difference in language between Dutch and Flemish is far, far less than, say, French and Québecois, and usually a film company will go with either Dutch or Flemish – confident that those who know one will not notice the difference in the other – but to have them available as a mixed but exclusive option like this is totally bizarre. I’ve a good mind next time to listen to it in Flemish but read the Dutch subtitles and to see if I can spot the difference.

Ja, zeker!

-3

Friday 6th April 2012- I’ve had another day of being indoors

Yes, I’ve been hard at it today.

And I’ve been working as well. I mentioned briefly last night that I needed to look around for another subject to discuss on the radio for when we finish “speeding convictions” and as chance would have it the Postie brought me one of these little magazines that the bank sends me every so often.

This month there was tons of stuff in it, and there was also another little magazine that comes out every few months as a supplement, entitled “Family Matters”. And by ‘eck wasn’t there some good stuff in there too?

They did one a year ago which was “40 typical situations in France – true or false?” I copied those out and embellished them quite considerably, but I noticed in this magazine today that there were several readers’ questions. I’ve selected a couple of those and added them to the list of qestions – by the looks of things I can keep that going for ever if it keeps on like this.

But there were two subjects in there concerning important matters of everyday life in France that are treated quite differently from in the UK. So what I’ve done today is to dash off a quick 31kb of information about one of them. That took most of the day and there’s more to add as well. We normally do about 3 or 4 kb of information per programme so that’s about 8 programmes, plus whatever else I can haven’t added in yet. That should all keep the ball rolling for while I’m away and also for when I come back too for the first month. I’ve also made a start on the additional information for the recording session when I come back.

Then, of course, there’s the second topic. I won’t do that right now though – I’m going to have a rest for a bit once I’ve finished what’s on hand. I deserve it.

But I tell you what – sitting here with a pile of papers, extracting relevant information, turning it into a play for two actors – we were discussing on a “social network” the other day the benefits that we gained from studying with the Open University. I wouldn’t have been able to do too much of this preparation for the radio without having had the kind of preparation that I was taught at the University, that’s for sure.

And another small matter that is worthy of note – all the paperwork that I receive is in legalese French. I have to translate it all into vernacular English in my head while I’m doing it. I just thought that I would mention that.

And that’s not all I did today either. Liz rang me up and asked me to run an errand round to some clients of Terry’s who live nearby. Then Percy Penguin (who doesn’t feature half as much in these pages as she might) rang up for a chat, and then Dave from Hexham rang up with further information from yesterday and to give me a job of work to do for Sunday.

And to think that I came to live here for a rest! Still, it keeps me out of mischief.

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Thursday 5th April 2012 – I’ve not been out much …

… today either. It’s another day where I’ve been working on radio stuff – this is fast becoming a full-time job.

With the aim of getting as far ahead as possible, I’ve been concentrating on the Radio Arverne programmes. As you know, these are in four parts – namely the events (organised by Liz), the selected track of the week (just grab the nearest CD and look for something about 3 minutes long), the practical information, and the additional notes – namely useful French phrases, a recipe and gardening hints.

What I did today until about 16:30 was 6 weeks worth of the additional notes. Get those out of the way.

After that I went outside for a few hours in the garden. I made up some tubs for the lavender, cleaned a few of the herb beds and planted the thyme and rosemary that I bought the other week. There was some rosemary in there that looked like it had died so I pulled it up – but the root system still looked good and healthy so I planted it in the cloche – let’s see what it does there.

As well as that, I cleared out some of the space where I’ll be planting the rose bushes, and I did some more weeding. With all of the rainfall after the weeks of beautiful sunny weather the weeds are going berserk.

I had a couple of phone calls this evening too. One from this guy in Canada and another one from Dave from Hexham, who contributes every so often to the comments on this blog. He is working right now on a new business idea and so we had a long chat about that – that is, until his phone card expired.

Tomorrow will be another morning in. I need to choose a new topic for the practical information for the radio programme and then write a pile of stuff about it. I’ll have to go through a pile of magazines and journals that I have here and see what I can find.

-2

Wednesday 4th April 2012 – I’ve hardly been out …

… of the house all day. I’ve been busy writing radio programmes.

We’re launching a new series of programmes on Radio Tartasse on Thursday and Sunday evenings at 20:00 – what is known under the generic term of AOR, or album-orientated rock music. Two programmes every month – one which will feature just album tracks with some kind of chat in between the tracks, and the other which features a 5-minute introduction and then 55 minutes of one particular group doing a selection of live tracks that I edit and cobble together to make it a kind of live show.

It was the kind of thing that I reckoned would be pretty straightforward and easy seeing the size of my record collection and the amount of useless information that has collected inside my head, but it’s far from it. It’s taking much more time than I imagined. I’ve been at it all day from about 11:00 and I’ve managed to do 4 programmes.

We’ve already recorded four of them – for the months of April and May, but I want to get well ahead while the getting is good and so I wrote another four – two months’ worth – and we’ll be recording them in due course.

And that’s it, really. Nothing else. Doesn’t time fly quickly when you are enjoying yourself?

-2

Tuesday 3rd April 2012 – Remember the other day …

… when I told you about all of the trees in the garden bursting into life in that couple of hours? Anyway, I thought that you might like a photo of the blooming things.

It was taken out of the little window at the top of the stairs in the attic – a favourite point of view of mine for the garden. Just compare it with any of the other photos taken from the same spot just recently and you will see the difference.

Another thing that you might notice in the photo is the change in colour of the soil. There’s a reason for that – it was positively precipitating down outside – the first time for 13 days that we have had any kind of precipitation. Just as well too, because I was getting pretty low with the old water, but the 8mm of rain that we had – that filled up the water butts considerably.

Mind you, at one stage it was touch and go. A huge pile of accumulated dust and dirt just have been washed straight down the pipe and it blocked the filter. No water was getting through to the puzzolane filter, and the water was backing up in the system. I had to disconnect the pipe – emptying about 30 litres of water all over me, clean the filter and then reassemble it. It did the trick and allowed the water to circulate through the filters and into the water butts.

So apart from that, what else did I do? Well, emptied the composting toilet, such is the highlight of the exciting life that I live around here. And have I described the composting toilet? Basically, it’s a stainless steel 20-litre casserole pot with lid. I pad it out with shredded cardboard packaging and then line it with a biodegradable bin liner. At the bottom of the bin liner I put a pile of shredded telephone directory pages (nice and absorbent). You take off the lid, do what you need to do (the casserole is in a nice wooden housing that I built, cover it with a ladleful of mixed sawdust and wood ash, and then put the lid back on. When it’s full, the contents are emptied into the compost heap and we start all over again.I can do that because, as regular readers of this rubbish will know, I’m a vegan. You can’t do this if you are a carnivore

As well as that, I tidied up in here. With being so busy over the last few weeks I hadn’t tidied up at all and the place was looking totally depressing. I’m useless at tidying up, so it’s always quite an effort, but now at least it looks a little more civilised. And I found a few important things that I had mislaid so at the end of the day it’s always worthwhile tidying up.

But I wish that I knew the secret of how to be tidy.

-3

Monday 2nd April 2012 – Coming back …

… from the Anglo-French group tonight, I noticed in my rear-view mirror just how nicely Pionsat was looking this evening.

There’s a certain spot near the old Roman Road up here where there’s a good view down into the valley and I’ve had one or two decent photos from there.

In case you are wondering, which I’m sure that you are, although I live 5 or 6 kms from Pionsat there’s a height difference of about 140 metres – Pionsat being at about 530 metres and me being at 667 metres – and so just here at this spot there must be 120 metres of difference.

What caught my eye, and if you look very carefully to the left of centre, is the “tent” that is covering the exposed roof of of the Medieval chateau in the centre of the town. It’s being replaced at the moment and so they have this plastic tarpaulin thing over the top. There are a few lights burning away underneath the tarpaulin, and the whole thing looked from here as if it was some kind of Chinese lantern. It really was bizarre.

So this morning I was recording radio programmes again, and then I came home and did some gardening for the rest of the day. I had another fire of all of the dried weeds and so on, and then went round pulling up yet more to add to the conflagration. This place is looking quite a bit different from a couple of months ago.

I’ve also planted the new potatoes. They are where they should be for now, and I’ll be intrigued to see what they might do. They are churning up the large bed that I laid out this year – the one that will eventually be the home of the fruit bushes. I also wasted a few surplus watts of energy on attacking the hole that I’m trying to drill through the wall. but another half hour and I reckon that I’ve advanced maybe a millimetre. there’s something not quite right about this.

All of the plants that I’ve been buying these last couple of weeks – they are now in a plastic box that has about 20mm of water in it – to give them all a good soaking before I plant them this week.

But never mind the exertions – I stopped for lunch at about 14:30, had a sandwich and a coffee, and the next thing that I remember was that it was 16:05. All of this work is taking it out of me.

-2

Saturday 31st March 2012 – WELL, I’VE SEEN SOME …

… bad football matches in my time, but I was totally taken aback by the one that I saw this evening.

Phone call at 19:00 to tell me that the floodlights at Pionsat hadn’t been fixed and so FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s game planned for this evening is to be played tomorrow afternoon instead.

That had me at a loose end this evening and with no footy at Marcillat-en-Combraille, a quick glance at the scheduling told me that there was a Regional Elite game at St Gervais d’Auvergne where the home team was to play Orcines.

I’d never seen a Regional Elite game and so I went for a wander down there, and to be quite honest I’m not sure that it was worth the effort.

St Gervais were pretty dire and Orcines weren’t much better, even though they had a couple of veterans playing up front who had clearly done this kind of thing at a much higher level a few years ago, although these days their zimmer frames were something of a danger to the other players on the field.

Add to that the fact that the St Gervais keeper was having a real off-day (he surely can’t play like that at this level each week, can he?) and a 3-0 victory for the visitors was almost a foregone conclusion.

After that I popped round to Liz and Terry’s where some ginger cake needed eating, and then back here.

This morning though, I had to write the text for two radio shows. It’s getting all exciting with a new series of programmes, but it’s much more work than I ever imagined it to be.

I popped into St Eloy-les-Mines for shopping, and excelled myself here.

6 small shrubs that will (I hope) grow into a hedge at the back of the raised beds, 6 rose bushes to make a hedge just outside here, some rosemary and thyme plants and a couple of lavender bushes. I can’t believe that I’m buying things like this.

It isn’t like me at all to buy flowers – I suppose that it is symbolic of how much I am becoming settled here.

-3

Friday 30th March 2012 – WE WERE RADIOING TODAY …

… and so that involved a trip to Gerzat.

In the gorgeous glorious sunshine as well, even though it was less hot today.

This morning was therefore printing stuff off, and then going off to Sauret Besserve to pick up Liz.

We recorded 5 programmes, ao as to get ourselves well ahead of the game seeing as I’m having serious thoughts about going for a holiday again. I have the wanderlust, don’t I?

And then back home, via Liz’s to drop her off and for some coffee and vegan ginger cake.

On the way back I stopped off at the birdwatching site at the back of St Gervais d’Auvergne to take a few pics with the new zoom lens that I bought a while ago.

Again, it’s manual focus and that is causing a few difficulties.

And I’m beginning to realise that this was not the best of my decisions. Only one of the photos was worth keeping, and this was a shot of the church at Gouttières, about 10 miles away.

And you can see, running from to centre to mid-right the road that I take when I go home.

So, like the 50mm lens, it will work eventually and do the business once I can work out how to get it to do what I want.

Back here, I had the TV on again and watched a DVD of Steppenwolf Live at Louisville, Kentucky.

I bought this ages ago but the little DVD player didn’t go it justice. The new AKAI though is magnificent and the sound, turned right up as befits any rock concert, is the best CD-type of stereo player that I have around here.

I just hope that this TV lasts the pace. If I can get 5 years out of it, it will be excellent

But one thing about this Steppenwolf concert – there are only four musicians on stage. John Kay on vocals and guitar, another guitarist, a drummer and a keyboard player. No bassist.

But never mind how you can possibly play “Born To Be Wild” and “Pusher” (to name but two tracks) without a bassist, there is nevertheless a bass being played somewhere out there, and it’s not being done on the foot pedals of the organ, as I once saw the famous bass line of Darkness (11/11) played on stage by Van Der Graaf Generator when they didn’t have Nic Potter with them. It’s definitely a bass guitar

Overdubbing at a later date for the DVD? Perish the thought.

-5

Thursday 29th March 2012 – IT’S "NEW TOY" TIME AGAIN.

I told you the other day that I had ordered a new DVD player – an AKAI 12-volt television, 16″ screen, with built-in DVD player.

Anyway, it turned up this morning.

First thing that I did was to cut off the cigarette lighter plug (I hate these) from the 12-volt connector lead, wired a fuseholder into the lead and then wired it up to an American plug.

Regular readers of thie rubbish will remember, but for the benefit of newer readers, I have a 12-volt electrical circuit running around the house, using American plugs and sockets.

I use them for the simple reason that they take heavier cable and I use 6mm cable for the circuit – the bigger the better to avoid voltage drop.

Anyway, the cable works and so does the DVD player. It even played one of the DVDs that wouldn’t work on the old in-car DVD, and the sound quality is exceptional.

I’m really pleased with it.

Only downside is the remote control. The keys are moulded plastic with the symbols moulded in., the same colour (light grey) as the keys. And so it’s really difficult to tell which key that you need to press, especially in the dim light.

But that’s a minor point.

Apart from that, then besides another couple of hours on the computer, I was outside in the garden for much of the day.

Another bed has been dug over and the remainder of the onion sets were planted and a few lines of leeks were sown.

After that I did a little hoeing and planted the beans that I had soaking, some cabbage, sprouts and cauliflower seeds.

I’ve also planted all of the raspberry plants that Liz kindly gave me in exchange for the lettuce from the other week.

All in all, it’s been another busy day today.

-4

EPIC HALL

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