Category Archives: Les Guis

Monday 27th February 2012 – IT WASN’T QUITE …

… as warm up herethis morning.

A mere 13.4°C up here in fact.

But considering that the temperature had dropped to -2.2°C outside last night and that I had no heating on in here last night either, I was quite impressed by that.

I’m wondering in fact whether or not it’s staying warmer up here since I finished the ceiling in the room below. It does seem like it.

This morning I went off to Sauret-Besserve and picked up Liz, and then we made our way down to Gerzat to record the Radio Arverne programmes. And wasn’t that a farce? They have had new computers and new programs installed and Bernard didn’t know how to work it all.

It took quite a bit of telephone assistance together with a little first-hand aid from Yours Truly to organise everything.

At one stage it looked like we might have to come back and do it all over again – an idea that didn’t impress me too much.

Instead of being a quick hour or so it ended up more like two and a half hours. Both Liz and I had things to do this afternoon so that meant hurrying back up here to get ready, and then off to Radio Tartasse in Marcillat en Combraille to carry out another little task, more of which anon.

Today we had well over 11 hours of solar energy – a huge improvement on winter’s previous best of 10:49. It seems that the weather has suddenly opened up.

So much so that when I came back from Radio Tartasse I did a little gardening – not on my garden but in the lane there are several small trees starting to grow and their branches have been scratching the side of Caliburn. I spent a pleasant half hour or so cutting them down.

I had a fire up here tonight although it wasn’t strictly necessary. And the temperature went to over 25°C while I cooked my baked potatoes and ratatouille.

It won’t be much longer before I have to abandon the idea of cooking up here on the stove. It’s warming up far too much.

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Sunday 26th February 2012 – ONE THING …

… that I can never understand is how it is that it can be 4:30 in the morning and I’m wide awake and I only go to bed because it’s force of habit – and yet next morning I wake up, don’t move for ages, slowly come round, eventually make sure that I’m wide awake and then get up because there’s no point in lying in any longer, and it’s only 09:20.

I don’t understand that at all.

And so despite it being yet another day of rest, I did the script for the new radio show, more of which anon, and then went off toi watch the football at Pionsat as the season has restarted.

I was spoilt for choice – FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI were at home to Chanat or the 2nd XI were away at Lapeyrouse?

Now I’ve never been to Lapeyrouse for a match, believe it or not, but the 1st XI match sounded much more interesting and so I waited until 14:50 and went down to the ground, only to find the game postponed.

GRRRRRRRRRR!!!!

If only someone had let me know!

Mind you, it’s probably as well that I didn’t go, because the 2nd XI were soundly spanked by the opposition.

But what was remarkable today is that I had to cook my tea downstairs in the verandah on the gas stove. Reason – I’ve not had the fire lit all day. When I woke up it was 17°C and it’s currently 15.5°C.

Isn’t this all a big change from two weeks ago?

-3

Saturday 25th February 2012 – AFTER MY TRIUMPHS …

… of yesterday, I celebrated by doing … errr … badger all.

That’s right. A nice lazy days today.

And I reckoned that I deserved one after all of the hard work that I have put in over the last week or so on my presentation.

Mind you, I didn’t quite do nothing at all. In fact I managed a little (but not much) tidying up and later went down to St Eloy les Mines to do the shopping this afternoon around Carrefour and LIDL. A couple of hours out around the shops and even that wasn’t exciting because I met no-one whom I knew and didn’t buy anything out of the ordinary.

And back here, I carried on with the rest of my Day of Rest – and see if I care.

Friday 24th February 2012 – WELL, THAT WAS EXCITING!

Two hours on my feet in front of about 25 people doing my presentation of the Trans-Labrador Highway. Loads of people whom I knew there too which was really nice.

And doing it all in French as well!

And It went down quite well too, much to my surprise.

The thing that I reckon is most important about living in new surroundings is to make an effort to integrate and to take an active role in community affairs. And so that’s my bit done for the next few years.

Anyway, it’s my birthday today so happy birthday to me of course. And in keeping with tradition I did my best not to do anything today. That’s what birthdays are all about of course.

But it didn’t quite work out like that as I had to redo the presentation (and it STILL didn’t work on anyone’s computer except mine and isn’t that a mystery?) and then I had a surprise visit from Terry to wish me a happy birthday, bring me a birthday cake (thanks, Liz) and a couple of birthday presents, to wit one cement mixer and a box of screwdriver bits.

It’s really nice when your friends understand instinctively your needs.

So that was today, really. But here’s a piece of surprising information – apart from about an hour earlier this morning, I’ve had no heat on in here today. And it’s well after 02:00 and the temperature is still over 15°C.

-2

Thursday 23rd February 2012 – HAVING FINALLY …

… broken the back of my presentation, I can get on and do other things.

This morning I cut up another pile of wood for in here, and doesn’t the lean-to start to look empty now, especially as I discovered that a major proportion of the heap in the middle is actually bricks and stone from when the wall collapsed all those years ago.

Moving some of that stuff out has made quite a difference, that’s for sure.

It’s going to be a while though before I can finish in there though – a term of years is not unlikely. The more wood I cut up, the more that I seem to find.

I also had a good look at the window in the bedroom. Having given the matter considerable thought, I now reckon that I know how I’m going to do the surround. And the next chance that I have to work in there, I’ll be making a start.

But tomorrow I’ll be printing off my notes because the presentation is at 20:00 tomorrow evening. So just you watch the printer break down or run out of ink

But assuming that we do go ahead, everyone is invited!

20:00 at the village hall in Virlet

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Wednesday 22nd February 2012 – GRRRRR!

This presentation is getting on my wick.

Having been at it all day yesterday and all day today, I am much nearer my goal but it hasn’t half been a struggle.

The issue is that PowerPoint seems to grind out at 1mb of space and everything after that is lost. That means that only 37 of the slides are being displayed, instead of the … gulp … 123

The answer is of course simple. To prepare four different presentations of about 30 slides each and that should keep it under the limit.

Simple, you might think, except that OpenOffice doesn’t seem to offer the possibility to delete multiple selections of slides. It seems to be just one at a time, and it has ben taking me forever to do that.

There must be a solution because my whole theory about computer programs is that I’m not the only one surely who wants that facility, so it must be there somewhere. It’s not the kind of simple software function that a software designer would have missed.

But I’m blowed if I can find it.

So it’s been the laborious one-by-one procedure.

All day.

And I’m fed up

Totally

Tuesday 21st February 2012 – IT’S GETTING CLOSE …

… to my presentation time.

For those of you not clued up to what is happening, a few months ago I was at a meeting of the village committee here in Virlet where they were discussing the programm for this year.

Once a month, they have an “event” when everyone is invited, and they ask someone to animate it. When they were deciding on the events, they had most of the meetings covered, but one date stuck out like a sore thumb – 24th February.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that 24th February is a date of special significance for me, and so it seemed like an opportunity. As you know, I’m all very much in favour of integration and participating in community events. I should be feeding something back into the community of which I am part.

As a result I offered to animate the meeting on that date, and I’m doing a presentation of my 2010 trip around the Trans-Labrador Highway

Much of it was pretty straightforward but I seem to have run aground somewha.

for some reason that I haven’t quite grasped, a presentation done in OpenOffice and exported as a Powerpoint presentation only displays the first 37 slides (which coincidentally runs to about 1mb) instead of the entire load of … gulp … 123 slides.

I’ve not yet found a workaround for it either.

And this is where I am at the moment

And I only have until Friday to do it too.

Monday 20th February 2012 – I’VE HAD SOMETHING …

… of a busy day today.

And it started, believe it or not, with me being up and about before the alarm clock went off – something that doesn’t happen every day.

So after an early breakfast I stayed in and spent much of the time on the computer working on another project for the radio, more of which anon.

But this involved making a few downloads from the internet. And as I watched these downloads unfold I noticed the internet speed dropping slowly but surely. Clearly something is up, and it’s high time I fixed it.

That meant disabling and then deleting the MacAfee anti-virus suite, which is something pretty appalling and I can’t think whyever it is that computer manufacturers bundle it in.

Once that was out of the way I went back to prehistoric computer protection, and installed the latest free AVG anti-virus software, and then Ad-Aware, Spybot and C-Cleaner, the same as I have been using for years.

Sure enough, 2 viruses, 140-odd adware links and the odd bit of spyware, and half a gb of bunged-up old temporary files all littering the computer and after quite a bit of patience and persuasion, they have all gone.

Now I seem to have a leaner, fitter computer.

Mind you, trying to download AVG at 9.3kbs took absolutely hours, but it was worth it and I’m hoping that I can win back the time in due course.

It’s all very well having virus protection, but not just any old virus protection though. You need one that works quietly, quickly and effectively without pinching all of your resources.

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Sunday 19th February 2012 – AFTER THE EXERTIONS …

…or lack thereof yesterday and having crashe dout without any tea, I was out like a light until all of about 07:00 on Sunday morning.

Of course, that time of the morning is far too early for a weekday, never mind a Sunday, and so I rolled over and went back to sleep. When I did wake up I noticed that it had been raining.

Liz even mentioned that at about 09:00 round by hers it had been snowing, but what do I know about 09:00 on a Sunday?

I did almost nothing at all today except deal with some payments I had to make on eBay – although I did make myself two pots of coffee with the 12-volt coffee machine.

The height of decadence.

Later on I went round to Liz and Terry’s at Sauret-Besserve to rehearse our radio programmes. Liz must have known that I hadn’t had my usual Saturday night curry, because she had made a gorgeous chickpea curry.

And not only that, she made me up a doggy bag for tomorrow and that has made my day as well.

-4

Saturday 18th February 2012 – WASN’T SATURDAY A WEIRD DAY?

The temperature in here was 15.4°C when I woke up this morning. And during the course of the day it actually increased without any heat input at all. So much so that at one stage we had 20°C in here.

Mind you, that’s not surprising. Outside we had as much as 16.3°C and in the verandah, over 25°C.

It really was an exceptional day.

So what to do with the surplus electrical energy? After all, no point in heating up here, as it was warm enough on its own.

No point in doing any washing either because although there is a lot to be done, I wasn’t sure if enough water had been melted.

The answer was to resurrect the 12-volt coffee machine. it needed a good clean as it hadn’t been used for a year or so but once it was up and running we managed a good pot of coffee. And why not?

What with electric heating, coffee machines and so on, it does make me wonder what I’m going to be having running next though.

But one of the drawbacks to the warm weather is that the fire, when I finally did light it up, never reached anything like hot enough to cook anything. I was burnt out of the room long before the fire warmed up.

Not that it mattered though because for some unaccountable reason I crashed out at 22:00 and apart from a brief 10 minutes of consciousness to take the readings and to switch off the computer, that was that.

Friday 17th February 2012 – I FINISHED THE CEILING …

… just before lunchtime. And I’m really impressed with how it has turned out, even if it did take ages to do.

And there’s 60mm of insulation underneath that tongue-and-grooving, and that is what is probably helping to keep my little attic warm. I remember just how cold it was in here when I first moved in and there wasn’t any insulation at all.

But it was colder in here this morning too – a mere 14.4°C. Positively arctic, I mused to myself. And that’s a difference too from 9°C from the other day, although the difference between 0.3°C outside last night (first 24-hour period for ages that it didn’t get below freezing) last night and -16°C the other night is even more spectacular.

So after lunch I cleaned the pathways outside now that everywhere is warming up. I can walk about the place without sliding over now.

And then it was back into the bedroom. All the joints in the plasterboard on the wall by the window are now sealed and filled, and I’ve almost finished sealing in the window.

I started off using mastic for that but then I remembered that Terry gave me a load of mastic-type glue that he didn’t think too much of, and so I used a pile of that.

That has gone in from the inside, but I’ll buy some proper stuff tomorrow to do the outside.

Once the window is properly sealed in, I can do the window= framing in the bedroom. The two sides and the top will (of course) be in tongue-and-grooving and I’ve some pine board that will do for the windowsill.

-4

Thursday 16th February 2012 – WHEN I WOKE UP THIS MORNING …

… der der der der der …

but doesn’t that have all the makings of a really good blues song?

However, to coin a phrase, since I’ve been on the Prozac I haven’t had the blues for years.

Anyway, when I woke up this morning the temperature in here was a massive 15.4°C. And it’s been a long time since it’s been that warm in here without a fire. It just goes to show, firstly, how much things have warmed up outside, and secondly, the benefits of heaping a pile of scrap wood on the fire just as you go to sleep

It was warm outside as well – all of 2°C – and it’s been a long time since it’s been that warm as well. 4mm of rain we had through the night and while it hasn’t washed away the snow, it’s now a messy sticky quagmire outside.

First job was to look at this solar spotlight thing that I bought a few weeks ago and which didn’t want to work. Once I’d worked out how to dismantle … “dispersontle” – ed … it, the rest was easy.

The battery wasn’t fitted correctly. It was only a 600mAh battery though, and so I charged up a spare 2500mAh battery and fitted that.

This evening it lit up at last. It’s not very bright but from where I’ve installed it, it lights up the pathway from where I park Caliburn down to the side of the house. And that was what I wanted it to do.

Next job was to fix the anemometer that didn’t want to record its data. A flat battery (that’s the third it’s had since I bought it in the autumn!) and a badly-seated mounting sorted that out, but each time the battery is relmoved, you need to recalibrate the computer, and I can see that being a pain with three batteries in five months

The rest of the day, in between the phone calls, I spent on the roof of the bedroom. I cracked on as well and I reckon that there’s about 3 hours’ work to do there.

Once that’s done, I need to deal with the sealing of the joints in the plasterboard – and now I have the water to do that. I also have to seal the window so that I can build up around it.

Tonight I had a gorgeous tea. Baked potatoes of course, but I put a baking tray in there, lightly oiled, and cut up an onion and some garlic to fry on it. Then, a small tin of mushrooms and a ladle of tinned vegetables. All finished off by some curry and gravy powder into the resultant liquid. It really was nice.

But a downside of this warm weather is that with having to heat up the oven sufficiently to cook the food, the temperature soared to an astonishing 24°C. It’s now 5 hours since I last put any fuel on the fire, I’m sitting here in shirt sleeves (not even a pullover) and it’s still over 20°C.

And in other news, I was chatting on the phone to this Canadian guy whom I’m working with. We were talking about fires and I was saying that I was looking for a woodstove that has an oven and also a water boiler, to fit in the cabin that I’m going to build on my plot of land in Canada.

“Ohh – I have an old one of those that I took out of here a few years ago. It’s in my shed – I’ll sort it out for you”

Blimey!

-4

Wednesday 15th February 2012 – THIS WATER ISSUE …

… might have solved itself.

And for several different reasons too.

f you see that icicle in the photo here that I took a week or so ago (the weather was nothing like that today of course) it started to melt today. And so I simply stuck a bucket underneath it.

Meantime, I took one of those plastic drinks bottles, the type with a very long pointed neck, and cut the bottom off. Then I stuffed a load of fine fibreglass mesh up the neck.

Each time a bucket was filled, I poured it through my home-made filter into one of these proprietary jug filters and let it filter through there, and then I decanted it into my water container.

I managed to capture about 40 litres over the course of the afternoon and that’s eased the situation considerably.

However like most things, solutions don’t come on their own. Like London buses, after you’ve been waiting for hours, three turn up all at once.

And so it is with this. By the end of the afternoon the water butt had started to unfreeze itself.

Not that that’s a quick solution, because I looked inside the rear tank and that’s a frozen mass of ice, but I still managed 5 litres out of there as well.

And the third solution? Well, after all the freezing weather that we’ve had just recently, it’s p155ing down outside. All the snow will be gone by tomorrow if it carries on like this, and then we will be in the floods again. Then we’ll be having a different kind of water problem.

Despite a constant stream of interruptions today, I’ve now started on the final row of the tongue-and-grooving in the bedroom.

That involved finishing off the previous row, moving piles of stuff around the room, and then mixing some polyfilla to fill in the joins between the wood and the insulation that is already in the ceiling.

Maybe if I have a decent day tomorrow I can crack on with this. It would be nice to have it finished for the weekend.

One thing that has helped is that this row is by far the narrowest of them. When I’ve been doing the other rows and cutting down lengths of tongue-and-grooving, I’ve always been left with leftover bits that wouldn’t fit anywhere.

I’ve been labelling them with the size, and these are all fitting into the row that I’m doing now. This will save me a load of time cutting up full-size lengths.

For tea tonight I had ratatouille, green beans and baked potatoes. This time the potatoes were done properly and it was one of the nicest meals I’ve had for ages. It was definitely a good plan to move the kitchen up here for the duration.

-2

Tuesday 14th February 2012 – IT WAS A PLEASURE …

… to wake up this morning with a temperature of 13.5°C up here in the room. It’s been a while since I’ve had a temperature like that.

Mind you, what wasn’t a pleasure was being woken up by a phone call at some ungodly hour of the morning. However, it did concern work so I can’t complain too much I suppose, even if it did get me off on the wrong foot.

After all of that, I went to beat the bounds of the property. As you know, we had a right caning of snow through the night and I wanted to see what the weather had done to the place.

The answer is, as you might expect, that I’m properly snowed in and I shan’t be going anywhere for a bit. Luckily I had the foresight to leave Caliburn up at he top of the bank

As an aside, you can see the Sankey trailer and the Minerva, and also the old orange central heating tank that Simon gave me to use to store biofuels in.

And while I was checking up on the house, I had a brainwave, And it’s so simple that I’ve no idea why I never thought of it before – and I’m kicking myself for having suffered like this these last couple of weeks.

And so I dashed off for a rummage in the barn.

In the apartment in Brussels I had a small white kitchen table with two drop leaves and I remember bringing it down here. That had to be around somewhere and eventually I found all of the pieces.

I brought it up into the attic and assembled it in the room, and laid all of the kitchen stuff on it. It’s now making quite a useful kitchen worktop up here and I wished that I had remembered it earlier.

This afternoon I didn’t manage to do very much as I had a whole series of phone calls one after the other, and so it was pretty much a wasted day. Still, there will be other days.

Tea was baked potatoes and spicy beans, cooked in the oven. This was an excellent buy, this new woodstove.

But the temperature outside just now is astonishing – minus 1.6°C. That’s over 10°C improvement from last night. If that kind of temperature transforms itself into a decent daytime temperature, I might even have some water tomorrow.

And not before time either – I’m now reduced to melting buckets of snow.

-2

Monday 13th February 2012 – I HAD MY FIRST …

… culinary disaster tonight – almost inevitable that there would be one sooner or later.

Returning home after the Anglo-French group meeting (hardly a group meeting, there was just me, myself and I there) it was a wicked 6.4°C in my little room. That called for some desperate measures.

I’d finished off the beans and chips last night and so that meant pizza this evening. And I soon had a roaring blaze going – one that had the room up to 18°C in under an hour.

Unfortunately it was rather too roaring and it burnt the base of the pizza and of the garlic bread. I’ve never ever had that before – it just goes to show you what you can do when you really try. Especially as the rice pudding was cooked to perfection, and that’s a first as well

But this morning, in the cold and damp overcast weather I had another marathon woodcutting session in the lean-to. I’m cutting up the wood that is in there. It’s perfectly dry and been that way for years hence I can burn it up here straight away without having to leave it standing for a year or so.

That explains the roaring inferno that I had this evening.

Apart from that, I’ve been working on the ceiling of the bedroom again. It’s taking ages to do, but it won’t half look nice when it’s finished.

Tonight it didn’t go cold again. It just stayed hovering around the -3°C mark.

And at 18:00 the heavens opened and we had about a ton and a half of snow dropped on us.

It’s still snowing now in fact. Haven’t times changed?

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EPIC HALL

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