Category Archives: Les Guis

Saturday 17th December 2011 – NEXT TIME …

… that I do this crossing, I shall book a couchette.

I enjoyed the trip – easily one of the best crossings that I have ever had and I’ll be doing it again. But it’s so uncomfortable to curl up in a corner – there just aren’t any corners in which to curl up.

And when I discovered that a couchette would set me back a mere £20:00 if booked in advance (they were all sold out on this trip – I did check), well, it’s a foregone conclusion.

This journey saves me a couple of hours and about 10 litres of fuel over driving to Calais, and it puts me in a much better position for going up to the Midlands and the north, missing out all of London and the M25.

A couchette would more-than pay for itself, I reckon.

We were decanted into Le Havre at dawn and at a leisurely pace, took me less than 8 hours to reach home. The roads are excellent, as are most French roads, but these were comparatively quiet. I even managed to fit a little shopping in on the way home.

I beat the snow home – but only just. A huge pile of it had followed me all the way from the coast. And it was taters in here. Absolutely freezing in my attic, although the wood stove soon sorted that out.

And while I had been away the place had been ravaged by 75 kph winds. That generated a few amps of electricity, I can tell you.

So I’m not doing much now. A bit of food – curled up by the fire, and here I’m staying to catch up with my beauty sleep.

-3

Saturday 10th December 2011 – SINCE WHEN …

… has one day’s blog started with a full account of what happened the next morning?

It’s not a very usual occurrence, I know, but it does happen to me now and again – usually because I don’t keep “normal” hours like everyone else. Years of working nights driving taxis and coaches means that I’m more “nocturnal” than “diurnal”.

My days usually finish when I go to bed, no matter what time that might be. And when there have been days when I haven’t gone to bed at all – which also happens very occasionally, I find a convenient break-point.

And so I hit the road tomorrow at 00:30 with still a long way to go before the day is ended.

Today though, I had a very desultory, leisurely day. Taking it easy due to the long night which I knew that I was going to have.

And my heart wasn’t really in the packing and I didn’t really do as much as I should. As a result, I set off on probably the most ill-prepared voyage that I have ever made. And I have made a few of those in my life as well, as you can probably imagine.

The road to Le Havre took me on a merry, mazy way via Bourges, Orleans and Chartres.

Parts of the road were really quick and I was able to make quite good time, whereas others were … err … not so quick, especially when it came to navigating my way through the cities with the endless strings of traffic lights.

Finally I found a service area about 20 or so miles beyond Chartres and that’s where I went to sleep.

And it was freezing as well – frost and ice everywhere – but I’m not that easily defeated.

A few years ago I stripped an old Volvo saloon and that had heated seat pads in it. And so I wired one of them up to one of these 12-volt powerpacks, and you’ve no idea how warm my feet were in bed.

That is – until the powerpack’s battery went flat.

Friday 9th December 2011 – I WON’T BE …

… here tomorrow night either.

I’m going to the UK next week as you know, and I’ve been checking ferries.

And to my surprise, the ferry from Le Havre (2 hours closer to here than Calais) to Portsmouth (nearer to the Midlands than Dover) and return for Caliburn and Yours Truly is a mere €129.

Only problem is that the sailing is at 17:00 which would ordinarily mean an early start but as you know, I don’t do early. My plan is to leave here the night before and getting a couple of hours on the clock.

Anyway, this morning was rather … errr … late and had I not had a spam phone call I would probably still be in bed right now.

And then I had another call – someone wanting to visit. That meant no work of course, and tidying up in here instead, tip that it is. That took me quite a while.

So Nan came around and we discussed the initiative that she is doing for some organisation or other about co-projects (car-sharing and that kind of thing) in the area.

That’s the problem with being a minor celebrity … “chortle chortle” – ed … – people are always sounding you out for things like this. Not that I mind, of course. It’s nice to have visitors.

This evening I’ve been buying stuff on eBay. And getting it shipped to my mailbox in the UK. You’ve no idea how much money I’m saving by doing that. It’s the best £25 a month I’ve ever spent.

-2

Thursday 8th December 2011 – IT TOOK ME LONGER …

… to drive the final 40kms from the motorway service area to my supplier’s this morning than it did to drive from my house to the motorway service area last night.

Well, okay, it didn’t. But the two hours that I spent on the road certainly felt like it. Heavy traffic was one reason, but the other reason was that I had to drive down a long tunnel and The Lady Who Lives In The Satnav lost her bearings.

It took quite a while to organise myself there, but the fun started on the way back.

That took absolutely ages.

Firstly the The Lady Who Lives In The Satnav tried to send me down a peage with a height limit of 2 metres and so that was out. And from then on it kept on finding me impossible routes that led back to where I started.

Eventually I followed my nose out west along the Seine until I hit the Francilienne – the N104 – and then south until I hit the N7 to Fontainebleu – a long way round but it brought me home. And during all of this of course we had the traffic.

The road goes through the Forest of Fontainebleu and it’s quite a busy road used by any amount of truckers. And in each entry to each glade along the route there were … errrr … filles de joie in place waiting. I’ve not noticed that before

But now I’m home and exhausted. I’m off to a nice clean bed and tomorrow I’ll unload Caliburn.

-1

Wednesday 7th December 2011 – SO WHERE WAS I …

… last night when I should have been posting my blog entry on-line?

The answer was that I wasn’t here.

I was probably fast asleep on a Motorway Service Area somewhere on the edge of Paris.

Now that my stay here is going to be permanent (well, it always has been since 2007 but having sold my big apartment in Brussels in the summer, I now have no choice) I need to upgrade my electricity system.

The solar panels are of course permanent but things like the inverter, the batteries, the cabling and so on have been “job lots” picked up here and there and while they might be okay for a casual arrangement, things have changed.

I’ve ordered some additional panels and a new inverter, and … gulp … 8 200-zmp-hour sealed gel batteries, each one of which weighs about 60 kg, from my suppliers. And the delivery costs are astronomical, to say the least.

It works out to be far cheaper for me to travel there and collect them, so that was what I decided to do.

And I had a good drive there too. The Transport Cafe near Gien was open and so I even managed a shower, so I’m nice and clean, which makes quite a change for just recently.

But parts of the drive were exciting. At some small town round near Nemours somewhere, there are five or six traffic lights in sequence on the road through the place and they are always against you. And when I stopped at the first one the car behind me overtook me and drove slowly through the lights.

And did that all the way up to light number 5.

At number 6 you do have to stop as it’s a major road and I caught up with him there just as that turned to green – so I was past him again and back in front.

So now I’m settling down for a good sleep and I’ll tell you the rest tomorrow.

Tuesday 6th December 2011 – I HAD TO WAIT …

…. until this afternoon to get the internet connection back and working, but now I’m up and running with my super-duper new laptop.

And it’s taking some getting used to, I’ll tell you. Especially this “85% – 10 hours 25 minutes – left” on the battery indicator.

There are downsides to it, of course. It’s fairly slow – a lot slower than I was expecting. But then, battery life and light weight was what was quite important to me and I certainly have that.

It took an age to upload everything that I needed – programs and the like from off the internet and the external DVD drive (which, much to my surprise, I found quite easily amongst the rubble). But I bet that I’ve forgotten something quite important.

And when I can lay my hands on a 2.5″ external caddy, I’ll take the hard drive out of the old laptop and copy the data over. It’s all there, complete and uncorrupted (I hope).

All of that has taken me most of the day and there has been little time to do much else. As you know, I’m leaving here for the UK in a day or two and I need the laptop set up for then.

-2

Monday 5th December 2011 – UP WITH THE COCK …

… this morning.

But that’s enough about my personal habits, isn’t it?

This morning I was awake bright and early (for me, anyway) and after a rushed breakfast Caliburn and I hit the road for Montlucon, the Auchan, and the new computer which I had mentioned yesterday.

Mind you, on the way to the Auchan I had another think.

I remember that it had always been my plan at one time to buy one of these small notebook computers for travelling – lightweight, extremely portable, and the battery lasts for hours.

Not much in the way of facilities, but back at home, have an external screen, DVD recorder, mouse and keyboard for when I’m working at my desk. And had I not had a similar emergency in the UK last time, that would have been exactly what I would have done as well.

Musing on this thought, I wandered around the informatique section of the Auchan where they had a the huge selection of notebooks. One thing that caught my eye was an Acer Aspire 1 – 500GB of hard drive and 4gb of RAM, on offer at just €299.

Further enquiries revealed that they were sold out and there was only the display model left. And if I would take that, they would do me 10% off. Do bears go to picnics in the woods?

So now I’m the owner of a new lightweight notebook and a new keyboard. And believe it or not, there’s a DVD reader somewhere around here. There’s also a flat-screen that works off 12-volt over there on the bench, a mouse and an external keyboard somewhere too.

So I returned back here ready to start to work on my new toy, and the blasted internet is down.

Now there’s a surprise!

Sunday 4th December 2011 – YOU ARE PROBABLY ALL WONDERING …

… how come I didn’t post this entry on Sunday night as I usually do.

Or even Monday morning, which I do if I’m too tired to go on line.

The truth is that we have had a tragedy.

On Sunday morning when I was organising the football photographs and text from last night, the battery went flat on the laptop – which it does quite often, as you know.

And so I plugged it in to charge up, like you do, and went back after a couple of hours to start up work again. Switched the computer on – but nothing happened. No charge in the battery.

So after much messing around with AVO meters and the like, I worked out that power is getting to the recharging unit and out the other side, but it isn’t getting to the battery to charge it up. And nothing that I tried to do would seem to make it.

Mind you, it might be a tragedy, but it’s not a catastrophe as it might otherwise been, because it was on its last legs since it fell off the roof of the car in Canada in September, and it was surely only a question of time.

And as it happened, when I was in Montlucon at the Auchan the other day I had seen a laptop for sale at €449 that had 1TB of hard drive and 6gb of RAM. I quite liked the look of that so I shall be going for a little wander tomorrow, I reckon.

Good job that there was no footy this afternoon, wasn’t it?

Saturday 3rd December 2011 – I HAVEN’T DONE …

… anything at all today.

A miserable wet windy Saturday was enough to keep me up here.

All I’ve done is to tidy up (just a little), do a little work on the radio programme, and read a book on Canadian railways. It’s a long time since I’ve had a lazy day like that.

This evening I went to Pionsat with the new lens to watch FC Pionsat St Hilaire. I’ll post a pic up here so that you can see what it looks like, but action night shots at 1/640 on ISO1600, and sufficient light to do it as well is amazing.

And with being manual focus, the reaction time is instant.

However one slight drawback is that the focus doesn’t stay locked and I didn’t realise that. It floated off from infinity and I didn’t notice, and one or two pf the photos at least are not much good.

I’m curious to see what the rest are like

But I’m going to do that tomorrow. I’m pretty tired again right now. All of this lazing around is no good for me.

-4

Friday 2nd December 2011 – IT’S FRIDAY …

… but it’s not Five o’clock, and it’s not Crackerjack either. But it is the last Friday that I’ll be spending here for a week or two. I’m hoping to go to the UK at the end of next week.

And despite having gone to bed quite late last night, that didn’t stop me being wide awake at about 07:00 this morning. This sleep thing is becoming ridiculous.

Liz and I arrived at Radio Arverne’s place in Gerzat at about 10:40 for our 11:00 appointment and eventually it was about 11:47 before we started recording.

We did the four Radio Anglais programmes for December and then Bernard sprung it on me. Would I write another Christmas Special for an hour, to be broadcast in … errrr …. 2 weeks time?

I shall have to get my finger out, won’t I?

We got back to Sauret-Beserve 20 minutes late after all of that and I shot off to Montel-de-Gelat and the sawmill to pick up a load of timber.

I had to wait around there for ages as well as they didn’t (despite what they said on the ‘phone) have any treated wood so they treated it while I waited, and that took ages too.

And while I was there I was chatting with the staff and it turns out that the office girl is the wife of the Montel goalkeeper whose photo that I took was published in the paper the other week, and the office manager plays for Pontaumur and one of my photos of him scoring against Pionsat was published a few weeks before that.

There were two clients there from Pionsat too. One of them had an old Transit pick-up that was clearly custom-made. A PTAC of 3.3 tons for a start – that’s impressive. And he had so much wood dropped in it that it was sagging right down at the back end and he crawled all the way back to Pionsat at 40kph.

And when I returned home and unloaded my wood I realised that I had forgotten the demi-chevrons that I need to finish off the greenhouse.

D’ohhhh.

And so I went upstairs and crashed out for a while instead.

-2

Thursday 1st December 2011 – GOING TO BED EARLY …

… does you no good at all if you roll over onto your staples at 04:00. It’s flaming painful and you can’t go back to sleep again.

And so I was up early again and breakfasted, and then I went out to cut more wood. That’s a couple more of the old chevrons and the tree trunks from 2 years ago all ready to burn in my nice new wood stove, with which I am almost as impressed as I am with my galvanised steel dustbin.

But then I had another idea and I cleared a space near the big front gates and laid out a couple of pallets. And then I moved one of the wood piles – the one that was at the side of the lean-to. That’s now on the pallets right at the front of the house and will be easy to get to in the winter, whenever that might be.

That pile of wood was formerly at the side of the lean-to on a concrete pad that was formerly the base of a chicken coop. This concrete hardstanding is now covered with plastic roof tiles – I did a safari around the garden and hunted down all that I can find ready for doing that roof, whenever that might be.

I also took out the plywood from the back of Caliburn and I’ve stood that upon the concrete pad. Even though it’s for exterior use, I’ve covered it up with a tarpaulin to protect it for a while from the weather.

All that’s left in Caliburn is the window and that’s rather heavy. But I have a cunning plan for that, more of which anon.

When it went dark I fetched a shelving unit that I had forgotten and I have put it in what will be the bathroom. I’ve started making a tour of the upper floors rescuing tools and so on, so that I know where everything might be.

But that’s not so easy as there’s just so much stuff. I really ought to have a good tidy up sometime.

Wednesday 30th November 2011 – FATHER CHRISTMAS …

… came early – as in “this morning”.

Or rather, it was the man from DHL who came bearing gifts. And I now have a 50mm f1.4 lens, and a zoom lens of 70-300mm for the Nikon.

The zoom lens was something bought on a whim as it was second-hand and quite cheap as well, and it’s something that I’ve always promised myself if ever I saw one around.

The other lens cost a great deal of money and it has a specific purpose in that my footy photographs at night are nothing like as good as they ought to be and it’s high time that I did something about it. I either have not enough light on the subject or else they are taken too slow and hence they are blurred.

The 17-105mm lens that I have currently on the camera doesn’t stop down anything like far enough – about f4 is its limit. But then again zoom lenses like this are never any good in poor light conditions.

They both came from the USA and the taxes and fees cost half the purchase price of the articles. That’s a huge disappointment and is threatening international commerce.

Apart from that, this morning I chopped up another pile of firewood. This fire really is impressive now that I reckon that I’ve figured it out. While I was having my evening meal last night it warmed up the place from15.4°C to 22.5°C with just one log of wood, and the insulation kept the place as high as 16.5°C this morning.

And this afternoon I built a huge wooden box out of scraps of wood that I had lying around. The mice are getting everywhere these days and there’s nowhere to leave any fruit or veg where it will be safe.

I tried a plastic container but the stuff just sweated. Wood is the answer as the wood will absorb the sweat but you can’t buy wood boxes like you used to be able to do – hence the home-made variety.

And with a really late night last night and a 7:30 awakening, I’m whacked so I’m going to bed early. Well, early for me anyway.

And I forgot to add that it rained yesterday – 4.5mm. The first rain that we have had since 7th November.

-2

Tuesday 29th November 2011 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… my money again.

And if I keep on spending it like this I won’t have any left.

First thing was to go to Marcillat in order to record the Radio Anglais programmes for Radio Tartasse with Liz.

And from there it was to Montlucon.

At LIDL I bought nothing out of the ordinary but at Auchan I bought as well as the usual stuff a little present for Rob and Nicolette for having looked after me, and also a battery pack seeing as all mine are duff. There it was on sale and I said that at €29 it would be a good deal. But with an air compressor included and selling at €22.95 it was an even better deal.

At Brico Depot they had the plywood that I wanted. And 2mm thicker, it cost €9 less than at the other place. And so I now have all that I need. I’m not sure why though because I don’t have the scaffolding to fit it now, as I said yesterday.

What I can be doing instead though is to build the greenhouse but would you believe I forgot to buy the perspex for the roof.

D’ohhh! That was no good.

There’s an issue over my tubing as well. I can buy it from the steel mill at Montlucon but would you believe that a huge place like that (so huge it has its own railway network and locomotive – which you have seen before) they don’t have a bender.They’ve given me an idea where to go and so I’ll follow that up.

And I have my window! Hooray!!!! That’s safely in the van now.

But here’s a thing.

You’ll have noticed without doubt that I have been strangely quiet just recently on the subject of the front door that I would be fitting to the house. But there’s a reason for that. Brain of Britain has done it again and bought a door that opens the wrong way. Mind you, it was at a give-away price in a sale so there’s no harm done there.

But a casual chat with the sales people at Lapeyre revealed that the “exotic wood” selection – the selection from which I have chosen all of my windows – is being discontinued in February. And as a result, they’ve started a clearance sale. The door that matches my windows – a big one with double glazing all the way down the front, is just €374.

That’s too good a deal to miss and so I have bitten the bullet. Now I shall have to get working.

At Rob and Nicolette’s I gave them their prezzy and thanked them for their help the other day. I was grateful for the effort that they took.

But with me forgetting all sorts of things today, this bang on the head doesn’t seem to have helped me any.

-2

Monday 28th November 2011 – I HAD VISITORS TODAY.

Here I was – up early and breakfasted, and tidying up (for a change) in my little room when the ‘phone rang. “If we come and raise up the wind turbine can we take the rest of the scaffolding?”

And so that put an end to the tidying up (which was a shame as it’s not often that I’m in the mood for tidying up) and I went up and prepared everything.

It didn’t take long for the three of us to put the wind turbine properly into position and the scaffolding has now gone, and there’s even a roof of sorts on the lean-to (a few sheets of corrugated iron and a tarpaulin) although I don’t know why. We’ve not had any rain here since 7th November.

It was then that I noticed that the wind turbine pole must have been rotated while we were raising it, as the bracket that holds the wire guy ropes is now the wrong way round. And I’ve no idea at all what I can do about that now.

I bet that you are thinking “great. He can go ahead and put the roof on the lean-to now” – but I can’t. I need the scaffolding for that, don’t I?

Caliburn is now emptied ready for a shopping trip to Montlucon tomorrow, and I’ve also done some more work cutting down the fir trees to a reasonable height. This time I’ve managed to afford falling trees, falling off the ladder and the like.

But anyway I’ve managed a good day’s work.

Up here this evening I’ve had the new fire working. It was difficult to get it to work properly but that’s the kind of thing that will surely come with practice.

But one thing and another – a bunch of herring hanging up in this room would have benefited from my efforts.

>But I gave someone quite a hard time today. I’m getting all bad-tempered and tetchy in my old age. And then I remembered that yesterday I gave the President of the football club a real hard time. That’s not like me at all these days.

And then I had a flashback – back to 1987 and my car accident when I suffered a fractured skull and how that was the beginning of the end and how bad-tempered and miserable I became for quite a good while after that. And now I’ve just fallen off a ladder and landed on my head as you know.

Don’t tell me that I’m going to be going through all of this again. It was bad enough back then!

As Terry Venables once famously said – “if history repeats itself then we can expect the same thing again”. That’s rather a depressing thought.

-4

Sunday 27th November 2011 – I WAS A BIT PUT OUT TODAY.

But before I tell you about that, let me first tell you the good news.

Although it was late when I went to bed, I managed to sleep for 6 hours or so. And after breakfast, I finished off the scripts for the radio programmes that we will be recording this week for Radio Anglais

I had to rush though as Pionsat St Hilaire’s 3rd XI were playing away at Combronde at 13:00 but just as I was stepping out of the door to go, Percy Penguin chose that moment to ring me.
“You fell on your head? It might knock some sense into you”.
It’s nice to have friends, isn’t it?

And so at Combronde, 5 minutes late and the place all deserted. There was no-one around at all. So what’s going on here?

Anyway, that was an hour and a half and 75 kilometres wasted. There was clearly no point in staying on here so I fuelled up and went off to Ceyssat for the 1st XI match instead.

That long drive took me round by the Puy de Dome – right past the foot of it, and it was remarkable to notice the change in the weather. From my humble abode to round about St Bonnet it was grey miserable and overcast.

But south of there we had glorious sunshine. The Puy de Dome (and you pass within about 200 metres of it) was especially nice. But once over the Col de Ceyssat I drove straight into a fog and that was that.

I met Bernard the club president. he said that the 3rd XI match was cancelled, and so I berated him for not sending me a text – after all, I told him last night that I would be going. It’s a couple of times now that they have done this on me and I’m becoming rather fed up.

But the actual match cheered me up considerably.

Olby-Ceyssay were a pretty poor side and FC Pionsat St Hilaire had no trouble whatever in demolishing them 4-0, hardly breaking sweat in doing so.

it’s a shame that they can’t play like that every week.

From there I went on round to Liz and Terry’s where we rehearsed our radio programmes – we’re recording next week.

Liz had baked potato pie and rice pudding for afters, and she even made up a doggy bag and a lump of fruitcake for me to take home. It’s that kind of thing that makes it worth-while having good friends, and helps me to forget all of the worries and disagreements.

-2

EPIC HALL

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