Category Archives: Les Guis

Saturday 26th November 2011 – OUCH!

It’s really difficult to sleep when you can only sleep in one position.

Each time I rolled over into another position something else hurt.

And coupled with that,I suffer from bad attacks of cramp every now and again and last night I had not one but two attacks. And that was probably the worst bit.

it was dawn when I finally managed to go to sleep and …gulp … 12:34 when I awoke.

So what I did today was to work on the notes for the programmes for Radio Anglais. For the next few weeks we’ll be discussing winter driving techniques, as well as all of the usual stuff that we do.

Tonight at Pionsat the FC Pionsat St Hilaire 2nd XI were playing against Clermont Franco-Algeriens and they were totally played off the park.

Even when the opponents had a man sent off (two yellow cards, both times for insulting the referee – how silly can you get?) they still had enough in the tank to demolish a weak FC Pionsat St Hilaire side that during the whole 90 minutes of the match could only manage only two shots on target (and somehow scored both times as well, which totally astonished me).

The number of times Clermont broke through the weakest FC Pionsat St Hilaire defence that I have ever seen (and we’ve seen some pretty weak ones just recently, believe me) and blazed over the bar from five yards out – never mind only scoring 4, 14 would have been more like it.

By the way, excuse the poor quality of the photo. Not only did we have the usual problems of lack of light in crucial zones of the pitch to contend with, the match was played in a very thick fog and there were moments when I thought that the match would never be finished.

But I’m starting to get worried. If the FC Pionsat St Hilaire 2nd XI are relegated to the 4th Division (which they will do if they carry on playing like this) the 3rd XI will have to go into hibernation.

And that won’t be at all popular.

-2

Friday 25th November 2011 – YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN IN STITCHES …

… watching me cut down the conifers at the front of the barn this afternoon.

But I’m not in stitches – I’m in staoles.

6 of them!

All across the top of my head.

I did something today that I vowed that I would never do – and that is to use a power tool to cut down a tree. When you are sawing away by hand, you can feel the tree start to give and you have plenty of time to move out of the way as it slowly keels over.

But with a power tool you can’t feel it and it takes you by surprise. And that’s not good if you are 3 metres up a ladder.

So it caught me under the chin, lifted me off the ladder and dropped me on the floor where my head struck the trailer with a glancing blow.

But I’m inpressed with that Ryobi 18-volt saw that I bought in the USA last year (almost as impressed, Rhys, as I am with my galvanised steel dustbin). It didn’t take long at all to go through this tree.

So let’s look on the positive side.

I was bleeding everywhere and so I went to Rob and Nicolette’s to get Nicolette to look at it as I couldn’t see anything of course. One look from her and Rob was detailed to drive me to Montlucon.

We waited for a couple of hours there (and I chatted to the father of one of the FC Pionsat St Hilaire footballers who had been admitted following a car accident) and then I was examined and stapled up.

What a waste of time that was, though. I have a stapler at home and Rob could have done that without having to waste 4 hours of his time. But I was grateful for his help – it’s nice to have good neighbours.

Of course we had all of the old jokes – “the Doctor examined your head but found nothing” and all that kind of thing.

But one piece of optimism is that many things work better if you give them a kick or if you bang them. I wonder if that will work for me now.

What makes it worse was that I was only cutting down the trees for something to do while I was waiting for some paint to dry. It was so nice again today that I gathered up all of the pieces of wood from the greenhouse and I’ve painted them with a couple of coats of wood treatment and the first coat of the wood staining.

And I was only doing that because I can’t do the roof on the lean-to yet – the scaffolding is in the way.

I was going to give it all a second coat this evening and then start to assemble it tomorrow but badger that. I’m going to have a day off tomorrow.

-2

Thursday 24th November 2011 – I’VE NOT DONE …

… a great deal today.

I started off by sweeping out the front of the lean-to where I’d been working these last few days, to make a bit of space.

And once that was clean I started to cut up some of the tree trunks from the trees that I had cut down a few years ago. It’s late November and winter is of course only just around the corner, and there’s no point in having a decent wood stove if I don’t have any decent wood to put in it.

But the saw that I’m using isn’t up to much and I need to get a really expensive one.

But it was round about then that the fun started.

I had someone from Canada ringing me up about supplying him with product and so I had to sort that out. And that got me sorting out another pile of orders too for other things and I ended up spending about 2 hours on the phone.

Not that I’m complaining though. With a trade card and a SIREN (a French trade registration) I’m getting some astonishing deals all along the line and it’s about time I started to make a bit of money. So more power to my elbow, say I

In between the rest of the phone calls (yes, we were having another one of those days) I managed to put a few lengths of tongue-and-groove on the stud wall just so that it looks like there’s something positive coming out of today.

It’s a shame that the light goes so early otherwise I’d be still out there (and you would have a photo of it). It’s not like me to be so enthusiastic as this.

I could of course put light into the lean-to but there’s an issue with that. I can’t find my metre-long SDS drill bit that I need to make a pilot hole in the right place. And this is what I bought it for, would you believe?

Mind you finding anything at all around my place is next to impossible as I’m sure you all know already.

-2

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 – I’VE FINISHED …

… building the staircase to the first floor in the lean-to, and so you can really say that we have an upstairs and a downstairs now.

The staircase is more like a ladder in a sense, because it has rungs rather than stairs, but then again there’s only a confined space to work in so it can’t be helped.

The gas bottle is in its permanent home and I’ll be drilling a hole through the wall at the back (the top edge of the photo) to pass the gas pipe through into where the kitchen will be. To change it over, you jut drag it out to the right.

And you can see the stud wall that’s in front of the stairs. I have piles of cheap tongue-and-grooving and that’s all going to be going on there in very early course (once I can find it in the barn).

The washroom, when it’s finished, will be a sort-of U-shape, from the back studding, down the side wall and then down to front wall to where the camera was when I took this shot.

We’ll have worktops (I’ve bought those already) with the washing machine underneath, a sink (there’s one of those lying about somewhere) and cupboards, which I can make. And, of course, a 12-volt immersion heater running off the surplus electricity that I generate

It doesn’t quite look like that now though. After I took the above photo I made the structure even stiffer by adding a diagonal bracing bar. That stiffened it up quite considerably and it’s all quite solid now. It’ll be stiffer even still when it’s cladded.

You can just about make out the gap in the rear studding where the gas bottle will be coming and going through. And I’ll be covering most of that rear stud wall as well, once I’ve cut up all the scrap wood in the rear section and moved it out for burning.

As you can see, this is something of a long-term project.

And in other news, my new window for the living room is ready. I’ll have to go Lapeyre at Montlucon to pick that up this weekend.

And in other other news, I seem to have become something of an unofficial sports reporter for the local newspaper.

Following Marianne’s suggestion, I’ve been sending some of the photos of FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s opponents to the reporter covering the town where they come from. And now twice – two weeks in succession, the reporter concerned has asked me to send in a match report.

-2

Tuesday 22nd November 2011 – YOU CAN SEE …

… what I’ve been doing this morning, seeing as I can’t move the scaffolding until the wind turbine is raised up.

I’ve been working inside the lean-to and I now have the five verticals in place for the stud walls with the staircase in between.

The gas bottle is in its home where it will be living. The kitchen will be in the house right behind there, so I’m going to have to run a gas pipe through the wall eventually.

The way that the gas bottle will be moved when it needs replacing is between the two uprights to the left in the rear wall. It’ll just about pass through there and then I’ll have to bring it around to the front and then out.

The stud wall nearest the doorway will be covered with tongue-and grooving and heavily varnished. There will be a cupboard there and a worktop, with a small water heater over the top, running off the surplus electrical energy.

The washing machine will be in that little corner and there will also be a sink.

Now I have my diamond core drills for going through the stonework, the world’s my lobster.

And you did hear me correctly. “Morning”. Despite having had a bad night’s sleep I was up with the lark this morning and outside fairly early, just for a change. That enabled me to get cracking.

And not “this afternoon” either.

One of the projects that we have on the go for Radio Anglais is to do a programme about researching the history of your house.

And Marianne rang me to say that she had such a project to do this afternoon and would I like to go with her to the Mairie and look through the records. Do bears have picnics in the woods?

I’m glad that I went because it was extremely interesting there and I learnt an awful lot. But then again that is the point of going.

Records in France in the local mairies go back as far as 1833 (in places where the Germans didn’t burn them) and it’s fascinating to see the evolution of a property.

What is even more exciting is to see o the local tax rolls the reason for tax reductions. Just taking one example, a whole list of rate reductions on certain plots of land in 1884 clearly show exactly where and how the “new road” to St Eloy was built.

We were there for hours going through everything, but it’s not always good news that you unearth.

The problem is though that searching through records can show up many surprises, some of which can be extremely unpleasant. And such was the case today. There’s a kind-of diary circulating around Pionsat, in which the author recounts quite freely a host of detail about his private life, including his birth almost 70 years ago.

But quite interestingly the Deed of Gift of this property back in the 1950s shows that the civil status of his mother was “divorced in 1936 and never remarried”.

So who was the fellow she brought back with her from Paris when she came to resettle in the village in the late 1930s?

The plot sickens.

But at least I’ve had my snow tyre fitted on my new wheel so I’m ready for winter.

I’m also ready for bed. Last night’s late finish and this early start this morning had finished me off.

-4

Monday 21st November 2011 – WELL, I’M STUMPED!

“Howzat?” I hear you ask.

And I’m going to tell you.

When Terry and I were doing the preparations for the new roof, we put a conduit through the wall and into this conduit we put 3 pairs of 6mm wire. 1 pair was for bank 1 of the solar panels, 1 pair was for bank 2, and the third pair was for the wind turbine.

The two banks of solar panels are wired in and doing what they are supposed to be doing when and where they are supposed to do it, but putting an ohm-meter onto the third pair for the wind turbine, there is no circuit in EITHER of the two wires.

I just don’t understand this at all. I can’t think why this should be. There can’t be a break in BOTH wires, surely?

So anyway I connected up two wires in a kind-of ad-hoc connection and they are working fine and are now connected into the circuit.

And the surprising thing about this (although not surprising if you know anything about me) is that despite the last few days having tons and tons of powerful wind, the wind dramatically dropped the moment I connected up the wires. You could not have timed it better.

What I’ve also done is to make up the four guy ropes that will hold the wind turbine mast in position.

I need some special wall anchor mountings for this and I can only get them in the UK at Screwfix. Unfortunately my last order didn’t go through in time and so I can’t get this part done until I go to the UK and come back. I don’t have my contacts to post me stuff these days.

Terry said that he’ll come round some time in the near future and help me push the pole up another metre or so – height is definitely might in these circumstances.

I’ve dismantled part of the scaffolding already and the rest can go as soon as the turbine is in its final position. Once that’s out of the way I can make a start on the roof and I’m eager to get going with that.

“Not a lot of work today” I hear you say. But this does not include the relentless string of telephone calls, and also of visits that I had today.

For once I seem to be popular. I wonder what’s up.

-5

Sunday 20th November 2011 – WE HAD A FOOTFEST TODAY.

We were down at Montel de Gelat for the whole afternoon watching the 3rd XI take on the 2nd XI of Montel-Villosanges, followed by the 1st XI taking on the 1st XI of the Chimps.

The 3rd XI were a man short and with no goalkeeper either (chapeau to Xavier to donning the gloves) once again, and lost 1-0 to a disputed penalty. For much of the game they were playing as if it were they who had the extra men and they never looked in any danger against one of the worst teams I have ever seen.

With a couple of extra players to make up a decent pool of players, and with a proper goalkeeper, they could – and should – have demolished this side.

The FC Pionsat St Hilaire administration needs to be asking itself a few serious questions about how seriously they are taking the 3rd XI, as I have said before.

As for the 1st XI they lived up to my expectations by conceding two soft goals, one of thmm being an unchallenged header from a free kick.

The second was when a defender pulled up with a hamstring chasing a loose ball, allowing an attacker a free shot at goal, and I don’t suppose you can do too much about that.

And that was all that Matthieu had to do in the game really – to pick the ball out of the net on those two occasions. For the rest of the match he was pretty much a spectator

not like his opposite number who was in the thick of the action for most of the game.

How the Pionsat side only managed to score 2 is one of those things that people will be asking for years to come because the 1st XI weren’t any better at football than their reserves.

They were however much better at punching and kicking their opponents, and collapsing like a sack of potatoes any time a Pionsat player got within 10 yards of them.

And we had a mass brawl in the closing stages of the game, with even the Chimps trainer becoming involved in the action.

Add to that the crowd hurling gratuitous abuse at FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s linesman and with a few other incidents that were just as unsavoury, I wasn’t sorry when the final whistle was blown.

Saturday 19th November 2011 – WELL, I’M A BIT ….

… disappointed today.

In the last 24 hours we’ve had 21 hours of recorded wind and the turbine has been going round like ye veritable clappers.

And do you know what?

There’s not even one watt recorded on the dial.

A quick check revealed that there’s no current reaching the battery bank. That’s sad.

I checked the two joints to the wind turbine and they seem to be working fine – I connected up a little piazo buzzer and that was ringing like Big Ben – and so it’s either going to be the final joint or else there’s a break in the cable somewhere.

That’s going to be a job for the multimeter on Monday morning

But it was certainly encouraging to see how the thing was going around today. And of course, all the time that it was going round, the big AIR 403 wind turbine didn’t move a muscle. It proves the point that I’ve been arguing with everyone for years that a small turbine can quite often produce more energy than a large one.

Why this is so is quite simple.

Feel the weight of the motors. The heavier a motor is, more powerful it is (generally speaking, of course. There are always exceptions). And the weight is made up of the copper coil and the magnet in the motor (it’s not this simple, but for the purpose of this discussion we’ll leave it here).

So the more powerful the motor, the bigger the magnet and the more magnetic resistance it contains. And so the more wind that you need to overcome the magnetic resistance. A less-powerful wind turbine will have less magnetic resistance and so it will need less wind to make it work. In low-wind situations (which is what I generally have here) two smaller wind turbines will pump out more power than one large one.

This afternoon I went to St Eloy-les-Mines where I spent next-to-nothing again but I did do a mega-wash at the launderette. That’s cheered me up. All clean clothes again. All I need to do is to find a way of getting me nice and clean as well, and then I can have nice new bedding. I shall work on that.

It was the Annual General Meeting of Pionsat Patrimoine this afternoon and interesting as it might be, I still can’t deal with the egos and the people who take 100 words to say either yes or no – and then say it 10 times over.

No footy tonight at Pionsat – Gerzat couldn’t raise a team to play the 2nd XI. But there was a game on at Marcillat, and that provided me with the biggest laugh that I have had for quite a while.

A goalkeeper and a forward went for a 50-50 ball and the keeper came off worse. It was a foul but a genuine attempt to play a loose ball with no malice whatsoever. The ref,in his wisdom, shows the Gannat forward a yellow card.

Outrage from the Gannat bench – and quite rightly so if you ask me. “We have to protect the goalkeepers” shouted the ref.

30 seconds later we have an almost-identical situation and this time it’s the forward who comes off worse And no yellow card. And in the silence of the still night up on the plateau where Marcillat play, the Gannat trainer bellows out (and I mean Bellows Out- he could be heard back in Gannat I reckon) “and you have to protect the forwards too!”

At that remark, the whole ground collapses in laughter, except for the ref who clearly has no sense of humour whatever and goes over to talk to the trainer

Well, I wasn’t the only one who thought it funny. And doesn’t that makes a change for round here?

-2

Friday 18th November 2011 – WHEN I TELL YOU …

… that I knocked off at 17:27 today, you will probably think something like “idle burger” or something like that.

But not a bit of it.

In fact, 17:27 was when I stopped for lunch.

Putting this wind turbine was not as easy as you might think.

First thing was to solder two longer wires to the couple of inches that come out of the wind turbine. My soldering is total rubbish, and what didn’t help was that the heavy-duty soldering iron I bought from LIDL ages ago didn’t want to work properly.

After trying a couple of others, it was the ancient soldering iron that I had bought from Tandy (and that tells you how old it is) that did some kind of a job on the wiring.

Collecting all the tools, I then went off up the ladder to the top of the scaffolding (and you can see how high I was as well – right at the top and that was nerve-wracking) and that wasn’t easy either.

One of the more difficult issues was fitting the wind turbine through the hatch in the lean-to floor. I had to dismantle the blasted thing, carry it through and up the ladder and then reassemble it on top.

Passing the wire down the tube was something else as well. For some reason it didn’t want to go down and I had to spend an age persuading it.

Fitting the wind turbine on the pole was exciting as well and it was quite a feat of balance to do that on a scaffolding like that.

I then had to fix the rudder back on the wind turbine but that was something of an issue as it seemed that the captive nut that holds the rudder on had sheared off. And so that meant climbing right up there, undoing the side of the turbine, and putting a nut and bolt in place.

It was at that moment that the wind sprang up, and if it wasn’t easy before, then trying to do this right up there with the thing swinging around and the blades going round like the clappers – that just made it worse.

But anyway it’s up there, and it’s all wired in as well. But I couldn’t solder up the wires which was annoying – not even the Tandy soldering iron would do that – and so I’ve had to use chocolate blocks for that and the sheath that I put over the conduit now won’t cover up the joints.

As you can tell, it wasn’t easy and it was no wonder that,having decided to work right through until I finished, it was so late when I came to a stop. And I wasn’t feeling like carrying on.

But anyway, having been hit in the face by the turning blades on occasions too numerous to count, I know that it works. It will be interesting to see what power it gives out.

-2

Thursday 17th November 2011 – HAVE A CLOSE …

… look at this photo and see if you can spot where the Gorge de la Sioule might be.

It’s one thing I like about going out to Liz and Terry’s early in the morning – the fact that they live right on the edge of the gorge. And because the gorge is so deep and so steep the sun can’t shine into it until it has well-risen.

That means that the surrounding ground is quite warm whereas at the bottom of the gorge the air is quite cold and damp. And when the sun is high enough to enter the gorge it dramatically heats the cold damp air and you have clouds of condensation rising up from the gorge quite spectacularly.

Liz had to do some kind of newspaper interview the other week, in which she described the Combrailles as “The Land That Time Forgot”, and you can see clearly exactly what she means by that.

But it’s not just that view from here (in case you haven’t guessed, we’re at the bird-watching site at the back of St Gervais d’Auvergne again) that is spectacular. There’s a spectacular view across to the Puy de Sancy and the Mont Dore away over there.

All swathed in a hanging cloud or two too.

And if I’m not mistaken, I reckon that I can see some snow up there too. Winter is definitely icumen in. Lhude sing Rudolph

It’s a litle-known fact that when the system of départements was created, what is today the départements of the Puy-de-Dome was to be called the départements of Mont-Dore – which is after all the most significant feature of the region. However, the locals objected, saying that it sounded too much like the mont d’or – a mountain made of gold – and would give the impression that this was an extremely wealthy region.

And so today Terry and I bricked up one of the doorways (their house is two small cottages knocked into one) and fitted the window in the upper half, and then fitted the new door in the other doorway.

And it wasn’t as straight-forward as you might think either. The old doors had been made-to-measure for the doorways and of course, as we discovered as we were trying to fit everything, the door openings were not built straight. That was a complication we didn’t need.

Fitting the door was exciting though. We spent 10 minutes trying to make it seat on the hinge pins,and you’ve no idea how easily it fitted when we took out the wedge that was trapped underneath it.

And we also spent half an hour trying everything that we could to make the door close and you’ve no idea how well it closed when we took the packing strip out of the aluminium closing tray.

Ahhh well. You live and learn, I suppose.

Anyway,tomorrow I’ll be fitting the wind turbine if the weather holds, and now that I have my diamond core drills, I’ll be drilling from the house through into the lean-to and running cables there.

If I’m not careful,I might even have light and power in there tomorrow night.

-1

Wednesday 16th November 2011 – I’VE MADE GREAT PROGRESS …

… today with the mount for the wind turbine. You can’t see it easily on the pic – you need to look carefully and you will see above and below the window the horizontal beams that will stand the vertical pole the required distance off the wall.

And if you look behind the ladder you can see the vertical upright – to the left of the yellow scaffolding pole.

It’s about 1 metre above the roof line and so what I’ve done is to cut a 1-metre length of pipe and I’ll be fastening the wind turbine to that. I have a special jointing piece for scaffolding pipe and so I can fit the two pipes together. That will give me a 2-metre height and I’ll see if I can slide the whole lot even higher.

The pole slides down easily enough – I have the squidged right hand to prove that – and so it should move up easily, or at least comparatively easily if I can manage the weight because it’s going to be quite something, the weight of it all, and I need all of the height that I can get.

My revised arrangements for mounting it all worked a treat and to fasten the wall anchors into the wall securely I’ve been driving them into the wall using a little something that I invented, based on a heavy washer, a couple of 17mm nuts, a deep 17mm socket and a lump hammer and that works a treat.

Mind you, it was all awkward to manipulate because it was so heavy and I had to manoeuvre the pipe in in three planes.

And I’m disappointed with this so-called super cement stuff. It’s not as super as I was hoping it to be and certainly not as super as the stuff that Terry was showing me the other day

Another thing that I found out today to my chagrin was that standard sizes in French pipe are different from standard UK sizes. And that’s awkward because French sizes are larger than UK sizes and I have all UK fittings. I’ll have to sort out some more pipe next time I go back the the UK.

Tomorrow I’m not going to be here. I’m round at Terry’s helping him fit his new door and window.

Tuesday 15th November 2011 – IT’S NOT AS EASY …

… as you might think putting up this wind turbine and despite a good day’s work I’ve hardly scratched the surface of it.

First job was to reposition all of the planks on the scaffolding so that they are where I want them to be, and then to put the ladder where it should be as well. And that wasn’t the work of five minutes either.

After that it was to cut up an old scrap scaffolding pole (I bought a couple of those with just this kind of purpose in mind) to make the horizontal battens on the wall. There’s an overhang on the roof of about 70mms and so I’m having to invent something to stand the upright pole 70mms out of the wall, and that’s not easy.

Next task was to drill the holes for the mounting brackets to take the horizontal battens. And with the hard stone that we have around here this was playing havoc with the batteries on the Hitachi battery-powered SDS drill.

And then I had an idea.

I have a mains SDS drill – about 750 watts-worth but it’s pretty lightweight and not any better than the Hitachi. That’s always been down here but back in Brussels a few years ago I recalled buying a really heavy-duty 1050 watt SDS drill – with rotostop and everything. And that would make short work of drilling the holes.

And so I had to hunt that down somewhere around the house or the barn and eventually, much to my surprise, I actually discovered it.
And then it was to wire in the 1500-watt mega-inverter that I bought for the barn.
And then it was to trail an electrical cable all around the side of the house from across the barn.
And then look for an adapter because the drill is still wired to a European plug.

But now you see why it’s taking me so long.

But once I was up and running, that drill went through the stone like a hot knife through butter.

After much manipulation I have one of the horizontal battens on now, and that cement mastic stuff is excellent. But I’m going to have to take it off because I’ve thought of an improvement and I shall be doing that tomorrow.

What with having to manipulate the heavy upright pole (and that wasn’t easy either) I was exhausted and in any case heaving heavy pipes around 10 metres up in the air by the light of a torch is not recommended.

We talked the other day about the film Tony Rome. Now that film is from the mid-60s and one of the things that was going through my mind was “is this the earliest ‘mainstream’ film to have a reasonably-explicit lesbian love scene in it?”

I spent all afternoon trying to think if there was one any earlier than this but nothing came to mind, apart from some subculture stuff in the 1920s

Secondly, I was watching an episode of The Prisoner this morning at breakfast – “It’s Your Funeral” – and one of the actresses in it caught my ear. And I mean that too because while I didn’t recognise the face, the voice was ringing in my ears telling me something.

And it wasn’t until much later that the penny dropped. It was no one other than Annette Andre, which might mean nothing to you but her most famous role was as Philia, Michael Crawford’s sidekick in the film version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

That film which, although excellent in its own right, was notorious for dropping Frankie Howerd from the lead role in favour of the dreadful Zero Mostel and featuring a cameo of Buster Keaton, two things done simply so that the film would have a wider audience in the USA.

Monday 14th November 2011 – WELL, THAT’S FINALLY THAT!

Yes, I’ve finished the wall today.

And about time too if you ask me. Mind you it’s just as well because the weather is going to change on Wednesday so we are told, and we can expect rain. So at least that gives 36 hours or so for the chalk to set and to harden before the rain gets to it.

Of course with the rain it means that it isn’t going to freeze any time soon, and that’s good news too as it gives even more time to cure before anything serious can attack it.

It seems that I’ve finished just in time

Mind you, it was awkward up the ladder doing this last bit and it’s made me realise just what a good idea it was to buy this scaffolding. A very good move, that.

There was some mortar left over too and so for that I did some work on the inside of the rear wall. And that was interesting too because I was still out there at 18:30 with a torch working on that – not like me, considering that we are on winter hours.

It was pretty tiring up there too and I didn’t really feel like going to the Anglo-French Group meeting but I managed to tear myself off the sofa and go down to St Gervais d’Auvergne.

Tomorrow I’ll be putting up the wind turbine – not something that I’m looking forward to doing on my own but it won’t get done on its own no matter how long I stare at it. And when it’s done, I can move the scaffolding out of the lean-to and put it at the side, ready to start on the roofing of it.

Isn’t this all progress?

Sunday 13th November 2011 – I DON’T THINK …

… that I will be seeing the wild boar again.

The farmer came down this morning to bring his cows to the field behind the house. He went for his usual walk around to check the boundaries and he must have seen the wild boar tracks because half an hour later the hunters arrived.

I was once at a meeting where I heard a hunter describe hunting as “a noble sport”. I’ve no idea what is noble or sporting about 20 armed men ringing a thicket, sending a bunch of dogs in to flush out everything that is in there and then blasting into oblivion whatever comes fleeing out.

It’s all really sad and pathetic, and brings out the worst in human nature if you ask me. But it’s legal to do it and part of the French rural tradition, so I have to put up with it whether I like it or not.

>This afternoon I went down to Loubeyrat. FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 2nd XI were playing there today and it’s a nice drive down.

We’ve been here before, a few years ago, and one thing that impressed me then was the view that could be had from the corner of the football ground. It’s right on the edge of the Faille de Limange – the fault line that runs down the centre of the département and there are views from here right across the plain and the valley of the River Allier all the way over to Vichy and the Montagne Bourbonnaise.

It was a real shame about the match though.

Although FC Pionsat St Hilare lost the match 3-0 they were desperately unlucky here. Two superb free kicks and a defensive howler were responsible for the goals but apart from that they did really well. This was probably the best that I’ve seen them play in recent times. They even managed to have a good shape that they kept throughout the match.

It’s just a pity that they can’t play like that every week.

Back here this evening I watched one of the videos that I had bought at Noz in Montlucon for a couple of Euros the other day. This was a Frank Sinatra film called Tony Rome.

Not only does Sinatra not sing in it (for which I am extremely grateful) he acts spectacularly well in his role as a private detective in Miami. If you know any of the Philip Marlowe films, then think of Humphrey Go-kart in The Big Sleep, bring it up to date by 20 years, film it in technicolour with good outdoor scenery and give it some meaningful and convincing co-stars and there you are.

It’s easily the best film that I have bought for quite a while and it will be one that will feature on my regular playlist.

There was a follow-up of it called The Lady In Cement. While it is very very rare for a follow-up to be anything like as good as the original, I shall be trying to track down a copy of that.

But it really was a good film, this.

Saturday 12th November 2011 – I’M GOING …

… to bed in a second.

Yes, I’m thoroughly exhausted and I don’t know why. Probably the early start this morning had something to do with it.

Up with the alarm waiting for a phone call for this photo safari thing, and it turns out that I had not been patched in to an earlier e-mail circular and so I’d missed the point of this trip out. But anyway it didn’t take us long to do what it was that we had to do.

This afternoon, seeing as how the weather was so beautiful I went to Commentry to do my shopping there.

And while I was in the car park of the Les Bonnes Affaires I was buzzed by one of these motorised hang-glider things passing low over the town. I was trying to think where he might have come from because there’s no suitable cliff in the vicinity off which to leap into the ether – unless he can run with his feet fast enough to make a clean take-off.

And I wonder what the rules might be about low-flying over a built-up area like this

While I had the camera out, I noticed another example of poorly-sighted solar panels – over there on the roof of that bungalow. Facing full west they are, so they don’t receive a glimmer of sunlight until early afternoon.

These “become a producer of solar energy and sell to the electricity board” high-pressure salesmen have struck again. It’s hardly surprising that the industry has such a bad name when they do things like this.

I did make a couple of interesting discoveries though. And they were both at Bricomarche.

they have a huge pile of water-resistant 8mm plywood at €39 a sheet of 2.5×1.25 metres. It’s expensive all right but it’s what I need for the roof of the lean-to and they do have it in stock.
they also have the stove that I want for downstairs. A woodstove with an oven and with a central heating boiler built in – for €1499 too. That’s exactly what I want, because the sun will heat the water in the summer and I need something for heating it in the winter. If this does everything, it will be perfect. I can even do cooking with it as well.

But the real reason for going to Commentry was that with the weather being so nice I could nip down the road to Neris-les-Bains for a swim. It was glorious in there – the water just right and the pool quite warm as well. Shame it can’t be like that all the time.

At the footy tonight the 3rd XI match was cancelled as the opposition couldn’t raise a team, and the first XI went down 2-1 to a team that they had played off the park, something of which they seem to be in a habit of doing

I’d tell you much more about the game but enough of this for now. I’ve fallen asleep twice already while typing as far as this, and if I don’t get a move on I’ll be ……..THUD THUD

…….ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

-1

EPIC HALL

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