Category Archives: Les Guis

Thursday 27th October 2011 – THE WEATHER …

… changed today.

And what was annoying was that it happened while I was up a ladder pointing the stone work.

I’d done quite a bit too and I was making good progress when the heavens opened on me. There was nothing for it but to put everything away and put the tarps back over. And by the time I had done that the rain had eased off, just as you might ordinarily expect.

I wasn’t going to undo everything and go back up the wall as it was getting late and the light was starting to go, and so I did some more on the struts that I’ll be using to make the stairs in the lean to. I’m well advanced into those and one more day with rain might see them installed

Not that I’m actually wishing for rain, of course. I have far too much work to do outside to go knocking off for no good reason.

This morning I carried on with the website. I’ve left Cap-de-la-Madeleine and now I’m along Highway 138 heading for Quebec City. There’s no doubt that Highway 138, the chemin du roy, is the most beautiful road in Canada.

>And that’s really all I’ve done today. Not very exciting is it? But if I remember to wake up tomorrow, Radio Anglais is off down to Gerzat to record for Radio Arverne. Now isn’t that’s exciting?
.

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Wednesday 26th October 2011 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I was up early this morning and I managed to have a really good go at the website this morning. I’ve left Trois Rivieres and arrived at Cap-de-la-Madeleine where I’m having a good wander around the pilgrimage site.

Absolutely fascinating and full of the most unexpected irony.

So this afternoon I was up the wall on the ladder, and in the wind too, chiselling out the old sand-and-clay mortar from the top of the wall. There was so much that came out that I had to do two large mixes of mortar and that still wasn’t enough to do that bit.

And it was exciting up there for several reasons.

I was carried away with what I was doing and it wasn’t until it suddenly went dark that I realised just how late it was. 19:05 when I knocked off this evening.
there was all kinds of noise going on in the brush in the field next door and all of a sudden two wild boar shot out and ran across the field. The first wild boar that I have seen properly here as well. They are bigger and heavier than I expected and the earth moves when they run. They have a hell of a speed as well. And the racket that they make is astonishing. I was really surprised.
You’re probably wondering why I didn’t take a photo of them, and indeed I would have, except that I was up the top of the ladder and the camera was down below. After all, it’s difficult enough trying to manipulate a bucket of water and a paintbrush, a hand brush, a bucket full of stones, a trowel and a hawk full of lime mortar when you are up the top of a ladder, never mind a camera as well.

Tonight I made a curry and seeing as I have no courgette left I used tinned mushroom and tinned chick peas. And it didn’t half come out well too. And there’s enough for another two days as well. Ohhh the luxury!

So tomorrow I’ll be back up the wall. And quite right too.

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Tuesday 25th October 2011 – AFTER LAST NIGHT’S …

… early retirement, this morning I was up with the cock.

But that’s more than enough about my personal habits.

I was up quite early and when Liz phoned me to make sure that I was awake, I was already tucking into breakfast.

At Radio Tartasse in Marcillat we did our programmes for the month of November and after a coffee together I came back home.

Working on the website again followed by lunch, and then I took some more roofing sheets off the lean-to and replaced them with a tarp. I also put something underneath the floor of the upper part of the lean-to to prevent any water that might infiltrate from falling on the washing machine that’s underneath.

After all of that I put up the ladder and started on chiselling out the old mortar at the top of the house wall.

However I wasn’t up there for too long. The wind sprang up again quite violently and then we had a huge black weather front that dumped 5 mms of rain everywhere. That wasn’t very good, and I left the wall to itself with all of that, thinking to myself what a good idea it was to protect the washing machine like that.

What I did instead was to go inside the lean-to and point some more of the inside of the wall that I had built up a short while ago.

It needs to be done some time or other and there’s no time like the present. Having something to do under cover when the weather is bad outside is always handy.

If you’ve looked at some of the earlier photos, like this one for example you’ll see the difference in this pic, particularly on the left side of the wall. You might have also noticed a hole in the wall as well in the left side of the back wall. That’s gone too now, all filled up with stones and properly cemented in.

And that was something that I was keen to do, especially with winter on the way. I don’t want the frost to get into it any more than it already has done

Tonight I finished off Liz’s vegan casserole and had some of her vegan chocolate cake. Isn’t it nice to have good friends?

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Monday 24th October 2011 – AND JUST WHAT ON EARTH …

…is happening here?

Yes, it’s absolutely ages before midnight and here I am blogging already.

What on earth is going on?

The fact is that I’m absolutely whacked. Three nights without much sleep have finished me off and I shall be in the arms of Morpheus before much longer.

But I dunno why I’m having these sleep issues. I know that I habitually keep late hours but what has been going on just recently is absurd.

This afternoon I carried on with moving the cattle trough in the lean-to. Here is a photo of how it looked after I’d been bashing away at it for an hour or two the other week.

What it looks like now is something else completely thanks to Terry lending me a concrete cutting disk and a huge sledgehammer yesterday.

They made quite short work of the bit that I can get to, and the rest of it will have to be done when I can get to it.

I did say that once I’d done that I would be starting on the pointing of the wall. However we’ve had a howling gale here today with winds gusting up to 20mph. I know that that isn’t particularly fast but if anyone thinks that I’ll be standing on top of a ladder 10 metres or so above ground in a wind like that then they are mistaken.

According to one of the litttle-used functions on the anemometer, we had 20:42 hours of wind in the last 24 hours and that is quite phenomenal. The wind turbines have been earning their keep today.

What I did do instead was to make a start on the framework that I’ll be using to make the dividing wall in there. That involved cutting up a few chevrons and shaping them,and cutting lets into the rafters of the ceiling in the lean-to.

And while I was doing that, the wind dramatically dropped. “Time for me to go and get the ladder out and make a start on the wall” you are probably thinking. But “not bloody likely”, as Eliza Doolittle once famously said, because we had a torrential downpour and it’s still raining now.

Instead, I did some tidying up and sorting out until knocking off time at 19:00 (I’m still on summer hours).

Seeing as I’m still on summer hours, this morning I was working on the website and I’ve put on line the reports for the 1st XI and 2nd XI matches from this weekend.

But Saturday night’s photos haven’t worked at all and I’m going to have to spend money on a decent lens to take better photos in the dark.

Tomorrow Liz and I are radioing, at Radio Tartasse. I wonder if I will have woken up by then.

Good night, everybody.

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Sunday 23rd October 2011 – TODAY I HAVE SEEN ….

… what is probably the worst game of football that I have ever seen in my life. US Menetrol were such a poor side that they could only manage to score four goals against the disorganised rabble that was supposed to be the FC Pionsat St Hilaire 2nd XI.

There were three types of player on the field for Pionsat this afternoon. We had those with inclination and no skill (but nevertheless, hats off to them for turning out because clubs need willing players like this), quite a few with neither skill nor inclination, and far too many of those with skill but no inclination.

It was such a dismal showing that had I been in charge of the team, I would have gone home with the bus and left them to walk home.

But I’m not. And that was the root of the problem – there didn’t seem to be anyone in charge. And whoever it was who was supposed to be giving the orders was giving some pretty strange ones, that’s for sure. It really was an absolute shambles.

I shan’t say any more about it as it will be just gratuitous.

On the way down to Menetrol, I had the misfortune to be behind heaps of those kinds of drivers who think that 90kph is 70, 70 kph is 50, and 50 kph means that you get out and push. That started me off on the wrong foot anyway so it’s hardly a surprise that I was in a bad mood.

Afterwards, I went round to Liz and Terry’s to discuss the radio programmes, but we seemed to have spent most of the time dealing with lost hunting dogs.

Terry has very kindly lent me a concrete-cutting disc and a huge sledgehammer to remove this cattle trough, and Liz, apart from cooking a gorgeous tea, has made me up a food parcel. That is really lovely.

So tomorrow, I shall be removing cattle troughs and then carrying on with the pointing of the house wall. We are told that the fine weather will last until Wednesday.

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Saturday 22nd October 2011 – AND THIS MUST BE …

… something of a new record.

I went to St Eloy les Mines this afternoon, rather late as it happened, and put my washing in the launderette seeing as there was quite a pile that had built up.

Anyway, once the machine had set off, it announced that the cycle would take 40 minutes to do.

And by the time the 40 minutes was up, I’d been to LIDL and Carrefour and I was back in the launderette. And for what I had spent on the week’s shopping, I had change back from €9:00 as well. Now, as I say, this must be a new record.

But my new plan is that seeing as I have quite a lot of work to do these days, I’m going to be doing the radio programmes on Saturday morning and then shopping in St Eloy les Mines when I’ve finished. And that seems to be working anyway because in 3 hours of work I’d done all four programmes.

Yes, I reckon that if I don’t go shopping until I’ve finished, it’s a good spur.

This evening the 3rd XI match at Pionsat St Hilaire was cancelled as the opposition couldn’t raise a team. Instead,I went and watched the 1st half of the match at Marcillat. Although the AS Marcillat team play at what is nominally 1 level higher in the pyramid (they are in a different region) Pionsat’s Ist XI wouldn’t have too much trouble in dispatching them on a good day.

And talking of good days, Pionsat’s 1st XI played one of the numerous teams from Clermont this evening with a 20:30 kick-off, so I was back down there for the start.

They weren’t under too much pressure except down the left side of defence as usual and that was where they conceded a goal. But a substitution in the second half with a new player in the team shored that side up.

The central defence played splendidly with Alex and Julien in there – and Julien has improved immeasurably this season.

but with Cedric scoring early in the game and this new left-sided player scoring a second, following up a loose ball (and if he can play like this every week he’ll prove to be an excellent signing), as well as two or three goals disallowed, Pionsat were never really in difficulty. They won the match with plenty to spare. in the tank.

But the end of the game was rather ugly as the opposition lost their cool and we had a brawl near the end and another one after the final whistle and it was all unnecessary.

And then afterwards we had the draw for the league cup quarter-final.

And Pionsat drew …. the team that had just played this evening.

This should be quite some match.

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Friday 21st October 2011 – TODAY WAS ….

… a quiet day or at least it should have been. But Terry and Rob came round to fix Lieneke’s barn and no-one can sleep through the kind of racket that those two are capable of producing.

But what about last night,hey? Temperature plummeted to -1.9°C. A minus temperature – winter is flaming well here, right enough. I’m even contemplating lighting a fire shortly if we don’t have an improvement

However, never mind that for a moment – three hours and more on the computer and my visit to Trois Rivieres is well-advanced.

Trois-Rivieres is on the north bank of the St Lawrence between Montreal and Quebec. It’s the oldest industrial site in North America and the newsprint capital of the world. In fact all of my visits to the area have been overwhelmed by the smell of wet paper from the pulp mills so I’ve always kept well clear.

This year though I found myself in the town and my opinions of the place rapidly changed. The town seeps history from almost every pore and I’ve completely changed my opinion about the place.

This afternoon though I had to wait for Terry to move his van before I could get out to the post office and post that parcel. And I fell through the floor when I found out the price. I bet that it’s cheaper to fly to Canada and deliver it by hand. It makes excess baggage charges look a bargain

To the bank after that to sort out a few financial details, and then to Bill’s to fix his computer again.

This evening it’s POETS day of course and so I finished early – spending half an hour or so sorting some papers that date back to 2004. And there’s so many of them that it’s going to take a while.

Tomorrow it’s shopping and as I have so much to do it’s going to be a St Eloy les Mines quick half hour-type of shopping. And the washing is building up here and so I might visit the local launderette and sort it out.

>But I’m not really looking forward to tomorrow. I’ve finished all of my stock of Canadian vegan cheese slices and that is a catastrophe.

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Thursday 20th October 2011 – I THOUGHT …

… that you might like to see like to see a photo of inside the lean-to now that the wall is finished for now. As I have said before,I’m quite impressed with it.

The part that I have built up is the part that has been pointed. The unpointed part is what remained after it fell down, and that will be pointed in early course. It depends how the weather holds out after I finish the house wall (yes, that’s the next task).

In fact, it occurs to me that the best way to judge how much work that I’ve done on the wall is to look at this photo to see what it looked like last year before I started in earnest.

So this morning I started on the web site again but not for long as Terry came round. He’d been working at Lieneke’s. It’s nice to see good friends and have a good chat about this and that, for a change.

This afternoon, I packed up an export order of bits and pieces – yes folks, my first export order. How about that? We are making progress all the time, which is very nice to see, and very welcome too. and once that was dealt with, seeing as how the weather wasn’t so good, I’ve started breaking the concrete food trough in the ground floor of the lean-to, as that’s where the wall that will support the steps will be.

Mind you, the steps won’t be there for long as I have a cunning plan about that.

But the concrete is tough there – it’s reinforced and armour-plated by the looks of things. I’ve broken the shafts on two sledgehammers, flattened two batteries on the SDS drill, and chipped about a hatful off with the pick-axe. I’m on the lookout for some dynamite now.

As for the frog that I told you about the other night, well thanks to Krys (and how nice it is to see you again), the frog now has steps in and out of the plant trough. He’ll probably fall in somewhere else now.

And the temperature? 1.8°C at the moment. Winter is acumen in. Lhude sing Rudolph

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Wednesday 19th October 2011 – THERE’S SOMETHING …

… really so satisfying about finishing a job that you started. And seeing as I started on this back in 2002 (well, sort-of, although I didn’t really get going until last summer), it’s high time as well.

Yes, I’ve finally topped out the wall at the end of the lean-to, as you can see in the pic. It took about three buckets full of stones,2 buckets full of gravel and about 4 buckets full of lime mortar, as well as about 3 hours of work.

Mind you, I’ve picked up an enormous lime burn on my left thumb and it isn’t half painful. I’ve tried soaking it in water but it still hurts.

So when I finished the cementing I tidied up in there and that’s a first isn’t it? And then I went down the garden and found one of the sheets of corrugated iron and put that on over where I’ve been working, to keep the rain off because we’ve had 15.5mm of that today.

And I have to say it – I spent 10 minutes just looking at the wall. I’m really impressed with how it came out and, of course, we’ll have an earthquake tomorrow so it will all fall down again – you just wait and see.

As for the weather, well it’s rained on and off for most of the day and the temperature has plummeted. It’s just 3.7 °C outside right now.

Apparently it’s snowing in Germany and snow has also been seen in Scotland and on high ground in the North of England. This is early and I don’t quite like the sound of it at all.

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Tuesday 18th October 2011 – It’s been progress on all fronts today.

This morning I had a good go on the website. For the last couple of days I’ve been making a start on the pages for the month I’ve just spent in Canada, and I’m actually on Day 4.

You might therefore be thinking that in another 10 days or so at this rate I’ll be finished, but I bet it will be nothing like. The first three days were pretty uneventful – it was on the fourth day that everything started to happen. I can see this being more like 10 months before it’s done.

This afternoon I’ve been up the wall again. Not as much progress as I would have liked, but the chevrons at each side of the wall that I have been doing – they are now nailed down to the beam and the outer and inner faces to the wall are now completed.

I’ve been infilling with crushed breeze block and a weak concrete mix and I’m about halfway up the centre of the final part of the wall. It won’t be long now until that’s done too.

It’s a shame that I couldn’t finish it this evening although I was doing my best. I was beaten by the dark (and I really DO mean dark) because it was 19:25 when I finally knocked off.

We also had some excitement elsewhere around the premises. I have a pile of dustbins, buckets and so on all around here in crucial places catching the rainwater to be used in the garden or in concreting and the like. A few days ago, the friendly frog who lives around here hopped into one and couldn’t get out. Luckily I noticed him and was able to liberate him.

This afternoon he had managed to do exactly the same thing. I saw him there when I went to wash my hands, and so I fished him out.

But badger me if, this evening when I went to fetch some water for washing up, he hadn’t gone and done exactly the same thing again.

That’s three times I’ve rescued him – if he ends up in there again tonight, well I’m afraid he’s on his own.

And we had some wind today – and serious wind as well, gusting up to 26kph which is not far short of a record for here since I’ve had the anemometer installed. All I need now is to fit the wind turbine up there and I’ll be happy. It’s high time it was in the place where it ought to be and doing the business

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Monday 17th October 2011 – THERE’S A LOT …

… to be said for being up at 08:00 in the morning at the first tinkling of the alarm clock. It means that by the time you have breakfasted and done your 3 hours on the laptop, there’s still two hours before lunch.

And it’s just as well because it took me a while to empty Caliburn ready for this furniture removal, and then there was still some time to do another little job that I’m thinking of.

You might recall that the 12-volt immersion heater has stopped working and had something of a meltdown. I had a good look at it and what has happened was that the heater element has folded downwards and shorted out against the metal sides. This has

produced a short-circuit that has melted all of the plastic causing the wires to short out (and why the fuse didn’t blow is a mystery to me)
the arc that was created has burnt a hole in the bottom of the drum.

Despite the catastrophe (and it could have been 10 times worse if the insulation had caught fire) I was still impressed with the heat that must have been generated from just 500 watts and my surplus energy.

But at least now I know why the heater elements are fitted vertically and not horizontally – it stops them shorting out like this. The issue with that though is that you need running water into the tank to make sure that when you drain the tank it refills instantly so that the element is never exposed to the air.

That won’t work for me because of course I don’t have running water. My solution would be to go for a non-conductive material like plastic, it I would find a plastic tank that would take water up to 70°C.

Anyway, the result of this is that I have no dump load for my surplus energy and so I had a cunning plan.

>When I was in Canada last year I found some black sockets formy 12-volt circuit and I bought a dozen with the idea that they would be so different in appearance to the usual white ones that it would evidently have some significance.

I cut out the wire from the dump load controller and put the black socket into the line. You can see it at the top right of this photo.

As winter approaches and the solar energy begins to die down, I’ve unplugged the fridge from the main circuit because I no longer have the charge to run it 24 hours. That will have to wait for next Spring.

What I’ve done is to move the fridge into where the water heater was and plugged it into the black socket. That way, from now on it will only switch on when there is surplus energy which isn’t too bad in winter. When there isn’t enough sun to run the fridge it will be cold enough to do without it anyway

It’s only 75 watts instead of 500 that the water heater gave out but nevertheless it’s better than nothing and it’s something useful to do with the surplus current.

What I also intend to do in the long run for the coming winter is when I wire in the big Studer inverter that I have, I’ll use the 600-watt one wired into the dump load circuit and couple up a small 400-watt oil heater that I have. I’ll put that in my room up here and it’ll take the chill off the place in the winter whenever we have plenty of sun.

This furniture removal this afternoon – well, I won’t say too much about it except that I was there at 14:00 as planned and Caliburn was all loaded before 14:30. For the 90km drive, we finally arrived at the house at … errr … 17:40 and it wasn’t until 18:10 that we got back under way.

So never mind the plans that I had about doing the washing and so on – we were lucky to make the Anglo-French meeting tonight in time. Still, what can you do in circumstances like this?

And so tomorrow I’m hoping to be back up the wall again. It might be finished this week – you never know.

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Sunday 16th October 2011 – IT’S A MYSTERY TO ME …

… how it is that Pionsat can play so dismally against mid-table opposition in their own division in the league and yet totally demolish a team two divisions higher up when they play in the cup.

Today it was the turn of Nord Combraille to come to Pionsat for a cup match and with the Miners being two divisions higher up, we were expecting something of a struggle.

But not so. Pionsat were all over a poor Nord Combraille side and demolished them completely, winning 3-1 at something of a canter.

You can read the match report here if you like.

The thing that is probably even more bizarre is that once again in a cup match, Thomas takes the opposition by the scruff of the neck and while his display isn’t quite as scintillating as two weeks ago (but then not by all that much either), it was streets ahead of his performance for the 2nd XI (4 divisions below Nord Combraille) last week when it took me almost an hour to realise that he was on the pitch.

And we had a gorgeous day for it as well. Here I was complaining the other day about the weather and yet for the last two days we’ve had proper summer days, the kind that you would be pleased to see in August. This weather is certainly bizarre.

Tomorrow I’m furniture removing and then going to the Anglo-French group. But I can’t wait to carry on with the house here. I’m getting all keen and enthusiastic and that’s not like me at all these days, is it?

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Saturday 15th October 2011 – WE SAW …

… the geese yesterday but this morning there was a horde of some other kind of bird assembling ready to fly off for the winter, and this is sad. In fact it’s more than sad – it’s depressing. Autumn is coming to a close already.

No idea what kind of bird they might have been. I know that I’m a keen birdwatcher, but that’s not concerned with any kind of bird that you might see flying about in the air over my property.

And so this morning after my 4 hours sleep (I was still up at 05:39) I was up and breakfasted and then I attacked Canada 2011.

But not before I had taken a shot of the work that I’ve been doing. You’ll see how much I’ve built up over the last couple of days, and you’ll also notice that the beam is in position where it should be.

When I restart work next week I’ll be building up the stonework so that it meets and infills the woodwork. And tipping cement and lightweight concrete into all of the gaps, that will hold everything nicely into position.

It’s all good stuff, make no mistake about this, and it’s coming along nicely.

In St Eloy les Mines I bumped into Bill and we went for a coffee and a chat to put the world to rights.

But in LIDL I also encountered a woman who was discussing things with her 4 year-old son “Do try to control yourself, Jasper”
Help! We are being invaded by Hooray Henries.

Back here my return was serenaded by the sounds of flute being played in welcome. Yes, it IS that time of the year and Lieneke and the others have turned up. And how well Lieneke looks. She’s dropped about 20 kilos over the last year and it really suits her. She’s probably losing years as the rest of us are adding them on.

And no footy again tonight either. whatever am I going to do until tomorrow?

-1

Friday 14th October 2011 – WINTER IS ON ITS WAY

This is just a small part of the huge flock of geese that assembled over my place this afternoon. They had been honking for about an hour and eventually they all put in an appearance right over me, coming in from every direction possible.

They circled around for a while, formed up in a huge echelon, and then departed hence. It wasn’t half impressive watching them do all of this and the noise was astonishing. But it is a fact that when they leave they take the sun with them, so I’ll be battening down the hatches and sorting out the firewood

And as as aside – why do birds fly south in winter?

Answer – “it takes too long to walk”.

And while we are on the subject of the weather, on the TV Monday night the weather forecaster promised us sun from Wednesday until next Monday. But I don’t know where it’s all gone too because we haven’t had it yet and the temperature has now plummeted.

Today was a momentous occasion outside on the wall of the lean-to because the beam is now in place where it ought to be. But it’s a bit of a disappointment because it’s about 0.5 inch too high in the vertical plane but about 0.5 inch too low under the chevrons. That means that the central beam is about 0.75 inch too high and the end where I’m working.

Ahh well.

Still, it’s progress I suppose. and from here on, the back-filling is pretty straightforward. It’s not going to take too long to finish off now and then I can plan my next step – always assuming that it doesn’t finish me off first.

But one thing is for sure – it won’t happen on Monday as I have a furniture removal to do – to Issoire.

Thursday 13th October – Just for a change …

… nothing happened today that was any different than the last few days.

I managed an early start for once and spent the morning on the computer. I have all of the Canada photos properly labelled and in some sort of order and so I’ve been sorting out my notes and putting the correct notes with the correct photos.

And that’s not as easy as you might think either. I’m … errr… somewhat disorganised. Anyway I’ve managed over half of that and if things go according to plan I can finish that tomorrow morning.

This afternoon I was back up the wall again and much of the time spent there was sorting stones so that I can find the best ones to use in the corner. That’s not easy either.

But anyway,I’ve now put the stones in right up to where the beam is going to go,and now I just need to find two stones for the side of the pillar. Once that is done and they are in place I can infill with stones and concrete and then drop the beam in place.

And when the beam is in place I can fill in the back wall behind it. That’s tomorrow’s work anyway.

And you can tell how carried away I was – it was well after 19:00 when I knocked off and that’s not like me at all, is it?

I’ve also finished the last of Tuesday’s courgette and lentil curry. That was a shame as I had been quite enjoying that. It’s fun to think of 1001 ways to use up a Combraiiles Courgette.

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EPIC HALL

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