Category Archives: Les Guis

Friday 27th May 2011 – Caliburn is getting ready …

… for his voyage to the UK next week. I had a good hunt around the garden and eventually found all of the framework for the suspended flooring. Two years of staying outside hasn’t done it much good though, and it needed a really good cleaning and some repairs too but now it’s in positions.

However there’s no sign of the flooring sheets. I’ve probably used them in some kind of building project somewhere. That means a trip to the DiY shop tomorrow to buy some more.

All of the kitchen utensils have been washed and cleaned and they are all in place. I’ve no gas though for the gas burner that I bought at a brocante. I’ll have to find some of that on my travels. But the electrics in the back work now and so I can run the slow cooker for now.

Apart from that I was on the web site this morning, and later in the evening I cleaned the oven in the verandah for the first time since I can’tr remember when.

Tomorrow it’s shopping and maybe the swimming baths if the weather is pleasant. And then I can start to load up Caliburn ready to go on Monday night.

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Thursday 26th May 2011 – I’ve been gardening today

I need to as well as I have so many plants lying around that need to be planted before I go away.

I started on the herbs and they’ve now all been properly put in place. The troughs that I used at my apartment in Brussels for my hedge on the balcony – they are just the job for this. I’ve had to put the mint into a pot all on its own as it was going berserk and overwhelming everything else in the trough where it was.

There are just a few herbs remaining but they are in small pots in the cloche and aren’t really up to being planted out as yet.

But I did find a plant that I didn’t recognise in the herb troughs. That, together with a couple of others that I can’t recognise, I’ve put on my Facebook page to see if anyone can identify them – you can see the link on the right-hand side.

If anyone has an idea as to what it (and the others) might be, let me know because I would love to find out what they are.

This afternoon I planted everything that I bought from the sale at St Gervais d’Auvergne, and there was tons of that too, and then made a start on the stuff growing in the cloche.

And so what with this morning on the computer again, this evening I went round to Marianne’s for a discussion and a perusal of the railway stuff that I received from Henri at Radio Tartasse about the tacot, the narrow-gauge railway that threaded its way through the Allier as far as Marcillat. And all of that is impressive too.

But basically Marianne and I have to go a-breaking and entering again, and we’ll do that when I come back from the UK.

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Wednesday 25th May 2011 – I’ve finished …

… the latest version of my water collection system. I’m not sure if this is the fifth or sixth go at doing it either, but it seems to be working. I hope that it stays the course as well.

The issue was that with having the sump where it was before, there wasn’t enough head to drain the water through the sand and puzzolane filter (the left-hand container) and so it was backing up into the settling tank (the long grey pipe). And so what I have done is to put a right-angle in where the sump was, and to move the sump round into the horizontal plane. That gives me much more head as you can see and the slope is much more respectable. The sump in its new position is much more twisted and I don’t think that it will work as well as the vertical sump and hotizontal take-off of the previous version, but the height of the head is everything and so it will have to do. It was either that or cut down the legs of the stand for the water butts, but if I were to do that I couldn’t fit a bucket underneath.

I was woken up this morning by the telephone man ringing me to ask where my house was situated so that he could repair my internet connection. Strange, that, seeing as I rang them yesterday to cancel the appointment as the internet was working. Shortly afterwards, someone else rang, despite knowing full well that I don’t want phone calls before 10:00am. This is a job for repeating the message by beating it into the skull of the offender in morse code with a baseball bat.

The rest of the morning was taken up with the web site of course and then trying to sort out a digger. The fun we’ve been having with diggers is, as you know, unbelievable. I’m sure that there’s some kind of major scam going on here.

The back of Caliburn is now empty and tomorrow afternoon I can fit the false floor and recover all of my voyaging stuff ready for the UK. And I finished off the evening with a beautiful warm solar shower. That was lovely.

And if tomorrow is as nice as today I’ll do a load of washing as well.

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Tuesday 24th May 2011 – I know it’s not much, but …

… it’s all my own and grown with my own fair hands.

Yes, the strawberries are coming into season and this evening for tea I had the four that have ripened so far. It’s impressive that I’ve got some as well after the devastating winter that we had.

It put the seal on the day too, because it was beautiful. Liz and I recorded our programmes at Radio Tartasse and Radio Arverne, and in between we went for lunch at the side of the River Sioule in Chateauneuf-les-Bains, in the glorious weather that we had.

We went from Chateauneuf to Gerzat by the scenic route through Blot and Charbonnieres and that was a gorgeous drive too – all in all it was an excellent day.

But there are changes afoot at Radio Arverne. As we suspected all along, SMADC has withdrawn its funding from our programmes. And it’s worse than that too because SMADC was leasing the radio aerial that transmits to the Combrailles, at €13,000 per annum. Radio Arverne can’t pay that and so it stops our programmes being broadcast to our own heartland.

However, all is not lost. There are a couple of other areas within range of the other transmitter that want to take the programme, and so could we continue the programmes but direct them there instead? We are open to offers, of course, but we can’t research any events to publicise because we have no contacts there. And so we’ve left it that we will still come, that we will produce our programmes, and that the regions that want to broadcast them will supply us with details of the events.

As well as that, they want us to prolong the running time of the programmes. Strangely enough, Liz and I were talking about that. We had the idea to talk about recipes, local Auvergnat ones for the Brits and British recipes for the French, and also some kind of gardening stuff – “what are you doing in the garden right now?”.

So we’ll have to wait to see what happens. it’s all confusing but then again nothing worth doing is ever easy to do.

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Monday 23rd May 2011 – I’ve found a new spot …

… from where I can take a good photograph of the Puy-de-Dome, my favourite photo object. It’s from the old road from St Gervais to Chateauneuf les Bains.

I was in Chateauneuf this evening as it was the opening of the Tourist season there and they were talking about all of the events that they will be doing. In my capacity as radio presenter I was invited. We were treated to some Gospel singers too, which made quite a change. Not my cup of tea at all but at least it shows initiative.

On the way back I took the old road and it was from there that I had the view. It’s a beautiful road, that one, but totally impractical if you are in a hurry.

And that was it, really. The internet is back and so after my long lie-in this morning (I had a Day of Rest today to make up for my long working weekend but someone still managed to wake me on the phone at 08:45) I caught up on the outstanding correspondence and the like.

Nice hot water outside and so a solar shower was called for. And quite right too – it’s really nice being clean. I should do it more often.

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Sunday 22nd May 2011 – My Postilion has been struck by lightning

Well, actually my Livebox has been hit by lightning and until I can get a new one sent to me I have no internet connection and so I can’t keep my blog up-to-date “Hooray” … ed. And so how come I’m on the internet now? Actually, I’m at Liz and Terry’s making very kind use of their internet here.

Today, after working on the topic for our radio programmes next week (we will be talking about the Post Office) I went to the plant fair at St Gervais. This is where people sell their surplus garden plants to those whose crops have been wiped out by intemperate weather, and I now have some peppers, chilis, tomatoes, oregano, all kinds of stuff like that. There was even some natural soap for deep-cleaning the skin (I’ll need that when I finally start on the old cars that I have to restore) and some natural soap for dealing with stains on clothing.

After that I went to Cellule, near Davayat to watch Pionsat’s 1st XI get soundly spanked. After that, we watched a football match and FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI were beaten 5-2.

But then again, playing with a back four of Lord Lucan, Martin Bormann and a couple of Easter Island statues it was hardly surprising. They were employing what I call the “Lego defence” – they all go to pieces in the box.

And now we have been rehearsing our radio programme for Tuesday – the morning it’s Radio Tartasse and in the afternoon it’s Radio Arverne.

Anyway, Liz wants her computer back and so I have to go. I don’t know when it might be that I’ll be on line again, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.

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Friday 20th May 2011 – Today was a better day.

At least I was up at a reasonable time, for a change and had the usual couple of hours on the web pages. And although I didn’t advance far down the Canso Peninsula I managed to cover about 750 years and three continents, such is the controversy surrounding the alleged voyage of Sir Henry Sinclair to Chedabucto Bay sometime in the late 14th Century.

I carried on with Caliburn and he is now all reassembled and roadworthy, with a nice, clean and tidy cab and almost all the electrics working. You’ve no idea how much junk I took out, and how much I threw away either, but I didn’t find the SatNav, which is a pain. Mind you, a couple of quid, 5 Canadian cents and about 2 Euros made it worthwhile from that point of view. I would rather have the SatNav though.

We went for a run into Pionsat to draw some cash and to go to the Post Office to post Mike’s birthday present but blast it – it’s POETS Day isn’t it? And I missed the post.

Back here I didn’t manage to empty out the back of Caliburn as we had a torrential downpour – 14.5mm of rain fell and that’s a lot. Fed up with this blasted non-working water system, I dismantled it in the pouring rain and cleaned it all out. Now some kind of water is getting through but still nothing like enough and I’ll have to redesign it. I know a way to make it work.

But this weekend I’m really busy and so it won’t be until Monday that I can carry on.

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Thursday 19th May 2011 – I’ve not been having a very good day today

I was up at a reasonable time (for a change just recently) and managed a good couple of hours on the Nova Scotia pages (yes, I’ve made it onto the Canadian mainland at last) but then I had to sort out a huge pile of photographs for this house that we visited the other week – the chairman of the local history society has been on to me about them.

This afternoon I finished scrubbing Caliburn’s dashboard and it all looks quite pretty there now, and then I tackled the wiring. And what a mess that was. In the end I ripped all of it out and completely redid it, but in a much-simplified form. I have the two fuse boxes properly fastened in and all of the connections are now inside a sealed plastic box to stop them being pulled out. And now the spare battery charges itself up with the solar panels and the split charge relay like it was supposed to.

I would have finished it too but at about 19:15 (I was still out there working then) we had a terrific thunderstorm, and 5mm of rain fell in minutes. and that was when I noticed that this water filter system STILL isn’t working, and I’ve no idea why. I’m going to strip it down as soon as I finish Caliburn, whenever that might be. And I think a battery is boiling up too judging by the smell. And that s depressing me too.

And in other news, I now have four governments to support .

Wednesday 18th May 2011- All I can say …

… is that if the sat-nav is still in Caliburn, then it is doing a pretty good impersonation of another piece of Caliburn’s equipment because all that there is in Caliburn’s cab right now is the passenger seat. Everything else is out.

I suppose that I shall have to write this one off to experience, I reckon. But it’s given me an opportunity to clear out the cab and I’m in the course of cleaning all of the plastic and the fascia and so on – or, at least, I was but I happened to notice the time – 19:24, long after knocking-off time, and so I’ll have to finish tomorrow.

Mind you, there’s a reason why I was still working at 19:24, and that was due in some small measure to the fact that I started at … errr … 11:05 this morning. Yes, I slept through all of the alarms again, but then again it was 03:45 when I went to bed – carried away on the web site again, that’s my excuse. Mind you, the night before it was 04:15 when I went to bed and so maybe that has something to do with it too.

And so tomorrow, assumimg that I wake up, I’ll finish off cleaning and reassembling Caliburn and then I need to check my auxiliary electrical system as that’s not working properly and I want to sort that out before I go to the UK.

I also have to find all the bits for the false floor and I’ve no idea where they might be. A lot has happened in the 2 years since I last went to the UK (apart from the day trip the other week of course).

Tuesday 17th May 2011 – I now have a new beichstuhl

and here’s a photo of it in ill its glory – minus the tongue-and-grooved cladding of course.

Did I mention that when I was at Les Bonnes Affaires the other day they had a couple of 20-litre aluminium casseroles? And just €9:99 too. I thought that I would try one because being a casserole it would be watertight, it has a tight-fitting lid and it shouldn’t be prone to rusting.

That so-called stainless steel bin that I bought from IKEA is rusty already and leaking, after less that a year and so it needed to be changed. At least this gives me an opportunity to redesign it.

It isn’t finished because I can’t find the hinges for the top part, and I can’t find the clips to hold the seat on, but they’ll turn up somewhere sometime.

Such delightful things that I talk about on my blog.

I started that after I’d been working on my voyage around Cape Breton Island, but I didn’t get a head start on it like I wanted. Another succession of cold canvassers, and the guy from Pionsat Patrimoine who doesn’t understand the meaning of the sentence “I’m busy and I don’t have time to deal with these photos right now” – mind you, the time it took him on the phone, I could have done it.

Tomorrow I’m going to strip out Caliburn, including removing the seats, and see what’s in there, and see if I can’t find that SatNav (although I’m not optimistic about that). I need to get ready to go to the UK.

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Monday 16th May 2011 – Well, it was a nice afternoon out.

Riom is quite pleasant at this time of the year and it was a nice drive too. And seeing as how what I had to do took nothing like as long as I was expecting, and with 2 hours to spare, I went for a swim in the baths there.

And the baths were delicious. New, clean, modern, light, airy, and plenty of room to move about. A few activities for the younger ones too. I really enjoyed that swim and the shower afterwards (… “what, was the OUSA EC there?” – ed …) was nice and warm. And so I am nice and clean and I’m even going to have clean bedding tonight.

At the Anglo-French group tonight we had a good chat about current events – Strauss-Kahn, Fukushima, that kind of thing. It’s nice to be with pleasant company.

And on the web pages I’m now on Cape Breton Island and taking the Englishtown Ferry over to the Cabot Trail. I’ve been there before, in 2003 of course, but I was quite ill then and I really wasn’t enjoying my journey. 2010 was a much different kettle of fish – 5 years since I’d been on a decent adventure, when I went off to South Carolina and I was all fuelled up for it.

“And Newfoundland?” I hear you ask. That’s all done and dusted and it’s on line. You can read it here.

Sunday 15th May 2011 – I’ve hardly been …

… outside today. Just once to take the lid off the cloche, and once to put it back on again and to take the stats. And that was that.

For the rest of the time I’ve stayed up here – catching up on tons of outstanding correspondence and so on, and there’s still tons to do but I haven’t done it.

But even in the confines of my comfy little corner I can still stir up a whirlwind, so I’m told. There’s one of these industrial walks next Saturday – I don’t know if you remember last year the one where we visited all of the old coal mines and quarries – and this year its to look at a few bits and pieces and to visit a Roman gold mine. So of course Yours Truly sent a message to the contacts group to inform them of the walk, with a little light-hearted comment such as “and we are going gold-prospecting, so bring your own shovel and pan”. And to cut a long story short “thank God” – ed my message has appeared word for word in the local newspaper.

Of course the organisers are furious but then again what can I do about it? I didn’t report it to the newspapers and the local reporter who covers the area – she didn’t report it either as it was she who told me about it. So who did?

Ahh well.

Anyway, back at work tomorrow. And I need to go to Riom in the afternoon. High time I was a little more pro-active.

Saturday 14th May 2011 – Wonders will never cease

At the football tonight, Biollet St Maurice put two past Pionsat’s 3rd XI tonight as you might expect, but rather astonishingly, Pionsat replied with FIVE (or was it 6? I lost count). That doesn’t happen very often, does it?

Mind you, Pionsat were bolstered by Cedric and Sebastien from the 1st XI, playing their first competitive matches for many, many months following long injuries.

Rusty and short of match fitness they may well have been, but they made something of a small difference to the team. The others on the pitch somehow picked up their game and were doing things that they don’t usually do.

But that’s the difference between “being beaten before they start” and “having loads of encouragement and support from the other two teams”. The first and second XIs ought to help out the 3rd XI whenever they can – something that I’ve been saying for years.

And there’s no football anywhere tomorrow – not even in the Allier. It’s cup final day, so it seems. What am I going to do?

This morning that solar panel guy came to see me, and he stayed for about 5 minutes. That suits me. I have no sympathy for canvassers and cold callers.

This afternoon I went to Commentry for the shopping and apart from the usual stuff I made some puchases for the water filters. Chatting to the guys in Bricomarche they had some fibreglass flyscreen stuff at €7:50 per square metre – much better for making a sand filter than a nylon stocking. The Centrakor came up with a pair of those anti-spatter frying pan covers that will be ideal for cutting down and also some stainess steel conical tea strainers, fine for conical puzzolane-filter housings that I’m building.

The Bonnes Affaires came up with some aluminium mesh gutter covers that they use for keeping leaves out. I can make good use of them too, especially at the reduced rate of €1 for a packet ot 0.8 square metres (I bought three). They also had some big casserole saucepans – 12-litre or thereabouts in aluminium for €9.99. I bought one of them to see if it’s any good for making an enclosed composting toilet.

And remember my posting of a few weeks ago about some interesting or exciting news that might be happening? Well, can tell you something but instead I’ll leave you to stew for a few more days.

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Friday 13th May 2011 – It’s been a long time …

.. since I’ve had one of these. It was one of those rare nights that they call a nuit blanche around here where I didn’t go to sleep at all. And I’m not quite sure why either, because I had a busy day yesterday too.

And so I sat in the window, reading a book to pass the time and at approximately 04:45 the sun started to come up, so I took a photo of the breaking dawn. I then went back to reading until breakfast time.

It’s been absolutely years since I’ve had one of those.

Today I’ve spent most of the afternoon on the phone. Katherine has sent a parcel back from Canada and it’s gone missing. The Canadian Postal Service’s website is useless and the telephone system is one of those digitalised ones where it is not possible to speak to a human, and it tells you nothing that the website doesn’t tell you.

Of course, I’m not one to take that kind of thing lying down and after many struggles I ended up speaking to the Personal Assistant of Rob Merrifield, who is the Canadian Government Minister for Posts and Telecommunications. We had a lengthy chat and this evening I’ve received a mail from her to say that someone from the Canadian Postal Service will be in touch with me.

We shall see, of course, because I have heard all of this before, but the only way to deal with incompetence and obfuscation is to go to the top. Once a few Government ministers have had their ears bent by a few dissatisfied customers, things might change.

Mind you, I’m not holding my breath. It’s not like the time that the lavatory attendants closed the public conveniences on Crewe Bus Station, to the inconvenience of everyone. But I didn’t take it lying down – I stood up and went over their heads.

Now that I’ve been to the sawmill at St Gervais d’Auvergne I can crack on with the balloon frame greenhouse and I spent the rest of the day cutting the wood ready for assembling the framework.

It’s coming on quite nicely now, and the net job will be to give it a couple of coats of the LIDL wood treatment, but that’s not for today.

So after finishing off the framework for the greenhouse I came in and started tidying up. I have a caller tomorrow – someone who wants to sell me some solar panels so that I can sell electricity to the EDF. I hate these canvassers.

Thursday 12th May 2011 – How long is it…

… since I featured an old vehicle on my blog? I can’t remember now but it may well have been about a year ago, and it might have been a Citroen lorry. And so here’s another old Citroen lorry that I saw on Thursday.

Now despite the fact that it’s a rare-enough lorry as it is, this vehicle is practically unique and there probably won’t be another one quite like this anywhere that would be still running on the road.

Do you see what looks like a boiler at the side behind the cab? That had me puzzled for quite a while and I thought at first that it was a tar-spreader.

I ruled that out though because the jets are in front of the truck, meaning that to do its spreading it would have to travel in reverse while it was working and that wouldn’t be very likely.

And then the penny dropped. We are at a sawmill, aren’t we? Yes, and what this is is a lorry that runs on wood-gas – like they did in the war when there was no petrol. And he was here to fuel up with his wood chippings because, astonishingly as it might seem, he still runs it on wood-gas.

The owner had gone off to chat with his friends otherwise I probably would have been still there now chatting to him. But it’s a good job that I had to go out – I would have missed this lorry otherwise.

After the customary couple of hours on the web pages I went out and carried on with the framework for the greenhouse, but I didn’t have enough chevrons. In fact, doing a considerable bit of mix-and-match, I was just 10 cms short.

So after lunch I had a good root around here, sorted out a pile of stuff for the dechetterie at Pionsat (there were four dustbins full of tin cans), went down there to dispose of it, and then went to the sawmill at St Gervais for some wood.

And it was at the sawmill that I saw the lorry.

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EPIC HALL

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