Category Archives: Les Guis

Wednesday 19th January 2011 – Just by way of a change …

… I was awake before the alarm clock this morning. Surprising too, because it was after 03:00 when I went to bed – rather busy on the computer was I last night.

And this non-seasonal weather is still here – light cloudy skies and plenty of solar energy, and thus electrically-heated water too, but the temperature has dropped. At 21:00 it was -2°C and falling, so winter is still with us.

I’ve had another good day working on the bedroom roof and that is making progress. Slowly, it has to be said, but at least it’s one of those tasks where you can actually see how you are getting on. I’ve probably done about a third of it and it seems to be making something of a difference up here with all of the extra insulation and then the tongue-and-grooving on the bedroom ceiling, which is of course the floor in here.

But I think that I have made something of an error in that I started with the tongue-and-grooving by the window, which means that I am having to do all kinds of contortions around the framework of the fitted wardrobe. It would have been easier to start at the wall by the fitted wardrobe and then continued out to the window. However, where you start is much neater than where you finish and by finishing over the top of the wardrobe, no-one is going to see how it all ended up.

The days are lengthening too. It was 17:48 when I finished work in the bedroom due to fading light, and I went outside to do some more but the drop in temperature drove me in at 18:10 when it was still light . enough to carry on for a short while. Give it another month and I’ll be outside working at 19:00. I’ll need to be too, as I have this greenhouse to build and some new plots and raised beds to deal with. Wherever does the time go to?

And in other news, CREFAD – this Government-sponsored business networking thing that gives lectures and advice to small businesspeople in the Auvergne – rang me up. There’s a meeting on 1st March at St Gervais on the subject of auto-entrpreneurs – this new system of taxation for small informal businesses – and they need a speaker for it. would I be free by any chance that evening? Magali (the girl who runs it) clearly remembers me from 9 months ago when I did a talk on eco-construction.

As it happens I am free that evening and even if I wasn’t, I would be. There’s no payment or anything involved of course which is a shame, but it gives me a chance to meet some more potential clients and talk about my business. An opportunity not to be missed. And they must clearly be impressed with my command of the French language otherwise they wouldn’t keep on asking me to speak at these public meetings, and that is something that pleases me greatly.

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Tuesday 18th January 2011 – We were recording again today

This time it was for the programmes for Radio Tartasse – the next lot of four-weekly programmes to take them up to the end of February. Luckily I don’t have too far to travel because it’s an early start in the morning, like … errrr … 10:00.

This time we were allowed to do the programmes how we wanted to do them, and it went much better. Liz and I have a very good rapport and much of our stuff is done as ad-libs and you can’t do that if you are having to concentrate on pages of script. And they have also agreed to let us have copies of the recorded programmes so that I can stick them on our blog when I have the time and I’m not so tired. But that will come – you can be assured of that.

And so back here, and carrying on with my ceiling. and that’s what I did for most of the rest of the day such as it was. And I’m making good progress too. It won’t be all that long before it’s done. BUt it went dark at about 17:00 – at least too dark to work on the ceiling, and so I had an hour or so outside doing a little more clearing up. And slowly but surely it’s looking a little (but only a little) more respectable out here. But the weather has turned. It clouded right over and it’s gone cold. I even have had the heating on a little earlier this evening. But not that that worries me. Now that the weeds and brambles are dying down I’m uncovering a few of the old chevrons that we ripped off the barn roof and threw down to the floor. It’s all more firewood for the stove.

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Monday 17th January 2011 – It was Monday today …

… believe it or not, and this afternoon we went to the recording studio to record our radio programmes for the month of February. And no offer of transport from our sponsors either. It seems that whatever budget that was available was only for 12 months and that has now expired.

Anyway, with a view to not taking this lying down, I have taken some positive action. I’ve created a blog for the radio programmes that we do and the intention is that I will stream the radio programmes on there for the benefit of those who can’t receive them or who forgot to listen to them. And in addition to that I will be offering advertising space, at a very democratic €30 per annum for those who run a business or have a service to offer, or €3 per 15 words per month for small ads and the like, people buying and selling articles and so on. And with the money that we raise, we can pay our own travelling expenses to the studio.

So I need help in spreading the word about the radio blog, and I also need customers to buy the advertising space. If you can do your bit to spread the word it would be a great help.

This morning I was up early (just for a change) and with the new insulation that I bought on Saturday I was able to have a profitable couple of hours doing the bedroom ceiling. And it’s advancing pretty well in there. I’m quite happy with that. This evening though we were in St Eloy for the Anglo-French group and we were so carried away with the discussions that instead of finishing at 21:00 as is our wont, it was almost 22:00 when someone noticed the time.

Tomorrow we are recording again – at Radio Tartasse. I need to encourage them to let me have the radio programmes from their end so that we can put them up on the blog too.

I hope it all works!

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Sunday, 16th January 2011 – What a beautiful day.

Definitely the best of the summ… errrr … winter so far. Not only did we have the hottest temperatures of the winter, we had the sunniest too. Not a cloud in the sky all day. My batteries in the house are all fully-charged and the water heater (that uses up the excess electricity) ran for 2.5 hours and warmed up the water to 32°C. Not quite shower-warm but we are getting there.

But how ridiculous is this though, when just 12 days ago we had -8.4°C? It could only happen here in the Combrailles.

Today I finished off “holiday lettings” ready for recording tomorrow, and then I worked on a blog for the radio programmes – an important thing that needs doing seeing as we seem to be going nationwide (well – alright, into the Allier and the Creuse). The aim is of course to stream out programmes so that people who miss them or live outside the reception areas can pick them up.

So after that it was off to St Bonnet to watch Pionsat’s 1st XI give them a good spannering. and I arrived 10 minutes late to find that they were already ahead 2-0. They won 4-0 in the end and that included missing a penalty, thanks to an excellent double-save by the St Bonnet keeper.

But this match was well-planned to be played in mid-winter. The heat that was generated on the field both on and off the ball would have certainly melted any ice that might otherwise have formed in any traditional kind of winter weather.

And so round to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse our radio programmes this week. We are recording at Radio Arverne tomorrow and Radio Tartasse on Tuesday.

And now I’m back home in my warm unheated attic – two consecutive days that I haven’t had the heating on here – watching the Jets and the Patriots. And listening to the adverts – including one for Viagra “seek medical attention immediately if you have an erection that lasts for four hours”. At my age, it wouldn’t be medical attention that I would be seeking, I could tell you. It reminds me of the time that a new machine tools factory opened up in Crewe, and the proud owner put up his sign “O’Malley’s Tool Works”. So I rang him up and told him “so does mine, but I haven’t put up a sign about it”.

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Saturday 15th January 2011 – It’s been another day …

where things might have been better.
Not the weather, though. we had a beautiful day today. The solar panels on the house roof generated almost 200 amp-hours today and the batteries in the house are now almost fully-charged. The batteries in the barn have been fully charged for a couple of days of course.

So up with the lark and off to Montlucon for my insulation. And they just had one pack of 20mm sheets left and so I shall have to make do with that for now. I also picked up a pile of door handles for €2:00 each and a few other bits and pieces too in the sale, but the huge disappointment was the sliding doors. They had a pile on sale at €15 each, quite reasonable light oak with inset mirrors and so I immediately went for four of them. But much to my dismay, only the first one was light oak and all of the others were a dark gloomy colour that won’t match the drawers and won’t match the worktop either. So back to square one with that.

I was back home before midday too, despite fitting in a trip to the Auchan, and I did some more on the Holiday Lettings thingy that we are talking about on the radio just now.

At 17:55 I nipped down into Pionsat to watch the 3rd XI play Montfermy, a match specially arranged at that time at the request of the visitors. Not many matches at all on tonight so they had even, for the first time that I can remember, been able to find an official referee for a 4th Division match and so we had the ref, we had 14 Pionsat players – and no opposition.

They simply didn’t turn up.

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Friday 14th January 2011 – Ouch!

It’s been an expensive day today – and I didn’t go shopping either. GRRRR What did happen was that the postie came by today bearing some major bad news.

Firstly, when the solicitor charged with handling the sale of Reyers was asked to settle all of the outstanding Brussels taxation issues, well, indeed he did. But he did that on the 29th of September, the day that the cheque for the sale was cleared, and of course the property taxes on Expo were due on October 1st. And so I had a red reminder today for €1200 that I had not taken into account in my budget.

Secondly, a couple of years ago I went into the taxation office here and asked that the taxes that I am to pay on Les Guis and on Montaigut should be paid by direct debit instead of by demand. I told the tax office that I travel around a great deal and was afraid of missing a payment or two, and the tax office very kindly helped me to complete the forms.

And when I went into the tax office that time, I was brandishing around a tax d’habitation form. And so you can guess what has happened. Just how many brain cells do you need to have, to work out that if someone tells you that he travels around a great deal and is afraid of missing a payment or two, he means ALL HIS TAXES? And so that was another €733 that bit the dust.

While I was out, I reckoned that I may as well go and buy the plank that I need for making my false beam, the one that the electric cables will be running behind. So to St Gervais and the sawmill. And he will cut me a plank of the required width and thickness, but to a maximum of 4.15 metres. That’s no good. The room is 4.47 metres and the plank of course needs to be in one piece – it will look silly as a beam if it is in two pieces.

And so I shot off through the wilds to Montel-de-Gelat and the huge sawmill there. And I arrived about half an hour before closing time. They have planks in stock – 4.50 metres long by 18mm thick. Absolutely ideal for what I want. But the width – 150mm whereas I want 120mm ideally.
“Can you trim one down for me?”
“No”
“No? Why not?”
“Because this is the week when the cutting mill is closed for machine maintenance.We can do it for you next Friday”.

I’m clearly having no luck at all today.

I said the other day that I would take a photo of the lean-to with all of the wood. It looked like this in November last year, and all through the following 12 months the pile increased in size as I flung more and more bits of wood in there.At one stage in the summer I couldn’t even get into the place. But anyway, you can see that it’s emptying out quite nicely.

The wall on the left is the eastern wall of the house and the kitchen will be built against this wall. The dark grey cylinder is the large gas bottle that will power the gas cooker. I’ll anchor it to the wall and drill through the wall in order to pass a gas pipe through. The other cylindrical object is an old immersion heater that Claude gave me to play with.

In the bedroom I did some more of the tongue-and-grooving but that came to a dead stop too as I ran out of 20mm insulation. I’ll have to go to Brico Depot tomorrow and buy a load of that so that I can carry on next week. There’s not much else I can be doing until I buy my plank.

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Thursday 13th January 2011 – Oh look at that!

Yes, doesn’t this look gorgeous?

It’s a home-made vegan Christmas cake specially made for me by Liz, whose culinary talents know no bounds and whose husband, Terry, is the luckiest man on earth. Liz made this for me for Christmas and now that I’ve finished everything else that was hanging around here, I can make a start on it.

So before I did anything else, I had to photograph it for posterity, and then I cut myself a slice.

And believe me – it really is as nice as it looks and I am ever so grateful to Liz for making it for me. It’s really nice to have good friends. This cake should keep me going until my birthday if I am lucky (said he, dropping a huge hint).

But back to the story.

With the weather being as it is right now, I’ve not been burning so much wood. But I’ve still been spending half an hour each morning in the woodshed, dragging out suitable wood and stacking it outside under the sheeting ready to burn. It’s keeping quite dry out there and the wind is helping to condition it for burning. And I’ve also been able to start to move things around a little so that there’s more space in there to move around. If I remember, I’ll post a pic of the place because I do remember taking one when I piled everything in there and there wasn’t room to swing a cat.

And up in the bedroom I’ve made a start on the ceiling.

You can see what I’m trying to do – put strips of tongue-and-grooving over the polystyrene insulation in the ceiling (which is actually the floor of my attic of course).

It’s slow work as each piece has to be cut separately as the beams are twisted and so the gap is never the same size. And then I have to wedge some more polystyrene in between the mounting rails and then nail the T&G over the top.

I’ve cut a hole in one of the pieces for the light fitting. There will be four lights, two by the window and two by the fitted wardrobe. Recessed MR16 12-volt fittings to take the LIDL LED bulbs that I can get.

What makes a difference of course is having music while I work. And I’m currently on the “W” and that can only mean “The Who” – followed tomorrow by “Wishbone Ash”. First album up was probably The Who’s second-best-ever album – Who’s Next. Every single one of the tracks on it is on my current playlist and rightly so – it’a an album full of classic Who music. And after a few other albums we came to what is probably the best rock album that has ever been recorded and which has never been off the top of my personal list since 1973, and that is of course Quadrophenia . That particular album is on a completely different plane than anything else that has ever been recorded and if you have never ever heard it then you really don’t know what you are missing. And at £3:99 for a copy of 1 hour 40 minutes worth of thumoing rock muisic, you can’t say that you can’t afford it.

Of course, there’s only one way to lsisten to Who’s Next and Quadrophenia, and that is why I have bought a house down the end of a dirt track miles from anywhere. And even old solidly-built stone houses can really rock with the volume turned full up.

That cheered me up as well, and I have four or five classic Wishbone Ash albums to listen to soon.

Wednesday 12th January 2011 – Well, we are still progressing …

… slow as it might be. You can see in the pic that I’ve fitted 2 of the strips to the front wall, all with the castellations nicely cut out, and the joints all properly filled in. It took me hours, as you might expect, as I don’t really do finicky, as I said yesterday.

I haven’t fitted the third strip as this depends on the 4500 x 100 plank that is to go as the false beam on the right-hand wall. I really need to go to the sawmill and sort that out, as well as picking up a pile of 40×27 laths.

What the plan is for tomorrow is to make a start on the ceiling – cutting some tongue-and-grooving to fit between the beams. I won’t be able to do much as I don’t have any 20mm insulation sheets. I forgot to get some last weekend at Brico Depot, but whatever I do will at least give you an idea of how it’s all going to work. As I say, slow progress but it’s progress all the same and It’s looking a little more optimistic here. I might even have a bedroom for the summer!

That is, of course, if we ever get any summer. For the last 2 days it’s poured down with rain more-or-less non-stop and working outside for the last half-hour before I knock off (the days are lengthening) is getting me soaked to the skin. But at least you can see a little improvement at the outside of the house – the place is slowly starting to look a little tidier. And there’s more space in the lean-to since I’ve been burning the wood in there. All in all, I’m feeling a little more optimistic.

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Tuesday 11th January 2011 – I made some slow progress today

The plasterboarding on the two outside walls in the bedroom is only up to 2.50 metres whereas the room itself is about 2.78. What I’ve done in the gaps is to run all of the conduit and trunking for the electric cables, as you may have already seen. For the side wall, I can make up the difference by building up with some plasterboard strips and then put a plank of 4.50 x 10 over the trunking so that it looks like a beam (the real outer beam is of course hidden in the 80mm of insulation on the wall).

But a big hunt around didn’t uncover a suitable plank and so I need to go to the sawmill, unless anyone has a suitable beam lying around anywhere. Of course I could use two smaller planks but it would look silly. Whoever heard of a beam with a join in it?

For the front wall I’ll be using plasterboard with 20mm of insulation behind it and cut to a castellated shape to fit between the beams. And so today I’ve been fitting the longitudinal laths between the beams so that I can infill between the beams with tongue-and-grooving to hide the 60mm of insulation there, and then I fitted some stand-off brackets on the front wall to take the plasterboard. This is all very finicky work and as you know I don’t do finicky and so it’s really slowwwwww. But it’s progress all the same

I’ve also made a change at the top of the stairs just here. I had a huge old cardboard box that I had opened out and used as an insulated wall covering, to cover over the back of the plasterboarding into my attic (I can’t cover it properly as I’ll be running the water pipes down there in due course). But a bit of measuring up revealed that the offcuts of the space-blanket insulation from when I did the walls of the bedroom – they would be a perfect fit and so I took the box off and redid it. And it’s cut down all the draughts that came in through there. But the firewood doesn’t like it and just now one of the boxes of firewood went crashing down the stairs decanting its contents all over the place.

This afternoon I braved the Hound of the Baskervilles and went round to Bill’s. He had a 100-litre immersion heater that was fairly new and which he was giving away to a good home. It has a slight leak around the electriclty plate, but that’s no problem for me as I’ll be taking it off anyway and fitting my own with one of my 12-volt elements.

He also had a small 50-litre immersion heater as well that was looking for a good home. And that got me thinking. Heater elements are what is known as “resistance elements” and so will work with any kind of voltage. And so with 50 litres, which isn’t a lot of water but more than I ever need, I could use it as the dump load for the set-up in the barn and run my 12-volt surplus current into it directly. With the element rated at 220 volts and with me putting 13.4 volts through it, I’d be getting only 0.06 of the power output (if the element is rated at 1200 watts I’d be getting about 75 watts – if it’s rated at an unlikely 3kw I would be getting about 180 watts) but 50 litres in a proper insulated tank won’t need all that much power to warm up. What I will need to do is to find a way of fitting a temperature sensor in there so that I can keep an eye on the temperature.

Of course, it might not work. But the whole idea is that it’s an experiment and we can see what happens.

But I had a bad night last night. I woke up at about 04:00 with a nightmare (a long time since I’ve had one of those) and I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards. I’ll be having an early night.

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Monday 10th January 2011 – I had a little fun …

…with the Nikon this evening.

On the way down to Christiane’s, I noticed that the church of Gouttieres, situated on a hill right across the valley from the main road, was clearly visible with there being no leaves on the trees right now. And it’s always well-illuminated at night and I’ve often thought that it would make a good photograph.

And so on the way back home I found a suitable spot at the side of the main road, set up the tripod and spent a pleasant 15 minutes experimenting. Considering that I’m probably a mile away from the church and it was pitch-black, I don’t think it’s come out too badly at all.

We’d been down to Christiane’s to celebrate Epiphany (I know we are three or four days behind but so what? The rest of the Auvergne is 200 years behind) and to cut the “galette du roi” – a traditional European Epiphany event. We were about 10 or so people there, but it’s the quality that counts, not the quantity and we had a very pleasant evening.

Today though, I did something that I bet you would never ever consider that I might do – and that is I swept up in the bedroom and bagged all of the rubbish. So at least I can move around in there for the next stage of the work and not trip over anything. I need a sieve to sift the rubbish to rescue nails, screws, screwdriver bits and the like and in the absence of such I made one, by the simple expedient of finding a damaged 20-litre liquid container, cutting off the top, and drilling a huge amount of 5mm holes all over the container. I tried it on the rubble that came out of the chimney and it worked a treat, and so I tried it in the lean-to on the debris from the wood I’ve been cutting and it separated a pile of small kindling from a huge amount of sawdust. I’m clearly onto something with this.

Tomorrow I can make a start on fitting the false beam that will hide part of the electrical trunking, and I also have to go to see Bill to pick up this immersion heater that he wants to dispose of.

And talking of water heating, the batteries in the barn topped out today. The first time since November.

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Sunday 9th January 2011 – What a miserable day.

Well, at least, the afternoon was. I … errr … don’t know what the morning was like. And having gone to bed quite early (well, for me anyway) last night, all I can say is that I must have been tired. All of this hard work and the early start yesterday have been taking it out of me.

So with the grey clouds and all of the rain that I awoke to, I was surprised to see how warm it was in here. Hot stuff indeed I must be, for when I went to bed last night it was 13.4°C in here, and when I awoke it was 15.4°C. But it didn’t stay like that for long as a huge grey hanging cloud appeared and brought a cold snap with it.

We had a footy match this afternoon – Pionsat’s 1st XI against Cellule. And while Pionsat’s team was well ahead of the opposition on possession and play they couldn’t do it on goals and lost 2-1, and the two goals that Cellule scored were surrounded in controversy. Pionsat are rather naive when it comes to playing the referee and were well outmatched in this department.

The 2nd XI were at Miremont – a team that was in Division 1 last season and who where crushed 12-1 by the Pionsat’s 1st XI last season in one match. I would have liked to have gone to see that match but “a man cannot be in two places at once, unless he were a bird” as the legendary Sir Boyle Roche once said. And so I came home and tidied up a pile of papers.

In other news, if you have been following my comments for a few years now you will know that I have been making a series of predictions, many of which are coming to fruition. One of the things that I have been prophesying is that with Great Satan deposing a pro-western Sunni dictator in Iraq and paving the way for an anti-Western Shia dictator, there will soon be such an anti-western dictator that Great Satan will wish that it had never ever deposed Saddam Hussein.

And so we learn that Moqtada Sadr, he who led the Mehdi Army against the Septics in some fierce fighting in Iraq a couple of years ago, has returned to Iraq and accepted a post in the Iraq government, seeing as his party won 38 seats in the recent elections there.

Watch this space.

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Saturday 8th January 2011 – I had to go …

…and lie down for an hour in a darkened room today.

Yes, I’ve been to order my windows for the bedroom and the bathroom. A whopping great €1100, for which they wanted a 50% deposit on the spot. I’ve never spent that much money in my life, and you should have seen the moths come flying out of my wallet when I unlocked it. These windows at Lapeyre are three times the price of Brico Depot windows but then again they are supposed to be 100 times better. I hope so.

Apart from that, there wasn’t much of any excitement happening in Montlucon. I’ve bought another pile of stuff that I need to carry on working in the bedroom and I did my monthly shopping. But I had a huge GRRRRR at the Auchan. I have €8:50 in credit on my card there so I asked the girl to cash it up – but having checked me out she then forgot to do it and if I’m not careful I’m going to lose this money. I only have until the end of the month to claim it.

At Brico Depot someone from a florist’s left a note on Caliburn for me to go round there to chat to them – one assumes about solar panels and the like. But there was no-one at home so I dunno what that was all about. Next stop was the swimming baths at Nerys-les-Hughes where I spent most of my hour in the water watching half a dozen kids aged about 9 or 10 having a load of fun on a huge foam-rubber raft-type of affair. It’s a long time since I’ve seen kids have so much fun without any adults moaning at them.

I was told that tonight there was to be a football match at Pionsat – one of the matches that was postponed from December. But the place was in total darkness – apparently the game has been re-rearranged for tomorrow. But there were lights on at Marcillat. Their first team had a game and so I wandered off up there for a couple of hours. A Promotion League match this was. That’s about one division higher that Pionsat’s 1st XI but in all seriousness Pionsat’s 3rd XI could have stuffed rhe both of them – at the same time. The standard was pretty dire.

But you can see that I’m slowly emerging from my winter hibernation – I’m getting ready for footy again.

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Friday 7th January 2011 – Ooooh – look at that!

Now, doesn’t this look impressive?

Yes, the wall with its plasterboarding firmly in place.

You can see where I’ve had to fit the plasterboard horizontally – I didn’t trust myself to cut a piece (with 40mm of insulation glued to it) just 3cms wide – discretion was the better part of valour here – and it doesn’t look too bad at all. Just imagine what it will look like with a new window there.

To be honest, I’m quite impressed with how it has all turned out.

But there are a few things that have made a big difference, even if we don’t include some proper studding.

cutting the plasterboard. Simon taught me how to do simple sheets but I’ve been struggling with these sheets with insulation backing. But not any more – my tenon saw went through it all like a knife through butter and did an excellent job
forget hammering nails and other messing around. I bought a bag of 4.2x80mm screws specially designed for plasterboard and while they were expensive they did a perfect job and I wish I had used them in the attic.
when I was in the USA at a Home Depot, I found a pack of 4 screw bits specially designed for plasterboard screws. These bits have a kind-of capped head that stops the screw at the required depth and puts a little countersink in the board so that you can fill over the head. A pack of 4 cost me $4:98 and it is easily the best investment I have ever made from this point of view.

Yes, having the correct tools and equipment has made a world of a difference to all of this.

Neither the plasterboarding on this wall nor the one on the left is finished though, and there’s a good reason for this right now.

The plasterboard is only 2m50 tall and the wall is 2m80 high. It’s in the 30cmsat the top where I have run the trunking for all of the electric cable, and now I need to cut sheets of insulation to fill over and around it. Once that is finished off, I’ll fit some plain plasterboarding over the top, with the section for the front wall being castellated to fit around the beams.

Of course being Friday it’s POETS Day – i.e. Pi… errr … Push Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday and so I finished at 17:30, had a good wash and shave, and prettied myself up all ready for the shops tomorrow. And I have a list of things that I need for the room (starting with the windows of course).

But I’m as impressed with my plasterboard wall as I am with my galvanised steel dustbin.

Ohhhh – and I almost forgot. I told you that everywhere warmed up this last couple of days. Well, I’m having another night – in early January too – with no heating. In my little room the temperature is 13.6°C. Hardly the Cote D’Azur I know, but it’s still warm enough to sit here. In fact I’m not sure whether it’s to do with the temperature outside or whether it’s anything to do with the fact that the insulation on the wall in the bedroom is starting to do its stuff.

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Thursday 6th January 2011 – I had a gorgeous tea tonight.

I finally managed to get my long-promised Bangers, mash and baked beans this evening. and it was gorgeous. The leftover vegan sausages from Christmas (and weren’t they nice?), a tin of baked beans, and I found a tin of spuds in the emergency supplies.

Yes, a tin of spuds, for all of mine have ended up in the compost. I know that you are supposed to keep them in a frost-free room but nothing round here is frost-free when the temperature reaches -13.5°C outside, and the whole crop had gone.

In the bedroom, the wiring is almost finished and I’ll soon be able to do the boarding. And I’ve been having tremendous fun with it all. There’s conduit and trunking and wires all over the place and it’s like 3 plates of spaghetti. Of course I don’t have a clue what I’m doing but that’s not anything that has ever bothered me in the past. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating and that’s when we will see if the place catches fire or not.

All last night and today we had a howling gale. It’s blown in one of the panes of glass in the bedroom window to match the other one that a rock fell through. I can’t board this one up as there won’t be any light getting into the room and there’s no point replacing the glass so I’m going to be freezing to death in there while I’m working.

But what I did do today was to dismantle the dump load from the electrical set-up in the barn and use the charge controller to measure the current being produced by the big wind turbine. And there was that much wind that at times there was quite a charge being registered. I’m going to have to get a decent charge controller with data facilities for the wind turbine that I’ll be mounting on the house. Stuck on a short pole attached to the fence that was going around like the clappers too in this wind.

This evening I was outside working until 18:10 before it went black outside. I’m using this final half-hour of my working day to have some sort of desultory tidying-up of the outside of the house and barn. Heaven knows it needs it, with the place having been covered in scaffolding for the last two summers. But for some reason that I don’t quite understand, I’ve been feeling quite enthusiastic today, the best I’ve been for quite a while. I think that I’m making some kind of rapid progress, which is cheering me up.

I’m not used to this.

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Wednesday 5th January 2011 – I bet …

… that you’ve all been waiting to see what my room looks like with the plasterboard on the front wall, haven’t you? So you are all in for a disappointment today.

Most of the studding is now done and it was a realistic expectation to put some of the plasterboard onto the walls, but we had a slight logistics problem about that. If I were to do the walls, I wouldn’t be able to get the wiring for the lights into the correct position – that needs to be done first. And so I spent all afternoon wiring. And that also involved putting some of the studding onto the ceiling in between the beams so that I can fasten the conduit in position.

And so all in all, there wasn’t much visual progress even though a lot of work was done.

At about 17:30 it was too dark to work in the bedroom and so I went outside and did a little clearing of where the new raised beds are going to be. And at 18:05 when I knocked off, it was just about possible to see what it was that I had been doing. The nights are getting shorter whereas my vegetable garden is getting bigger.The heap of wood in the lean-to is getting smaller too and I can actually see the concrete floor in places. A really good fire of garden rubbish to get rid of all kinds of stuff including the kindling in the lean-to that I am never going to use – that will be something to aim for in March when the weather improves.

But the weather today was good. This morning was bright and sunny with a cloudy and windy afternoon. The batteries in the barn are fully-charged and in the house we managed to get onto “float” mode – where the batteries equalise themselves. So it’s not far short of fully-charged here either. These last 3 days of good weather have done wonders for my charging system.

In fact, all in all, I was mostly in a good mood today with the way things ae panning out here. But sorting out my … gulp … 2400 photos of Canada is filling me full of nostalgia and I’m wishing I was back there.

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EPIC HALL

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