Category Archives: Les Guis

Tuesday 4th January 2011 – It was Terry’s turn …

… to ring up this morning.

“Are you doing much?”
“Not really” (I was chopping wood, as it happens)
“Fancy coming round here to give me a hand with the scaffolding?”
“You need to say the Magic Words”
“Liz is baking bread”

Round at Terry’s we put up the scaffolding on the end of the house wall and attacked the satellite dish. Although Terry and Liz can pick up the Hotbird satellite, Astra 2, which is the British satellite, remains quite elusive. After a few hours at the adjustment we managed to find a couple more satellites, but still no Astra 2. Careful research showed us that the Astra 2 satellite is 4° lower in the sky than the others and so this involved tilting down the dish, but then it was pointing straight into the barn of the house across the road.

Next job therefore was to raise up the dish as high as we could get it so that the antenna would clear the barn. So we built the scaffolding up to 8.5 metres and refitted the brackets and pole so that the dish would be at the highest point possible. Next problem was that the cable wasn’t long enough to reach the dish in its new position but that will have to wait until tomorrow as it was 18:01 (I made a note of that) and we lost the light. And isn’t that a far cry from just about two weeks ago when the light went at 17:20?

Today though was lovely and the drive down at Liz and Terry’s was magnificent. It was a beautiful Alpine morning with a few scattered clouds here and there.

Not so good here at my house though as I could only manage a mere 158 amp-hours, in contrast with the 195 (for that was what it was) of yesterday. But “only” 158 amp-hours – that’s more than I received in a week just a short while ago.

But it’s freezing again tonight and we may well have a lower temperature than last night’s -8.2°C but tomorrow they are talking about a rise in temperature and rain clouds.But for me I’d much rather have the freezing temperatures and the bright sunshine – my batteries would welcome the juice.

-1

Monday 3rd January 2011 – Liz rang me this morning.

“Are you okay, Eric?”
“Yes, fine thanks”
“That’s okay, but we were worried about you. You haven’t blogged for a couple of days”.

So my blog does serve some useful purpose – it lets people know that I’m still there. Not ALL THERE, of course, but then again you can’t have everything.

First job therefore was to put on line the blog entries for the weekend that I had … errr … overlooked to do.

As for today though, it was a much better day than we’ve been having just recently.

I woke up to about an inch of ice on the windows (outside of course) and a gorgeous Alpine morning. And if it had stayed like that all day it would have been wonderful.

But of course it was all too good to be true and by lunchtime had the clouds drifting slowly back.

However, we managed about 175 amps of energy – the second-highest since I’ve been back from Canada – and that has made a difference to my batteries. They’ve been quite down for a couple of weeks.

And inside the house I’ve finished all of the insulation in the bedroom and I’ve made a good start on the counter-battens.

Tomorrow will hopefully see me start fitting the plasterboard.

I’m having a little issue with fitting part of it and I’m going to have to put some of the boards on sideways. The sheets measure 2.50 by 1.20 and normally they would be fitted upright.

But the distance from the wall to the edge on the window is 1.24. A strip of 4cms would look pretty silly and you can also see that if I turn the board sideways-on, I can cut it so that it will do two strips with a very minimal waste.

So that’s what I shall be doing.

And Terry wants me to give him a hand with the scaffolding. “We’ll do it on a nice day” he says. So that will be some time in May then, I reckon.

-1

Sunday 2nd January 2011 – AFTER YESTERDAY …

… where I didn’t do very much at all, it is my pleasure to announce that today I did even less.

Sundays on or near Bank Holidays give me even less of an incentive to do anything – apart from having a lie-in of course, and that kind of thing goes without saying.

Still, plenty of stuff to nibble on up here, some good DVDs and that kind of thing.

And did I go outside?

Ahh yes – I must have done. otherwise I would not have been able to take the stats, would I? But that’s about the only time, I reckon. It certainly isn’t any more than that.

So tomorrow my holidays will be over and I’ll need to get a wiggle on and start working again.

It’s not going to do itself, is it?

Saturday 1st January 2011 – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

And quite right too!

Wishing everyone the compliments of the season, and me too because regular readers of this rubbish will realise that it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

it’s a Bank Holiday today and so that means a lie-in, and then a day of leisure where I do as little as possible.

Not quite though, because François was having a get-together and because regular readers of this rubbish tell me that I need to get out more often, I decided to go. It never does anyone any harm to socialise – including me.

The usual crowd was there of course – not very inspiring unfortunately. But nevertheless I’m glad that I went because Bill was there and at least I can have a good chat or two with him.

The good news to come out of that is that Bill has offered me an immersion heater – 100 litres – that he’s just taken out of his house. I’ve been looking for a small one like this for quite a while.

If I can change the element from 230 volt to 12 volt then this will go nicely in the barn to use as a dump load for the excess solar energy, assuming that we ever get any more decent sunshine.

Not sure when that might be.

Friday 31st December 2010 – Happy New Year everyone.

And this year seems to have gone out with a whimper. I managed once more to sleep right through the alarm clocks – all of them – and so it was rather a late morning start. But once breakfast dissolved itself I set about chopping some more wood.

Not that I need it (I’m rather overflowing up here right now) but with needing some space in the lean-to and being depressed about the general overall quality of the stuff, I’ve stood some more outside and covered with some more of that clear plastic roofing stuff. The idea being that if ever the sun reappears, it might dry out the wood under the sheeting.

I also chopped up a huge bundle of kindling as there was plenty of that in the way too and it needs to be moved on.

Once that was done I connected up a couple of batteries to the Rutland WG901 wind turbine on the barn roof. We’ve had quite an amount of wind just recently and it seems to be a shame to waste whatever electricity is generated, especially when I have a few batteries loitering around and doing nothing. I’m planning to move the solar panels and the main batteries up that end in due course, but that’s not going to be for a while, until I get a huge load of 32mm saddle clamps.

Arno’s bed is now moved, and once we finished he invited me back home to look at his house. He asked me if he could give me something for my diesel, which was nice of him, and so we settled on a nice hot shower. I explained my difficulties about having a shower, to which he retorted “Yes – you aren’t a member of the OUSA Executive Committee any more” – keen reader of my blog is Arno. But a shower meant a lot to me just then. Nice and clean for New Year, and it saves me having to drive all the way to Neris and paying €3:00 for an entry. So that was fine by me.

I’ve also finally managed my Christmas dinner this evening – it was warm enough to stay down in the verandah for the one hour and 45 minutes it took to cook it. A slab of soya protein, with vegan sausages, roast potatoes, sprouts, chicory, carrots, broccoli and some thick gravy. Over a week I’ve been waiting for this, and it was well worth it.

What was even nicer was that it was followed by some Christmas pudding (I got to that today as well) and soya cream. And that was lovely too. It was just a pity that I’ve had to wait all this time to get to it.

And so that’s the year all done and dusted. And for 2011 I wish every one of you exactly the same as you wished on everyone else for 2010.

-1

Thursday 30th December 2010 – SPRING IS SPRUNG.

Yes, quite unexpectedly we had a Spring day today. A weak, hazy sunshine for most of the day with a cloudy late afternoon-evening. And it was quite warm too – 10°C outside for some of the day.

I chopped up some more wood for burning and I’ve had to start on a second pile as the first pile is in danger of overbalancing. Wood is not something that I’m short of, although I do wish that it was of better quality.

I’ve carried on in the bedroom as well and most of the wall is now studded and insulated. It won’t take long to finish that off but it’s unlikely to be tomorrow as I have to go out to move this famous bed.

Mind you, it’s nice having music to work to. It seems to make the time pass quicker and it makes me more enthusiastic. In fact I’m quite pleased at how this bedroom is coming on and I’m thinking that maybe it won’t be all that much longer until it’s ready for occupation. Maybe a month or two. And then I can start on the bathroom.

But of course there’s the gardening to do. I need to build the new greenhouse, shift the old Ford Transit around, make some more vegetable beds and so on.

Even though things are progressing quite nicely at the moment, the work is just backing up and backing up. No danger of it ever being finished.

-3

Wednesday 29th December 2010 – I FINISHED MY CD PLAYER THINGY TODAY;

It’s made out of the old CD/SD card stereo out of Caliburn, a pair of speakers that I bought ages ago for the LDV, and then a pile of scrap wood I had lying around, the leftovers of various projects.

It’s really heavy and solid, which is just as it is supposed to be. No tinny rattles and reverberation, just good heavy and solid bass – exactly as I want, and it works perfectly once I worked out that it isn’t the red that’s the live cable but the yellow.

It does exactly what it is supposed to do and I’m impressed with it.

But before that I spent ages cutting up a huge pile of wood. It’s quite damp and airless but simply pulling it out of the lean-to is doing it a little good. And it won’t be long before I can start to use that room for what it is intended to be – a kind-of washroom and gas bottle store, the outside composting WC, some stairs up to the first floor and a general storage area.

It’s nice to see it emptying, and quite quickly too. In fact, if I knew where my huge sledgehammer was, I could demolish the concrete feeding troughs in there and get started on that tomorrow.

After lunch I started on some more studding on the front wall and I now have another length of this space-blanket insulation on there. It won’t be long now before all of that is done, and then I can start on the plasterboarding. This will be done with the huge sheets that have the insulation built-in and they are not going to be easy to cut and manoeuvre.

But once it’s on, then that will be that indeed.

Finally, I hunted around for more wood from the pile that I cut up 18 months ago and which was scattered to the four winds when we put the scaffolding up. A few more loads was recovered and piled up in the heap at the side of the lean-to and now that’s overflowing with wood with plenty more to come.

This woodpile is getting out of hand now – it’s amazing just how much wood you can have from just doing a bit of hedge-trimming.

And I’m in demand too. I’m wanted on Friday afternoon to help move a bed and then deliver it to Espinasse and then I’ve been invited to the Reseau Rural‘s New Years Day party on Saturday.

Yes, after all of the disputes that went on over the “Temoin de Whatsit” and the Teilhet goatslayers (for which I am still awaiting an apology by the way) a few years ago, you might think that my sudden surge to popularity is a sign of my own good character and likeable qualities that have been sorely missed by the members.

But the cynic in me tells me nothing of the sort.

In fact, following the spectacular collapse of the Reseau a short while ago and the general level of (dis)interest shown by anyone else, there’s only me doing anything (namely organising the Anglo-French Conversation Group) and hence there’s only me that has an active e-mail list of all the members.

And so if you want to hold a New Year party and invite everyone you need to come to me for the list of addresses. And you can hardly ask me to send out an invitation to everyone and NOT include me on the list of invitees, could you?

But then again, the definition of a cynic is someone who sees things as they are and not as they are supposed to be. And that’s me to a Tee.

-3

Tuesday 28th December 2010 – BACK TO WORK TODAY

Well, sort of.

And with not too much enthusiasm either, particularly as the morning opened with a rainstorm. Not all that much, but enough to start the thaw and with the snow sliding off the barn roof (metal roofs are wonderful) we were on our way.

I spent the morning chopping a huge pile of wood and there’s enough to keep me going for a week with that. A mixture of wood from the lean-to and wood from the old laths on the barn roof and all of that should burn quite nicely.

I’m also collecting wood that’s been lying around the place, and stacking it in the impromptu pile under the left-over bits of plastic roof from the verandah. And that seems to be working – they are drying out a treat under there.

This afternoon, after a long chat with Liz, I fitted the new radio into Caliburn. That’s a useful piece of kit because it contains not just an SD card slot but also a bluetooth telephone receiver and thats what I really wanted.

Trying to talk to anyone on my bluetooth “oyster” is pretty nigh impossible in Caliburn when I’m on the move. This has a mike that hangs down from the ceiling and plays the received calls through the radio speakers. That’s much more like it.

And so I then started to build the box to put Caliburn’s old radio CD player into – that will be my mobile workshop music player and household CD player too. I didn’t finish it as, no surprise, I ran out of light.

I had another weird dream as well last night. I’ve been having a few of these just recently. It concerned an area of a town that I reckoned was Crewe and how this whole area had been abandoned ready for demolition – the only premises still occupied was the derelict and run-down attic in which I was living and which was a total shambles of dereliction and decay – much worse than how I’m living right at the moment. And I recall having had this dream before. The dream then went on to feature a white Mark IV Cortina, and white must be about the only colour of Mark IV Cortina that I’ve never actually owned. And this one was being transported on my towing dolly.

But it wasn’t half a strange dream.

-3

Monday 27th December 2010 – BACK TO WORK TOMORROW

And so I had another quiet relaxing day where I haven’t done very much.

But I’ve made an important discovery – and that is that my little portable DVD player that I use for watching films – it plays CDs as well. And in all the time that I’ve had it, and after all that I’ve tried to find a CD player for up here, then I wish I had have discovered that earlier. Ahhh well.

The weather today was rather depressing though. It started off really nicely with some sun but by the time that midday came around it was heavily overcast again and rather depressing. But after the excesses of the last few days it’s warmed up a little and even managed to return a “positive” temperature reading at some point in the day.

Tomorrow I need to cut a stack of firewood as I’ve worked my way through the stuff that I had ready. And I’ll go for the dry stuff – the old laths in the barn. That has burnt beautifully, much better than the stuff in the lean-to.

But my little woodpile, covered by the offcuts of plastic sheeting, seems to be doing its job and drying out the stack that has been outside for 18 months. I tried burning a few pieces of that today and it seemed to be okay. So I’ll have a good go at the stuff in the lean-to as well and leave that to dry out under some plastic sheeting. See if that works any better.

-2

Sunday 26th December 2010 – AT LONG LAST …

we’ve had a gorgeous Alpine day – not a cloud in the sky, not even for a minute. And my batteries now have some charge in them – although not a lot.

Mind you, we earned this day today, for last night the temperature fell to the lowest ever figure that I have ever recorded – an unbelievable MINUS 13.5°C and my water butts are frozen absolutely solid.

But I’m glad I decided to sort out a pile of really dry wood from out of the barn. That’s been burning for all of the day and the temperature has been hovering around the 18-19 degree mark which, given the temperature outside, has been pretty impressive and I’m pleased that I have this little stove.

So it’s still holiday time so all I’ve done is to watch some DVDs and to watch some sport on the computer – Boxing Day is all about sport after all. But I didn’t manage an evening meal yet again as it’s absolutely taters in the verandah.

But I’m not complaining as I don’t mind the temperature dropping to -20°C mark as long as I get some sun for my batteries.

So when I’ve finished watching the Houston Texans play the Denver Broncos I’m off to bed. Tomorrow is also a day of rest as I catch up on my Sunday day of rest which I missed due to Boxing Day intervening.

-3

Saturday 25th December 2010 – I WAS WOKEN UP THIS MORNING …

… by Enoch Powell singing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas”. And if ever his dreams were to come true it was today as we have indeed had a White Christmas. And no wonder I didn’t really want to get out of bed.

And when I did get out of bed eventually – well I’ve done nothing at all today. Nothing at all. In fact the most strenuous thing that I have done is to make a butty for lunch.

So why no tea? I hear you ask. That’s because I froze to death making my lunch and when I went downstairs at 21:00 to make tea it was -6.5°C IN THE VERANDAH – and -10.2°C outside. And I was not going to hang around in those conditions.

I came back up here and nibbled on a few things, played my Christmas CDs, and watched my Christmas DVDs

But I did have a phone call from a friend of mine. He went out to a party last night and then spent three hours digging himself out of the ditch he had slid into on the way home.
“What? After all those years and all that experience you have had driving on ice?”
“Yes, but as it wasn’t so bad I suppose I was over-confident. Feeling a little cocky I suppose”
“Well you shouldn’t be doing that while you are driving. And anyway it will make you go blind”

-4

Friday 24th December 2010 – MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

And hasn’t the year passed quickly? It hardly seems like a moment since I rushed over the finishing of the stairs up to my attic and then locked myself in.

So this morning was another late start, due in the main by my being confused about the time. And the darkness of the room was due to the skylights being covered in snow. 24 hours late, yes indeed, but it got here in the end.

And once I was up and about I did a little more in my bedroom with putting up some more framework.

But I didn’t stick at it long and after lunch and a wash and shave it was picking my way gingerly through the snow and ice to Terry and Liz’s for Christmas Eve, which was very nice of them. Liz cooked a gorgeous Indian meal and then we had a listen to our radio programme.

And even though it’s me who says it, we sounded really good on the broadcast – exactly how I wanted it to be – all nice and informal and happy and partying.

At 22:30 I came home and it took me over 45 minutes – the roads were dreadful. But I was armed with a Christmas cake and a prezzy – it’s really nice having friends like Terry and Liz.

But if you are reading this before Christmas Day evening, you might want to listen to our radio programme as it’s being streamed at 23:00 Europe, 22:00 UK and 17:00 EST – go to
http://www.radioarverne.com
and click on the link “Arverne en Ligne”

-20

Thursday 23rd December 2010 – IT WAS HARD TO GET UP …

… this morning with the buckets of rain that were crashing down on the roof. Not a very pleasant start to the day. But the rainsoon stopped and was replaced by a hanging cloud and that was that. The temperature fell significantly but as yet that snow that we were promised – it isn’t here yet even though it’s flaming cold.

I’ve hardly been outside today – I stayed in to work and as you can see I’ve finished off the major part of the wall that I’ve been plasterboarding.

I had to refit part of the floor where the previous occupiers had fitted a concrete pad for the stove that was here. What I did was to pull up some of the existing floor in the corridor outside and fit it in the bedroom. I’ll be fitting all new flooring out there so it won’t make any difference but at the moment it’s quite eventful walking out there.

After finishing off there I went to make a start on putting the studding on the wall by the window but what with the weather it was hopeless – couldn’t see a thing. And it was too wet and miserable to go outside and so at 17:25 I knocked off and came up here to do some tidying. And the place needs it – I’ve been letting it slip just recently.

-3

Wednesday 22nd December 2010 – WHAT A SHAMBLES!

This recording session at Radio Tartasse was nothing but a shambles – it really was.

I can understand why it is that performers and other thespians and the like throw tantrums and have hysterics if they have studio staff like this to deal with.

Despite having told them on several occasions how the programme ought to be run they did it completely differently. They had us read out THE WHOLE of “Buying and Selling Property” in one swell foop with the idea that they would edit it into segments. 40-odd minutes of typed text!

Now it might seem logical to do that but there are several major disadvantages.

you can’t physically read 40 minutes of documentation out loud without wanting to stop for breath, to clear your throat, to gather your wits (such as they are) and so on and so forth.
after the first 15 minutes you become bored, your attention starts to wander, you miss your cues and the reading deteriorates rapidly
Liz and I keep up a constant patter of repartee and ad-lib our way through much of our chats. And if I dare to say it, we do it very well. But after 15 minutes or so we are tired and confused and we don’t have the same spark or interaction and it spoils the show
when it comes to ending our programme we finish off with a little impromptu chat. But they just want to cut it dead and it won’t work like that
most importantly – if they want our topics “en bloc” and to cut them into segments themselves, how will we know when the topic is finished? How will we know when to prepare fresh stuff? I don’t intend to sit around on Sunday mornings writing stuff that won’t ever be used – I’ve enough to do. So suppose I decide not to do anything for a week or two and then find out that they’ve used up all the material?

No, it won’t work like that and I told them so, and I didn’t mince my words either.

It’s nothing but totally shambolic. The woman that does the technical stuff is a sham, and the old guy that does the organising – he’s a load of … errrr … rubbish.

So off to Montlucon to order my windows only to find that I’d forgotten the to bring the paper with the dimensions. And Terry, who had measured up “in case you forget” had also forgotten the measurements too. But I did buy the last 30 Brussels sprouts in the whole of France (a Christmas without sprouts is unthinkable) and in Brico Depot I had a most astonishing find – a beautiful faded-oak effect parquet flooring on special offer of about €8:00 per square metre. It’s gorgeous and just the thing for my bedroom, so I now have 18 metres of that downstairs and I wish that I had bought some more.

But an astonishing thing happened here while I was away. all day we had nothing but overcast gloomy foggy clouds that followed us around. Back in Pionsat this evening when we returned there was a clearish sky. But the statistics here – 100 amp-hours of solar energy, temperatures of 13 degrees, 12 degrees in my attic – told me that here while we had been away we had been bathed in glorious sunshine for much of the afternoon. And that is just so surprising.

But tomorrow, snow is forecast so we shall see.

-2

Tuesday 21st December 2010 – IT WAS A BUSY DAY TODAY.

It started after the usual fire-cleaning and breakfast by chopping another huge pile of wood ready for the next bout of winter – due on Thursday, so we are told. Now there’s four bucketsfull outside together with a huge pile heaped up against the wall in here – good plan it was to tile the wall behind the fireplace.

Then it was checking over the documents for the radio recording this afternoon – a total of 31 pages! That is a record by anyone’s standard. And it’s a good job I bought that new printer a couple of months ago so I could print it all out. Bye-bye another rain forest.

Next stop was down to see Liz as our chauffeur has abandoned us and we worked out a few more things, and then down to Gerzat. We recorded 4 programmes of the traditional type that will see us through to the 25th of January (back in the studio on the 18th) and then we did the Christmas Special.

1 hour we were allowed, and on the Sunday rehearsal we did the play in 58 minutes (add another Carol to make up the time) but today we had to crop a huge chunk out as we overran by miles. No idea how that happened.

The Christmas Special is going out on Christmas Eve at 19:00 and being repeated a couple of times. You can hear it on Radio Arverne (89.8mhz) but if you can’t get the reception then I have the programme saved to disk and I’ll be uploading it to the internet once the broadcast has passed and you can hear us on the internet.

Tomorrow we are recording for Radio Tartasse – the first radio station to want to syndicate us. Then it’s off to Montlucon with Terry and Liz to do our last-minute shopping before the weather closes in again.

-3

EPIC HALL

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