Category Archives: Les Guis

Monday 20th December 2010 – I MADE A LITTLE PROGRESS TODAY.

Yes, I now have the first sheet of plasterboard on the wall in the bedroom.

Mind you, it wasn’t until late afternoon that I got as far as doing that.

This morning was … errr … rather a late start and after breakfast I went and cut up a huge pile of wood. The deeper I dig into the lean-to the worse the quality of wood seems to be and it’s taking ages for it to catch light, so I cut a huge pile of the old laths that were on the barn roof. They should burn like Billio. I want to empty the lean-to as you know so I reckon I’ll use a half-load of that with a half-load of old laths each time I fill up the woodstove.

I was just about to cut my hair, seeing as it’s all nice and clean, but Terry turned up. He’d been hedge-trimming at The Beguiled and so he came round to look at the bedroom. While he was here we measured up the windows for the bedroom and the bathroom and one day this week when Terry and Liz are going to Montlucon I’ll tag a ride and go and buy the windows.

After that, the hair-cutting recommenced but A DISASTER. I somehow managed to walk on my no1 fitting. And so after many hours of messing around with that I ended up … errr … shaving my head with the thing and that was that.

Lunch at 15:30 (I was rather carried away, wasn’t I?) followed by finishing the odds and ends of insulation in the bedroom, and then fitting the first sheet of plasterboard. And then I lost the light.

But with the meeting of the Anglo-French group being in St Eloy and me needing some shopping, I went early into there and took the opportunity of doing a load of washing in the launderette. It’s going to be ages before I’ll have the weather conditions suitable to do any washing here.

And now it’s gone cold again. And they are talking of snow for Thursday. But at least I’ve now restocked with food, I’ve plenty of wood and gas, so what more do I need?

A few days of bright brilliant sunshine would be nice.

Sunday 19th December 2010 – THE WEATHER IMPROVED THIS AFTERNOON.

And that was just as well because I was getting rather fed up of being stuck down here.

But today got off to a bad start with someone ringing me up at 09:00 – and on a Sunday too! So they were told to sod off and I went back to bed – but it was hard to go back to sleep once I was awake. So after a while I sorted out the fire and got a nice little blaze going and settled down to finish off the Christmas Special.

The sun came out again after a while and the temperature slowly began to rise – not that you could tell too much in here of course, but I noticed it when I went outside and was digging Caliburn out of a snowbank.

After lunch I set off for Liz and Terry’s for our rehearsal, and fitted in a stop at my favourite photography point, the ornithological centre at St Gervais.

The bit on Holiday lettings – that seems to go on for ages but I was told to do an hour for the Christmas Special and that has, believe it or not, turned out to be 58 minutes. No problems there – bung another Christmas Carol on the end and that sorted that out.

Liz made a nice tea and I got a doggy bag, and I also had a nice shower, seeing as how I didn’t manage to make it to the swimming baths yesterday.

On the way home it started to rain and that is washing the snow away. So I’m just hoping that it doesn’t freeze or we really will be in difficulties with that lot.

And tomorrow is back to work again. I’m plasterboarding.

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Saturday 18th December 2010 – MY PREDICTION ABOUT THE WEATHER …

… was pretty well near correct. At about 08:00 there was some sun but by the time I was up and about it had long since gone following a change of direction of the wind veering round from the west again, and we had clouds.

“Ahhh well” I sighed, and went out to chop a huge pile of wood.

The snow that I predicted arrived at round about 11:30 and it didn’t last long for – astonishingly – the wind veered round to a southerly and that pushed a Mediterranean weather front up. Not an Alpine afternoon like I would have liked, but a blue kind of hazy afternoon with a fair amount of sun – once I’d cleaned off all of the solar panels.

No point in going shopping – I’m well-snowed in here – and so I took the cue and went off to do the notes for our radio programme. Holiday lettings is January’s topic and there’s enough here to rival War and Peace.

So that’s where I’ve been all afternoon and evening – up here translating and transcribing notes and then writing the dialogue. It takes ages to do as well but I suppose it keeps me out of mischief.

Tomorrow morning I need to finish off the Christmas Special and then somehow work out how I can dig Caliburn up the hill. I need to go to Liz and Terry’s for our rehearsal. But unless we have a dramatic change to the weather I can see it being a long afternoon with a shovel and a pile of sand.

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Friday 17th December 2010 – FIRST JOB THIS MORNING …

… after making up the fire for this evening of course, was to shovel a foot of snow off the solar panels on the roof. Yes, we’ve had another pasting again through the night and isn’t this becoming monotonous?

And after breakfast it was more wood-cutting for the fire and I can see me needing tons of this as the cold weather and snow continues. I now have 5 buckets lined up in the queue and I’ll be cutting some more. I’ve also built a kind-of lean-to out of two old pallets and some offcuts of plastic roofing from when I made the verandah, and I’ve been slowly collecting the wood that’s been lying around outside and heaving it under there out of the weather.

Next task was to sweep the floor and clear a big space in the bedroom to lay down the plasterboarding for cutting. That seemed to take ages and I ended up with a huge pile of rubbish in the middle of the floor.

Going through it a few times with a magnet pulled out tons of screws and nails and the like and I need to sift that properly as I was finding all kinds of things that I had lost.

During this time the heavens opened again and we were treated to a thorough downpour of the white stuff – an incredible snowstorm. And I felt sorry for this guy who turned up – his company is a bigger liar than he is and he was not in the area at all – he had driven 260 kms from Lyon in the worst snowstorm of the year and his face was a picture when he saw my panels. 14:00 he arrived and despite this 90-minute presentation I was to have, he had gone by 14:15. And in all that snow as well.

But tonight the temperature plummeted all in a space of about an hour. From -2°C to -7.5°C and we have a brilliant clear sky with so much moonlight that you don’t need a torch down the garden. If this keeps up tomorrow I could have a record solar energy day and by heavens I need it, but I’m not holding my breath. We’ll have one quick promise, a change of wind back to the westerlies and then another shed-load of snow, all by 10:00.

I’m getting fed up of this.

Thursday 16th December 2010 – I WONDER IF YOU CAN GUESS …

… whereabouts in the verandah the cooker is situated?

Yes, the weather has warmed up slightly today – it even managed to struggle up above freezing inside the verandah and so the heat that the cooker gave off while heating up my lunchtime coffee managed to thaw away some of the snow on the roof.

But of course, as you know, it isn’t snow at all but just several inches of severe frost.

And this evening we’ve had a dramatic change in the direction – and the speed – of the wind. We are now having a howling westerly gale blowing in that’s keeping the temperature up a little (not like the 11°C that we had the other day) but blowing all the smoke back down my chimney and suffocating the fire (and me as it blows all of the smoke back into my room).

Nevertheless I wonder if this might bring me some sunshine. It’s been ages since I’ve had any.

Things are progressing in the bedroom as well. all of the long wall has been insulated and I could have done even more had I not … errrr … slept through the alarm and had I woken up before … errrr … 10:26.

It’s not quite how it ought to be though because with my wall being 2.65 metres high and the plasterboard being 2.50 metres high, I need to let in another horizontal batten in the appropriate place to support the join between the boards. But that’s tomorrow’s task as I ran out of time today.

I’m not going to have too much time tomorrow either. I had a telephone call from some society asking me if I would like to become an energy producer and sell my excess output to the Electricity Board. By pure coincidence they “just happen” to have a salesman in Virlet tomorrow and he will be delighted to talk to me about how I can become rich, at no obligation, and he will even give me a free estimate for the supply and fitting of some solar panels.

Of course this is a far too good an opportunity to miss and I’m eager to see exactly what he proposes with regard to selling me a solar panel system. He’ll be here at 14:00 so he says, and I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

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Wednesday 15th December 2010 – AWWWWW – BAMBI

I can’t remember now what it was that I came up to my room for this afternoon but a quick look out of the window revealed Bambi in all her glory, foraging for food in the field next door

You have to feel sorry for the wildlife just now in this kind of weather. Absolutely perishing, well under zero, and not a chance of getting anything out of the garden unless you use dynamite.

I’m struggling for water now. Today I had to undo the top of one of the water butts (luckily I expected this kind of weather and so I fastened the tops on with wing nuts) and smash my way in through God knows how much ice on the top of the water. I filled 4 kettles like this but of course at tea time they had all frozen up in the verandah because it’s well below zero in there too and has been for all of the day.

It’s almost impossible to go outside in this. Luckily I threw all of the wood into the lean-to in the summer so at least I’m out of the wind in there while I cut up the supplies for the evening.

And it’s emptying out quite well in there and when the weather eases I can definitely build the stairs that I promised so that I can climb up to the next level in comparative ease.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, I didn’t manage to finish the wall. Nothing like, in fact.

In between the phone calls I had to deal with the wiring for the second set of plugs and that took quite a while – most of the day in fact Threading it through the conduit is … errr … exciting and of course whenever I do anything involving electrical wiring there’s always a pause after each connection while I go round to see if anything has been set on fire. Not my strong point as you know.

>But at least the wiring on that side of the room now is all done and I can press on tomorrow assuming that I don’t have any more interruptions.

But this cold weather is starting to drag now. I’ve never known it as cold as this in December. Who said “Global Warming”?

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Tuesday 14th December 2010 – GOD IT WAS HARD THIS MORNING …

… to get out of bed. Not surprising really, as in my little room up here the temperature had fallen to 7.8°C and it was taters.

But that was nothing.

My hunch about the temperature last night was correct – and correct in spades as the temperature had dropped right through the floor to an incredible -10.5°C outside through the night.

That’s not just the lowest temperature this winter so far, it’s also the lowest temperature of the year. And it’s also the second-lowest temperature that I have ever recorded.

The heat exchanger recorded a temperature of -14.8°C, and that is pretty good going too.

Tonight the temperature outside was even lower at teatime than it was yesterday so I don’t know if that is significant, but I’ll tell you tomorrow.

Mind you, up here this evening after I knocked off work it was a mere 4.8°C in my room. But a huge blaze in the little fire sorted that out (although not as much as I would have liked). And as a side effect the little coffee maker thing that I bought – it managed to conjure up a cup of coffee, so intense was the heat in the fire.

Work carried on apace in the bedroom – there was no way that I was going to work outside in the ridiculous daytime temperature of -5.4°C.

I fitted all of the battens to the long wall in the bedroom, fitted the space-blanket insulation and then put on the counter-battens. The first part of the wiring has been done as you know, and I’ve started to fit the polystyrene tiles over the top. If I put my back into it tomorrow I could have that wall finished.

What helped with the work was the set of overalls that I was wearing. They were on sale in LIDL last winter – a pair of XL-size quilted winter overalls rather like a huge ski-suit. They were expensive but today they were worth every penny and I would recommend a pair of them to anyone who intends to work around here in this weather. I could feel the heat as soon as I put them on and I was comfortable for all of the day. What I call an impressive piece of kit.

And I’m not going to hang around tonight either. it’s still cold and so I’m going to retreat underneath the covers and have an early night. I reckon that tomorrow is going to be even colder.

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Monday 13th December 2010 – AND AFTER A DAY …

… where I did nothing at all (and I mean nothing at all) it was back to work today.

First job was of course the fire and the wood but by way of a change I rearranged it all today as I was fed up of the heap collapsing every five minutes. it’s now in a bigger, deeper box so there’s more room for it to spread out and the place looks a little neater up here.

There’s another load of wood cut up for the next few days and the lean-to is looking emptier and emptier. If I put my mind to it I could do the stairs in there this week but the weather will have to warm up quite a bit before I venture outside for a long period.

Emptying Caliburn took a while too. The wood and the breeze blocks are still in there but everything else is out and put away as far as is possible, and so I was finally ready to start work.

Not quite though, because there was still some slate in the way. 9 bucket-loads went downstairs onto the pile and that was that. There’s some room to move about in there now although I still have much more stuff to sort out in there. Nevertheless I’ve managed to put all of the framework onto the long wall in the bedroom and I followed that up with another length of insulation.

But that was all, though, because due to my Sunday inactivity I had things to do – like make a start on the Christmas Special. That took a couple of hours and I reckon I’ve done about a third of it. At the moment I’m just writing down whatever comes into my head and I can edit it once I’ve got to the end of my ideas. But it’s coming together nicely and I reckon that I may well be on to something with this.

Tomorrow I’ll do some more work in the bedroom and a bit more on the Christmas Special unless the weather warms up dramatically and I can work outside. But not much hope of that as we are on course for another candidate for the coldest night of the winter. When I came home tonight after my Monday night conviviality it was -3.9°C outside. In the 45 minutes it took to make a quick tea and wash up it had plummeted to -5.1°C. Heaven alone knows what it is right now.

Sunday 12th December 2010 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I did absolutely nothing today.

Not a tap.

It is Sunday of course and I’m still suffering from jet-lag and it’s cold outside too, so it was one of those days where I didn’t stray very far from my warm, comfortable attic.

A pile of books, some DVDS and some music, with a bit of desultory surfing on the internet – and a trip down to cook the Sunday pizza. That was about it, really.

But I reckon that everyone should have one day a week where he can sit around all day and do nothing at all without ever feeling guilty about it.

I mean – it’s not as if I don’t do anything for the rest of the week, is it?

Saturday 11th December 2010 – I SPENT A FORTUNE TODAY …

… in the shops in Montlucon. Easily €600 reckon. And poor Caliburn creaked and groaned on the way home under the weight of 50 breeze blocks, loads of pine boards to do my wardrobe (and why is it that a 300mm pine board costs €5.75 yet a 600mm pine board costs … errrr … €12.15?), tons more insulation, a load of wire and trunking and (says he, hoping it does the job) a new wheel for his wheelbarrow.

Yes, forget your €15:00 in some shops and your €17.95 on the tool vans that come by, how about a Brico Depot special at €8:75? Much more like my kind of price.

But I had lots of time to spend all of this money as I was up and about at some ridiculous hour and was actually camped outside the door of the new Aldi in Montlucon before its 09:00 opening time. And that’s a change isn’t it? Normally I struggle to make my kitchen by 09:00!

>And it was a gorgeous day to be out as well. Not quite your Alpine winter day but as close as we can get and the solar panels here on the house racked up about 180 amp-hours of charge. That was quite welcome too. We’ve been struggling for a decent charge for the last few weeks and I’ve been on something of an economy drive as far as the electrical energy goes.

On the way home I managed to fit in a visit to the swimming pool at Neris-les-Bains. I didn’t stay long as it was perishing in there but I managed a decent soak and a good warm (not hot, unfortunately) shower so I feel all clean for a change – at least on the outside.

Tomorrow I’m told (for at Auchan I bumped into Michel from the footy club) that there might be some footy – Pionsat’s 2nd XI have a match at St Maurice and it might even be on – so I might even have an afternoon out.

I’m missing the footy. What with this weather there has been none for ages.

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Friday 10th December 2010 – I ALWAYS SEEM TO BE …

… talking about the weather just now.

And that’s because there’s such a lot of it. This morning when I woke up I noticed the beautiful clear blue skies. “Ahhh – a nice Alpine winter day” I mused, and hauled myself out of bed to see the ammeter run off the clock.

But no sooner had I arisen then the clouds blew themselves back in again and that was that. I lose count of how many days we’ve had like that now.

So as it wasn’t as cold as yesterday I spent the morning clearing out a pile of rubbish from Caliburn. If I wake up at anything like early I’ll be off to Montlucon for a pile of shopping including a load of stuff from Brico Depot. There’s tons of stuff that I need.

Once that was done (and still no satnav) I carried on emptying out the old roofing tiles from the bedroom. I’ve been up and down those steps like a yo-yo with probably 50 buckets or so and I reckon that another hour or so on Monday will see the job done. Once all of that is gone I can finish off the insulation and the plasterboarding instead of doing it bit by bit.

But that won’t be tomorrow – I’m shopping!

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Thursday 9th December 2010 – I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE WEATHER.

I woke up this morning … "DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH " – ed …to -2°C and a covering of snow everywhere.

And perishing cold it was too. It snookered my plans of digging up the chicory and blanching it – I needed a hammer and chisel to get into the soil.

So instead, after cutting a pile of wood, I started to wire up the wind turbine on the barn to some batteries I had lying around. I may as well try to make use of some of the wind that we might have.

But that was a perishing cold job too and by the time that lunch came around and I still hadn’t finished and I was frozen to the marrow I abandoned that idea too.

After lunch I made a start on moving some of the old slate that is in the bedroom. And after about 50 bucketfuls up and down stairs you can just about notice the difference. I had no idea how much there is in that room. I’ll be here until next Christmas trying to shift it all.

But at least I’ve shifted enough so that I can get the next load of insulation onto the wall. I can do that tomorrow if we still have sub-arctic temperatures.

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Wednesday 8th December 2010 – AND IN A MOST AMAZING PIECE OF NEWS …

… It’s just after 01:00, I’m about to go to bed, and I haven’t had the heating on all day.

When I came upstairs after knocking off work at 18:00 it was 13.8°C up here. What with me being in the room and the laptop on, it quickly rose to 14.4°C, reached a high of 15.5°C and now is down to 13.7°C.

I could have put the heating on, I suppose, but I was determined to stick a day in December without it because there probably won’t be another one. The weather has broken again – the south-westerly gales that have been keeping us warm these last few days collided with a north-easterly weather front this afternoon, we had a thunderstorm and it’s been a torrential downpour ever since.

It’s snowing in Paris and the temperature has dropped considerably outside and I reckon that winter might be coming back. That’s my forecast anyway.

So as it was so nice today, at least earlier on, I hung out my washing to dry it (and had to take it in at about 15:00) and dug up my potatoes. Not as many today as there were the other day. These beds that I have been digging up are the lowest in the run, they are fairly waterlogged and many of the potatoes have rotted with the damp.

I’m going to have to get some compost from St Eloy to raise up the level of the bed and I’ll also need to mix some sand in. That’ll help the drainage.

I’ve also made a start (well, sort-of) on pulling up the brambles and weeds and ground alder with the idea of letting more light into the bottom of the vegetable patch in the hope that any sun that we might have will dry things out a little.

I stopped the beds where they were because that was where the fruit trees began, but they gave me nothing at all this year and haven’t done for a while so I reckon I’ll pull them up too and put another row of raised beds in. Not that I want particularly to grow more crops – I just think that they can be spaced out a little more.

Tomorrow I’m going to have a go at getting my chicory to blanch. I’ll dig up a couple and crop the leaves, and then bury them in a large flower pot to see if they will push up some shoots. That’s something else I have never done before.

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Tuesday 7th December 2010 – I HAD A DAY OUT TODAY.

I was quietly drinking a coffee ready to go out and cut wood for this evening when Liz rang me. “Terry and I are on our way to Montlucon. Anything you want?”

Well, as it happens, this very morning I had been making a list of things that I want from Montlucon so I enquired “will you be going to Brico Depot?”
“Of course”
“Well, do you want an extra passenger?”
And so instead of working on my bedroom, I went to Montlucon instead.

I tried a couple of places but no wheel for Caliburn and I also bought a few useful things, including a small coffee pot thingy to fit on my little stove (€25 in the Auchan but only €6 in Gifi) but what was so depressing about the journey was that blasted flaming perishing Brico Depot was blasted flaming well closed for perishing stock taking.

So 30 kms there and 30 kms back for me (and add on another 20 kms each way for Liz and Terry) and the place was closed. So no extra insulation, no bits to finish off the wardrobe.

GRRRRRRRRR at Brico Depot!

But the temperature is crazy right now. It was a grey hazy day with just the odd burst of sun through the clouds but the temperature reached 15°C today. In the heat exchanger it reached 22.3°C. In a space of just about 36 hours the temperature has increased 20°C.

There’s clearly something wrong with this weather right now. But I’m not worrying about it. I didn’t get much sleep last night so I’m having an early night.

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Monday 6th December 2010 – WHAT A DRAMATIC …

… change in the weather!

The temperature in my room this morning when I woke up was a balmy 11.2°C this morning – a long time since it’s been this high. And outside it was positively pouring with rain – no surprise there.

But in the verandah we had a pleasant 8°C, and there was an even-better 9°C outside. These figures aren’t bad for a December, especially after the winter we have just had. And the change is dramatic – just a day and a half for the temperature to shoot up.

So after the usual firewood-chopping session (which is diminishing the pile of wood in the lean-to and it won’t be long before I can get to where the stairs will be going) and a long chat with Liz and Terry on the phone I came back up here and restarted on the bedroom

I’ve put another length of insulation on the wall and then I fastened the two conduits to the battens – one conduit taking the 230 volt power and the other one taking the 12 volt power.

Once the cable was in the conduits I made a start on putting the polystyrene insulation on the walls but I ran out of light. With this appalling weather it was dark at 16:26 this afternoon.

So despite the rain (we had 17mm today) it was quite warm outside so I moved one of the two huge piles of recycled bricks out of the way of the pathway down to the garden. They are all stacked up neatly against the barn wall now.

But I have noticed that with the dramatically severe weather followed by the equally-dramatically severe thaw, all of the brush has dramatically died down and I’m starting to find things that I mislaid around the garden. It won’t be long before it will be time to start on the landscaping, version 2011.

In this version I’ll be building the greenhouse, moving the two halves of the old Ford Transit, moving a pile of unwanted trees and digging a couple more beds.

It seems that work never stops around here.

Except on a Sunday of course.

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EPIC HALL

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