Category Archives: Les Guis

Friday 17th September 2010 – I had a visitor today

I wonder if he is the same one who came around here earlier in the year.

This time he didn’t stop for food and he didn’t stop to have a play around, he was just sitting down in the field. As soon as he heard me he was off, but this time I had the camera ready.

Mind you, he’ll need to be good. The hunting season has started already and I hate hunters. They are the scum of the earth. It’s no joke being woken up at 07:30 in the morning by the sound of a shotgun blast. If I had my way I would arm the wildlife and set them after the hunters – see how they like it.

I keep on telling Rhys – the American Constitution has been misinterpreted for years. What it actually says is that “Every American Shall Have The Right To Arm Bears”. That’s much more like it.

Meanwhile, here’s a pic of where I got up to yesterday with the pointing. I’ve done half of that row now. Today I did another quarter and I finished off by gouging out the loose sand for the final panel at that level.

Once I’ve pointed that I’ll have to stop as I will have run out of ladder. The other half of this one is the piece that is transformed into the roof ladder and Terry has that which he is using on someone’s roof.

But that’s not too much of a worry – In another 2 weeks I shall be in Canada living the Life of Reilly and before then there is something really important that I need to attend to which requires my absence from here for a day or two. It’s all go, isn’t it? So it’s not really worth starting on more if I’m not able to finish it off. When I come back it will be mid-November (gulp) and I’ll be ready for more encouragement from Ms Stephenson.

In other news, the other day Bill lent me a book on French railways, published by the SNCF. One section talks about viaducts but as you might imagine, in any publication by the SNCF about viaducts, the Viaduc des Fades is conspicuous by its absence, despite it being the highest railway bridge in the world when it was built, being currently the second-highest, and being the highest railway bridge in France, as well as being built using pioneering techniques. Knowing the French like I do and with all of their national pride, it’s hard to understand why they don’t talk about it. Probably because they are ashamed about their handling of the viaduct and don’t want to call attention to themselves.

But his book does talk about the 141R class of locomotives, the type that passed through Montlucon in the summer. I’ll extract some notes.

But here’s a puzzle for you. What is the significance of the 141? And why are some other locomotives of the 130 class, or maybe the 250 class? Or even the 031 class?

It suddenly struck me the other week when I was writing about it – can you remember?

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Thursday 16th September 2010 – You’ve probably noticed …

… that a photo has miraculously appeared for yesterday’s image. That’s because I took it this morning first thing before I did anything else.

If you take a photo in the evening just after you have finished the cement is never dry and so you can’t really see the pointing so well.

So after that, and after breakfast, I started on my notes for the tacot. And I bet you are wondering what the tacot is. Look in any idiomatic French dictionary and you’ll see that it means “old banger”, as in some kind of disreputable car. But if you translated it to “rattletrap” or “jalopy” then you’ll understand that it refers to the Lignes Economique – the narrow-gauge light railways that littered the Allier at the turn of the 20th Century.

Marianne, the local history expert, found a book on them and has lent it to me, but she wants it back before I go to Canada at the end of the month. And so I only have 10 days or so to make notes.

It’s an exciting book – not because of its style and the way that it’s written – but more the fact that it’s written in some kind of reporter-style sensationalist account. It recounts the history of the duel between a politician and the railway manager and a few other exciting bits (life is not all boring around here, you know) but it’s strangely short on a good deal of technical information that you would have in a British book on the subject. Clearly they are more interested in the social side of events rather than the technical side.

The line at Marcillat en Combraille is featured in it, as you might expect, and it’s a monument to the shortsightedness and pigheadedness of local politicians. The line was proposed to run from the mines at Villefranche through the steelworks at Commentry, down to the limestone at Marcillat en Combraille (my guess about that was a good one) and then on to the main line into the wilderness of South-western France at Evaux-les-Bains. But when they had the quote they decided that it was too expensive and so they would shorten it. They relied upon a standard-gauge railway line frm another company to bring the coal from the mines down a branch line to where the ligne metrique would now start (involving a needless trans-shipment that would cost money and cause delays of course), and then stop the line at Marcillat en Combraille. With Evaux being in a different Departement (the Creuse) it was a case of “if they want it they can pay for it”.

Once the line was opened however, the standard gauge company closed down the branch line and ran their own line down to Commentry instead. Thus, with no through traffic to and from Commentry to the south-west of France, as provided for in the original estimations, the line quietly stagnated

But if you remember the famous bridge that I investigated several weeks ago, I’ve ruled it out as the bridge for the tacot. In the book that Marianne lent me, there’s a diary by a traveller from Paris who took his week’s annual holiday to ride all of the lines of the tacot d’Allier, all 272 kms of them.

He quite clearly describes the route from Commentry and he says that it follows a river valley well to the south (not the north, where my bridge is) of Durdat-Larequille, and makes the point that the village is “away to the north” of the station. Ahh well.

This afternoon I’ve been pointing again and harvesting veg, and tonight I’ve been cooking tea – the same as last night as it happens – and making some damson jam-type of stuff to flavour my plain soya desserts.

I’m enjoying life in the countryside like this.

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Wednesday 15th September 2010 – It’s been another one of those days ….

…. where I don’t seem to have done very much. I just don’t know where the time is going.

It was a somewhat later breakfast than usual and then I had another couple of hours on the FC Pionsat St Hilaire Football Club website and that’s now up-to-date and running.

That took me almost until lunchtime so after lunch I went outside and raked out another load of rubbish from between the stones on my house wall I then mixed up another bucket-load of pointing, which I duly slapped onto the wall in between the stones.

But it’s soooo sloooooooooow getting this wall all done. At this rate I reckon that I’m going to be here for ever trying to finish it off.

I dug up some vegetables for tea. I can safely say that apart from my veggie burger, everything else for the main course came from out of my garden. Even the onion. That is certainly progress.

Pudding was just as nice – a plain soya dessert flavoured with a blackberry puree made from blackberries in my orchard. Things are definitely looking up.

But I really don’t know where all the time has gone. I’ve just noticed what time it is and I seem to have done nothing at all. I remember the days when holidays used to last forever. I suppose that time speeds up the older you get 🙁

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Tuesday 14th September 2010 – I haven’t done a tap today.

Well, that’s not strictly true – after breakfast I started on the website for this season’s adventures for Pionsat’s football club. Even though I might not be there as much as I have been in the past that is no reason for ignoring it and I already have match reports for four games.

When the battery went flat in the laptop I went outside to see what the postie had brought me. I was hoping it might be good news, after all it’s been a long time since I’ve had any. And – to my surprise if not total astonishment ……

…. Yes, I’m very quick with the criticism of French public service and beauraucracy (and not without reason in many circumstances) and so I ought to be just as quick with the praise. And so hats off to the lady in the Prefecture at Clermont Ferrand. Not only did my International Driving Licence arrive today, attached to it was a new bright and shiny French Drivers Licence with medical certificate for driving lorries and buses and also for cars and vans pulling heavy trailers. This latter bit is very important as a French driving licence specifically states that a car or light van pulling a heavy trailer (one up to 3.5 tonnes laden weight) is fully authorised. And of course, what is the total laden weight of our new trailer?

A short while later Bill came round. And he stayed here having a really good chat until quite late in the afternoon. I couldn’t download a driver for his old printer – it’s not supported – and in any case he told me the price of the ink cartridges he needed to buy to fire it up. Over €50, he said, so I pointed him in the general direction of these Epson SX115 all-in-one things that we have been buying. Complete with ink cartridges, it costs a mere €49.50 and the replacement inks are €4:00 for the black and €15.99 for the three colour cartridges.

We were also looking at dial-up modems (broadband hasn’t got to him yet) and the cost is unbelievable. They are clearly a breed close to extinction. But we did find that Orange was offering a basic internet connection on “dial-up” for just €10:00 per month so as he is going to Montlucon tomorrow he’ll stop by the Orange shop to see what they can do for him.

We spent a while looking at photos of old cars and so on, and the discussion turned round to next summer. He has an old Peugeot 106 at his place that hasn’t gone anywhere for a while and isn’t worth anything much as it’s right-hand drive. No-one else wants it so we’ve decided that we will bring it round here and strip it, and then prepare it for grass-tracking. Bill was a racing driver of sorts in his youth and I reckon it won’t take too much persuasion to get him behind the wheel again. And in any case we need to find something else to do in the summer when there’s no footy.

He had a good look around the Ebro and reckons that he will help me have a bit of a play with that too when I can make some space (whenever that might be).

But I also got to thinking again as well. Terry and I have a scaffolding and a heavy duty trailer between us. He has this amazing pressure-washer and I have a big diesel generator. Simon has a huge crepi machine. You can see where I’m going with this. We have all the basics of a little plant hire business here. A big petrol cement mixer which you can buy really cheaply round here and which I can fit my single cylinder diesel engine to is something else we can consider. I reckon that there might be some mileage in exploring avenues such as this.

Once Bill had gone the phone rang twice and each time it was someone reading War and Peace to me and it wasn’t worth starting anything after that. But still, things are slowly progressing and that’s a good sign.

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Monday 13th September 2010 – We’ve been seeing stars tonight

With our regular haunt being closed for redecoration we took ourselves off to the birdwatching centre at the back of St Gervais d’Auvergne. Marianne brought her telescope and we looked at the stars, and the rest of us each bought something to eat so that we could all have a picnic.

There were about a dozen of us all told, including some new people which is always very nice to see, and we had a very friendly and pleasant time.

Mind you, at least one of us is in league with the devil and I don’t know who – but from a morning that was all grey and dreary the day slowly opened out and by the time evening arrived the clouds had all but gone and we were treated to a most magnificent sunset.

We were out there until quite late and once the skies darkened over, we were able to see some really impressive stars and planets. But it’s a shame that we didn’t really know what we were looking at.

This morning I was surprisingly free from aches and pains and awake even before the alarm clock. Regular exercise must be doing me good. Simon came round for a chat and then he went to work at Lieneke’s, and I had this other radio station on line – it seems that they want to use us for their broadcasts. Things are looking up.

This morning also saw me do my paperwork from Sunday – they are certainly getting their money’s worth out of me.

But next weekend is cup weekend and so I’ll be having a weekend off.

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Saturday 11th September 2010 – AND SO AFTER BREAKFAST …

… I went to part II of this meeting. It was still just as interesting – except that they didn’t get me a meal. Apparently my special diet is too much effort for them. Well, never mind. They will be hearing more about this because I was quite fed up, especially as the Sports Centre across the road closed just as I was about to investigate if it had any food.

And this afternoon, we went off to a Sports Stadium on the south side of the city to watch a referee and to criticise his refereeing. He made a few deliberate mistakes to see if we would spot them, and we also spotted a few unintentional errors too.

Once the match was over we had our debriefing and then it was back to Head Office. I didn’t know the way so the guy in charge shouted “follow me” – and then piddled off before Caliburn and I were ready.

Nevertheless we worked out our way through Clermont Ferrand all on our own and came back all the way to Pionsat like the wind as I had promised to photograph the entire Pionsat football club for the new calendar, and I was running for time.

For the football itself, Pionsat’s 2nd XI lost 2-1 to hated local rivals St Gervais d’Auvergne while the 1st XI spannered Menat 4-0. A couple of exciting matches, even though they were a little bad-tempered.

Franck has forgotten my shorts and so I had to scrounge a pair for making my debut with the whistle tomorrow. Such is life. But the good news is that the club has made me a little “gesture” towards my expenses of travelling back and to to Clermont Ferrand. That was nice of them and it is much appreciated, as I’m a bit down on my uppers right now.

And so tomorrow I make my debut in centre-field.

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Friday 10th September 2010 – I found a hotel with free wi-fi …

… a Première Classe on the edge of the city near the motorway, but when I returned from this meeting on Friday night, I … errrr … crashed out! Mind you it had been a long day. I had to get up early to open up Lieneke’s for Simon – but he never showed up. Mind you I took advantage by catching up with some more web stuff. I’m really pressing on with that

And after lunch I went to Bill’s and fixed his computer as much as I could , but I couldn’t do it all as we need some new drivers and then after that I went to Clermont Ferrand for this meeting. And as luck should have it I fell into Auchan just as they were having a huge €1:00 sale – and there was also a printer for Liz and Terry too.

The meeting was the Annual General Meeting of the referees of the Puy de Dome where they discuss problems that have arisen during the past season and new proceedings for the forthcoming season. It was quite interesting, but not half as interesting as the “attitudes” of a few of the people in charge of the meeting. I wouldn’t have called them particularly friendly – not in the least.

I picked up something to eat on the way back and after that I crashed right out.

i’m clearly working far too hard these days.

Thursday 9th September 2010 – Here’s a pic …

… of our latest toy.

I told you a little while ago that Terry and I had bought a trailer between us – and here’s a picture.

It isn’t half a mega-beast, an Ifor Williams Trailer with a carrying capacity of 2.5 tonnes. Terry’s tractor and broyer went onto this and the thing didn’t even bat an eyelid. It’s a 4-wheeler with 12″ wheels, detachable sides and back, and a pair of ramps that would be the envy of anyone.

I have the Minerva and the 2000E estate to collect to Brussels some time when I have the room , and this will do all of that without any effort at all. I’m impressed.

So this morning I went down to Liz and Terry’s where we put one of the old caravan chassis on top of the other one and then put them both on the trailer.

Guillaume and his mate and then Simon came round in mi-chemin and once they had been sorted out Terry brought the load around here. We took off the two old trailers and dumped them round the side of the barn and then Terry loaded up his tractor and set off for home.

I put a couple of buckets of mortar onto the wall and it’s starting to look much better.

Tomorrow I have to go to Bill’s to fix his computer and then I’m off to Clermont Ferrand for a meeting that starts tomorrow evening and finishes on Saturday late afternoon.

If I don’t blog tomorrow night it will because I won’t have been able to find a wi-fi point.

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Wednesday 8th September 2010 – It finally stopped raining …

… sometime about midday. Which was just as well as we were being thoroughly drowned out again. As the battery was then flat on the computer I nipped out and did two more bucket-loads of mortar on the wall. I reckon I’ve not done about one-sixth of it, so this time next year I might be halfway round.

That took me until about 15:00 when I knocked off for a late lunch. And just as well because it started to rain again just about then.

So this afternoon I’ve moved the old computer into the barn where I’ll be using it for more technical applications and so on, taking advantage of the bad weather to clean up the hard drive and remove all kinds of unwanted files that were hanging around on there. I have one of these portable hard drives and I’ll be using that to transport files back and to – no sense in having two copies saved at different dates on two computers – I’ll only over-write the more recent one with the older version or do something silly like that.

At about 17:15 the rain stopped so I put yet another bucket of mortar onto the wall and then went and picked my veg for tea until the rain drove me back inside again.

So what have I been doing on the computer these last few mornings? Well, I’ve written a few web pages about Virlet, the village that is my postal address, and I’ve put them on line today. Now you can see all about the village and read about its history.

Talking of history, the Americans’ much-vaunted retreat from Iraq at the end of August is now history. It lasted all of 5 days before the much-prophesied Civil War that erupted grew so far out of control that the troops were sent back in, and only a day or so later that they suffered their first casualties. As I (and many others, it is only fair to say) prophesied, the Anglo-American tactic of invading a country that was the only friend of the Westerners in the Middle-East and overthrowing the only pro-Western government in the Middle East, making them hate us with an intensity that cannot be measured on any scale known to man, and replacing them with another group of Middle-Easterners that already hate the west with an intensity that cannot etc etc, was short-sighted to say the least.

And now it seems now that the Septics are stuck there for a while yet. And no surprise either, because they will probably remember what else that I said – that once the occupying farces have pulled out there will be in due course a dictator of the country that will make Saddam look like a Boy Scout leader and the west will wish that they had him back in power.

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Tuesday 7th September 2010 – We’ve been 8 days …

… without any measurable rainfall, so my plants would welcome something, but I think that … errrr… 43.5cms in the last 24 hours was something rather excessive. During the five hours between my being awoken by the most tremendous storm and the time I had breakfast, 30.5mm of that rainfall had fallen.

Solar energy was badger all as you might expect – we had a right proper November cloud here all day.

After working on the computer I went outside but it was far too wet to work so I spent until lunchtime sawing wood. There’s a nice neatly cut pile ready for the little stove but strangely enough the pile that’s left to be cut doesn’t look any smaller at all. And I need to reduce that as I want to put a wooden wall right where it is. I shall be here for ever doing that, I reckon.

This afternoon it stopped raining so I laid off the woodcutting and scratched out a load more loose “cement” from my wall. I then made a mix of mortar to point up, and that was the signal for the heavens to open up. I put the cement on, though, even though I ended up being soaked to the skin.

I dug up some veg for tea, and noticed while scraping caterpillars off the broccoli that they are forming some nice heads. But all of the vegetation is starting to die down, I noticed. That is rather frightening if you ask me. Winter can’t be too far away.

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Monday 6th September 2010 – I just KNEW …

… that it wouldn’t be THAT easy.

I’ve been all the way to Clermont Ferrand today about this perishing driving licence. And here’s a pic of part of the centre of the city with the Puy-de-Dome towering in the distance. I hope you like it.

So I got to the city early this morning (well, early for me, anyway), found a parking space, paid for three hours parking and picked up a nice thick book (on the Treaty of Yalta, in French if you must know) as I know what these Government departments are like

At the prefecture I took my ticket for the queue and was totally astonished to find that the number of people ahead of me in the queue is … errr … NONE – now that’s a first in any Civil Service department anywhere in the world. What a waste of all of this parking money that I’ve just spent!

And so the woman at the counter went through my paperwork, and suddenly came to a dead stop.

“What’s this?” she said, brandishing a document that she had found.
“It’s my medical statement that I had done on Friday” I replied
“I can see that” she said, “but why have you had it done?”
So I explained slowly and gently that it was for a PSV and HGV driving licence.
“I can see that” she replied “but who told you to do it?”
“I understood that this was the procedure and no-one has told me any different” I replied
“Well, the doctor should certainly have told you different. He ought to know that for all new French commercial driving licences, whether for a new candidate or a transfer in from abroad, the medical is done here by our official doctor!”

So I explained that I needed the licence, and an International one to boot, by the end of September. She retaliated by offering me a medical appointment in, if I heard her correctly, the year 2016.
Yes, it was too good to be true. I knew it would be.

But after a lengthy discussion she did in fact become quite helpful in her own way. She promised to do her best to have my medical certificate accepted. And if she failed, she would send my Belgian licence back to me to take to Canada, but she would “make sure” that I received an International Driving licence.

Now having had years of promises made to me by all kinds of Civil Servants the world over, my bitter experience is to reserve judgement until I have the paperwork in hand. But it was really nice to find a French Civil Servant doing her best to deal with a difficulty that is not covered by the rules and regulations, and doing her best to think around corners and find a solution.

So after that I went for a wander around. I had paid for all this parking and I wasn’t going to waste it. And in any case I hardly know Clermont Ferrand, even though it’s the “county town” of the area where I live.

The most important place to visit in Clermont Ferrand is the cathedral. I went inside and managed to take one photo, and then we had an announcement –
“it is now midday and the cathedral is closing until 14:00. Could all visitors make their way to the exits”.
Yes, even God has his two-hour lunch break here in France. Heaven help the sinners in the meantime.

I can’t be doing with this.

So had a good wander around until 13:15 and then off to the Footy offices where they gave me some log-in details for the website so that I can see my programme. And I am indeed refereeing on Sunday as announced earlier.

Then to Brico Depot for some wood for Terry, followed by a stop off at the Carrefour at Riom for some shopping. But I didn’t do much as I was waylaid at the computer counter. I have a couple of printers here – the very old first-generation printer/scanner/copier that won’t work on Windoze Vista and so I have to copy it onto the old laptop to print it, and the little DJ540 that swallows expensive ink cartridges at an alarming rate. And I need a working printer to print out my refereeing stuff and stuff for the local history group, so I was pricing up another load of cartridges for theDJ540 when I was interrupted by a pile of Epson SX115 printer/scanner/photocopiers reduced on sale to just €49. And the ink for them is the cheapest on offer. So I bit the bullet and purchased one of the aforementioned.

At Liz and Terry’s I gave Terry his wood and inspected our new toy, the Ifor Williams trailer, which isn’t half a mega-beast and well-worth the money that we paid, and then back here to pull more caterpillars off my brassica – I’m in the middle of the second round of the cabbage-white infestation.

It was my turn to animate the Anglo-French group this evening and I had everyone discussing DiY tools and words that derive from them. It went down rather well.

And in other news, terrorists have attempted to bomb a Primary School packed with children, and an 8 year old boy discovered the primed and armed bomb, picked it up and took it into the classroom to show all of his classmates. The carnage that might have been caused can only be imagined.

Now where did this outrage take place? Iraq? Afghanistan? Well actually, it was in Antrim, Northern Ireland, which for those of you who are geographically-challenged, is in the UK. Of course it is rather ironic about how the UK is going to war to deal with “terrorists” who attack armed soldiers who are trained to fight back and to kill, so I carefully scrutinised the news report for the expressions of outrage, horror and revulsion from the British Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the B liar and assorted American politicians who have criticised Scotland’s “interaction” with one of that ilk, yet do you know what? There’s not a word!

And I wonder what they would have said if it had not been the white-skinned Paddy O’Reilly who had planted this device, but the brown-skinned Abdul Mohammed?

And I’m waiting for the aforementioned Paddy O’Reilly to be uncovered and to be named as someone with an interest in the Irish Republic, because I shall be eagerly awaiting the Anglo-American invasion of that country to sort out that nest of vipers that are sending foreign fighters abroad to spread their messages of extremism and hatred amongst innocent children.

But I am not holding my breath as it isn’t going to happen. The Brits and the Americans, and the Irish, and most of the other white-skinned westerners are the biggest bunches of hypocrites I have ever encountered.

It makes me sick.

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Sunday 5th September 2010 – One thing that I promised never to do …

… was to criticise anyone else’s attempts at foreign language translations. And for two reasons –

people ought to be congratulated for making any attempt at doing their best to make themselves understood/li>
of course, the stuff that I do is nothing to write home about and I wouldn’t like mine to receive the same kind of criticism

But be that as it may, my imagination isn’t half working overtime about the condition third from bottom on the list on the right, and all kind of images are floating through my mind.

I had a lovely afternoon out this afternoon though, although this morning was something of a disaster. It was about 04:00 when I went to bed, I was dealing with a computer issue for all of Saturday until then – and yet at 09:00 I was up and about and breakfasted. And on a Sunday too.!

“How did you manage that?” I hear you say.
That was thanks to whoever it was who rang me at 08:10 and said “C’est toi, Albert?” And when I told him that he had a wrong number, rang me back twice more until I finally convinced him.

And so with my Sunday ruined, I did some more website stuff for the rest of the morning.

After lunch I set out for the football at Blot-l’Eglise, a nice village up in the hills at the back of Manzat and Combronde.

FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI won 1-0 in a good, enjoyable match played in a very friendly atmosphere in beautiful weather conditions, but in all honesty Blot l’Eglise could still be out there now, all on their own attacking an empty net, and they still wouldn’t have equalised.

On the way back I parked up for a while at the Moulin de Braynant (where I saw the above notice) and went for a walk along the Gorge de la Sioule, such a beautiful afternoon that it was. The weather was gorgeous, the scenery was impressive and it really was a pleasure to be out and about.

This is quite a touristy spot here and a very popular place for watersports, as Lee Potty-mouth and Rick Hollyoaks will tell you.

They also hire out kayaks (and this is what the notice above refers to, by the way) and one day I’m going to have a go at this. It’s a long time since I’ve been in a boat – I used to canoe for my school back in the late 1960s, which is just as well as there are no lessons on offer here.

I asked them how beginners manage, and the response was that they have to paddle their own canoe around here.

They need to make sure that they take all the correct equipment with them otherwise that they can find themselves right up the creek without a paddle.

The notice above, by the way, omits two of the most important rules of kayaking, and maybe I ought to repeat them here.

you are not allowed to light a fire in a canoe. After all, you cannot have your kayak and heat it
it is forbidden to make love in a canoe. After all, making love in a canoe is just the same as English beer – it’s f*cking close to water

And after all of that, I came back here and crashed out for … errrr …. four hours – now I can’t sleep.

In other news, something has happened this evening that I have been waiting 10 months to do. And just like a hurricane, you know that it is inevitably going to happen and you are totally powerless – there is nothing that you can do that will stop it.

Yes, I have finally, at long last, managed to spill a full mug of coffee all over the floor in my nice attic room 🙁

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Saturday 4th September 2010 – We are back where we left off in May.

But never mind the footy for the moment – just look at the picture.

It’s not just streets ahead of what the old Pentax K100D could do – it’s on a totally different planet. ISO 3200 setting on RAW data with a shutter speed of 400 and automatic exposure and then the image reduced from 4200×3000 to 800×533 and it can churn out stuff like this.

This is definitely the way forward and as I said the other day, a decent (read “expensive”) lens makes a whole new world of difference. I’ll settle for this quality.

Remember that the floodlights are only cheap basic stuff, probably not even 250LUX. A proper professional football ground has a light output of 750LUX and that would give almost daylight-quality.

As for the match itself, this is Pionsat’s 3rd XI playing St Angel, and they started off the season with a 2-1 win. There were a couple of new lads playing for the side and they looked the business.

But before anyone gets too excited, the 2nd XI don’t have a game this weekend. Next weekend when all three teams are out you’ll see a different 3rd XI on the field and we’ll be back to the motley. But get the points in while you can.

At the moment the 3rd XI are top of the league, and that really is a moment to savour.

Today I’ve been working – in the morning on my Virlet website and later pointing the eastern wall. Three buckets of mortar went into it today. And I now know which are the animals that live in the holes in that wall. I threw a paintbrush full of water into one of the holes to flush out some loose sand and I flushed out a rather indignant bat. I’m not sure who was more surprised, me or him, but I threw another brush-load of water at him, he took the hint and piddled off, and I quickly filled in the hole before he came back.

But this pointing is ever so slow – it’s going to take me for ever.

Does anyone remember those green fruits on the tree in my garden – I posted an image of them a few months back. They are in fact damsons and so seeing as I didn’t have any strawberries to eat with my plain soya dessert this evening, I grabbed a handful and boiled them in some sugar and water and made a kind of syrup. I added some of that to the soya and it tasted really good. I like this idea of profiting as much as possible from what is available to eat here.

And in other news, talking football again, I see that next Sunday afternoon the referee for the 2nd Division match between Pontaumur and Chapdes Beaufort is a Mr E Hall of Pionsat.

God help them!

-2

Friday 3rd September 2010 – In a change to the advertised programme ….

…. I had a day off today. Totally unplanned but somehow things just seem to work out that way. But first, just have a look at this picture. And what do you make of it? You might need to enlarge it first.

The giveaway clues are in between the two rails in centre pic and also in the top left corner.

What has happened is that at some time or other some kind of railway conveyance has come off the rails at the points just here and ridden along the sleepers for a long way. And no-one has bothered to repair the damage.

Where I am in fact is at the old Les Ancizes-St Georges de Mons railway station, where I have been for a prowl around this evening. This is on the abandoned railway line between Lapeyrouse and Volvic – the one that crosses over the Viaduc des Fades and which was closed in dramatic fashion a couple of years ago when they “suddenly discovered” that the viaduct was unsafe. But you know me and my conspiracy theories – I reckon that the closure was planned for years and the lack of maintenance along the line merely proves it. And not replacing these clearly-badly-damaged sleepers just adds more fuel to the fire.

So how come I had a day off when it wasn’t planned?

This morning I went to the doctor’s to have my football medical signed off – if I want to play I need a certificate. As it happened, it cost me nothing as all my details of the medical I had for my referee’s test were on file.

So that was good.

Then I decided that seeing as I was in St Eloy I would do my shopping. and LIDL was good too.

I needed some more identity photos so I went to Carrefour where I planned to finish my shopping. But no photo booth!
“We don’t have one” they said.
“So where do people go for their identity photos?”
“The professional photographer” she said – and watched me splutter.
“Anyway” she added “he’s closed until 15:00”
Sod this for a game of soldiers – a 50-mile round trip where I drove to the Intermarche at Commentry – I know that they have one. Mind you, I half-expected it to be closed for lunch or the machine out of order but no – it worked, and that must be a first.

They aren’t have having their money’s worth out of me, running around to collect all this paperwork.

On the way back and passing through Marcillat en Combraille I went to look at a building that I noticed when I was with Liz the other evening. Now is this a former railway station or is it a former railway station? You can even see the platform.

In fact what we here was the terminus of the Ligne Economique, – the narrow-gauge railway that ran between Marcillat en Combraille and Commentry.

Commentry is a steel-making town and there was a huge lime furnace just a mile or so away from here, so it’s no surprise that there was a railway line between the two towns. The station building here is in a direct line with the old lime furnaces, but modern building has obscured whatever track there might have been in between the two.

The narrow gauge track was ploughed up in 1930 when they built the standard gauge line over its track bed, so when the main line service was suspended in 1939, Marcillat en Combraille lost its passenger service completely, even though the rest of the tacot system staggered on into the 1950s

So while I was here in Marcillat en Combraille I went to the local Mairie and the secretary agreed to talk to the people who know, to see what help might be given for my proposed research

At Pionsat I dropped off my forms at the Football Club, only to find that I can’t find the receipt for the referee’s stuff, and I’ll need that if I want the club to pay it. I remember seeing it floating around the van so I picked it up to put somewhere safe. That says it all really.

So after a solar shower I went to St George for my HGV medical, and here’s another doctor who tells me that there is nothing dropping off quite yet. Mind you, he had me doing some funny things like standing on one leg with my eyes closed and all of that. And as I’m after a change of licence and an International licence he gave me my file back and told me to take it myself to Clermont Ferrand on Monday.

On the way back I went for a prowl around the deserted and abandoned railway station at Les Ancizes and took a pile of photos, a couple of of which you have seen above. In his book First and Last Loves” John Betjeman wrote that “Nothing is more empty than a deserted fairground”. But that was because in his day there weren’t any deserted railway stations. He’d change his tune if he were alive today.

And after coffee at Liz and Terry’s I came home just in time for tea at 21:00. And now you see what I mean. Tomorrow I shall have to work to catch up.

-1

Thursday 2nd September 2010 – I had a little fun today …

… with the Nikon. As you know, I’ve started to work on a little website about Virlet, and the major claim to fame of the village is the Dominican Abbey of Bellaigue.

You can see it from the end of my lane, way down in the valley below and so I took a pic of it. And considering that it’s about 6 km away it’s come out rather well.

The camera by the way is set to images of 4200×3000 or something like that, and the quality of the image is set to HIGH.

What I have done with it though is to reduce it to 800×533 and set the quality to 42% – what I always do for images that I’m posting to the web.

The next bit was the exciting part. What I have done is cropped out a section that is just 350 x 220 or thereabouts and blown it up to 800×533. I had to sharpen the image a little but I reckon that this has come out superbly.

Like I said, it’s 6 kilometres away from where I took the pic. Spending that money on that 105mm (3xzoom) lens has been well-spent if you ask me.

>Now despite what I said yesterday, I didn’t go to Clermont Ferrand today. I made it as far as the mairie but the secretary was involved with some complicated with someone and it took 40 minutes while I was there! So by the time I had my paperwork and had reached Clermont Ferrand, it would have been lunchtime and I would have been hanging around for a couple of hours.

But she had given me a list of doctors authorised to give medicals for truck and bus drivers, so I rang them to see about an appointment for me. The first one said “mid-October” – the second one said the same. And none of this surprised me. Long-term followers of my outpourings will remember all of this from before.

The next doctor I tried said “Friday 18:00”.
“Like tomorrow?” I asked with disbelief
“Yes, tomorrow” he confirmed.

So badger going to Clermont Ferrand this afternoon and trying to blag my way around getting my commercial licenses somehow. I can go on Monday with all of the paperwork properly complete. I worked hard to get my commercial licenses so I’m not going to surrender them lightly, that’s for sure.

So this afternoon I added a couple more buckets of mortar to the wall. And ended the day with a solar shower. Only 35.5°C so it was rather cool, but welcome nevertheless.

-4

EPIC HALL

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