Category Archives: Les Guis

Sunday 1st August 2010 – Blimey!

This weather is totally crazy.

When I woke up ( at ….errrr ….. 11:33 this morning, and my excuse was that I was having a really good dream about a new house that I had bought) the weather was beautiful. So I had a leisurely breakfast and messed about a bit on the computer before deciding to go to the brocante at Pionsat.

But a flaming phone call interrupted me and I was there discussing the Palestine question with someone and it was gone 14:00 when I left. Bright sunshine when I left, and in the 5kms it takes to drive to Pionsat the heavens opened with a deluge. In the village square all the stallholders had gone due to the rain and that was that.

By the time I checked the stats at 31:45 we had had 22mm of rain and it’s still bucketing down. Thunder and lightning and all sorts. It had better clear up if we are going to have another go on that roof tomorrow.

In other news, I noticed a little giveaway phrase in a press report about the situation in Afghanistan. Hidden in all of the rhetoric is the little phrase that NATO “hopes to reverse the Taliban’s momentum”. Translated into English that means that the Taliban is advancing in Afghanistan and NATO hopes to push its forces back. Now if the Taliban is advancing, it means that NATO is retreating, so what a giveaway this phrase actually is.

But then again I’ve been saying for a couple of years that the Taliban has had NATO on the run and that Khazi’s writ doesn’t run any wider than the gates of his palace in Kabulseye (and only then with American permission).

To make matters worse, the Dutch pulled out of Afghanistan today. Not that the Dutch forces amount to much – who will ever forget the craven way that the Dutch Army, who had been sent to defend the town of Srebenica and its population, surrendered it to the Serbs and then stood by idly as the Serbs massacred the population – but it’s a sign that the Coalition of the Willing is becoming less and less Willing as the war marches on. What with the Germans also likely to pull out before the end of the year and the Poles and Canadians to be the next to run away, the Septics and the Brits are going to be left with the oeufs all over the visage. And with more and more countries pulling out, the likelihood of persuading more and more countries to take over so that the Septics can secure all of the mineral rights in Afghanistan will be less and less. It will mean that more and more Brits will be dying so that more and more Americans can become richer and richer.

July 2010 was the second-most-deadly month for NATO forces in Afghanistan. And when was the most deadly month for them? Why, June 2010 of course. But of course nothing of this is surprising. For every innocent child that NATO kills you have half a dozen people shouting for revenge. And Afghans and other tribesmen (“tribespersons please” – ed) are much more likely to pick up a gun and go to war that your average North American or British Couch Potato.

And how long has this war been going on? 8 and a half years? And instead of things getting better and better they are getting worse and worse. The Brits and Septics have been dragged into the very bloodbath that they promised that they would avoid. But then again, the way of dealing with a group of freedom fighters, most of whom were Saudi Arabians, led by a Saudi and financed by a Saudi company, leading to an invasion of … errrr …. Afghanistan was something that mystified almost everyone on the planet.

The funniest thing about all of this is that when the Russians invaded Afghanistan the Afghans fought the Russians off – armed by weapons supplied by the west. The Russians had the right to feel aggrieved by that. And 20 years or so later here are the Afghans fighting off the might of the west with no help from anybody at all. No wonder the Russians are p155ing themselves laughing.

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Saturday 31st July 2010 – Tomorrow the world!

I can’t get into the greenhouse for the moment because this monster is in the way. It’s supposed to be a squash plant and it does indeed look as if it’s quite a squash in the greenhouse.

That’s especially the case seeing as yonder tryffid is being backed up by another one of its ilk as well as a rogue tomato seed that fell onto the floor and is now likewise threatening to take over the world. It’s quite impressive in there.

I actually have piles of tomatoes ripening in the mega-cloche, as well as peppers and chili but these are the plants that I bought at the St Gervais d’Auvergne plant fair. The ones I planted aren’t doing much. The brassica are doing well but the one surviving pea plant has turned brown and died.

Elsewhere in the garden the beans are going berserk (especially those I planted the other day), the spuds have gone wild and the carrots are doing the biz. The onions are now swelling at long last and the garlic is dying off so that will be ready to lift in early course.

Today is Saturday and just for a change there was a brocante at St Priest les Champs. It’s not natural to have a brocante on a Saturday – it’s like your body clock is all wrong when you have other things to do. But not to worry – it’s Pionsat’s brocante tomorrow. I’m still looking for a milk churn, and Liz saw one at St Priest today and rang me up to tell me about it. I went round there chaud-pied, as they say around here to have a look but it was only 15 litres and that isn’t big enough.

I’m also after a car CD player so I can build a unit to play all of my CDs around the house, and that’s not as easy as it sounds either.

Nothing of any use at Carrefour or at Lidl so it’s been a bit of a non-day today. But they were selling tubs of sorbet at LIDL for €0.89 and they looked ever so enticing and after all it has been quite a while since I had an ice-cream …..

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Friday 30th July 2010 – I’m making progress …

… with this floor in the other lean-to. I’ve done about two thirds of it and the only reason that I stopped (it was 18:42 when I did) was that I had run out of the wood that I had bought.

It’s 25mm planking and I might even have some more in the barn – some of that cheap concrete shuttering that I bought from Brico Depot. I need to go and have a look.

But I won’t be doing all of the floor – I’ll be having a kind of ladder-type of stair so that I can get up here from inside rather than climbing up the fence and in through the old window.

One of the two heavy beams in the foreground is to replace the broken one in the middle of the picture and the other one is to attach to the wall on some hangers that are there. The third heavy beam is sort-of in position at the low edge of the roof.

Once the floor is done and the woodwork is in position I need to build up the far wall and the low wall (it was the low wall I was doing when I became ill – that was the one that collapsed and I repaired it up to floor level) and then I can start to think about a roof. I hope I have enough recycled plastic slates left over.

This morning Terry was round and we built up the scaffolding and took the tiles off the roof. After lunch we knocked part of the wall down to fit the horizontal beam extensions and then started on the chevrons. And I managed to drop a huge rock onto Terry’s hand – right onto his scar tissue – and he wasn’t impressed. But them I have told him a million times that he didn’t ought to be working downhill from me. But his response was that he prefers it. If I do something he can simply grab my leg and yank me off the scaffolding. Ahh well.

But this roof is a mess – nothing is straight and nothing is sound. It’s not possible to work in straight lines as the more you dig into it the more defects you find. Replacing a chevron, we discovered that it had been rotten for years and all of the surrounding wood had collapsed. A new chevron went in straight (as they do if you don’t buy them from Brico Depot) and then we had to put a broadener onto it when the wood that fits under the tiles promptly collapsed under the strain of the new wood. Instead of a broadener we should have replaced the voltige back to the next chevron, but where do you stop? What would happen if we were to discover that that chevron was rotten too?

The only solution as I have said before is to replace the entire roof and make everything new. Patching it like this isn’t really the solution as it won’t be long before the bugs that are creating the ominously-huge cavities in the old wood move house into the new wood and that lot all comes crashing down.

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Thursday 29th July 2010 – Today was exciting.

This evening I picked the first courgette out of the garden and made myself a delicious courgette and lentil curry. It was magnificent, and furthermore there’s enough left over – and stored in the fridge – for 2 more days

I also went in search of strawberries as there were quite a few when I last looked, but it seems that mildew has done for most of those and there were only two left. And they were delicious too.

This morning we were back on the roof. One side is finished, complete with edging tiles all in place and properly cemented in.

We did however have a problem – the roofing tiles are 40cm so I dunno what possessed someone to buy 43cm edging tiles. Because of that, they don’t fit properly!

Still, we managed to get them to look very nice by using an aluminium straight-edge and an angle-grinder but it would have looked nicer with 40cm edgings.

Now that we’ve done all of that, this afternoon we took down the scaffolding and put it up around the other side of the house. But that is on a slope and, like the Irish expedition to climb Mount Everest, we ran out of scaffolding.

We’ll have to finish off the other side of the edging tomorrow, and then re-position all of this scaffolding and then start to strip the roof.

After Terry left I went home and did something else that I was meaning to do for quite a while – years in fact. Keen readers of these outpourings in one of their many previous forms (it was after the Xoom blog but before the Yahoo one – might have been the Bravenet one) will remember that back in 2002 I was repairing a collapsed outbuilding when I collapsed, and it was never finished. But that is where the composting toilet is and where the washroom will be and I’m fed up of being rained upon. I can’t refit the roof just yet but I can put in the floor at the first floor level so I made a start on that. At least I won’t get p155ed on now when I’m riding the porcelain horse.

But, quite strangely, I’ve been hearing some bizarre noises in the verandah just recently and as I was coming back from this roof I heard a similar noise coming from the barn. I stuck my head inside just in time to see a flaming huge hedgehog drag a plastic bag full of wire rope off into one of the deepest and darkest recesses.

What is all that about?

The amount of stuff that I can’t find in that barn that I know full well is there – there’s probably a group of hedgehogs about to open a hardware store somewhere in the vicinity. I bet they will be doing deliveries too – using a SatNav that they will have acquired from somewhere.

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Wednesday 28th July 2010 – I had another day off today …

… because Terry was elsewhere, and I celebrated it with something of a lie-in.

After breakfast I did some more work on my website, which has fallen way behind schedule, and then I finally managed to do a big load of washing, what with the wind and the weather being all right for that sort of thing. It’s amazing how much washing there was but then again I haven’t done any for a while.

After a late lunch I emptied Caliburn out. I’ve lost my SatNav and I’ve no idea where it might be. It’s nowhere in Caliburn as far as I can see and it’s annoying me, this.

Terry suggests that I look elsewhere for it in case I may have taken it out of Caliburn at some time, but around here, where on earth do you start? You can be here for a week and only just scratch the surface. I reckon it’s well and truly gone.

But at least Caliburn is now fully empty, and he needs to be. We have a scaffolding to pick up in a week or so and the other trailer has now apparently gone tits-up. This is annoying me! We are going to have to collect it in the two vans.

When I knocked off I had a shower – the solar shower was showing 36 degrees and that’s warm enough. The automatic heater fired itself up as well today and reached 33 degrees, 11 degrees above the ambient. Add on another 11 degrees for a closed lid and another 11 degrees for insulation and you can see how this is all going to work when I install a tank instead. I noticed by the way that even with the fridge running and the water heater working there was still an excess of solar power. I might have to fit two elements instead of just one.

But talking of the fridge, there’s no thermostat on mine and so it runs 24 hours per day 7 days per week. And at 5 amps that’s a total of 120 amp-hours, or about 1.45Kw. But Conforama where I bought my bed settee from, they are offering a table top fridge – twice as big as mine – that uses just 0.37Kw per day – or about 32 amp-hours. And it’s an A+ so there’s bound to be a ton of insulation stuffed into it, so I’m currently thinking about abandoning my 12-volt fridge, buying a small inverter that will power the fridge and then having the inverter switched into the dump load. When the batteries are fully charged the inverter will fire up and run the fridge as well as the water heater and when the battery charge drops the inverter (and the fridge) switch off.

The big advantage of this is that on a good day it takes until about 12:30 for the batteries to be fully charged. with no fridge running through the night the batteries will be fully-charged in an hour or so and that’ll give me more time for the water heater and the fridge will be running away in the background on its minimal power requirement.

I shall have to look into this.

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Tuesday 27th July 2010 – Terry had other things to do today …

… so he didn’t come down today. Mind you he did ring me at 08:00 to tell me not to wake up, which was kind of him.

So I had a relaxed morning doing not very much. I checked on Lieneke’s house to make sure things were okay and that was that. I was going to do some washing but the weather wasn’t stable enough for that. I need to do some soon as I’m running out of clothes.

This afternoon we went to record our monthly programmes and this was full of hitches. The guy who takes us had his floosie with him and so engrossed were they in talking that he missed our exit on the Motorway and we had to drive miles out of our way to get to the studio. And then they had a technician in repairing the computer so we had to wait an hour or so.

And then the computer still wasn’t working so we had to record our programmes on the analogue tape machine.

And then the tape jammed

And then we ran out of tape.

So all in all it took hours.

And that is really that. I’m thoroughly exhausted and I’m going to have another early night. I’ve not even managed to make myself any food.

But summer has returned. The solar shower reached 35 degrees and if I had made it home earlier than 18:15 I would have had a shower. And the automatic water heater started up again. Only 20 minutes but it pushed the water temp up by 4 degrees.

Tomorrow I may even have a shower if the weather keeps up.

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Monday 26th July 2010 – Lieneke asked me …

… to take a photo every day of the progress on her roof now that she is back in the Netherlands. And I forgot to do it until it was almost going dark but nevertheless here we are.

What we’ve been doing is to take off the roof tiles from the right-hand edge as far as the little window in the roof, replace a couple of chevrons, strengthen the principal horizontal beams and lengthen where necessary, extend the roof out from the chimney line so that it protects the stone wall of the house and then replace the tiles and add the extra for where the roof has been extended (basically, the bit to the right of the roof ladder).

So this morning we finished off the joinery and then replaced the rest of the tiles. This afternoon we took our lives into our own hands and pointed the chimney. It looks much better now than it did and it’s certainly more solid, although there isn’t anything that you can do about the tilt.

Finally we started to fit the edging tiles but one or two of them proved to be more difficult than you would think. And we were at that stage where we know from bitter experience that nothing will ever go right no matter what you do and how long you try to do it, and so we called it a day and we’ll finish it tomorrow.

But I wasn’t surprised. It was 18:10 when we finished and Terry was here at 08:50 so that’s not far off 09:30 hours that we were working. And it’s hard work too. Terry’s had me running up and down that scaffolding all day with buckets of nails, buckets of screws, buckets of tiles and buckets of mortar. It’s keeping me fit, that’s for sure, but it’s wearing me out as well. So much so that I’m going to press “send” and then have an early night.

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Sunday 25th July 2010 – Coming back …

… from Liz and Terry’s this evening, I was just crossing over the Font Nanaud as the sun was setting. I stopped and took a few photos, as is my wont, and while most of them turned out quite well, this one is in fact quite spectacular.

I had to take it on a very fast shutter so as to avoid any blur or interference and the colours have come out perfectly, which is quite a surprise. I’m impressed with this.

I’d been round there this evening to organise our radio programme for the next few weeks. We will be talking about this auto-entrepreneur system but seeing as we only have enough information for three weeks we will also be doing something about playing football in the region. I reckon that there are loads of expats living in the area dying to integrate and not sure how – and football is a universal language.

So that’s what I was doing this morning and in the early part of the afternoon – preparation. later on I went to the brocante at Youx – quite a big one too as it happens. I bought something that indicated on it that it was 12-volt current in and 230 volt current out at 80 watts – ideal for Caliburn. But it wasn’t half a Stone-Age appliance. We started off at €10 but I got it knocked down to €3 in the end.

At Terry’s we had a play with it. We put 12 volts into it – and got nothing out. And Terry doubts that it is what it says that it is on the label. It’s not like any inverter he has ever seen.

So I dunno. I’ll add it to the stuff to be played with at a later date.

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Saturday 24th July 2010 – One thing that is interesting about walking …

… down which you normally drive is that you get to see plenty of things that you would otherwise miss. I mean – I’ve never seen this sign before in St Eloy les Mines and I certainly would have remembered it had I done so.

Most of St Eloy les Mines was closed off this afternoon due to one of these local street market thingies and so after going to LIDL, washing Caliburn (yes, I’ve given Caliburn a good wash today) and going to Carrefour I had a wander round. But there was nothing particularly to catch my attention.

There are two shops recently opened here – Gamme Vert and Cheze, and I took the opportunity to have a good poke around. They both have a pile of things that would come in useful and save me having to drive to Commentry or Montlucon so often. I took quite a note.

Shopping though was boring. I bought nothing out of the ordinary, nothing exciting at all. I suppose that it’s me all stuck in a rut at the moment. I ought to be getting out more often. It would probably do me good.

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Friday 23rd July 2010 – I went downstairs this morning …

… and found a mouse dying in the kitchen! My cooking isn’t that bad, you know. Anyway, I heaved it outside to join into the food chain and waited for Terry. He had gone off on a tour of sawmills to find some of the specially-shaped wood for hanging these tiles and so I carried on with some weeding.

When Terry turned up he didn’t have the wood because it’s no longer sold. Apparently it’s a fire risk but having seen last year how quickly ordinary household products catch fire some kind of fire restriction is totally unnecessary.

We started to cut the laths and voltige to cover this roof and made a start on fitting the tiles. With good weather we could have fixed them all on but it was not to be. We were having rainstorms every 10 minutes and they kept on driving us off the roof into shelter.

After Terry went home I sowed some more beans and peas and that really was my day. Tomorrow is shopping, Sunday is rest and then we are back at it on Monday.

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Thursday 22nd July 2010 – It was a much better day today.

Only 18.5mm of rain. But this morning was far too wet to go up onto the roof and so instead we went to Montlucon to look at some trailers and so on.

The afternoon was still rather damp so Terry took some wood home to cut and I did some gardening. I’ve sown some more peas, beans, chicory and carrots, as well as doing some weeding in front of the house. And that’s about it, really.

In other news, TNS’s good win has been emulated by Bangor City who beat Honka Espoo of Finland in the Europa (formerly UEFA) Cup to progress to the 3rd round of the tournament where they will meet Maritimo of Portugal. I can’t think that it has ever happened before that two Welsh football clubs have reached the 3rd Round of their respective European tournaments in the same season. In fact I have to think long and hard about the last time that just one Welsh Club did. TNS’s win drew the Welsh Premier League to within a fraction of a seeded place in next year’s series of matches and maybe Bangor’s victory might be sufficient to ensure it. The Welsh Premier League clubs have never yet been seeded at all in the draw for the opening matches so history may well be made next season.

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Wednesday 21st July 2010 – No solar shower today!

And no automatic hot water either. What we did have was 39mm of rain! And it’s still p155ing down outside and I don’t think that it’s ever going to stop.

Having rerouted the guttering the water was coming down the verandah roof at such a speed that it was shooting over the top of the guttering. Putting a slate up to block the flow caused the guttering to overflow. But the water butts are full so that is something.

We made great progress with this roof today until about 15;30 when the rain started. But it wasn’t the rain that stopped us, it was the lightning. When you are working on a metal scaffolding and climbing up and down an aluminium ladder then lightning is the last thing that you want. And so we tidied up and called it a day.

But that wasn’t all of it. About half an hour later Lieneke came round in a panic. A rock had fallen off the wall and through one of the tiles on her bathroom roof and her bathroom was flooded in the storm. And so there I was in the pouring rain wrestling with the left-over roofing sheets from my barn, getting them up onto her bathroom roof. In the thunder and lightning I might add.

So now I’m soaking wet and I’ve run out of dry clothes.

Tuesday 20th July 2010 – I’m just thoroughly exhausted right now.

Terry rang me at just after 08:00 to make sure that I was awake – he was just setting out. And it was 20:10 when I came back into the house this evening.

This roof that we are fixing is turning out to be a right horror story. We’ve been cutting out the side beams today and fixing extensions to them so that we can make an overhang to stop the water penetrating into the roof. At least we were – until we discovered that the principal beam had rotted away. It’s full of insect holes – and I mean the real galleries rather than plain ordinary and common-or-garden woodworm but at the outside end there was simply nothing at all to inspect.

So we ended up having to take a 4.5 metre beam, cut a load of lets into it for the chevrons to fit into, then drag it up the scaffolding on the ladder, fit it under the roof, turn and pivot it into position, hold it up while we made a few adjustments, whack it in with a hammer and then cut some stud-iron into long bolt-shaped pieces to bolt everything together. And all of that into an attic where the OUTSIDE temperature was 35°C. God knows what the temperature was inside that roof and I have never sweated so much in all my life.

This roof is all thoroughly rotten and the only reason it’s still standing up is because the woodworm are all holding hands in the beams. If they let go then we will all be goosed. Looking under the eaves you can see that the chevrons are just crumbling away. Patching it up is a major mistake because what will then happen is that in the first strong gale or heavy snowfall all of the strains and stresses in the roof will come hard up against the solid wood that has been fitted, the flexing will stop dramatically and all of the old wood will just shear off. The only solution really is to strip the whole lot off – every last piece – and start from scratch but for that you will get no change out of €20,000.

It’s comforting me quite a lot actually because I had always thought of my house as being something of a ruin. Yet compared to a few houses that I’ve seen just recently it’s in comparatively good condition all things being considered.

And another thing too – seeing the conditions in which a few other nouveaux arrivants are living, then my aspirations for my house and the long-term plans I have for it will make it into something quite luxurious. At the moment things aren’t so hot (although my attic is quite a little palace comparatively-speaking, and that’s certainly hot right at the moment) but I’m ripping up and discarding, without any hesitation at all, some situations that others are finding to be quite acceptable. I suppose that I really DO have some expensive tastes after all. What with one thing and another, all of this is cheering me up!

But once that had finished I did some more work on my guttering and water filters and they are all sealed up. Heavy rain is forecast for tomorrow and I need to catch all of the rain that I can.

And in other news, I’ve been severely critical in the past about TNS – or The New Saints – or They’ve No Support – a football team in the Welsh Premier League that is in many respects just one man’s ambition and is hawked around from town to town in North-East Wales. The club qualified for European competition (the Champions’ League in fact) at the end of last season and tonight they thrashed Bohemians of Ireland 4-0 to reach the 3rd Qualifying Round and a match against Anderlecht of Belgium. So good luck to them from a long-time critic.

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Monday 19th July 2010 – There was no conversation group today …

… so Clotilde invited a couple of us round for a chat and some snacks, which was very nice of her. Of course Strawberry Moose came along too to meet some of his admirers.

Clotilde’s house is gorgeous but it’s really discouraging to hear her say that it took 46 years to get it into the condition that it’s in today. And she showed us a photo of how it was when she bought it – and it really was a right tip too.

On the way down to Clotilde’s, I went the long way round with my new camera via the birdwatching centre at the back of St Gervais d’Auvergne seeing as how it was a beautiful early evening. This as you know is my favourite photography spot.

Here’s a beautiful view of the Gorge de la Sioule just down there in the centre of the photograph and over away to the left is the church at Sauret Besserve

I wanted to take a couple of photos of the view from there – a view which you all know is one of the best in the whole of France – and see how the new camera performs in the excellent weather conditions.

This is a close-up of the radio antenna on the Puy-de-Dome – a little bit of crop-and-enlarge from a full-size image. We have a new high-quality lens and I was keen to see how that performed too.

But that wasn’t all that was exciting about my little visit to the centre ornithologique this evening. As I was there this evening, the moon rose. Quite early for once, I know, and so I gave it a little go with the new lens too.

Quite honestly, this photo couldn’t have come out much better, could it?

All in all, I’m well-impressed with my new camera and lens. And quite rightly so, considering the money that I’ve spent on it.

Back at Pooh Corner this morning, Terry has started on Lieneke’s roof and I’ve been roped in to help. That’s going to be the plan for the next few weeks I suppose. And her roof is a right mess – far worse than mine was – and only patching a part of it is not going to be a long-term solution, for the more that you rip off the more damage that you find.

The chimney is leaning quite ominously too and I don’t like the look of it.

But it was hot up there on that roof today and my being stung by a wasp didn’t help matters much. 30-odd years since I was last stung by a wasp and now it’s twice in as many weeks.

And we’ve set a couple of records today. A total of 317 amp-hours on the two banks in the house will take some matching. And 44 degrees in the solar heat exchanger and 42.5 in the electric heater – those figures are impressive too. I’ve been thinking about the electric water heater – a 25-litre oil drum would do the job but an old milk churn with lid would be even better. I need to search the brocantes.

But at Clotilde’s this evening I did hear a story about a man who ran some cold water slowly onto his tin roof and took a shower underneath the downspout – and burnt himself, the water was so hot. And here I am, just having fitted about 150 sq m of metal roof on my barn. I’d love to try that out!

Sunday 18th July 2010 – I have been severely critical …

…“What, you, Eric? Shurely shome mishtake” – ed … about the way that people in North America treat their heritage. And not just on the odd occasion either. And not just in one country, as a matter of fact. However I do recognise that there are some people who are making a valiant effort.

I am ashamed to say that in my own neck of the woods the lack of interest in culture and heritage and all of this is just as apparent as it is in North America. And that is just what is on public view. There is much more that is going on behind closed (and locked doors) that the public never has the opportunity to see.

I’ve been on my travels today and one of the places I visited was the Fete des Myrtilles at St Julien-la-Geneste.

There was an art exhibition taking place in the church and Marianne the local journalist was there to photograph it. She blagged her way into the church tower to take a photo of the exhibition and asked me whether I would like to go – she knows that I have an interest in boldly going where the hand of man has never set foot.

And so up in the tower it was – and this was the sight that greeted me. I know that Medieval religious art is two-a-penny and not usually particularly good but that is no reason in my opinion to just chuck it in a corner out of the way where no-one is ever likely to go and just leave it there to fester, to let rats and mice make a nest for it and when in 100 years time everyone has forgotten all about it, quietly burn it somewhere in a lonely field.

According to Marianne it is something to do with the Chemin de la Croix which is something that means nothing to me but seems to be of some kind of significance. Marianne was pretty busy so I didn’t have time to ask her but I’m seeing her at a meeting tomorrow night and so I will interrogate her.

But it appals me how people can treat significant objects in this despicable fashion . Yes, I’m having another “Lancaster Bomber” moment, aren’t I?

Things weren’t any better up in the top of the tower either. I took the opportunity to shin up the rickety wooden ladder and force the trapdoor so that I could go into the bell housing. And I bet no-one had been up there for fifty years either.

There were three bells in the belfry and the original pulling gear was all there, although it looked as if it had been disconnected for a hundred years.

And so we had one bell which was electrically connected to chime the hours and half-hours, although Terry did ask me how they managed in view of the frequent power cuts that they have around here.

The second, which was slightly smaller, was still hanging but disconnected and the third, the smallest of the trio, had been taken down and just flung in a corner where it sat.

Of course, just as I stuck my head into the bell housing, the clock chimed half-past three.
“I bet Marianne did that on purpose” said Terry.
“I don’t know why you are complaining” said Marianne. “You should be grateful that it wasn’t twelve o’clock”.

It’s nice to have friends.

You may remember that we were here a few years ago and were entertained by a guy from Canada who played the bagpipes and his friend who played the drums. They were back here again today, bringing their bagpipes and drums with them and they entertained the crowd for a short while.

Hardly a traditional French entertainment, you might think, but this is part of the beauty of living here. There are all kinds of people from all over the place living here and they have brought their cultures with them.

That wasn’t all of the excitement either. This car was parked up around the back of the church and so I went for a closer look, and it took me quite by surprise because it’s a comparatively rare car and I didn’t expect to see one here.

It’s a Renault Novaquatre, a model that was built for just a couple of years. Launched in the Autumn of 1937, it was never a popular car. Few were made and production ground to a halt in the summer of 1940 when the Renault factory was taken over by the Germans, and never restarted after the war.

Back home, I helped Lieneke with her gardening for a while and then Terry and Liz came round for the scaffolding. They invited me back for tea which was nice of them and as Liz had baked vegan ginger cake I gratefully accepted. I was even given a doggy bag!

But earlier in the day I’d been to the brocante at Le Quartier. I had had a good day there, spending a whole €10:50 on a map of the French railway system in 1962, a hold-down switch for my doorbell, a kind-of lance for weed control, a ladle for the composting toilet and – biggest prize of all – a heavy-duty electric paint sprayer. Jerome from Pionsat’s 3rd XI was there too and we had a good chat.

But I’m on the warpath again about these paintings.

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EPIC HALL

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