Category Archives: Les Guis

Monday 29th March 2010 – We now have SIX raised beds in the vegetable plot.

The last one of these I had to cut a couple of new sides as the original ones had split. The next couple of beds I’m going to have to build up from scratch.

There’s only two more to make, but I’m going to be building a new cloche about 3 times the size of the existing one and about twice as high. That’ll be for melons and cucumbers and so on and I’ll use the existing one for strawberries.

MInd you there was a point when I didn’t think I would get anything done today. What with the change in hours today I found it a little difficult to leave my stinking pit. And then I had a phone call, a parcel from the postwoman, a parcel from a courier (my new Nikon camera has arrived!!!!) followed by a visit from my Dutch neighbours. By the time I’d finished my breakfast it was almost 12:00!

This morning started off bright and sunny snd for a moment I thought that Spring had come back. But of course it wasn’t to last and it clouded over progressively until by teatime it was positively pouring down with rain.

You might remember a few months ago I had a jamming session with a guitarist and a drummer in Montaigut. Michael the guitarist phoned me up this afternoon and asked if I wanted to get together again. So with being out tomorrow night at a CREFAD meeting, wednesday football training and Friday in Clermont Ferrand, that only left Thursday evening.

Do you know that when I lived in Brussels there was so much more to do and so many more people to do it with, yet I never seemed to do very much. However down here in the back of beyond I’m rushed off my feet and have far more going for me than I ever did back there!

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Sunday 28th March 2010 – Blimey, that was quick!

Yes, summer has been and gone and taken autumn with it, and we are back in the middle of winter.

I was at Giat today to watch Pionsat’s 2nd XI play them (they lost 2-0). 790 metres up on an exposed plateau and I froze to death in the biting wind. And the locals are expecting snow this evening, so they said.

13.9 degrees in here when I set out and 12.8 degrees when I came back so I lit the fire for a while to warm up the place. So much for the 20.2 degrees we had early last week.

After the footy I went round to Liz and Terry’s to insoect the work in progress in the new kitchen (very impressive) and to plan our radio programmes for the next month. We are highlighting medical insurance and the like to go with Julie’s account of her hospital encounters.

And much to our surprise our radio programme from last week is being streamed. You can listen to it at
http://lemagazine.canalblog.com
Send us your feedback, please.

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Saturday 27th March 2010 – You have to feel sorry …

… for Pionsat’s 3rd XI. Struggling near the foot of the table and desperate for points they were leading 2-1 tonight against the league leaders and playing like lions until not one but TWO wicked deflections robbed them of glory.

When your luck is down it is really down.

And it was flaming cold on the terraces tonight. Winter has returned, so it seems. Horrible grey overcast windy with driving rain. I couldn’t be bothered to get up this morning when the alarm went – I just wasn’t in the mood and it was 10:40 I when finally crawled out of my heaving pit.

After a leisurely breakfast I wandered off to Commentry to do the shopping and had an excellent day in the Bargain Shop. Apart from the usual mundane nonsense and cheap food products I bought a blackboard for €3.50 and some chalk for 20 centimes, a mobile kind of table thingy, two levels and on wheels, for €2:00 and a little tiny rucksack thingy for €1 which, lined with an old foam gym mat that I have lying around, will make an excellent camera bag.

After that it was off to Neris-les-Bains for my swim and shower. Yes, two showers in a week and we aren’t talking OUSA here either. I’ll be washing myself away here.

But while I was in the swim all of a sudden about 30 young teenage girls wearing tight-fitting swimming costumes burst onto the scene. There was to be some kind of swimming tournament after the pool closed to the public. And as the girls were doing their exercises, rhythmically stretching their lithe and supple muscles, I didn’t know where to look
… “Ohhh yes you did” – ed …
“I mean I had too much choice of where to look. 3 or 4 would have been sufficient”
But really, it isn’t fair. I’m not young any more and I can’t cope with things like this. My heart can’t take the pressure any more.

But it goes to show that I’m still quite capable of chasing after the women. I just hope that if ever I catch one I can remember what to do with her. And if I do remember what to do with one, I just hope that I will last long enough to be able to do it.

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Friday 26th March 2010 – On my way …

… to Clermont Ferrand this evening I passed under the autoroute, went round the bend … “no surprise there” – ed … above Beauregard Vendon and noticed this absolutely magnificent rainbow dangling underneath the clouds.

You need to enlarge the photo to see it and it’s not really all that clear even then, but it wasn’t half impressive. I wish I had taken the Pentax, poorly though it is, with me.

A couple of miles further on at St Bonnet there was a Citroen U23 lorry from 1951 parked at a garage at the side of the road so I stopped and took some pics of that too. No old vehicles for months and months and then two good ones – the Studebaker of Sunday and now this one – in a couple of days.

This morning I was much more mobile – most of the aches seem to have worn off. But after breakfast I came up here for three hours and did some more stuff for the radio programme. I can now tell you all about registering with French Social Security.

After lunch I went into the garden and braved the wind and rain (we had ONLY 22mm of rain today and it’s p155ing down now). I didn’t install any more raised beds today but I’ve started doing the paths in between them. People keep asking me what I ontend to do with the rubble and old slate still in the first floor bedroom- well now you know. The rubble from the dividing wall is the base of the path and the slates are the top covering. They say that slates discourage slugs from crossing but I don’t care – it makes a good path and there’s plenty of it. Slug-repellant capacities will be a bonus.

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Thursday 25th March 2010 – God it was hard this morning …

… but that’s enough about Percy Penguin, who doesn’t feature in these pages half as much as she ought to.

It was agony in bed last night with the muscles in my legs tightening up continually. It kept me awake for much of the night, as did the French Air Force, who decided on carrying out night-time manoeuvres … “personoeuvres please” – ed … until gone 02:30. Getting up for a gipsy’s at 06:00 was probably the most painful thing I have ever tried.

Going downstairs for breakfast was interesting too, and I was clearly in no fit state to go out working so I came back up here and did a load of outstanding work on the computer – much of which was the preparation for our radio broadcast next week. I managed a fair bit too – but that’s enough about … “you’ve already done that” – ed … and that’s got me thinking.

When I was in Brussels I used to do my computer work from 11:00 until 14:00 and then work on the apartment in the afternoon and evening. Pretty soon the clocks will go forward and we will have more daytime daylight so bearing this in mind I could easily work from 10:00 until 12:00 up here on the computer and then work until maybe 19:00 or 19:30 outside. That would be much more useful.

By about 12:00 I felt a little better so I went outside and did another raised bed. That’s 5 in position. But the weather has changed. It was blowing a gale when I went outside, so much so that it’s lifted the cucumber and tomato seeds off the shelf in the greenhouse and spilled them all over the floor so I needed to replant them which was a pain.

Now the weather has really turned and it’s pouring with rain outside. I have mixed feelings about that. I love the hot weather but I’m getting low on water and also the plants that I have sown need the water. This is the sign if a true rural peasant, definitely a distinction from the vacancier.

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Wednesday 24th March 2010 – I must be off my head

Yes – at my age (which I shudder to think about) I’ve restarted football training! I’m out of condition, I realise that, and it’s one of those things that if I let it drag then it won’t ever improve. It’ll just get worse and worse. It’s probably 25 years since I last played a football match and 10 years since I last did anything serious in the way of fitness. When I lived in Brussels I used to go running every night and I could run for miles, but when I moved from Duysbergh to Expo in 2000 I stopped as the terrain was not suitable. And since I was ill and lost all my energy I’ve just not been able to do a thing.

Three laps round the football pitch tonight finished me off and then we had a 7-a-side game for 30 minutes each half. But after about 10 minutes I went to play sweeper as you don’t have to run around very much.

At least I managed to get a shower out of it (and we aren’t talking about OUSA here!) – but it’s a hell of a way to do it. I’ve a feeling that I’m going to regret this tomorrow morning and I can already feel my leg muscles tightening up.

This morning I went round to discuss this newspaper thing. Apparently there’s going to be a committee of three running it – an owner/editor, a financial consultant, and a typestter/website manager. You can guess which role I’m earmarked for. Two years of doing General Electric’s training leaflets followed by 11 months redesigning The Conference Board’s documents has sttod me in good stead as I knew it would. I also took the opportunity to rustle up the deatails of events taking place in due course – we need to pad out our radio programme with stuff.

And while we are on the subject you might remember a photo that graced these pages a while back – that of Le Quartier all lit up with Christmas lights. I sent it to a friend who is the reporter for that area for the local newspaper. She sent it in to the paper and apparently they featured it in glorious technicolour as “photo of the day”. Now how about that?

In other news, back at the ranch I don’t just have my radishes coming up, I also have my marjoram and my spinach. This garden is looking impressive if it all works. And I put in my fourth raised bed today.

But somehow I have a feeling that I won’t be doing too much tomorrow. Ouch!

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Tuesday 23rd March 2010 – If you look in this photo …

… you’ll notice a few changes. From right to left we have the outline of the greenhouse. It’s far from being erected as I said previously as I don;t have the bolts for it and there’s no glass. But at least it’s in position.

Next to it is a water butt. It’s one that has been hanging around here for quite a while so I reckoned that I would put it to use. There are loads of receptacles full of old rainwater so I filled it with that. Bucket by bucket as there is no way of connecting it to my water system. Not yet anyway, but I have a cunning plan.

Thirdly you will notice a third raised bed. I installed that this afternoon too. I need to get a move on with these as I noticed to my astonishment that the radishes seem to have germinated (since Thursday!) – there’s definitely signs of movement in that seed tray.

So that was this afternoon’s work. What about this morning? Well there wasn’t all that much of that. I had to get up in the middle of the night to go for a gipsy’s but the next thing I remember was that it was 09:54. A leisurely breakfast on the terrace was followed by the realisation that –

it was a gorgeous bright sunny day
all of the batteries were fully charged (and it was only just 10:30)
there was a decent wind blowing

That can only mean one thing – WASHING! So I scouted around and found a machine-load of stuff

While the washing was a-doing I did a bit of housekeeping and general arranging so as to keep on top of what there is to do around here.

And did you all hear us on the radio this evening? Yes, Liz and I were on the air!

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Monday 22nd March 2010 – It’s 23:11 right now …

… and I’m absolutely shattered. I crashed out at lunchtime, I crashed out when I knocked off, and I’ll be crashing out any moment now at this rate.

It’s not as if I’ve done anything major either, so I don’t understand it. This morning I finished off repotting the Liz Ayers memorial orchard – the trees are now all in fresh soil with a light scattering of wood ash over the topof the soil and covered in gravel to prevent weeds from settling. The bottoms of the plastic buckets have been crocked to allow for drainage.

I was also going to go into St Eloy for LIDL’s gardening day but I passed on that. In fact I couldn’t really justify the expense of buying the stuff and I’m on another economy drive.

So instead I sowed my Brussels Sprouts seeds and that’s now everything for March. I can have 3 weeks off before I need to do the April planting.

But talking of Brussels Sprouts I noticed that the ones I planted last year now have a decent look about them so I had some of those for tea. It’s nice to eat your own food. After all, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing, and what the garden is supposed to be doing too.

This afternoon I extracted the bits of aluminium greenhouse from the shrubbery. This is one that someone gave me – it’s a 3×2 metre with no glass so I need to organise that somehow, and I also need to find some of the aluminium screws and nuts to fasten it together. But at least I have it in place (which meant that I had to saw away several inconvenient branches) so I can work out where to put the next beds.

And I’m in demand! The English-language newspaper that spectacularly collapsed back in November has been put up for sale by the owner (some people have quite a cheek – it made nothing but losses throughout its entire existence) and a French person I know is interested in buying it (there’s one born every minute you know). She needs an English-language technical adviser and yours truly has been roped in for that. We have a site meeting on Wednesday morning.

As if I don’t have enough to do. Who said that the rural life was quiet and boring?

But I’m off to bed now before I fa ………..

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

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Sunday 21st March 2010 – One thing that has been missing from these pages …

… has been “old cars”. I don’t mean the Merc and the Cortina and the old Transit, that have graced these pages just recently – I mean the real stuff.

If Nerina were here right now she would tell you of our holidays in Europe during which I spent most of my time scavenging around in hedgerows for the real old stuff, like this … errrr… Studebaker Champion from about 1950.

This (or rather the first model for this one is a type two) was the car that saved Studebaker from bankruptcy. A big straight-six sidevalve engine that was phenomenally economical for its day and during the petrol rationing in the USA during World War II this car sold like hot cakes.

So what is it doing here in St Pardoux? Especially as it is sporting California licence plates.

Talking of sporting, I was in St Pardoux on my way to somewhere near Maringues to watch Pionsat’s 3rd XI play ES Thuret. Pionsat had 10 players and Thuret were complete but Pionsat still gave them a good run for their money and the game finished, surprisingly, 0-0. It’s the only game so far that I didn’t take any action photos, for the simple reason that there was no action.

Well, there was – in the second half a Pionsat defender whalloped the ball into touch (they’ve been clearly reading my notes) and a girl – and a girly girl at that – who happened to be walking around the ground – she caught it fully and completely in a fashion that any goalkeeper would have been proud of. And the cheers from the crowd were encouraging.

And not to be out-done, a high clearance into touch fell just nicely for me and I headed it back on the volley into play and into the arms of Xavier who was running up to take the throw-in. Again, this was greeted by enormous cheers from the crowd.

But this has got me thinking. This was a basement clash between two of the worst clubs in the entire Puy-de-Dome league. The standard was appalling and I’ve had enough of this so I spoke to Jerome, the organiser of the team, and he’s agreed that I can come and join in the training on Wednesday evenings. And I spoke to Terry when I got home, and he’s coming along to the training too. We probably won’t get to play at all, but at least it’ll get us both up to a decent level of fitness.

You would think that we were both old enough to know better.

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Saturday 20th March 2010 – One thing about the warm weather that we are having…

… is that the footy can recommence. And in the balmy spring weather we had two matches tonight. The 2nd XI played Neuf-Eglise and ground out a 0-0 draw. The second half particularly seemed to go on on for ever and I think that most of the supporters had fallen asleep by the final whistle – I know that I had

The second match was against Artonne and keen followers of my blog may recall the away match back in November which was controversial in the extreme, to say the least. It was refereed by the ref who had the attack of the hysterics against the Miners back in October so fireworks would be guaranteed, one would have thought.

But instead we had a lamb-like performance from everyone(except the Pionsat no14 who was sent off for two yellow cards) and Pionsat ran out 2-0 winners. I don’t think anyone was expecting that.

For the rest of today, nothing much happened. I did my shopping in St Eloy and didn’t get anything out of the ordinary, except for the seeds I was missing. I went round to see Claude and Francoise but they weren’t there. According to the neighbour they’d gone down to the South of France for a week to see Sandrine, their daughter. Hmmmm.

I did encounter Bob from Montaigut. He’s a Brit and managed to get a job with a French company as an employee. I managed to persuade him to come onto our radio programme some time and talk to us about the French working environment.

And that was that, really.

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Friday 19th March 2010 – It’s raining now and blowing a gale.

In fact the rain is the first we’ve had since a week last Thursday -over a week ago. And hasn’t a lot happened in that time? A week ago we were still in the grip of the icy weather with the temperature as low as minus 9. Last night it was as low as … er …. PLUS 9.2

And look at everything I’ve done too – finished off weeding the hedge and the area around the vegetable garden, burnt all of the rubbish in a mega-bonfire, moved the greenhouse, moved the cloche, dug two raised beds, planted tons of seeds. Today I finished all of the sowing for February and March and I’ve started to repot the Liz Ayers Memorial Orchard, as the trees are having to stay in their pots for another year.

One thing I noticed in a gardening book is that they reckon that the soil I’m planting things in should be friable. One of my plots has onion and garlic in it. Now how friable is that?

But I’m going to have to do something about the manure water distiller. Since its installation back in February it’s given me about half a litre, most of which was yesterday.Today it gave me three litres and there is more beckoning. I’m going to have to move it no matter what otherwise they will be changing my address from “Les Guis” to “The House at Pooh Corner” and like Christopher Robin, I’ll go down with Alice or some other infectious disease. Which of course reminds me – the new AA Milne Travel Company is now organising trips to London where you can visit Buckingham Palace to see The Changing of the Guard, followed by a trip to the Bank of England to see “The Guarding of the Change”.

And I’ve not long been back from Clermont Ferrand, I’m thoroughly exhausted after this hard week, and so I’m going to have an early night.

Goodnight All!

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Thursday 18th March 2010 – My progress knows no bounds

We now have, from right to left, a greenhouse, a cloche with 5 strawberry plants, a home-made bird scarer, a raised bed with garlic and onions, and a raised bed that is empty but covered with a sheet of black plastic.

First thing though was to scrape up all of the wood ash from the big fire. That’s my source of potash and it’s threatening rain – I don’t want to lose that. And I noticed something curious, namely that I’d set the fire over some tree stumps in the hope that I could burn them out but despite the raging fire all day Monday they are but scorched and it took me ages to pull them up today.

When I finished the raised bed I started on the organising of the seeds and I’ve now sown in seed trays some lettuce, peppers, aubergines, chili peppers and turnips. There’s loads more stuff to do. And I’m down on seeds too – there’s about 6 missing so I’ll be doing a megashop on Saturday.

I had a surprise visitor this morning – Liz came round with some of this compressed hardwood that a friend of hers sells. I invited her onto my terrace and we had coffee. It’s getting mighty civilised here these days – not like me at all. But it’s a major sign of progress all the same.

But there’s a couple of things that aren’t quite right. This compost bin is …errr … not much good and when I heaved a load of stuff into it, it all came apart. I had to empty it so that I could reassemble it and now it’s held together with a load strap. I dunno how long it will last – not very, I suspect.

The second thing is not quite so good. It concerns the composting toilet and a manure-water distiller that I’ve invented. This isn’t the place to discuss it – you’re probably eating your tea right now – but basically I wish I had put it somewhere else as it’s in the wrong place and it’s now too heavy to lift. The hot weather we have had is accelerating the distillation process and it’s making its mark on my close environment.

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Wedesday 17th March 2010 – I now have a little terrace …

… as you can see – and it’s less than 60 cms high too.But it’s amazing the things that you can do with old pallets and continually give them new leases of life. These were formerly part of the attic floor and before that they carried loads of paper into the European Commission.

And it was nice to have a terrace to sit out on to have my breakfast – at 09:30 it was already 17 degrees outside. And today has been the warmest day since October sometime – a max of 22.6 degrees outside and another 270 amp-hours (over 3KwH) of solar energy.

If you look carefully you’ll see that the cloche has gone. That’s now taken up residence in front of the greenhouse. And furthermore when moving the cloche I uncovered 2 strawberry plants from last year. So a ferret around where the outdoor strawberry plants were last year salvaged another 3 so I now have a cloche with strawberry plants in it.

I pulled up a raised bed from out here too and moved that down to the area in front of the cloche. I gave that a thorough digging and that’s in place, with onions and some left-over garlic from last year. I haven’t half been busy!

Tomorrow I’ll be digging some more and moving another raised bed. This will be for the spuds at the end of the month. When that’s done I’llbe taking an inventory of the seeds that I have, finding out which ones I need (to be bought on Saturday) and then starting to sow them in trays. The garden needs to get under way.

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Tuesday 16th March 2010 – Well, I moved the greenhouse!

This is where it will be staying for the foreseeable future, gale-force winds permitting.

I had to dig out six tree stumps and that tookabsolutely ages. I broke the handle on my pickaxe but luckily Claude (Laurence’s father that is) many years ago gave me a kind of digging axe and I put a shaft into it, and that came in really handy. There was a whole warren of tree roots under there and they took some moving.

This afternoon I had to dig over the patch a few times ( and that wore me out) and then dig out the greenhouse from where it used to be, in front of the verandah. In fact the empty space there makes a nice place to put my outdoor table and chairs. I rounded off the day by chopping wood but I really didn’t need it as it was an absolutely beautiful day today. The warmest so far this year an I had 270amp-hours (over 3KwH) of electricity – enough to run the electric heater in here for 5 hours and the temperature up here reached 18.6 degrees.

Tomorrow if the weather keeps on going I’ll be moving the cloche and making the first of the raised beds – you can see one of the shuttering planks leaning up against the Cortina.

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Monday 15th March 2010 – For tea tonight…

…I had ratatouille and baked potatoes. The ratatouille was out of a tin (I’ve not evolved beyond that stage as yet) but the baked potatoes were out of my own fire.

Yes, I had a raging fire going since about 10:30 this morning and I burnt all of the rubbish that I had pulled up from where the vegetable patch is going to be. It was burning like stink too, and I must smell like a forest fire.

This afternoon I covered up the vegetable plot-to-be. I could only find one opened tarpaulin so I’ve used the lean-to roof to cover the rest. With a couple of bits of vehicle having been parked on there for 8 years or so there’s nothing growing there, so it seems silly to leave it uncovered and attracting the weeds. I’ll keep it covered until I’m ready to do something with it.

I was going to dig up the tree roots and transplant the greenhouse too, but the fire was still roaring away so I carried un pulling up brambles and nettles from elsewhere. I’ve now cleared out down the side of the Merc (well, some way anyway) and all of the weeds have been consigned to the fire.

That’s left a nice little space at the side of the lean-to and so I set up the compost bin that I bought for 10 Euros in the Brico Depot sales. It goes quite nicely there. There’s some hardstanding just there and I’m going to put the dustbin there in early course.

All in all I’ve had a pretty good day, even though someone spoilt it right at the beginning by telephoning me at, would you believe, 08:02 this morning. I caught up with the person responsible and gave him the sharp end of my tongue. It’s not the first time that he’s dragged me out of bed like this but it will certainly be the last, I can tell you.

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EPIC HALL

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