Category Archives: Virlet

Tuesday 31st August 2010 – I’ve been out and about …

… for part of the day today.

village church eglise de virlet puy de dome franceOne of the places that I visited today was Virlet, the village that is my postal address. And while I was there I went to take a few photographs.

Now that my website is practically up-to-date I’ve started on doing some new stuff and one of the things I’m working on is a page about the village. There’s nothing at all in English about it.

village church eglise de virlet puy de dome franceWhile I was there for the brocante I took a few pics but I really wanted one of the church. There has never been a decent one because it’s surrounded by clutter – a stone wall, trees, the village hall etc.

So I had this idea of driving right across to the other side of the valley, using the 105mm (3x) zoom, doing a nice long-hop (it’s over a mile away across there) and then cropping the church out of the photo.

And do you know, it’s come out rather well. It really is the only position where you can see it to its best advantage , and in fact I’ve never seen a photo of the church taken from this position. I’m well-pleased with this.

So why was I in Virlet today?

Two reasons really. Firstly to obtain an attestation that I am a resident in the area and secondly to have a copy of the list that gives the names and addresses of doctors who are authorised to give medical examinations for commercial driving licences. If I’m changing my driving licence for a new one I may as well change my truck and bus (and taxi) licences too while I’m at it. You never know what might happen.

But of course, as you would expect, it wasn’t all plain sailing. The mayor’s secretary is away today and he doesn’t have a clue what to do. So I’ll have to go back on Thursday. You’ve never ever seen anything like this place for chaos. But at least the guy at the Driving Licence centre answered his phone this morning and he was even helpful. I don’t have much time to apply for this licence so I need to put my skates on. I’ll go down to Clermont Ferrand on Thursday when I have my attestation.

pointing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo this afternoon I carried on with the pointing and it doesn’t half take ages to do. You can see just how far I’ve done today – the grey-mortared bit at the lower edge of the wall. That’s about one-sixteenth of the wall done.  At this rate it will take for ever but I’ll keep on plugging away at it as long as the weather lets me.

And that might not be for long – last night the temperature fell to 7.2°C, the lowest so far. I ahve all the windows closed up here and I’m wearing a jacket – in August.

And in other news, Terry and I are now the owners of an Ifor Williams 2.5-tonne trailer. Fed-up of messing about with old trailers that won’t even carry a set of scaffolding when they are working properly, we have bitten the bullet and paid up. It’ll move the scaffolding and Terry’s tractor quite nicely, help me fetch all my cars down here, and we can hire it out as well to make a little bit on the side, like we do with the scaffolding.

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Sunday 29th August 2010 – It was the Virlet brocante today

virlet combrailles montaigut quarry puy de dome franceVirlet, the village where I live (well, where I don’t live – it’s about 4kms from where I live but it’s my postal address as there isn’t another village any nearer) is the last outcrop of the Combrailles.

We’re looking north-east here right along the scarp slope that forms the edge of the Monts de la Combraille (the pinky orange scar right on the upper-right edge of the photo is the quarry where our sand and gravel comes from). The view is, of course, quite impressive from here as the village is situated on an outcrop – a kind-of finger that points north-eastward across the valley and the plains.

pig roast virlet puy de dome franceThis spot where they are preparing the pig roast is the kind of place that any half-decent and self-respecting baron would have thrown up a castle back in the dim and distant dark ages because it’s just like this on two sides.

The third side is something of a similar ilk but not so steep, and the fourth side is a ridge-top that brings the main road up from Pionsat and part of which was the old Pilgrims’ Way that runs to Santiago De Compostela.

abbé de bellaigues virlet puy de dome franceThe Pilgrims would spend the night at the Abbaye de Bellaigues down there. The Abbey is a Benedictine Abbey founded in the 11th Century and situated down the steep slope to the north-west of the village.

The Pilgrims would leave the Abbey next morning and then they would climb up here and walk along the old ridgeway through Les Coursieres and through the forest path that passes about 200 metres from my house on the way to the next stop at La Cellette and the refuge at St Hilaire la Croix.

So that’s the exciting bits over. And I’m glad that there was something exciting because the brocante certainly wasn’t, unfortunately.

brocante virlet puy de dome franceDozens of stalls, dozens of vendors, a huge crowd of people (including some from the Footy Club with whom I had a good chat) and loads of interesting objects.

But the prices!!!!!

Someone wanted 40 Euros for a milk churn. Someone else wanted 30 Euros for a 1930s handpump. And 25 Euros for a manual coffee grinder. And 15 Euros for a car CD player etc etc. It’s a far cry from when I bought a chest of drawers for 7 Euros, a table-top washing machine for 10 Euros, a table-top saw without motor for 5 Euros etc.

The Virlet brocante used to be one of the best around but these prices will just scare everyone off. Some people have a very exaggerated idea of values, that’s all that I can say. The only think that I bought was a 1960s Michelin “Green Guide” of the Auvergne – tatty and falling apart but a respectable one Euro.

fanfare brass band virlet puy de dome franceAt least we had some entertainment, and that wasn’t too bad. There was a brass band – a fanfare as they are called in French – playing on a temporary stage by the village hall and they weren’t all that bad. I’ve seen much worse than these.

As well as that, there was the optional lunchtime meal and also a buvette – the beer tent. You can’t have a public gathering anywhere in France without having a buvette.

old cars citroen H type van virlet puy de dome franceThe most exciting thing at the brocante was parked up in the car park. A superficially-nice but underneath-the-paint-really-quite-tatty Citroen type “H” van that had been transformed into a mobile home was parked up not too far from Caliburn.

Now I have always liked these vans and have been looking around for one in something of a desultory fashion for many years.

old cars citroen H type van virlet puy de dome franceAnd if I did find one, turning it into a caravanette would be quite interesting. They are mostly petrol but some were fitted with an old Perkins diesel engine and that would be quite interesting. A nice low-pressure pump that would run on vegetable oil would suit me fine.

Thinking about things, apart from Caliburn of course it’s been ages since I bought a car – 4.5 years in fact. A nice old collectors’ car or van would suit me fine, now that I’m starting to make some space for myself at home.

So apart from the brocan’t, I spent the rest of the day bringing my website up-to-date. All the photos since July 2009 are now on line and the monthly photo pages up to July this year are now on-line too. I can now start catching up on a few other things.

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Saturday 7th August 2010 – If you don’t maintain your property ….

longere house fallen down virlet puy de dome france… then this is the kind of thing that can happen. I was on my way back from the Mairie this afternoon when I happened to notice this property. I’ve no idea how long that it has been like that because I don’t go this way all that often.

This is a holiday home owned by some people from Paris and whenever they arrive here for the summer they are going to have a surprise. Part of the wall of the barn has collapsed and it’s taken all one end of the roof with it. Luckily the house is unscathed (just about) but it’s still pretty serious.

I was at the mairie this morning to have my passport photo signed. I have the wanderlust again and I feel like I’m ready for a voyage. As the passport has expired I can’t go anywhere at the moment so I need to get that all sorted out.

I also took the opportunity to find out about this land I want to buy (STILL receiving attention – it’s only 16 months) and to ask about having my name added to the list of local artisans, now that I am registered.
“Do you have your SIRET (the registration certificate)?” asked the mayor
“It’s in the van” I said, going to fetch it
So he photocopied it and promised me that he would update the information board.

Talking of going anywhere I shoud have gone to Montlucon this morning – and I was up and about even before the alarm went off, which is something of a surprise for me. I should have taken someone there to pick up a mattress and I rang him up to see if he was ready but all I got was a groan. Apparently he’d been to a barbecue last night and had stayed out late.

Still – no matter. We can always go again.

modular home made compost bin les guis virlet puy de dome franceInstead, I stayed at home (apart from my trip to the mairie) and built myself a compost bin.

The plastic one that I bought has definitively collapsed and as I rely heavily on composting I designed and built one.

It’s modular in that you start off with one level and the lid level (the lid will be hinged just as soon as I buy anyhinges) and that will give you a height of 300mm. As your heap expands you can add more 150mm sections to it to increase the height.

As your heap settles down you can take away sections to start your second heap. You need two on the go at any one time – one for filling and the other one festering away. When the one that you have been filling becomes full you can empty the festering one (it would have been festering away for about a year) and start to fill that from scratch, leaving the other one to fester for a while.

So now I’ve put it in place and tomorrow I can start to fill it from all of the stuff lying around. It’s time I had a good clean-up.

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Saturday 3rd July 2010 – Today was really decided for me.

You may remember that last night I was undecided about what to do today and so while musing over the problem with a coffee this morning, the phone rang. Nada had been wanting to come round and see Pooh Corner for a while and could she come this afternoon?

I told her to come this evening instead and I legged it into Commentry where I bought all of the stuff I needed to finish off the guttering, the stuff I needed to make the puzzolane water filter (except the puzzolane), a pile of stuff from the cheapo shop (including a load of those clip-together storage bins at €1 for 3) and then back here and a quick tidy up.

While the tidying up was in progress we had a huge thunderstorm that presented us with 5mm of rain and flattened my potatoes (but at least it soaked all of the plants which is a good thing) and then Nada came round for her visit.

virlet crossroads puy de dome franceThis evening was the annual walk around Virlet to get to know the commune and Nada came with me for the walk – it turns out that she knows the Mayor’s wife. Going for a tramp in the woods was out of the question due to the thunderstorm and the fact that we wouldn’t have caught him anyway

Instead, we visited the highlights of the village – namely the church that blew down in the hurricane in 1999, the old house that is on the point of falling down, and the cemetery which is of course right in the dead centre of the village.

Virlet is of course a very healthy village – so much so that they employ a man to go round the cemetery at closing time to tell the deceased to go back to sleep. It’s a huge cemetery for such a small village and an American tourist said “do people die here often then?”
The cemetery keeper replied “no – just the once like everywhere else”
The wall is quite high too and our American visitor wanted to know why they bothered to put a wall around it. The keeper replied that it was because people were dying to get in.
And I was impressed with the cemetery keeper. He told me that his job carried a great deal of responsibility – he had 500 people under him.  
One thing that he did try to tell me was to reserve my plot. There were no English people buried in there (not that I am English but let’s not spoil this story by introducing facts into it). He did say that there was a Scots grave in the cemetery. So I wandered off to have a look, and there it was – “Here lies Jock MacTavish, a loyal father and a devoted husband”. Now isn’t that just like the Scots to bury three men in one grave?

One of the issues with burials here is the cost – it isn’t cheap. You can now get burials done on the instalment plan – they bury your left arm the first month, the right arm the second month et cetera. And I did ask the keeper what happens if you miss an instalment. “Well”, he replied “we simply dig them up”.

On leaving the cemetery this old guy was struggling his best to catch up with us.
“How old are you?” asked the cemetery keeper
“I’m 102 years old” he replied
“Well, it’s hardly worth your while going home then, is it?”

strawberry moose village fete virlet puy de dome franceBecause of the inclement weather, they decided to abandon the idea of lighting up the bonfire. Instead, we all went into the village hall for drinks and cakes and to have a good chat. It’s just a shame that there weren’t more of us.

You can’t have a village fête without inviting Strawberry Moose. He is very popular and took advantage of the occasion to have a photo opportunity with some more new friends. He’s always up for that.

bonfire feu de joie village fete virlet puy de dome franceA little later we decided that regardless of the weather we would indeed all go outside and have a go at lighting the bonfire after all. Perhaps the wine played something of a part in this decision.

I tried to encourage the deputy mayoress to play the leading role in my new production of “Joan of Arc” but she wasn’t having it. Shame. Everyone else thought that it would be a good idea.

We had a good time talking and telling jokes, all that kind of thing. It really was a nice friendly gathering and represents the best of French village life – something that you probably won’t understand if you have never taken part in it. And at midnight, with dogs and children all long-since asleep we all called it a night.

Tomorrow I’m going to have to make up for this by painting the wood for next week and doing the gutttering. I shall have to get my finger out.

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Friday 15th January 2010 – Liz rang me up this morning for a chat.

intermarche pionst puy de dome franceThe new Intermarche at Pionsat opened its doors on Wednesday and yesterday Liz went there for a look round. She was ever so excited – they had some kind of prize draw there, and she had won a flight in a helicopter!

Anyway, I reckoned that seeing as how I had to go into Pionsat yesterday anyway, I’d go and have a nosey around in there. First thing I did was have a go at the prize draw but of course my usual luck held out and I won b*gg*r all.

Never mind, I went for a wander around and I was quite impressed. They are clearly “mindful” of the large “Alternative” community that exists round here. Tons of pulses, dried herbs, infusions, all that kind of thing (and at a price too, though, it has to be said) and a really good “bio” selection. They are also just as clearly “mindful” of the large British community living round here. Heinz Baked Beans and Typhoo tea bags were just two of the dozens of traditional British products on sale. They even had Hartley’s Jelly, something that I have never ever seen anywhere this side of the Channel.

And of course that reminds me. I worked in Brussels for several years and one day one of my Belgian colleagues came up to me. “What do you call that dessert that you Brits eat and it goes ‘brrrrrrrr’ when a lorry drives past?“

Another exciting thing about the Intermarche was some publicity from the local taxi company offfering some kind of limited stage carriage service from the local area into Pionsat and from Pionsat to Clermont Ferrand and Montlucon. They even advertised a shopping service – you phone up the shop and place your order, they go round and pick it up and bring it to you, for €5:00. It’s not quite “Tesco at Home” but it’s still some kind of gesture to the 21st Century.

And seeing that advert prompted me to do something that I vowed that I would never ever do even if I was dying of hunger and the bailiffs were hammering at the door, having spent 25 years of my life doing it. I went round to the taxi company’s office and, mindful of the fact that they were advertising a whole host of new services, I suggested to them that they might feel the need to engage extra drivers and if so I was available on an occasional basis. So I now have to fill in a CV and a letter of motivation and we’ll see what happens.

I must be off my head.

But the most exciting thing occurred as I was wandering around the Intermarche. The woman from Luxembourg who lives up the road a way from here and uses my e-mail address when she needs to order anything – she was in there and she came over to me saying “here – have this!” And it was A RIDE IN A HELICOPTER. She had won it and she had absolutely no intention of doing anything that involved taking more than one foot off the ground. All in favour of terra firma – the more firma, the less terra. I was ever so impressed, and ever so grateful.

And I’m still in great demand here. Apart from Liz on the phone I had one of these cold calling canvassers. By the time we finished our call I had the latter cursing and swearing at me down the telephone. Serve them right – I hate them. And not only that I had a visit from the mayor’s office. Firstly about the census and would I like to participate by filling in a form. And secondly it was a fact-finding mission as there appears to be some confusion about the land that I want to buy from the commune. One of the councillors wanted to see precisely what it was that I was wanting.

With all of that, I haven’t done much here. I have an “outside wall” in the stairwell where I wasn’t able to put any insulation to stop the heat leaving the attic. I found some thick corrugated cardboard boxes and flattened them out to use. If homeless people can live in them then they must be some good at insulating and it does seem to work. It’s quite cosy in here even without the heating on.

But I did fit the vertical that I cut yesterday. I also trimmed it to take the horizontal battens that will support the plasterboards. And I’ve made a start on the next one. While I was looking for a suitable chevron I came across some stuff such as guitar leads that I’d been looking for for a while.

All in all, on balance I’ve had a really good day today.

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Sunday 22nd November 2009 – Habemus Papam.

Coming back from Commentry yesterday I could see a huge cloud of smoke in the distance up in the hills in the general direction of where I live. And as I got closer to home the pillar of smoke got more and more intense.

abbaye de bellaigues virlet puy de dome franceI finally tracked down the smoke – it’s the Abbey at Bellaigues just across the valley from me. There was so much smoke coming out of their chimney that I had to check on the radio to see if the Pope had died or something.

But have a quick look at the church on the right-hand edge of the photo. Half the roof is tiled, the other half is rusty corrugated sheet. And on a building of historical importance too. And there are people who complain about my regard for Building Regulations and the like!

A couple of the buoldings in the shot are worthy of note. There is one where the monks go to deal with their filthy habits and underneath the toliets is a room where they bottle their own water.

Regular readers know that I once tried the monastic life but I had to abandon it due to the monotonous diet. Only two monks were allowed to work in the kitchens – the chip monk and the fish friar.

Today I was going to have my huge bonfire and bake my spuds outside. And it looked so nice out there too early on (if 10:24 can be called “early” – I don’t have a clue what it was like before that, for obvious reasons. After all, it is Sunday). Anyway I did a load of work up here and just as I was going outside I noticed the weather. We were having a hurricane, the big wind turbine was going round like the clappers and it was pouring down with torrential rain.

It’s the first day today since the 16th that the temperature hasn’t got up to around 20 degrees. It reached only 14.4 degrees outside today, still unseasonably warm, but it got up to over 18 degrees in here. It’s currently 16.8 degrees and I’m quite comfortable in here. It’s been 10 days since I had the heating on and it’s been interesting to see the temperature in here steadily rise since I moved in.

I’ll be interested to see what happens when the temperature plummets outside. In early January we had minus 15. I bet it won’t be 16.8 degrees in here then!

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Sunday 30th August 2009 – I WAS UP …

… early again today, but not as early as yesterday. But early nevertheless bearing in mind it’s Sunday.

After breakfast I tidied up the verandah, in the garage and round about, and as you might expect, my visitors didn’t show up.But while I was waiting I also cleaned and tidied up the cab of Caliburn, so as to silence my critics on these pages, Graham.

After lunch it was off to the brocante at Virlet. Not as good as usual and not as many stalls but I did manage to find a chest of drawers – four drawers and quite big and just fits nicely under my bed – all for 7 Euros.

But so much for minimalisation – I have far too many clothes to go in it. I shall have to have a spell of throwing away clothes. There’s far too many for what I need down here.< That gave me an opportunity to have a decent in-depth tidy-up in my room. And this constant smell like something has died in here is due to the damp that is ingressing. I'm surprised that I haven't gone down with pleurisy or pneumonia - not like Christopher Robin who, as you all know, went down with Alice. Fitting the guttering may well help to do something about the damp but moving into the attic is the logical answer. If I get damp in there then I know that I've REALLY got a problem.

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