Category Archives: sauret besserve

Tuesday 25th November 2014 – I THOUGHT THAT I HAD GIVEN THIS UP YEARS AGO

Yes, I had a phone call erly this morning from Simon. You might remember a week ago that some English people needed an old van moving from a house that had been sold and it had been offered to me. So could I fetch it this morning?

Terry and I went off to have a look at it and we picked up Simon on the way. We found the address and the van was in a shed right at the far end of the property, up a steep hill that had been churned up by a procession of diggers. Consequently, it took me three quarters of an hour to get Caliburn up as far as I could – and that wasn’t anything like close enough.

Luckily, the previous owners hadn’t left the handbrake on, so the three of us were, with much effort, able to push the van out of its shed and couple it up to Caliburn with the length of chain that I always carry about with me. THen we could pull it down the hill to the road.

I would have taken a lovely photo of the vans and all of us up to our eyeballs in mud, but the battery had gone flat in the camera, which annoyed me preatly.

The van didn’t look too bad – it’s a 2000 Ford Transit, the biggest of all the body options, but there’s a slight crack in the windscreen, a water leak and a fe other bits and pieces. And the starter had packed up. More in hope than expectation we gave it a puch down the road and to our complete and absolute surprise, the van fired up. I can’t think who was the most astonished.

A run up and down the lane to test the brakes, which actually worked, and so we made an executive decision (that’s a decision that if it goes wrong, the person making it is executed) to drive it to Terry’s. Terry and Simon leapt into it and I drove Calibuen as a blocking vehicle, to keep an eye open for the police and chase them away. It’s years since I’ve had to do anything like this, and you would never be able to do such a thing in the UK these days. This is what I like about France – you can still get away with doing things like this.

The drive was uneventful and the van is now safely at Terry’s.Then we all went home.

This afternoon, I started on my Christmas Special. I have tons to do, and only a short time to do it.

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Monday 24th November 2014 – WE WERE RADIOING TODAY.

Just this afternoon though, and that’s just as well because I didn’t wake up until 11:00 today.

I should never have drunk that last cup of coffee at Liz and Terry’s ysterday, because it was long after 06:00 that I went to bed. I’m still having these sleep issues, aren’t I?

After breakfast I went round to Liz and Terry’s, and Liz and I went off to to record our radio programmes for Radio Arverne. We did 5 programmes and that took a bit of arranging as there isn’t going to be a programme for Christmas week. I had anticipated this, however, and with 5 weeks of radio programmes prepared, we had taken a sixth week’s events with us so that we could seamlessly skip the Christmas week.

However, I have been asked to prepare another Christmas special – a one-hour programme of variety and entertainment – and I have just two weeks to do it as well. I shall have to get weaving, won’t I?

On the way home, I fuelled up. Diesel at the Carrefour at Menetrol was just €1.19. That’s the cheapest that I’ve seen it for years and so I squeezed as much in as I could, and I wished that I had taken a container with me too. The fruitshop in Mozac produced a red pepper and yet another pile of grapes. They were delicious too.

I dropped Liz off at home and came back here where I promptly crashed out on the sofa.

I need to do something about these sleep issues.

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Sunday 23rd November 2014 – I HATE HUNTERS

But that of course is quite a usual state of affairs isn’t it? However, after today I hate them even more.

I’d had a coffee last night at the footy, hadn’t I? And so at 04:00 I was still not in bed. I eventually crawled into my stinking pit ready for my Sunday lie-in when at 09:30 the hunters came down the lane. B@$t@rd$. Hounds baying, dogs barking, horns nlowing and firearms discharging. I hate every last one of them.

After my rude awakening I had something of a leisurely morning and then set off to Miremont, making a mental note to bring in the washing when I come home as the weather was clouding over.

Pionsat’s 2nd XI were playing at Miremont and just for a change not only did they have a full team but even a substitute too. And they won at a canter, 6-2, without even breaking sweat. One of the goals was probably the best that I have ever seen at this level – a telling, curling cross into the penalty area and a full-length diving header right across the penalty area from Frederic and he met the ball perfectly with his forehead.

Pionsat also had a new player out, a young lad who was playing his first match. He was nominally a striker and was on the bench at first and he admitted that he had never played at this level before. I gave him the benefit of my advice, such as it is, and the most important thing was, in my opinion, that if he was playing up front, to run after the ball every time that it was kicked into the area because at this level of football, anything is possible in the defence.

And so that was what he did and, sure enough, eventually it paid off. The keeper could only parry a fierce shot and this young lad, running in, reached it first before the keeper could recover, and smashed it into the net. He was delighted, and so was I. It’s not every day that anyone takes any notice of me.

But it was tough on the keeper. He was the best that I have ever seen in Division 4 and ought to be playing in Division One at least. He made half a dozen desperate saves and without him, Pionsat could have had double figures quite easily.

I went round to Liz and Terry’s afterwards to rehearse the radio programmes for tomorrrow, and Liz made a nice spinach, mushroom and chick pea curry. Not only that, I even had a doggy bag of the leftovers, which was really nice.

But two wins out of two for Pionsat this weekend. It’s been a long time since this has happened.

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Thursday 6th November 2014 – THE BIG PROBLEM …

… about portable telephones these days is that there are fewer and fewer public telephone boxes.

Consequently when Yours Truly and his sidekick Strawberry Moose are off in Caliburn on a Mission to rescue people in distress, there is nowhere for us to go to put our underpants on outside our trousers. As a result, we drove all the way to Rouen dressed quite normally.

The drive was quite uneventful and I found a place to park up in the secluded car park of a restaurant right on the edge of the city of Rouen and froze to death all night. It really was cold.

I had my phone call at 06:40 and then went to look for the hotel. And I do have to say that I have come to hate the centre of Rouen – really hate it. It’s all one-way streets and pedestrianised areas and I couldn’t reach the hotel. IN the end I had to park up and let my “client” come to me.

It was 08:00 when we finally met up, far too late, and then went off to Pissy-Poville (yes, it really does exist) for this recovery job. There was no way to remove the vehicle involved and so we had to empty it of everything – and I DO mean everything. That wasn’t as easy as it might sound either as it was so misshapen that we couldn’t open the doors. We were there for ages with a series of heavy crowbars and hacksaws, but we managed it in the end.

It then took ages to fill up Caliburn and once that was done, we had a drive back gome. And that wasn’t quite so easy either for we had a really full load up on Caliburn and he wasn’t impressed at all. Still, at 18:00, I was all unloaded and back in Pionsat.

What a day!

And it wasn’t finished either. I have some friends coming here and I’d booked them in at the Queue de Milan Hotel in Pionsat. I went round there to pay for the room now that I was free, only to find that they were there and had paid the bill. Consequently I took them to the Dauphin restaurant in Montaigut, giving them a guided tour of the town while we were at it.

I came back here and crashed out – hardly surprising given what I’d been through today. I’m far too old for this.

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Monday 27th October 2014 – RED SKY AT NIGHT …

sunset auzances creuse birdwatching ornithological centre st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome france… means that Auzances is on fire.

Yes, on the way back home this evening as the sun was setting, I stopped off at my favourite haunt, the St Gervais Ornithological Centre to take one or two photos. The sun setting below the horizon in the clouds in the general direction of Auzances was particularly impressive.

birdwatching ornithological centre st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceThe view in the opposite direction, while not being quite as spectacular, was nevertheless quite impressive in its own right.

Here, with the evening drawing on and the damp mist slowly rising out of the fields, the Puy de Dome looks as if it is slowly disappearing from view behind a kind of diaphanous veil. It gives a completely different aspect to this view, of which you have seen dozens of examples over the years.

This morning we went to record the Radio Anglais programmes at Marcillat-en-Cembraille for Radio Tartasse. We had a few technical issues but they were resolved by simply returning to the very first version of the studio’s computer program. This new upgrade has caused nothing but problems.

We went from there to Clermont-Ferrand and the Auchan where I did a big pile of shopping. I’d run out of oats for my muesli and lentils for my curries, and so I needed to stock up. I also took advantage of the proximity of the Auchan to the recording studios at Gerzat to do a mega-shop.

The radio session at Gerzat went surprisigly well – in fact four programmes of 15 minutes each took just 1 hour and 5 minutes to record in total. It’s never happened like this before and I wish that it had happened like this that time just before I went to Canada.

Afterwards, we celebrated by going for coffee at Menetrol and doing a lap around the Carrefour there to buy the things that I had forgotten.

And after dropping Liz off, I came home via the birdwatching site at St Gervais d’Auvergne.

Tonihgt, I’ve enrolled in another Higher Education course. The University of Birmingham, in its Future Learn Programme is offering a course in the Development of Aviation in World War I and there was a free place even though the course started a week ago. This kind of thing is right up my Alley as you know and I couldn’t resist the opportunity.

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Sunday 26th October 2014 – GRRRRRR!

Yes, I asked last night at the footy where the 2nd XI would be playing today. “St Maurice” was the answer, “but don’t forget that the kick-off is at 13:00”. So at 12:50, there I was at the football ground at St maurice, and I was there all on my own.

At 14:00 someone finally turned up, and it was then that I discovered that the kick-off was actually 15:00. It seems that I had been misinformed. But it wasn’t necessarily a waste of time, for I had brought my laptop with me. So I had sat in Caliburn and done another radio programme while I was waiting.

Pionsat’s 2nd XI lost 3-1, which was no surprise seeing as how they only had 8 players there. Nevertheless, at one stage they were 1-0 up. What changed the match was one of the outfield players being injured just before half time and so in the second half he went in goal and the keeper ended up playing up front (and he was the one who scored the goal, strange as it might seem).

But there was something good that came out of the doom and gloom nevertheless – and that was with Didier (the right-winger) and Vincent (the centre-forward) playong together as a completely impromptu central defensive pairing. And until they tired late in the game (which was hardlly surprising given the circumstances) they never put a foot wrong for 80 minutes and no-one was ever going to get past them. It was a revelation as far as I was concerned and they can both take a bow for their performance.

This morning though I finished off the rdio programmes that we will be presenting tomorrow morning and then after the footy I went round to Liz and Terry’s for rehearsals. Liz had made a vegetable crumble and while it might sound rather bizarre, it tasted really good. That’s something else that I will be adding to my repertoire when (if ever) I work on my kitchen.

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Friday 17th October 2014 – IT’S ALL EXCITEMENT HERE.

Yes, it’s all happening here at Pionsat.

intermarche launderette pionsat puy de dome franceI went a’shopping this afternoon at Pionsat on my way home, and look what I found in a lean-to on the car park at the Intermarché.

Yes, Pionsat now has its own launderette. Not much of a one, that’s for sure, but a launderette just the same. And not only that, there’s a 18kg machine here. That’s good news for me because I haven’t washed the cover on my bed settee in the five years that I’ve had it because I’ve not found a machine big enough to take it since the launderette in Montlucon closed down all those years ago.

And so on the next fine day that we have when I’m at home, guess what I’ll be doing?

And so I did say “on my way home”. That’s because I’ve been out and about this morning. Terry rang me up to ask if I could help him cut some wood.

gorges de la sioule st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceIt was a warm morning today, and with all of the dampness that we’ve had these last few days, it wasn’t difficult to guess where the Gorge de la Sioule is. There is the mist gradually rising up out of the Gorge and dissipating into the atmosphere.

It certainly makes a good photograph, especially in the early morning.

birdwatching centre ornithologique st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceThe photo was taken from the birdwatching centre at St Gervais d’Auvergne, and I wasn’t alone here either. There was a pile of other photographers here admiring the view, although I’m not quite sure what it was that was of such an interest to them.

Still, chacun à son gout as they say around here.

Terry and I chopped up a good pile of wood this morning and Liz made a good lunch for us. Then they went off to the dentist and I came home, via the Intermarché at Pionsat.

Back here, I carried on with the tidying up and despite all that I’ve been doing, I can’t see any improvement, and I can’t see any empty space either. I don’t know why this should be, but there we are.

I’ll just have to keep on at it until something happens or that I die of boredom.

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Monday 13th October 2014 – WE WERE RADIOING TODAY

Yes, it didn’t take me long to get back into the routine, did it?

And with a reasonably-early night I managed to be up and about by 10:15 too, without the benefit of the alarm. And that gave me an hour or so to do a few things around here first.

Many of you who read the rubbish that I write elsewhere will know that I have a thing about clouds and how they reflect the skyline underneath when passing over mountainous areas.

clouds reflecting skyline puy de sancy puy de dome franceThis was quite apparent today as you can see in this photo of the Puy de Sancy taken from my favourite little spec at the bird-watching site near St Gervais.

We’ve had a fair amount of rain just recently so the sky is quite humid. Here sure enough, the moisture has condensed where the air has had to rise up over the mountains and formed clouds that reflect almost exactly the skyline underneath.

We had more vegan lasagne for lunch and then went off to Gerzat to record the Radio Anglais sessions for Radio Arverne. And just for a change, everyone was ready and everything passed off without incident. We were in and out in just an hour and 10 minutes.

While we were there, the weather had changed and we were in the rain on the way back. Liz gave me a doggy bag of leftover vegan lasagne and ginger cake, and I came back here to plot my next move.

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Saturday 11th October 2014 – BACK TO THE DAILY GRIND

I was on my travels again last night, and it was once more with the guitarist/singer and drummer with whom I played for a couple of years in the mid-70s and who have been featuring rather a lot just recently in these pages.

We were in a pub in Liverpool sitting at a table waiting for things to happen before we went on stage and who should come and sit next to us but John Wetton. He’s a bassist/singer of no little repute, having appeared in several supergroups of the 70s and early 80s and though while he’s not on my list of top-10 bassists, I was still relishing having a good chat with him and maybe even getting him onstage with us in some capacity.

But for some unknown reason, the other two were being rather abusive and offensive to him and after a couple of minutes he left. I was quite upset at that because it’s not every day that one has the opportunity to be in the intimate presence of a superstar.

With all of those issues having been dealt with, I heaved myself out of my stinking pit and set about making breakfast. That wasn’t as easy as it might have been either, because I couldn’t remember where the coffee was, and I couldn’t remember which glass I used for my orange juice, all that kind of thing. It’s astonishing how, after just 45 days away from home, how much of my old routine that I have forgotten.

And talking of being back in the routine, once breakfast was out of the way I sat down and started work on the next batch of Radio Anglais stuff. And happy that I’d dealt with the shopping issues yesterday, I could have a really good whack at it. Three or four hours of uninterrupted work and I’d written four programmes – a mere 2774 words. When you can find the rhythm, it’s easy to understand how it was that people like Enid Blyton and Earl Stanley Gardner could knock off 5,000 or 6,000 words in a day on a consistent basis if they could be totally uninterrupted (except for someone serving up mugs of hot coffee on a regular basis too).

By now though, the weather had cleared and the sun was shining. That was something that was quite uexpected, but welcome nevertheless. We even, just for a fleeting moment, had an overcharge of electricity and I wish that I had thought on and reconnected the 12-volt immersion heater.

Later on in the afternoon, I went round to Liz and Terry’s. This was to rehearse the radio programmes because Liz is going to be busy tomorrow, and we also had a lovely vegan lasagne followed by vegan ginger cake. You’ve no idea how well Liz and Terry look after me.

Back home, I did a few more things on the computer and, just as I was about to settle down for an early night the internet suddenly sprang back into life. I restarted the computer and settled down to something of a long night. I had plenty of work to do.

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Friday 10th October 2014 – I MUST HAVE BEEN TIRED LAST NIGHT.

10:45 when I heaved myself out of the stinking pit, and had the ‘phone not rung downstairs at that time, I would probably still be there now. Terry said that he had never known anyone sleep that long, which just goes to show that he’s clearly not kept himself up-to-date with these pages, and that he’s never gone two days with just a fitful doze or two in between. But then again, my lifestyle has always been somewhat extreme compared to the norm, I suppose. Not many people would put up for a minute with what I do just for pleasure.

After breakfast, we had a long chat about things around here and when Liz came back we had lunch. Then, on their way to see Rob and Julie, they dropped me off here.

Caliburn started with just a glance at the ignition key – good old Caliburn – but we are having some issues here right now. I have (once again) left the fridge plugged in permanently while I was away, instead of in the overcharge circuit, and so with the bad weather for the last three or four days that they have had here, the batteries are right down. And with the forecast weather for the next few days, there won’t be much chance of topping things up for a while so I’ll be on short rations again. I really must remember to sort out the fridge properly each time that I go away. I did exactly the same thing last year, you might remember.

The battery in the laptop went flat after a couple of hours’ work and so I was wondering how to charge it up. By then of course, it was late afternoon and in the pouring rain I wasn’t going to be doing much else so the idea came to my mind to go to St Eloy to do my shopping. It would fill in the time this evening, save me a journey tomorrow, give Caliburn an airing and also charge up the laptop. Problem solved. Wasn’t I glad that I had bought that 12-volt charging lead a few months ago?

At LIDL I met Amondine from the Anglo-French group. She was there with her children doing her shopping and we had quite a chat. All in all, at the shops, I spent €21 for a week’s supply of food. That’s much more like old times.

Back here, the internet is down, so I discovered. Dunno what has happened here. I just did a few other bits and pieces and went for an early night. I’ll resolve this issue tomorrow.

Or maybe some other time.

I dunno.

But as Barry Hay once famously said at a concert at Scheveningen Beach, “I’ll tell you one thing, man. It’s good to be back home”.

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Thursday 9th October 2014 – WELL, I WAS RIGHT ABOUT ONE THING.

I missed the connection at Brussels.

And not by 5 or 10 minutes either, but by a whopping couple of hours too. It took all night to evacuate this ill person and her baggage and we were about a couple of hours late before we took to the sky.

The flight itself and the food were excellent but the in-flight entertainment was rather rubbish. There wasn’t a single film that I was interested in seeing. On the Sports Channel however there was the World Cup semi-final between Brazil and Germany from 2014- the match where in a devastating spell of just 6 minutes half-way through the first half the Germans totally demolished the Brazilians.

At Brussels, those of us with onward journeys to attend to had to regroup in order to see what they airline had in store for us. For me, they could move me onwards to Paris via … errrr … Frankfurt am Main. That was clearly out of the question. However, there was one person who was flying on to Lyon and so that gave me an idea. When I was at Montreal I heard them call an Air Transat flight to Lyon and while I’m not overly impressed with Air Transat, I still put into the back of my mind the idea to go around to the airport at Lyon to see what I could see and to spy out the land.

This seemed like the opportunity and so I made the appropriate noises at the airport staff. There was indeed flight to Lyon but at 17:00 in the afternoon, meaning that I had 5 hours to kill. A meal voucher for €16:00 to compensate me in part for the inconvenience meant that I could have a meal but even that voucher only made a slight hole in the price of the meal, prices in Belgium being what they are. But nevertheless, the choices of meal here seem to be better than what was on offer when I was stranded at Paris Charles de Gaulle last year.

zaventam brussels national airport belgium october 2014For the rest of my stay in Brussels, I also took the opportunity to go for a wander around the airport, inside and outside. It’s been a long time, 9 years in fact, since I’ve been here and there was a time when I was here a couple of times a week, back in the good old days.

So braving the horrendous weather outside, because it really was bad outside, I went for a look around.

zaventam brussels national airport belgium october 2014There have been some tremendous changes to the airport in this time. Outside, there’s an enormous amount of redevelopment and much of the old building is being swept away and replaced ith more modern stuff.

There have been even more changes inside the place. A huge programme of expansion has taken place with all kinds of new terminals and departure gates and I do have to admit that it is quite a significant leg-up from how it all used to be in the past.

The plane to Lyon was one of these small 70-seater things with about 40 passengers on it. The flight took a quite reasonable 75 minutes which wasn’t bad at all, even if there was no special meal for me. That came as no surprise seeing as how I’d chopped and changed from one flight to another – it can’t be helped. I was glad that I had had a meal at Zaventam. And descending into Lyon through a thunderstorm, we were being tossed around like a cork on the ocean. Not for the faint-hearted, this descent.

Lyon was a very nice airport, quite modern and up-to-date, and the tram connection to town, quite shockingly expensive at €15:70, was nevertheless straighforward and direct, to right opposite the main railway station in town. No issues whatever with this at all (apart from the cost of course).

The ticket for the train to Riom cost a mere €16:00 with my senior citizen’s railcard (and that puts into perspective the astonishing price of the tram ticket) but there was a wait of 100 minutes for my train. No mind – it gave me an opportunity to look around outside the station. In the square behind the railway station there were all kinds of food shops, including a Subway sandwich store so I grabbed a foot-long vegetarian and orange juice there – that was tea sorted out.

Further investigation revealed that just a 10-minute stagger away from here is one of these Premier Class tourist hotels. A modern unit-type hotel with en-suite facilities.

So the verdict on Lyon as a departure point for Montreal? Well, even if the only flight offered is an Air Transat service, then I am no longer going to struggle all of the way out to Paris Charles de Gaulle. Apart from the tram fare, everything else that I would need is right here in front of me at Lyon, much more so than at the airport hotels in Paris. There will also be a saving of over €200 on my travelling costs and that, dear reader, is all that you need to know.

The train to Riom presented no problems whatever, and Terry was there to meet me at the station. Liz and Terry offered me a bed for the night, for which I was extremely grateful, and I was out like a light. It had been a long day.

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Monday 23rd June 2014 – WELL, ONE OF US …

… that is, Terry or Yours Truly, is in league with the devil, that’s for sure.

For about two or three weeks we’ve been working on this concrete here and thee has hardly been a drop of rain while it’s all been going on, but today, with the work finished for now, I was awoken at 06:20 by the most astonishing thunderstorm and it’s been raining cats and dogs all day. Half an inch of rain we’ve had so far, and there’s planty more to come.

So without the benefit of a decent sleep, I was up and about quite early which was just as well, as we had 14 – yes FOURTEEN – radio programmes to record today. You can see how much work I’ve been doing.

I started off at Marcillat and Radio Tartasse at 09:30 and recorded 4 of the rock music programmes that we do – 2 of the normal ones and two of the live concert performances that I have taken to mixing and engineering myself at home. Liz xame to join me a little later (and it was a little later as she was having car problems) and we recorded four episodes of our information programmes.

Back at Liz’s house I had a look at her Golf but I couldn’t get the thing to go either in the limited time available, and we went off to Gerzat after lunch for Radio Arverne where we recorded 6 of our information programmes.

So that’s the radio done until the end of August which is just as well as Liz is off on her hols in 2 weeks’ time and won’t be back until the end of August. Just in time for us to record another marathon 14 programmes and then I’m heading off to Montreal and Canada again.

Liz fetched a mechanic out from her local garage to look at the Golf – after all, they are supposed to have “repaired” it last time this happened. He started the car (and I’m not going to tell you how because it will only give you all ideas) and drove it back to the garage where they will sort it out, and I came home in the tropical downpour.

I wonder if it will ever clear up?

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Sunday 22nd June 2014 – THE NIGHTS ARE CLOSING IN

Yes, what happened to the first half of the year? I have never known one go so quickly. It’ll be Christmas before we know it.

Even more astonishingly, there I was lying in bed for a good half-hour thinking that I maybe ought to get up, and when I did, noticing that it was just 07:40. On a Sunday too. I’ll never have a decent lie-in at this rate.

Resuming my usual habits after this last few weeks of work, I watched a film this morning while I was breakfasting. Today’s offering was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and I was totally puzzled by this film. I was sitting there watching ti all warm up and wondering when the action might begin and suddenly it ended. 2 hours or so of no real plot and no real action and I can’t think of where the time went because there was nothing memorable about it.

However, having read the reviews of the film, I’m clearly in a minority of one. Lots of people consider it to be the best of the films.

So I spent the rest of the day doing some informal tidying up in here until it became too hot, and also tidying up a huge pile of files on the computer.

This evening Iwas round at Liz and Terry’s rehearsing the radio programmes as we are recording tomorrow. I also went round to Cécile’s to pick up a couple of letters.

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Tuesday 17th June 2014 – SO THERE I WAS …

… out of bed at 06:45, on the road at 07:00 and at Liz and Terry’s for 07:30.

And by 08:30 we were in the queue at the sous-prefecture at Riom. Ticket number 27 which meant that we only had to wait just over an hour – not like when I took Caliburn to be registered in 2009, had ticket 93 and had to wait until 11:50.

Anyway, the Jeep is now registered in France and we went off to the Carrefour to buy the number plates and have a coffee. On the way back we called at the insurance at St Gervais to pick up an updated insurance certificate, and then we went back to Liz and Terry’s and fitted the new plates.

After lunch we came back here and with Terry in the pit and me on the cement mixer, we fitted three rows of breeze blocks. There wasn’t much sun so I could only do the mix bucket by bucket, otherwise the mixer would stall, but we managed all the same and I’m impressed with this little 350-watt cement mixer. Not the quickest or biggest mixer but it mixes the stuff quicker than I can use it.

Tomorrow we’ll do the final row of blocks in the pit and then do the shuttering. That’s going to be exciting because it’s not a square – neither is it a rectangle and it isn’t an quadrilateral either.

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Wednesday 4th June 2014 – I WENT BACK …

… to Terry’s this morning.

Although I nearly didn’t. When I woke up this morning it was pouring down and wasn’t fit for anything. I had breakfast and wondered whether to carry on with the web pages but by then it had stopped raining so I headed off to Terry’s.

I checked the handbrake mechanism and the nearside seemed to be working fine but the offside not so, so I stripped down the brakes on that side and, as I suspected, the brake operators had seized.

Taking out the operators was not easy at all, but I dismantled them, cleaned them and greased them. A cut-out in the ear halfshaft and this would have been a two-minute job. And if taking them out was difficult, putting them back was even more difficult. And when they were back the pieces wouldn’t hold together and so I had to end up wiring them in.

And as you might have expected, having done all of that and making sure that all of the brake mechanism was working fine, it made not a ha’porth of difference.

We spent the afternoon working on the nearside brake. I made a few adjustments to that side and that did nothing either, which is a total surprise.

These rear brakes on this Jeep Cherokee are totally bewildering me. All that I can think of is that with the brake drums being brand-new, there’s a surface coating that needs to be broken down before the brakes will grip. So we’ll leave it for a week or two in order to see what happens.

If that doesn’t change anything, we’ll have to strip them right down.

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