Category Archives: Antoine

Monday 5th April 2010 – Blimmin’ ‘eck!

I’ve just noticed the time – 03:44! Yes, that’ll teach me. But I’ve made a couple of important discoveries with this 3D animation program and suddenly my attempted animations have come on in leaps and bounds. So I managed to get myself carried away.

I can see that I’m going to have to be careful with what I do with this program, otherwise my spare time will simply evaporate.

So with it being another jour ferie today I did just about badger all again. Coffee in bed, read a book, checked on the garden, worked on the website, wrapped a birthday present for Bill, prepared some entertainment for the Anglo-French group – yes, badger all as you can see.

At the group this evening we had quite a few newcomers – an American couple who have bought a holiday home here; my new Dutch neighbours; two French guys that Antoine knew. And with the welcome return from hibernation of Clotilde and the presence of Heidi back temporarily from Germany we were quite numerous. And wasn’t that a nice change?

But not so good news is that the new owners of the Queue de Milan, being much more businesslike than the previous, have now decided that they want to charge us €30 for use of the room. Well, fair enough – it’s their room and they can do what they like with it. But then on the other hand it’s our bodies and we are quite free to take them elsewhere.

We shall have a little sit-down this week and plan our next move. It’s a pity that there isn’t a club room at the footy ground. But there are plenty of other options – it’s a case of seeing what’s available. Marianne, who is the President of the Amis du Chateau de Pionsat, might even have a little room there that we can use.

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Monday 25th January 2010 – I had my first garden fire of the year today

ford transit garden fire jungle les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs you know if you’ve been following my outpourings for a while, I have enormous difficulty getting a fire to burn when I really try. When I don’t try, like while I’m welding up a car or something, I can summon up a raging inferno in no time at all. But Liz, whom I spoke to on the phone this morning , gave me a few tips and I had quite a nice little fire burning. I was happily pulling up the brambles and chucking them on the fire and watching them burn.

But fires need careful watching in order to keep them burning and so it was no surprise at all that the phone rang immediately after this shot. It was the lady from Luxembourg who lives up the road and she was in the mood for a good chat. And of course by the time the phonecall finished, the fire was out.

This morning I wanted to get the wood off the roof of Caliburn but to do that I needed the ladder. And that was underneath the insulation which was stuck at the side of the plasterboard. So I ended up emptying Caliburn anyway and then I unloaded the wood. The ladder on Caliburn, when it’s on the roofrack, is held on by a patent clamp that I made. But the stud iron (or threaded rod as it is called these days) is quite long and useful for a multitude of sins and so takes a while to fasten down. So I found another bracket and made a made-to-measure bracket for the ladder that now fastens on in seconds.

And after lunch it was the garden.

This evening I went to Montaigut for this meal with Antoine. And it was what you call an “interactive” meal, involving the employees of the restaurant and some of the other customers. I’d never experienced anything quite like it. But it was a nice pizza restaurant and I’ll go there again. It’s good to know that there’s somewhere respectable to take my guests, if ever I have any. Although they might not let me in another time.

And tomorrow with a bit of luck I’ll be on the piste.

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Sunday 24th January 2010 – Well, I got my go in a chopper.

chopper helicopter flight intermarche pionsat puy de dome franceLiz, Terry and I turned up at just before 11 in the rain and after waiting for a while we brandished our passes and that was that.

The weather wan’t much good though and the seating positions for a good photo opportunity were hopeless but it was still an experience even though we were thoroughly deafened by the noise.

No danger of me missing the flight either, for Antoine telephoned me – at 09:35 on a SUNDAY! That time simply doesn’t exist for me on a Sunday.

chopper helicopter flight pionsat puy de dome franceAfter the flight we went for a coffee. I invited Liz and Terry back here but they voted for the “Queue de Milan” instead. And that tells you two things. The Queue de Milan, under new management, was actually open. There were about 7 people in the bar as well, and if each one spent 2Euros on a beer or a coffee then with the mark-up being about 75% at least then in the half-hour that we were there the new owners cleared over 10 Euros in gross profit. Perhaps the previous owners might have done better at the place if they had been more business-orientated and actually opened their doors to clients.

The second thing that it tells you is that my coffee is so awful that people would rather pay good money to someone else to make it. Hmmmmm – I’ll need to improve on my coffee-making technique.

But on the subject of the Queue de Milan, the owners are on the lookout for an au-pair girl to look after their two kids. Anyone interested let me know and I shall come round and give a personal vetting of the prosepctive applicants. If she has an “aaauuuuuuu” pair then that will do for starters. But the one trouble with being at my age is that I have these memory issues. I can’t remember whether I’m going to the doctors to be vetted or going to the vets to be doctored.

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Friday 22nd January 2010 – all the charging circuits shut down today.

batteries fully charged charging circuit shut down les guis virlet puy de dome franceWhat happens is that the solar (or wind) charge during the day gradually increases the charge in the battery from the overnight figure (about 12.4-12.5 volts is a good figure) up to about 14.1 volts if it’s a good day.

Once it’s at that figure it maintains the charge for a short while to give the batteries a chance to warm up inside and to shake loose any oxides that have accumulated, and then it goes into PWM mode, which is where it distributes the charge equally over all of the batteries and balances the incoming charge against the outgoing load.

When it’s happy with all of that it goes into FLOAT mode where the circuits close down until the charge in the battery drops to about 13.4 volts, and then it all starts up again and we repeat the cycle.

So today was the first day since October (I think) that we all went into FLOAT mode, even with the fridge running throughout the day. Three good days of solar charge has done wonders for my system.

This morning I was woken up by Antoine ringing me. Mind you, it was almost 10:00. I’d slept through all of the alarms again. I’ll have to do something about that. Then Antoine phoned me again, Claude came round for a chat, Liz phoned me twice and Francois phoned me once. I’m still in demand as you can see. I’ve never been so popular.

old ford transit hedge tree jungle garden les guis virlet puy de dome franceToday I made a start on the garden. I’m resiting my vegetable plot as you know and so I need to clear a place to move the old Ford Transit, the Merc and the British Salt Cortina because it’s under where they are currently that the vegetable garden will be. Back in 2002 all of this was cleared out but all these years of neglect has seen bushes, shrubs, brambles and trees grow right around everything. First job was to cut down a tree that was about 15 feet high and about 2 inches in diameter. That’s grown since 2002!

I could get at the back of the old Transit then and so I took off the towbar. I’m going to let Terry have it to fit on his new van. His is a 2005 model and rear wheel drive so it should fit okay and the tow bar is doing no good at all to anyone, rusting down a field. Older readers of my blog will remember the old Transit. I was on my way to a ferry at Caen to go to the UK for my OU science lab work when I had a puncture. You know that I prefer steel-belted radial tyres to textile belted ones. I’d been travelling at high-speed for hours and so the tyres were quite hot, and the blow-out occurred with such force that it blew the tread and the belting off the tyre. The steel belting spun round like a flail and ripped out the side of the van and the nearside wheel-arch and floor. Mind you, the van was 16 years old and it had seen much better days but it was still a mess and not fit to be driven on the highway after that.

But it’s going to be a lot of work to do this garden. I’ll have to start making the borders for my raised beds.

In other news, the UK is getting weirder and weirder. Some woman has been given a suspended prison sentence for breaching an Anti-Social Behaviour Order. And the Anti-Social Behaviour Order she has breached? Well, her moans and groans during lovemaking are too loud for her neighbours, and they played a tape of it in the courtroom. Personally, I cannot imagine anything so pathetic. I reckon that what it is is that the neighbours are just thoroughly jealous. I remember telling Nerina that it would be nice if she would moan while we were making love. And sure enough, half-way through the next performance she said “when are you going to paint this ceiling? It’s been like this for 5 years. And the walls need papering too …“

Mind you, I did once live next door to a couple whose lovemaking was exceptionally noisy. But never mind the ASBO – I always wanted to give them a round of applause when they finished. But you know how it is – you can’t clap with just one hand.

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Monday 7th December 2009 – I’ve fitted one of my verticals

stud wall bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou can see it in the photo – dead centre of the image up against the wall. Only one vertical though.

I woke up this morning to hear the rain lashing down on the roof again just like the other day. And just like the other day, even though I’m working inside, it’s not very encouraging. I’m wondering when we might have a dry day.

So when I eventually got out of bed and had my breakfast and went up to the first floor where I’m working, it was so perishing dark that I couldn’t actually see anything.

That prompted me hurling out of the window all of the old pallets that were in the pile against the wall and which you may well have seen in other photos. Some were broken, but others survived the fall and so I extended the pallet path that I laid 2 years ago. What with the marsh that’s developing outside, it seemed like a good idea.

So that was the morning accounted for, and in the afternoon I cut and fitted the vertical. It takes hours to do them as they need to be millimetre-perfect and so that involves cutting the lets slightly undersize and then filing them out to fit.

Tonight at the Anglo-French group we had a couple of new arrivals joining in – a French woman and an Austrian woman. They are Buddhists and have come here to be close to the Buddhist monastery in the area. Those of you who remember my blog in its previous home will remember my visit there one Sunday afternoon. And Marianne, the local journalist who sometimes comes to the meetings – she liked my pic from last night and intends to use it to illustrate an article on the village. Not that there’s any dosh in it but if it’s in the paper the villagers will see it and they might be interested in having a copy for themselves. It’s worth a go.

The proprietors of the Hotel in Pionsat where we meet have announced that they are leaving imminently – where to, they don’t know. You need a special kind of mentality to run a place like that and you can’t do it if you have small children and want a family life. Someone is taking over so our continuity is assured. But not so at St Eloy. You may remember that we were locked out of our venue the other week. It seems that the tenants (they were only tenants, not owners) have fled, leaving behind something of a financial muddle. We’ll have to find somewhere else in St Eloy now. Antoine is on the case.

And tomorrow I’ll be carrying on with the verticals if I can trouble myself to climb out of bed. The weather forecast is “no change”.

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Sunday 25th October 2009 – It was 9:03 when I woke up this morning

I thought to myself that that can’t be right – and it wasn’t.

Well, it was because in fact the clocks went back this morning and we are now on real time, although by yesterday’s time it would have been 10:03 and that is much more like a respectable time to wake up on a Sunday.

So having breakfasted I had to do a CD of footy photos for Xavier. He has some friends who play for Cebazat and I had photographed them the other week so he had asked me for copies of what I had. And as I was meeting him at Beauregard Vendon where the 3rd XI were playing this afternoon I needed to get my skates on.

First stop though was the fete de la pomme at La Cellette. I’d been invited by Marianne so I went along to say hello. Antoine, Liz and Terry were there so we had a good chat and then it was off to the footy.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire beauregard vendonPionsat’s luck ran out today – they only had 10 players and not one of them was what could be called a goalkeeper. For much of the match Xavier was in goal and today’s pic features him diving to push a Beauregard shot round the post for a corner. There was precious little else to cheer.

On the way back home I went via the brocante at St Gervais. And what a waste of time that was. Most of the stallholders were Dutch and if you are a keen follower of my blog you will know that the problem with the Dutch is that they have no word for gratis. I was looking for a metal bucket or something similar to take away my ashes (well, not mine, the ashes out of the stove) but there was nothing that would do. Some stallholder had a battered aluminium casserole and he wanted €4:00 for it. It’s not very often I come away from a brocante empty-handed. Mind you, I met Gilles and Heidi there and we had had a good chat.

Back home I plucked up the courage to tackle that wiring job seeing as it was now dark. I took me about an hour to do it, most of which time was spent trying to fish the torch out from downbehind the battery box.

We’ll know tomorrow whether it works properly.

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Tuesday 15th September 2009 – IF YOU COMPARE THIS PIC …

attic wall plasterboard les guis virlet puy de dome france… to the pic of yesterday you will notice a change. In fact I’ve started to add the plasterboard to the walls.

First thing in the morning I finished off the battens and then set up a workstation outside with everything I need to measure and cut the plasterboard. I’ve been cutting it into manageable sizes and so although it looks like a patchwork quilt I can’t see any other way of getting it into the attic by way of the ladder that I’m using.

plasterboard attic wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceTerry recommended glueing the plasterboard to the battens but it was a hell of a job getting the polystyrene to stick. It wasn’t possible to put the pressure on at the right places and it kept on springing off. I held it on with some speed clamps but that didn’t work and so I tacked them on with nails – and then I thought “badger this for a game of soldiers. If I’m using nails I may as well nail the boards to the battens and forget about the glue”.

It’s not very pretty but I’m going to have to use filler anyway in the joints so mixing more filler to fill the nail heads is neither here nor there. It’s still going to be quicker than waiting for the glue to dry on each individual panel.

Claude poked his head in and had a look – and he’s quite impressed. The last time he was here we hadn’t finished the roof tiling. That was a month ago and doesn’t that seem like a long time ago? We had sun in those days – not like today. I had to put a jumper on as the temperature has now plummeted. In a valiant attempt not to light the heating, I now have a fleece jacket on as well. The first frost of the autumn can’t be far away.

In other news, at the Anglo-French group yesterday I was working with Antoine Ged. He’s the former postmaster (now retired) and his English is surprisingly good. He lent me a book to read – entitled Managing in Turbulent Times. This is another one of the Alvin Tofler – The Third Wave kind of books that were written 30 years ago forecasting how the world would look at the turn of the 21st Century. And while many predictions were totally wide of the mark, many others were surprisingly, if not astonishingly accurate.

In one chapter on the subversion of democracies, Drucker (the author of “Turbulent Times”) writes
“such a process (of subverting democracy) is doubly important …in which small, single-minded, often paranoid groups have attained a power out of all proportion to their actual size”
Now I bet you any money that many people are waiting for me to make a nasty and cheap crack about an organisation that many of us know and love. But not a bit of it. May I draw your attention to the key word in the quote from Drucker – a word that has as its middle two letters “NG” and not “MP” and so it can’t possibly apply.

But of course the Open University Students’ Association Executive Committee does in fact speak with a single mind (except when the OUSA President crawls out of her sick bed at the Annual Conference to oppose a motion in respect of which the rest of the Executive Committee is speaking in favour – but more of this anon) but that single (“do you mean “simple?” – ed) mind does not belong to any of the elected members of the committee.

No more graphic example of this that the one that was reported to me by one of my moles on various committees – taking a well-earned break from all kinds of activities at the last Annual Conference – who happened to be present when the much-maligned Turdi de Hatred very generously invited the members of the retiring Executive Committee to dinner at the University canteen.
The waitress approached the table at which Turdi and the members of the committee were sitting and asked
“is madam ready to order?”
“I’ll have the steak!” announced Turdi
“And the vegetables?”
“They’ll have the steak too!”

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Tuesday 21st July 2009 – WE’VE DONE OVER HALF …

… of the back of the roof now.

Yesterday we put on another row of insulation plywood and damp-proof membrane and then went off to Brico Depot to spend another 400 Euros. This roof is becoming expensive 🙁

We did it that way round because the weather forecast predicted a boiling hot day so we did the heavy work in the morning. Mind you it was still pretty uncomfortable in the heat that we had. And to show you just how concerned I am about my workforce I spent a whole 22 centimes on a bottle of water for Terry. copulatum expensium, as we Pompeiians say

And excitement at the Anglo-French conversation group where Antoine revealed that he had been approached by a Dutch TV company that wants to film one of our meetings. This should drag out of the woodwork a few of the star-struck lurkers of our group. But of course when you have talent like yours truly, dear reader, who needs a makeover?

kwikstage scaffolding plywood space blanket insulation damp proof membrane aspire recycled plastic slates les guis virlet puy de dome franceToday we tiled over the plywood that we fitted yesterday and then started to fit another row. This time we are boarding vertically as we have reached the top row at the back. Tiling was much more easy with the safety harness that Terry persuaded me to buy. I felt like Peter Pan, swinging over the roof like that. But I couldn’t find Peter Pan anywhere so I gave up that idea. When Terry had a go in the safety harness, complete with the wet tea-towel on his head, I told him that he looked like Ena Sharples’ granma.
“Who’s helping you finish the roof?” was his response.

My retort was that I dunno why he was complaining. In Soho and places like that people pay good money to be swung from a safety harness from the roof of a building (not that I have any first-hand experience of that sort of thing of course) and if he wasn’t careful I’ll knock the money’s worth off his bill.

Now we are having torrential rain, thunder and lightning. I hope it clears for tomorrow.

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