Category Archives: Francois Carriat

Monday 23rd July 2012 -171.4 AND 160.1 AMP-HOURS …

… of solar energy in bank 1 and bank 2 respectively might not be a new record (although it isn’t far off), but 154 amp-hours of that being surplus and hence being diverted into the dump load (the hot water tank) – now, that definitely is.

And having emptied out the hot water from the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load, which was still at an indecent temperature and filled up the tank this morning with cold water, that brought the water temperature down to just a mere 39°C.

And by the time that this 154 amp-hours of solar energy had finished, it was enough to push the temperature of the water off the scale – ie over 70°C.

Now that is impressive.

The temperature of the water in the solar shower tank may well only have been 30°C, but 5 litres of water out of the dump load took it right up to 38.5°C and I had yet another lovely shower.

And I’m all clean now, just for a change.

Mind you, I wasn’t half dirty earlier on.

This morning, after my 07:00 start (despite only going to bed at 02:30), a leisurely breakfast and an hour or so on the laptop, I went round to Marianne’s to move the International Library from her friend’s garage to an empty room at François’ at Barrot.

That was enough to make anyone filthy

From there it was off to LIz and Terry’s to pick up Liz and then off to Gerzat to record the Radio Anglais programmes for Radio Arverne.

And as well as the 5 that we had planned, we needed to do a 6th as Bernard had somehow managed to lose the one for this week. And it’s not very pleasant in the heat up there in their attic.

That’s it, really. Quite busy but nothing much to show for it.

I’m off to bed now, another ridiculously early night as it’s another early start tomorrow.

I’m changing the cylinder head gasket on Liz’s car.

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Wednesday 20th June 2012 – AFTER THE USUAL …

… couple of hours on the laptop I went off to Rosemary’s for the afternoon.

On the way there thought I had a couple of interesting encounters, firstly with the German guy – Heidi’s husband or partner or something – who lives over the back here, and then with Francois Carriat who lives at Barrot.

Francois was full of energy as usual – “on your way back, drop in. I could do with a hand”.

memorial to the fallen nazi puy de dome franceOn my way around to Rosemary’s, I came across this memorial. I can’t think why I hadn’t noticed it before, because I’ve been up and down this road quite a bit.

Many people criticise what the perceive as the lack of resilience of the French population to the Germans in World War II.

Leaving aside the question that I don’t recall the British civilians of the Channel Island doing too much to resist the German occupying forces – even down to the extent of sitting on their hands in starvation conditions for 9 months after the war had passed them by, the real fact is that there was quite a considerable amount of French resistance!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall the numerous plaques that we have seen scattered around the countryside honouring people who were fusilés – shot – or decapité – decapitated – by the Germans, and we’ve seen the cemeteries at Ixelles and Evere in Belgium.

I wonder how these critics would cope if they were running the risk of being shot or decapitated every day.

Round at Rosemary’s we made some space in her barn, put my door in there and loaded up Caliburn with the rubbish, as well as a few bits and pieces that she knew that I would like.

Then we had a coffee and a chat to put the world to rights as we usually do.

I brought the rubbish back here because I have some stuff here that needs throwing away …{thud] …[thud] and I can heave that into the back of Caliburn and make just one trip down to the dechetterie at Pionsat.

Francois certainly did need a hand too. He’s had a rotavator in his small field and turned it into some kind of market garden, and a friend offered him “some” tomato plants. This “some” turned out to be about 150 and they were about 10 inches high with flowers on them.

Anyway, to cut a long story short …”hooray” – ed … Francois did the planting and I followed on behind with the watering cans and we managed to plant most of them before it went dark.

For my trouble Francois gave me a dozen for which I am grateful, and also a chili plant.

Not only that, he fed and watered me too, and we had a good chat about all kinds of things. Including the fact that tomorrow there are four groups of musicians who will be roaming the Streets of Saint Gervais d’Auvergne playing in all of the bars.

Now that sounds like a fun evening and so I might just as well go out and see what’s going on.

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Wednesday 8th February 2012 – AFTER ALL …

… that I said yesterday about my heat pad melting the water in the deep-frozen water butt, the sum total of water received today was precisely zero.

Although we had a really warm night for a change (the temperature rose to the dizzy heights of -11.4°C in fact) we had some snow. It was overcast all day with snow flurries and the sun hardly broke through at all, hence the maximun temperature today was a crazy -7.9°C and not even a heat pad can cope with that and do anything worthwhile.

I also had a phone call first thing.

François, who I haven’t seen for ages, came on the blower. He’s having issues with the blog of one of his Associations and now that there’s no technical assistance with the reseau since Liesbeth moved away, it looks like I have the short straw.

That meant the first part of the morning tidying up. Can’t have visitors with the place looking like a tip.

I cut up some wood too, and brought up here a load of wood to make an impressive woodpile up here.

I had a couple of hours in the bedroom, having managed to scrounge enough water to mix some quick-drying filler to do the joints between the plasterboard and the ceiling. And quick-drying it needs to be too – to set and to dry before it freezes.

And after that, I had another good go at the ceiling.

François came round after lunch, and won the prize for being the first private visitor of the year (yes, 6 weeks in as well, it shows just how popular I am). We chatted for quite a while and I sorted out his problems.

But once he had gone, I didn’t resume work. The temperature is dropping rapidy and so I stayed up here in the warm.

As for tea, I had tinned ratatouille standing by but what with my late lunch (17:00) I wasn’t hungry. a kettle with a small amount of water boiled up in no time on the stove and I had a coffee instead.

Anyway, it’s bright moonlight outside and not a cloud in the sky. It’s going to be another stinker tonight.

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Saturday 9th July 2011 – There’a an old French saying …

… to the effect that “il faut etre vu pour etre connu” – which roughly translated means that “you have to be seen in order that people will recognise you” and this is what I keep telling people. You need to get out and about and visit all kinds of events possible and make sure that people recognise you, so that you stick in their memories.

I take it to extremes of course – I drive a yellow-and-black van and all the clothes that I wear are yellow and black – corporate clothing. And it works too. Some people came up to me in LIDL today – “you’re Eric, aren’t you? From the Anglo-French group. We recognised your van on the car park”. And of course, being colour-coded, they knew whose van it was. Works every time.

But with the idea of being out and about, and going to all of the events possible, some times you come up trumps as well.

TF3 indignes des combrailles francois carriat barrot le quartier puy de dome franceFrancois, the local environmental activist from Barrot at Le Quartier, was having another one of his events and he’s asked me to go along. I like Francois very much and his friends are quite friendly too and interested in what I’m doing, and so I went along with pleasure.

But I never expected the French television chain TF3 to have a camera and a reporter there

.

TF3 indignes des combrailles francois carriat barrot le quartier puy de dome franceLuckily Caliburn is sign-written and so I parked him in a strategic place. But I’ve learnt something of a little lesson here ahd what I’m now going to do is have a banner made – one that I can keep in the back of Caliburn together with a few bits and pieces of samples just in case anything like this happens again. You live and learn.

And so it just goes to show – you need to be prepared for all eventualities and have everything to hand. You never know who you are going to meet when you are out. Nothing like this would ever happen if you stayed indoors brooding and sulking.

strawberry moose barrot le quartier puy de dome franceAnd I wasn’t the only one who goes in search of publicity and seeking a presence in front of the television cameras.

Strawberry Moose was pleased to see the television people too and took the opportunity to have his views aired on television. Appearing in public before his fans and making new friends has always been top of his priorities

Interestingly, one of the guys at this meeting was talking about building his own wind turbine. Even more interestingly, this American company I was talking to yesterday sells all of the complicated machinery that you need that you can’t manufacture yourself when you are building your own wind turbine.

I have a feeling that I might well be on to something here.

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Saturday 25th June 2011 – It’s been all go here today

karl hagen chantier communaux lapeyrouse puy de dome franceYes, I crawled out of the heaving pit rather late this morning, at about 10:30 to be precise, and it was off to Karl and Lou’s for their chantier. The girls spent the day painting the front of the house while Jean, Francois and I were building a woodshed at the back of the house.

There was the obligatory pause for lunch of course and I took advantage of the moment to take a photograph of all the attendees

fete des nouveaux arrivants marcillat en combraille allier franceI couldn’t stick around for long though because at 14:30 I had to piddle off to Marcillat en Combraille for this meeting. And now I know why they wanted me – apparently they didn’t have a translator and so Yours Truly was stuck with the task.

But it was well-worth going for I met a Dutch guy there who sells and hires out trailers. I’d talked to him a while back about car transporter trailers but he doesn’t do them, and so I made it clear that I had one that I might hire out if he says the magic words.
“Stop messing about Eric. You’ll be well-paid”
“Ahhh. So you know the magic words then!”

One thing led to another and it turns out that he plays music in a folk group of sorts. I mentioned my previous existence when I played bass guitar in a rock group and he’s going to pass my details on to a friend of his who plays in a folk rock group.

annual village walk virlet puy de dome franceLater this evening we were all round at Virlet where we were going to have our annual evening walk, exploring the highways and, more importantly, the byways of the commune. Just for a change the weather was good this year and the walk was enjoyable even though it was done at the pace of a route march.

This here is the old road into the village, long-since replaced by a more modern route and that down there on the right in the photo is an old well for the village

feu de joie virlet village bonfire puy de dome france Afterwards we had the traditional village bonfire – the feu de joie at the back of the church. There was a picnic too – the village had done us proud in this respect – and there was dancing to music provided by …. our friend with the trailer.

With the backdrop of the firework display at Montaigut en Combraille, it really was a most enjoyable evening and Jean, Elizabeth, Clotilde and Rosemary all certainly enjoyed it.

What with one thing and another it really was a good, enjoyable day and I’m off to bed quite happy for a change.

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Tuesday 21st June 2011 – You might be forgiven …

… for thinking that I haven’t done a tap today.

And in fact, I’ve hardly set my foot outside the door at all. What with one thing and another I’ve been really busy up here today.

I had another … errrr … late-ish morning (I’ve not recovered from the other day yet) and then did some work on my website until the battery went flat. Once I switched the inverter on, I then set about dealing with my mailbox. Dozens of useless mails have gone into the bin, and I’ve created loads of directories into which I’ve filed tons of stuff. Once I work out how to configure a mail server I’ll download a pile of these obsolete directories onto my computer and then delete them from my web site.

With a nice streamlined mailbox I then attacked a load of outstanding correspondence and that’s all en route. But there’s tons of stuff that I haven’t done and I’ll be here tomorrow as well getting all of that up to date.

opening of art gallery pionsat puy de dome franceI was “summoned to attend” the opening of an art gallery in Pionsat at 16:30 as Marianne from the Parish magazine needed a report and some photos and she was otherwise engaged elsewhere.

I bumped into Francois who was wandering around the village with a lady-friend and we went for a coffee and a chat.

And it seems that my little hint to the local newspaper about the closure of Radio Arverne’s Loubeyrat antenna has been picked up and they have decided to run with it, and in spades too.

Back here I carried on with the mail (missing tea, unfortunately) and I’m now on the verge of appointing accountants and creating a limited company for my little wind farm.

There’s also the possibility of some kind of consultancy on the horizon too – it seems that there’s a company in Canada that specialises in this kind of thing and it will save me endless hours and endless amounts of cash tracking down a suitable wind turbine supplier if they already have the contacts.

I’ve also made an astonishing discovery too on the Maplin website. How about this little thing? Never mind the negative reviews, posted by people who don’t seem to understand the principle of wind turbines, this will be a fascinating little gadget to have on the side of the house here, and if I make it detachable, it will be good for use at shows and also for sticking on the side of Caliburn whenever we are parked up at the seaside. That’s an excellent price too, and even as we speak there’s one winging its way to my new mailbox in Stoke on Trent. I’ll have to have a play with that.

And so tomorrow I’ll be up here again carrying on with the correspondence. And quite right too – there’s tons of it to do.

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Saturday 1st January 2011 – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

And quite right too!

Wishing everyone the compliments of the season, and me too because regular readers of this rubbish will realise that it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

it’s a Bank Holiday today and so that means a lie-in, and then a day of leisure where I do as little as possible.

Not quite though, because François was having a get-together and because regular readers of this rubbish tell me that I need to get out more often, I decided to go. It never does anyone any harm to socialise – including me.

The usual crowd was there of course – not very inspiring unfortunately. But nevertheless I’m glad that I went because Bill was there and at least I can have a good chat or two with him.

The good news to come out of that is that Bill has offered me an immersion heater – 100 litres – that he’s just taken out of his house. I’ve been looking for a small one like this for quite a while.

If I can change the element from 230 volt to 12 volt then this will go nicely in the barn to use as a dump load for the excess solar energy, assuming that we ever get any more decent sunshine.

Not sure when that might be.

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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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Wednesday 23rd December 2009 – I thought that I would post …

stairs staircase first floor les guis virlet puy de dome france… a pic of the completed stairs on the ground floor. It’ll take my mind off the gruesome weather.

I woke up this morning to that weird golden thing in the sky and not a cloud in sight. So I quickly shinned up onto the roof and onto the roof of the old Luton Transit to brush the snow off the solar panels to take advantage of everything.

But I needn’t have bothered for 10 minutes later the wind changed, a whole heap of cloud came over and blocked the sky. We had 10mm of rain!

And as I type I have the long-range weather forecast up and every day for the next week is totally overcast with rain forecast. Monday and Tuesday we are promised 15 and 16 degrees. They say Centigrade but I bet it’ll be more like Fahrenheit.

stairs staircase ground floor first floor les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo I stayed in and shovelled up tons of rubbish and piled it up elsewhere and I now have a path through the rubble to the stairs. it’s impressive. I also tidied up a few things and sorted out the wood. You can see the door that I bought in the Brico Depot sale. That’s for the front – lots of glass to let in the light. Light is at a premium around here.

At lunchtime Francois came round, with a woman in tow. He was amazed at the progress since he last visited here in September. This woman is renovating and she is interested in recycled materials and Francois had told her about my reccycled plastic slates. She was well-impressed.

This afternoon I started to tidy up the verandah which I use as a kitchen. But my heart wasn’t in it “No surprise there – it’s a cleaning job” … ed – and at 17:00 I called it a day. And then crashed out up here for an hour. All this work has been taking its toll of me.

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Sunday 2nd August 2009 – LOOK WHAT I’M HAVING FOR TEA!

new potatoes grown les guis virlet puy de dome franceYes, new potatoes! And grown with my own fair hands too.

In fact there’s a story behind these potatoes. Readers of my blog in its previous incarnation will recall the sad passing-away of my good friend Liz.

On my way to her funeral I stopped off at a Pound Shop (Anyone who knew Liz would know that she would have appreciated that!) and one of the things that they had on offer was a pack of 12 well-advanced seed potatoes for a quid. So they duly found their way into my garden, and then into my oven.

And right delicious they were too. I’ve been having lettuce from my garden for a few days but today I’m starting on the spuds. Tomorrow it will also be the peas, beans and carrots, with courgettes planned for later in the week.

This morning I had a telehone call that disturbed me from my reverie. It was Francois who wanted to come and inspect the work. And at 10:00 too! On a Sunday! So I hauled myself out of my pit, breakfasted, and showed him round. He pointed out a few faults (he’s a professional roofing carpenter) and I had to agree with him.

Mind you, this is the first roof I’ve ever done and Terry has only ever done one before so it’s only to be expected. Francois also reminded me of the chantier at his house on Thursday – emptying the library before his house goes up for sale. But it’s doubtful that I’ll be there. I’ve far too much on right now.

Once he’d gone I slated the side of the rafters where I painted yesterday. That should keep the weather out nicely. And after lunch I started to cement under the eaves. My cementing is awful and I bet I dropped more on the floor that I stuck to the walls but after a bit of practice it started to hod together – which is a major advance for me. I’ll finish it off tomorrow night.

Once it’s dried off properly I can start to paint the front of the house and won’t that be progress?

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