Category Archives: Eric Hall

Wednesday 6th May 2015 – DOESN’T CALIBURN LOOK SMART …

… with his new front number plate?

Here we were, going up the autoroute to wards Paris yesterday late afternoon in a howling gale and I stopped to make what is called a “comfort break”. Going back to Caliburn afterwards, I noticed that the white refelective part of his number plate was detaching itself from the background.

Cheap number plates, I suppose, and here I was off to Germany for two weeks. If it all comes apart in Germany I’ll be sunk, and the controle technique as soon as I return, I could do with having this fixed instanter.

Back on the autoroute again and we drove around the town of Nemours. And there on the Trading Estate I could just about make out one of these car accessory places. 18:55 it was, 5 minutes to chucking-out time, but nevertheless when I arrived they were still there. The plate cost an arm and a leg as you might expect, but they also had a fitting service for a couple of Euros. Anyway, there wasn’t much option. It’s cheaper than a fine and I’m going to have to have the number plate anyway for the controle technique. May as well do it now as later.

I’m not sure whether you can see it in the photo but I now have my dash cam installed. I had that running for the journey. It’s cheap, as you can tell by the price and by the quality of materials, and the instructions, written in basic Chinglish, are, shall we say, “unhelpful”. However, it does what it says it does, and quite good enough for what I want, although I’m going to have to stop talking to myself when I’m driving.

I was on the road by 15:00, having spent the morning tidying the house and doing a little cleaning, and I arrived here at about 23:45 after several stops. One of which was at Melun, where I discovered a new takeaway where they did me proud.

On the way up, though, I started to make a list of things that I have forgotten, including the cooking stove and the portable beichstuhl.

It’s going to be one of THOSE journeys, isn’t it?

-2

Tuesday 5th May 2015 – HAVING CURSED ORANGE TELECOM …

… with what can best be described as “an expletive-ridden rant” on Saturday, it’s only fair that I report on my visit this morning to the main Orange Telecom shop in the centre of Montlucon. And apart from not being open unti 10:00, I do have to say that the personnel in the shop could not have been more helpful. It was a stark contrast to Saturday, and had I had today’s treatment then, I would have been delighted.

So now, after having been to Montlucon and back, reconfigured the new Livebox and made a couple of phone calls, I now have a proper working home telephone, a proper working mobile phone (and one of the guys in Orange helped me configure it so that I could access the internet) and my e-mail and website back up. So it’s all systems go here in Pooh Corner.

As for the website, I finally managed to speak to someone at the Danish Domain Registration Service, and they were so horrified about my two-hour hold yesterday that they extended my domain renewal by 12 months free of charge. So all’s well that ends well there too.

So having done that, I propped Caliburn up on axle stands, removed the spare wheel (and checked it over) and then made a start on rustproofing the underneath.

As you can see, what I have done so far has come out quite well.

The wire brush on the angle grinder was far too savage so in the end I cleaned it off by hand, and the rustproofing paint went on quite easily, giving a lovely finish. I let in dry for a couple of hours and then put the spare wheel back and dropped Caliburn back off the axle stands.

I’ll be doing the rest of the floor bit by bit (there’s nothing cluttering the rest of the underside) and then going round to give it all a second coat. Once that’s been done and it’s all stabilised, I can underseal it all and that will keep it good for another 8 years.

When that had been done, I checked over Caliburn to make sure that there was enough oil, water and so on and then gave the back a really good clear-out.

While I was starting to load up Caliburn, I had spectators. The French Air Force came for a look around to see what I was up to. They’ve come round to check up on me a few times

But in Caliburn there’s now about half of the stuff that I need to take with me, and I’ll do all of the rest tomorrow before I go. It shouldn’t take too long, I hope, and then I can clear off.

I’m taking the horizontal axis wind turbine with me too. I’s never had a decent run out yet, and I reckon that parked up on the side of the autoroutes, or by the side of a big lake, it ought to do something, and this would seem to be a good time to try it.

-3

Monday 4th May 2015 – HAPPY STAR WARS DAY

And it’s another day when I’ve been heavily sidetracked and not done anything like what I intended to do.

A late night last night, and I was on my travels too. A Mercedes 25-seater bus, a 407-type of thing, came down the lane and when he reached the junction he didn’t know which way to go, so he travelled straight on, right through my hedge (which I don’t actually have of course).

Naturally, I was furious, and buttonholed the driver, and his response was “it’s okay. I’ll buy you a srink and it will be fine”. I told him that I expected much more than a drink for the damage that he had caused, but he ran away.

After breakfast, I did all of the paperwork for Orange Telecom and then went into Pionsat to post it off. On the way back, I gave Caliburn a really good wash and soak. And I can see that I’m going to have to give his bodywork some attention in the near future.

From there, I could carry on with cleaning and grouting the beichstuhl, and once I’d done that, I started to fit the top. And that took a huge amount of work – much more than you might think. It needed considerable modification.

Cecile hadn’t been able to contact the telephone company about my line, but at lunchtime I noticed that Liz was on line, so she gallantly took up the cudgel. And with Liz and I exchanging messages on here and Liz passing them on to the technician on the phone, we finally worked out that the problem was in the Livebox, That’s no surprise as it’s quite flaky and nothing like as good as the previous one.

However, about 10 minutes after the call ended, the Livebox gave a peculiar squeak and Lo and Behold, the phone line came back.

That was the queue to catch up on a few outstanding phone calls and having been kept hanging on the line by a Danish computer company for no less than TWO HOURS, I called it a day.

So tomorrow, I’ll have to change my plans and go to Montlucon for this blasted Livebox. I wasn’t anticipating having to waste my time doing that.

-1

Sunday 3rd May 2015 – TODAY WAS ANOTHER DAY …

… where I’ve hardly set foot outside the door. In fact, the only time that I went out (apart from doing the stats) was to rescue my coffee mug from Caliburn.

And as it was Sunday, I had the alarms switched off and so I slept through until 09:50 – and quite right too. It’s what Sundays are for;

I was on my travels last night and I had one of those rare (for me, at least, but not apparently so rare for other people who were on this study that we did) occasions where I wasn’t a participant but a spectator. All the events took place in the USA, in quite a wealthy area in a huge modern house inhabited by a banker. He and another banker were busy trying to undermine the bank of a rival company and I was watching them try to use all kinds of disreputable tactics, including implicating the children of this third banker, to achieve their aims.

The interesting thing about this was the viewpoint from which I was observing the events. At times, I was in the room with everyone, and ay other times I was high up in the sky with a kind of drone’s-eye view. And the view from this viewpoint included a splendid school of a circus school and in particular the school for the flying trapeze and my view from here was being continually interrupted by trapeze artists flying through my field of view.

Apart from that, I’ve been working on the radio programmes for Radio Anglais. I finished off the rock music programmes and then did the additional notes for the next five weeks of Radio Arverne radio programmes.

As well as that, I did some research into where I’ll be going in Germany next week

And that’s my lot really. And quite right too. I’m entitled to a day of rest. Tomorrow, it’s back to work.

-3

Saturday 2nd May 2015 – I WON’T HAVE MUCH …

… of my mind yet at this rate, the amount that I have been giving out to other people just recently. And today was the day that capped it all and they will remember me in the Orange telecom boutique in Montlucon for quite a long time.

For in there today, I have had customer service of the kind that makes Belgium look impressive.

It all started when I arrived at the place and there were two assistants on duty (on a Saturday morning!), of which one of them sat there all morning just tapping numbers into a telephone, making no attempt whatever to deal with the huge crowd of people in there.

I’ve never seen anything like this at all.

I had to wait there for a good hour before I was finally seen, and we started off as we meant to go on when the assistant refused to take back the television decoder that I have mysteriously been sent.
“You can do that at the other shop” she said.
“So why not here?”
“Because you do it at the other shop”.
Quite.

And then we finally had to deal with the issue of the contract for the new service. Despite my asking for hard copy stuff because I don’t have a printer, Orange still managed to send it to me by e-mail. So I needed them to print it out.

She could manage that fine, and so I suggested that I can fill in the papers then and there and that would be fine, but …

Ohhhhh Noooooo –
“you did this by internet”
“yes I did”
“so you need to post this off”
“why?”
“Because you sis it on line”
“But this is an Orange shop?”
“yes”
“So why can’t i just do it and hand it in here?”
“Because you did it on line”.

It was at that point that I exploded and, as I said, they won’t forget me in a hurry in there. It’s a long time since I’ve reacted like that. And even though it won’t solve anything, I felt so much better afterwards.

And I haven’t finished yet, by any means.

Apart from that, I’ve done the rounds of the usual shops in Montlucon and bought a pile of DVDs and also some new cotton bedding in the sale at Auchan – some nice dark brown cotton pillow cases and a quilt cover and a light brown cotton sheet.

I’ve bought the stuff in Brico Depot that I need to finish off the beichstuhl and the lights in the bedroom, and probably a few other things besides. There was a nice wooden toilet seat that will fit nicely on the beichstuhl too. But not the worktop – I’ve seen something that might provide a solution for this.

It was also a day for meeting people too. I had a coffee with Liz and Terry, whom I had met at the Orange boutique, and then bumped into Pascal, Marianne’s son, at leClerc. In the Auchan it was the turn of Michel, who used to be associated with the football club at Pionsat and he told me few things that answered several but by no means all) of what has been going on at the football club.

But no football this weekend, so tomorrow I might even have a blast at the radio programmes.

-5

Friday 1st May 2015 – IT’S THE FETE DE TRAVAIL …

… here in France today, and so everyone celebrates the Festival of Work by not working.

I’m included in that too – I had a day off and spent the morning in bed, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was on my travels too – running a taxi company with one of my old drivers and with a yound lad who was a chauffeur with us in the EU. We were quite busy and the older driver had a long-distance job to do, so when someone asked me to send a car to meet the bus traveling from Chester to Newcastle-under-Lime, I was worried about whether he would be back in time to do the job, but as it happened, the younger driver was free at the right moment so he made the pick-up.

And meanwhile, I was living with Marianne in an apartment somewhere – a bit salubrious and run-down, and I remember changing my bedroom to one that was much smaller and painted yellow. As the alarm clock was showing the wrong time, I was busy resetting it, and Marianne, who saw me do it, asked me if I was planning to leave.

After breakfast, I had something of a rest and relax, and then went round to Cecile’s. There were a few jobs that needed to be done there, so I attended that.

I’ve had some paperwork to do as well. I’m going into Montlucon tomorrow and I need a few papers signing so I want to make sure that I have all that I need.

-2

30th April 2015 – NOT ONLY DID I …

… finish the plasterboarding around where the beichstuhl will be, I have made further great progress today.

First though, I had a rummage around in the barn looking for plasterboard. I can see me being short of decent plasterboard for the shower room if I’m not careful, and around the beichstuhl will be a good place to use a few offcuts.

So once that had been done, I attacked the major task that needed to be done, and one which I am never happy when I have to do it.

Wallpapering is a job that I detest, as you know, but one that I am never happy tackling, much as I enjoy it, because I’m rubbish at it, is tiling.

However, supposing that it all sticks to shere it’s supposed to, it hasn’t come out too badly. Thats mainly because I managed to make the consistency of the paste just about right, but also to the Rawlplug electric tile-cutter that I bought for peanuts from a car boot sale years ago. It’s cheap and basic, and the design could be improved in a million ways, but it cuts tiles a thousand times better and a thousand tiles quicker that I could ever do and it was well worth every penny that I paid for it.

I had fun cutting the hole for the breather pipe, but luckily it’s near the edge of a tile so I cheated with a deft little technique with the tile cutter

Now I know that I have said on a million occasions that I hate white, so why the white tiles? The answer is that when I lived with Laurence and her daughter Roxanne, and Roxanne’s school was making mosaics, a friend of a friend gave me “some” waste tiles – “some” being enough to fill a Ford Escort estate. And there were plenty in there that were certainly serviceable, so I put them on one side for jobs such as this.

So that’s a nice job to finish off the week, as it’s Bank Holiday and so a day off tomorrow. No alarm, and no working either. I could do with a few more days like that.

-1

29th April 2015 – TODAY IS ANOTHER DAY …

… when I smell all coconutty.It was a much better day today and the temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load for the excess solar energy reached 64°C. Consequently, when I knocked off at 18:30 this evening, I put some hot water in a bucket, cooled it down with some cold water, and then had one of my patent “jug showers” in the corner of the verandah. And wasn’t that lovely?

So today, I’ve varnished all of the woodwork that I cut yesterday. So far it’s had two coats on either side but tomorrow morning it will have the third coat on the outer side.

That is, apart from the pine board that will be the front of the beichstuhl. That’s had three coats ion the other side, and nothing on the inside, and for the simple reason that I’m going to tile all of the inside of the beichstuhl. If I’m having the fittings for the composting toilet in there, it needs to have a wipe-down surface and varnished pine boards don’t work.

I’m even going to tile the floor in there too – something that I said that I wouldn’t do, but cleaning has to be the thing with a composting toilet. Consequently, I spent about half an hour going through all of the odds and ends of tiles to find enough for the job.

I’ve started to refit the plasterboard too, which of course I’ll need to do if I’m going to do the tiling.

In other news, I’ve made advances with the electrical system here. Having had a test-bed in the barn with the old internet Livebox running on 12-volt DC non-stop for 10 days, I’ve set up the new one in here and that’s now running on 12-volt DC instead of the mains and an adapter. It took ages to set up, but the situation was greatly eased when I remembered to switch on the Livebox.

But this is yet more progress around the house.

And on my travels during the night, I was joined by someone else with whom I wouldn’t aprticularly care to pss any real time. I was in my car and explaining to the aforementioned about MP3s in car radios with either memory sticks or SD cards – an invention which hadn’t, apparently, penetrated into the depths of darkest Crewe.

But all of these unwelcome people turning up in my nocturnal voyages. Whatever is this all about?

-3

Tuesday 28th April 2015 – I STARTED BACK …

… to work again today. And I felt a little better, especially as the weather wwas better. Mind you, during the night the temperature outside had dropped to 2.5°C and so I’m back in a jumper.

I’ve finished off cutting and shaping the shelf that will be the top of the beichstuhl – the composting toilet. The lids have been cut out and the “porthole” cut into the larger lid.

I’ve had to put quite a large amount of reinforcement under the lids as the pine isn’t as strong as I would like it to be. Having saved the offcuts from the heavy floorboards that I used as the under-layer in the shower room, I had a good supply of decent reinforcement too.

The hinges were not a success though. This is due mainly to the thin-ness of the pine shelving. Discreet, hidden shelving is not really possible and so I’m going to have to go for intrusive tee-hinges, which is something of a let-down.

However, a couple of things that I wish is that –
1) I wish that I would stop cutting bits off the top of my old Workmate every time I wield the circular saw.
2) whenever I cut myself with a tool, I wouldn’t bleed all over the clean pine shelving.

For tea, I made a courgette and lentil curry – enough for four days. And it took longer than planned because I had to dismantle the cooker. It seems that there was something growing in one of the jets. It’s amazing at just how much better the gas is burning now. It must have been blocking itself up for a couple of years.

-1

Monday 27th April 2015 – THE WEATHER …

… was much improved today. We only had 30.5mm of rain.

And after everything that I have said just recently about good nights’ sleeps, I was awake at 06:30 and I couldn’t go back to sleep. In the end I got up (before the alarm too) and vegetated on the sofa for a bit.

Mind you, I’d been on my travels again during the night. I can’t remember who I was with but she was tall and quite well-dressed in a flowing black skirt. We were watching the Grand National and had to cross the course in front of the horses (I had memories of suffragettes and being trampled to death by the King’s horse) and they obligingly split into two packs to have a better go at getting us.

After the horses passed, we climbed into the car to head around the course and into town but we must have missed the course and instead ended up straight in the town. Parking the car, we had to find a cafe so we walked through an old granite building, formerly a cinema but now let into little shop units, and as we passed down the stairs we commented that this would make a good little theatre area.

We were having a coffee on some tables at the side of the street and there in a cafe just a couple of doors down was someone who, in real life, I haven’t given any thought at all but who has appeared a few times just recently in my nocturnal voyages. So what is going on here then? This is the biggest mystery in all of this.

At Radio Tartasse, Violette forgot that we were coming so I had to phone her, and we ended up running quite late. But a coffee afterwards warmed us up and then I came home.

Back here, I’ve done nothing. The weather is cold and miserable and I ended up crashing out for a couple of hours. This led to a very late (like 17:00) lunch and so I’ve had no evening meal again.

I did manage to shin up the scaffolding in the middle of the torrential downpour in order to check on the guttering. Mind you, judging by the speed at which the water was cascading out of the overflow in the waterbutts, everything must have been working fine.

And indeed it was. Everything was nicely aligned and all of the water was flowing right where it ought to flow. I can glue it all together now whenever the weather allows.

Now I’m off to bed to see if I can summon up a better morale and more incentive for tomorrow.

-2

Sunday 27th April 2015 – I WAS ON MY TRAVELS …

… last night too.

If you’ve ever seen the film Smokey and the Bandit you’ll remember the scene where the car transporter rips the door off the Sheriff’s car. Now I was at a similar site in an area of similar vegetation – a flat-bottomed river valley with a river (as you might expect), a road, a strip of vegetation of about 100 metres width and then a steep slope upwards with a winding side-road going up to the top.

I was here with a small army – a hundred or so men – and we were the rearguard installed here to hold off an advancing army. Every now and again, a lorry would come down the hill, take away more of our personal possessions, until in the end we had just the clothes that we were wearing, and some weapons and that was that.

What surprised me about all of this was the silence. I’ve never been anywhere or in any situation where there was such a complete and utter silence as we waited for the enemy to show up.

All of this goes to show just how deep my sleeping is and how comfortable my new bed is.

My lie-in lasted until about 08:50, which was nothing like enough as far as I am concerned, but again, I must have had a good night’s sleep.

After breakfast, I made a start on writing the radio programmes for the next series of programmes but my heart wasn’t really in it and I didn’t last long. I ended up watching Bala and TNS on the laptop and doing some more editing of old radio shows to extract more soundbytes.

So that was my Sunday – apart from the rain of course. 33mm fell during the course of the day and as I said yesterday, the big benefit of having the bedroom is that I can’t hear the rain falling on the roof when I’m in bed, like I could when asleep on the sofa bed in the attic. That’s definitely an improvement.

-3

Saturday 25th April 2015 – IT RAINED DURING THE NIGHT

And here’s an added advantage about having a separate bedroom on the first floor, and that is that the rain cascading down on the roof doesn’t awaken me. And that’s certainly a bonus. I slept right through it, and as a result, the washing that I did the other day and which was hanging up outside had an unexpected rinse.

Now I’ll have to wait for another week or so for it to dry.

The 5mm of rain that we had filled up the water butts, and I do have to say that I’m catching much more water than I ever did before, since I repositioned the guttering the other day. That’s good news.

During the night I was on the move again – in a 2-door Cortina MkV saloon although while the main part of the body was MkV cortina, the roof was off a BMW 1602 or 2002 and the car didn’t ‘arf look weird. Being yellow and black, like my old taxis, didn’t help matters too much either.

I was in Crewe, driving up Market Street (before they closed it off) from Badger Avenue past the old Co-op place there and the left-hand lane was colsed off with crowd barriers, meaning that we were having some exciting incidents with cars and buses coming round the corner by the Grand Junction pub. There was a fire or something over on the left at the back of the Old Vine pub Right at the top of the hill (by now, in Stoke on Trent) I turned left and drove down a dead-end road onto an area of demolished houses and below me I could see a big factory with clouds of smoke billowing out of it. Chatting to some people, it turned out that the factory was burning a pile of wood and cardboard dummies as it didn’t need them and had no place to store them, and a group of people were heading off on foot down an old back-entry to go down to the factory for a closer look.

After another good night’s sleep and breakfast, I spent the day in the house and I’ve hardly been out. I’ve had a football day, watching Watford win promotion to the Premier leaguen by beating Brighton, and Barnet winning promotion to the Football League by beating Gateshead.

As well as that, I’ve been hacking bits more out of old radio programmes to make up some more soundbytes and I’m building up a nice library of them to slip into the radio programmes every now and again.

Now, I’m off for an early night and a long lie-in. I intend to make the most of my new bed and bedroom.

Friday 24th April 2015 – APART FROM HAVING …

… to leave my nice comfortable bed for obvious reasons during the night, I had the best night’s sleep that I have had for a century. It was wonderful.

I was out like a light, and was off on my travels too. I was at a Gothic cathedral somewhere in the UK auditioning singers to choose one to front a huge concert and trade show. And after having listened to all of them, I had the very disappointing task of announcing that there wasn’t one of them sufficiently good to be given the task. That was not a popular decision by any means.

From there, I went with Liz to the Trade Show. It was in a new all-glass exhibition hall and was on several floors, and packed to the gunwhales with people. We spent our time wandering around the mezzanine between the first and second floor looking at all the technology stands.

After breakfast I finished off the rock music radio programmes for the month of June, and then attacked the shower room. I’ve assembled the stud wall and screwed it into position. And I was right too – it’s much more solid than its predecessor.

I had to cut down a sheet of plasterboard while it was standing upright. I didn’t think that this would be very easy at all, to say the least, but clamping a long and heavy straight-edge in position where I wanted to cut – that simplified the task considerably and it’s not all that much more difficult than cutting it when its lying down on its back. It’s amazing how your technique adjusts itself when necessity is driving you forward.

So having screwed the first piece or two back on, I’ve made a start on constructing the new beichstuhl. This is going to be a permanent fixture instead of a “thunder box”, but the container can lift out and be taken downstairs to be emptied all the same.

I went to St Eloy for shopping this evening. There was no-one there whom I knew, and it was a comparatively cheap trip (apart from the fact that I treated myself to a couple of things in the “reduced” box).

And that is that. I’m off now for an early night in my lovely comfortable bed. It really is the business and I keep on sticking my head in there during the day, just to admire my handiwork.

That’s definitely a sign of contentment and, strange as it may seem to say it, I’m glad that I didn’t do it earlier as my technique a couple of years ago was nothing like what it is now. This is one of the reasons why I’ve dismantled the shower room and started again, and I do wish that I could restart the attic from scratch. Compared to the bedroom, the attic is something of a shambles.

I would love to do it all again.

-1

Thursday 23rd April 2015 – SO, HOW WAS IT?

My first night in my new bedroom, in my new bed with my new bedding?

The answer was that it was delicious.

It took me a while to settle in there. There was something of a smell of rubber from the new pillows and that took some getting used to, and then I found it difficult to find a position in which I was comfortable, but once I was in, I was away and slept right through until 09:00 – one of the best nights’ sleeps that I have ever had.

And I deserved it too. It was worth all of the expense and the hard work.

I managed eventually to crawl out of bed and after breakfast, I had – would you believe – a day off! Well, not quite a day off because I did a pile of radio stuff such as preparing another live concert for the rock programmes and also clipping bits out of old radio programmes so that I can make little insets to run within the rock programmes.

I’ve also done another machine of washing. This means that the washing is almost up-to-date now. There’s just a couple of items left to do but I’ll do this when I organise some clean clothes at the weekend.

I went and had another 15 minutes crashed out on the bed this evening and it was just as comfortable as in the night.

The one thing that I do appreciate about it all is that when I feel tired I can go to bed. There’s none of this 10 minutes or so tidying the sofa and making up the bed, or putting all of the bedding away in the morning. That’s the best thing about all of this.

-3

Wednesday 22nd April 2015 – HAVE A GUESS …

… where I’ll be sleeping tonight!

We now have acquired a mattress (which cost more than everything else in the bedroom combined), a new sheet, new pillows, new quilt, new mattress cover, new sheet and new pillowcases. And I shall be in there in a very short space of time.

I’ve even had a shower (5 litres of hot water at 69°C out of the home-made immersion heater that I use as a dump load for the excess solar energy and poured into the solar shower at 32°C and the result was gorgeous) and a shave too. I’ll be nice and clean in there.

And no alarm either. I’ll be sleeping in there until I awake and I don’t care if it’s not until lunchtime either.

Many thanks to Terry who helped me bring the mattress into the bedroom. It had to come in through the window and that was something to which I was not looking forward. But with Terry, we had done it in 2 minutes, and then spent two hours chatting and drinking coffee.

And that reminds me – talking of coffee – I had the percolator running again – and twice too. Once for me at lunchtime and once when Terry came round. The weather was such that I could certainly spare the electricity.

This morning, I had another go with the weedkiller and then I used the wood treatment to cover the stud wall that I had built the other day. At least – I’ve not built the wall but everything is cut and shaped, and it was the pieces that I covered in wood treatment.

So I’m off to bed in a minute, and tomorrow I’ll let you know how the bed is.

-2

EPIC HALL

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