Category Archives: Eric Hall

Saturday 21st March 2015 – THE FIRST DAY OF SPRING …

… although you xould never have guessed it from the weather. We’ve had a hanging cloud on the mountain all day, it’s been pouring down with rain and I’ve had almost no solar energy. Consequently I’ve disconnected the fridge

It hasn’t stopped me from working though. Yes, I’m at it again, working once more on a Saturday morning.

I’ll tell yuo how good that little machine of Simon’s is, because it took me two hours to fit the final three runs of floorboarding using a hammer and nails. There’s not enough room to use the machine on the final three runs. To fit the other 35 runs, it took just five and a half hours, so you can see exactly what I mean.

Eventually, I finished it and all that remains to be done (the big stuff I mean) is the varnishing, the skirting board and the glass panel over the door. This is a dark house so you need as much light as possible filtering around.

When I had finished that, I went and did my shopping and then came home to chill out.

Now if anyone had said that FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI would draw against Aulnat, anyone at the club would have taken that without even kicking off. And when I saw that 5 of the players on the field were regulars from the 2nd XI in the 4th Division, then even more so.

But drawing 2-2 after being 2-0 up and having a 3rd goal disallowed under controversial circumstances has to count as 2 points thrown away rather than 1 point gained. To make matters worse, the equalising goal was really rubbing salt into the wound. Cedric, playing at centre-half, clears an attack by hoofing the ball out into touch, but the ball cannons off the back of one of his own players, rebounding right into the path of an unmarked Aulnat player standing in front of goal.

That just about sums up FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s luck as far as I am concerned. It’s a tragedy.

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Friday 20th March 2015 – MANY THANKS …

… to Simon for lending me his floorboard nailer.

I’ve had some exciting and interesting tools here while I’ve been doing work but I’ve never had anything quite like this. Floorboarding has never been so easy and had I not run out of floorboarding (there are a few more packs in Caliburn) I might well have finished it today.

The first couple of pieces needed careful shaping and it took a while to align them, but once they were in place the rest followed quickly. And once I’d worked out the best way to employ the machine then it went even better.

But as I said, I ran out of wood here and so I called it a day – at 18:50 as it happened so I’d already put in a good day’s work. And apart from taking the stats I haven’t been outside at all. And that’s not a surprise because the weather has been awful today – pouring down with rain all day.

I’ve not even been to the shops (something that I usually do on a Friday evening). I’ll have to do that tomorrow – after I’ve done the flooring because I’m going to have another hour or so working on the floor, despite it being a weekend.

I was on my travels again last night and, interestingly, it was a continuation of a voyage that I had made a short while ago (which is the point that this person doing this experiment was trying to prove). I was back on that coach journey where that family from round here were passengers. I’d gone to bed and I sensed that I was not alone, looking up from under my eyelids, but still pretending to be asleep, I saw the girl from this family. She had come into my room. When I gave a sign of life, she shuffled off out again quickly.

This prompted me to go to look for her to find out what was going on, and that wasn’t going to be too difficult as the hotel rooms had windows facing the corridor, rather like the older part of our school, which amazed me from a privacy point of view, although the windows were frosted glass.

From ere I found myself working the office where Nerina was working, although the bosses put us to work in different rooms to keep us apart. I spent a lot of time chatting to a girl who worked there, and I stayed there until late evening to miss the rush hour traffic. In my car, which was a white Cortina mkIV estate with the spare wheel in a holder on the left-hand side of the tailgate, I saw the girl with whom I’d been working so I waved at her to make sure that she would see me and then go back to the office to tell everyone what a big car I had.

This was a quite exciting voyage, I have to say that, and it went on for ever. I wonder how it is sometimes that I find time to sleep. But I do wish that my real life was as exciting as what goes on when I’m deep in the arms of Morpheus.

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Thursday 19th March 2015 – YOU MAY NOT BELIEVE THIS, BUT ….

… the bedroom is empty of everything apart from a set of steps and the tools that I need to lay the flooring.

Everything that I don’t need for the foreseeable future is now downstairs on the ground floor, as are all of the plasterboard offcuts. The things that I don’t need right now but which I’ll be requiring in early course are now stacked up on the stairs so I’m bound to trip up over them and break my neck before I’m much older.

That left three sheets of plasterboard and that was something that I was not looking forward too. They were too big to go down the stairs, my idea of a trapdoor didn’t work, and there was a scaffolding outside the window that I would have to dismantle.

One sheet was easy to deal with. This was the waterproof plasterboard for the shower room. I needed two full-lenght strips to finish off in there so by the time I’d cut them off, that left me with a full-length strip about 35cms wide and I could pass that down the stairs with no difficulty.

The second sheet was one of those that I bought years ago, one with the 40mm of insulation backing. That however was cracked across its width roughly halfway down so I reckoned that I may as well complete the damage. The tow halves of that went down the stairs with some degree of difficulty, but much less difficulty than dismantling the scaffolding.

This left just one sheet. And I thought to myself “sod this for a game of soldiers. I’m not dismantling the scaffolding for this” and I cut that in half too.

That resolved all of the issues at a stroke (of the plasterboard knife).

This gave me just enough time to sweep out the bedroom prior to lunch. And it does look nice in there.

After lunch I went round to Cecile’s. She and her mum are leaving tomorrow and she needed help to load up her car and to do a few other things too. It gave me an opportunity to rescue the floorboards that I had left there when I needed to unload Caliburn in a hurry a couple of years ago.

On the way back, I went to see Simon. He has a machine for fitting floorboards and he had offered to lend it to me. So I went to pick it up. It’s similar to a stapler, with an automatic magazine for the nails. You have to hit the piston with a heavy mallet to get it to work, and if you have the machine in the correct place, it punches lost-head 3-inch nails right through.

I forget how many times I’ve clouted myself with a hammer fitting floorboards, and if this maching works as well as it looks, I’ll have this floor done in no time.

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Wednesday 18th March 2015 – WE NOW HAVE …

… door handles, a door latch and even locks and kets on our door now.

And not only that, the bottom has been trimmed so that it opens and closes correcclty, and the battens have been fitted to the door frame to prevent the door from going through the frame.

Fitting the lock took longer than I thought that it would, but then again, if you want anything doing, you may as well do it correctly. And it was done so “correctly” too that the 5mm pilot drill that I used to drill through the door to site the hole in the latch where the handle will fit, that went right through without touching the sides and for the keyholes, I was about 2mm out of position.

Even the through-bolts for the door plates, the upper one was spot-on and the lower one was 2mm out too.

You can’t get much better than all of that.

The question of battens was not so simple though. The distance between the doorplate and the frame is only 20mm so using a 27mm lath was clearly out of the question. One alternative was to trim off a length from an 18mm pine plank, but rummaging around in the barn I found a 4m length of 18×40 lath left over from when I built the verandah, and that did the business perfecrly. A run-over with the belt sander cleaned that up really nicely.

And while I was rummaging around in the barn, I found something that I knew that I had and which I didn’t have a clue where I had put them – half a dozen 60cm pine planks. Propped up against the central beam in the barn, hidden behing two chipboard and one OSB boards about which I had also forgotten.

I’ve made a start on emptying out the bedroom now. That’s not going to be quite so easy as I have nowhere to put anything. I think that maybe half a day in the barn emptying out a space where I can put the wood offcuts, the electrical conduit and the insulation – that will make a huge amount of space.

But my door does look nice and I’m really happy with that.

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Tuesday 17th March 2015 – THIS IS PROGRESS

Here we have a door, now hanging nicely in the doorframe of the bedroom.

This morning I removed all of the masking tape and then wired up all of the electrical sockets in the bedroom (and that was something that took much longer than I anticipated too).

No bread at lunchtime, so I went into Pionsat to see the boulangère but it seems that they are exceptionally closed for the week. So that was that – I ended up having to go to the Intermarché.

And so after lunch, I attacked the door. I had to cut off about 20mm off one side to make it fit, and then I cut the lets in for the hinges. Much to my surprise, the door fotted perfectly for most of its length and width, but it was catching in places where the frame on the wall seems to be bowed.

And that was where the new belt sander fitted in. It earned its keep here, that’s for sure, sanding off where the door was tight. And in position too – it’s not that easy taking he door off, lying it flat on a surface, marking it off and then cutting off the excess. The belt sander did it in seconds.

I still had enough time to start on fitting the door lock. That’s 10mm wide and 60mm deep and so with the aid of an auger, I drilled into the door jamb as necessary. Tomorrow, I’l chisel it out to fit the lock and then drill through for the handle and key.

I’ll also fit the lock plate on the door frame, and then fit the battens to stop the door pushing through.

When that’s done, I can start to empty the room ready to do the flooring.

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Monday 16th March 2015 – I’VE FINISHED …

… painting the walls of the bedroom today. At least, I’ve done all that I intend to do.

The plasterboard joints wre still showing through the second coat that I did on Saturday morning, and so that called for a third coat. I had to put some more white paint into the mix to make sure that I had enough paint, and now the colour is too light. Not only that, it’s rather patchy too and, even worse, you can still see the plasterboard joints.

Ahhh well, never mind.

I had a phone call from Cecile and that ended up with me being sidetracked for half an hour or so. Nevertheless, I had finished the painting by 17:00 and that gave me time to start the emptying of Caliburn.

That took about an hour and a half and there’s still a plie of stuff left in there for which I can’t find room at the moment. But it’s a long time since Caliburn has been this empty.

And I was right about some tins of kidney beans. I distincly remember buying some but you will remember that I couldn’t find them. Anyway, once I’d emptied Caliburn I found an IKEA bag with the missing articles – together with some Soya desserts, dated 22 December 2014. They went in the bin.

I had another chat with Cecile afterwards and then sat down to watch a film. Tonight’s film was the whimsical John Wayne comedy McLintock!.

A delightful film, even if the picture quality is very poor – due to the fact that it’s out of copyright and so the original studio copies have long been lost. All that remain are second- and third-hand copies, and we are lucky to have those.

It’s another one of these John Wayne films where everyone is intent on having a good time, on screen as well as off-screen, and the fight scene is one of the inspirations for the fight in Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles.

It’s full of all kinds of memorable quotes, but you’ll need to buy the film to listen to them for yourself. Make sure you buy the full (122 minute) version and not the cut-down 90-minute TV edition, which cuts out half the plot, and don’t complain about the wretched quality because it’s all that is available.

For tea, I made another mega-curry of green pepper and lentils. There’s enough for three more days too which is good. It means that I don’t have to exert myself so much for the rest of the week.

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Sunday 15th March 2015 – WHAT A NICE MORNING!

I woke up this morning at 07:00, but sod that for a game of soldiers. I turned over and went back to sleep and that was that until 10:00. That’s much more like it on a Sunday.

And while I was deep in the arms of Morpheus I was on my travels again. Just across the Combrailles in fact to the house of a woman who lives near here, where I’d been invited for a party. The guests here were all women and they were so busy doing things that they totally ignored me, making me wonder why i’d been invited in the first place.

A nice leisurely breakfast and a film on the DVD player, and then I had a good wash and shave and hung out the damp washing, seeing as how it was such a nice morning. Cold though – it had been -2°C here during the night.

Pionsat’s 2nd XI was playing at Le Quartier today and lost 1-0. Most unfair, seeing as how they had the lion’s share of the play, missed a penalty, hit the bar and had about a dozen good chances. What made it worse was that they had just 9 players. With a full team out here today, they would have won this match at a canter.

But there’s something clearly not right at the club, the way that they keep on losing players and never seem to be able to sign any repacements. I smell a rat – there’s definitely something going on that I don’t know about and no-one seems to want to discuss it. Someone is clearly upsetting everyone else there and that can’t ever be right.

Back here, I had a leisurely evening too. I deserve it after working on a Saturday morning yesterday. A good day of rest will do me good, and it’s back to work tomorrow.

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Saturday 14th March 2015 – WHAT? ME?

Working on the house on a Saturday morning?

Yes, make a note of this because it doesn’t happen every week, or every year come to that. But running behind, and having lost half a day on Thursday, I need to catch up otherwise i’m going to be here for ever.

But it wasn’t an early start by any means.

I woke up this morning to a crash on the roof as if the chimney had blown off. But what had happened was that a pile of snow had slid off the roof light onto the tiles. Yes, we had a pile of snow during the night and it was cold in here.

So that was enough for me. Never mind the alarm, I turned over and went back to sleep where I remained until 10:00.

After breakfast, I went downstairs and finished off the second coat of paint on the wall in the bedroom. And as I say it myself, it doesn’t look too bad at all, although a third coat would help matters greatly.

Cecile came round in the late afternoon and stayed for a good two hours while she sorted out a few things. And now I’m back up here with the fire on to keep warm. No footy tonight so I’m staying in.

Tomorrow, Pionsat’s 2nd XI are playing just down the road at le Quartier. I’ll have a run out around there.

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Friday 13th March 2015 – I HAD A …

… delivery this morning. Terry came round.

I have a patch of uneven ground underneath the window of the ground floor outside. I intend to build a stone wall to a level and then infill with all of the brick ends and rubble that is hangong around here and then pave it over to make a little terrace.

The crazy paving is much cheaper if you buy it by the pallet rather than by the square metre, and Terry wanted half a load for a job he’s doing. It made sense to me to buy the other half and keep it here for a year or so until I need it.

Consequently I didn’t start on the painting of the bedroom until about 11:30, but by 14:20 I’d finished it all. It’s not very good though as it’s thin and patchy. It’s not spreading too well.

After my lunch break (and a little siesta) I went back out and put the second coat on the paintwork that I had done yesterday. As it looks as if I’m going to have to put three coats on, I thinnned it out with another 2 litres of white paint and it now looks like a lovely custard colour.

I went down to Pionsat for the shopping this evening, and on the way back I had to call at Rob and Nicolette’s. It seems that, for some reason best known to herself, the boulangère left my bread there instead of at my house.

Not sure what’s happening there.

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Thursday 12th March 2015 – I MADE THE BEST EVER …

… fire that I have ever made at Cecile’s today. It burned beutifully and did everything that it was supposed to do. I only wish that it had burned like that during the bitter winter of 2013.

Mind you, it wasn’t easy.

I lit the fire as soon as I went round there, and promptly filled the house with a thick oily smoke. Nothing was coming out of the chimney at all.

I had to let the fire burn itself out (by which time Cecile and her mother had arrived) and then I dismantled the chimney pipes. And no-one was more surprised than me when, after much ramming, prodding and poking, an enormous dead bird fell out. It really was a monster bird and he was well-wedged in the chimney. I’ve no idea how come he came to be stuck there.

Reassembling the chimney pipes was much more complicated, and we ended up moving the stove so that the pipes lined up better. And it was during this manoeuvre that I was drowned in a load of soot (wo much for my gorgeous heated shower in the verandah this lunchtime).

It turns out that with the dead bird blocking the chimney, the soot had falled into the trap and this was blocked solid. Chiseling it all out, I noticed that was a small vent in the trap, presumably to provide an updraught for lifting the smoke up. Unblocking and cleaning the chimney pipes solved many of the problems, but I reckon that it was cleaning out the vent in the trap that gave it the finishing touch.

Yes, the best fire that I have ever seen out there at La Batisse.

So what was I up to this morning then?

I’ve started to put the paint on the wall this morning. Everywhere that I papered on Tuesday now has the first coat of paint.

It’s lighter than the paint colour on the landing. That’s because I found another 5-litre tub of white paint, so I mixed three litres of that into the yellow. It looks much better now and I can’t wait to see it with the second coat on.

I had enough time to go round and mask off the rest of the bedroom. That’s a task well-done and so I can crack on with the rest of the first coat tomorrow

And then I had my lovely shower.

I also found time to do a machine-load of washing at Cecile’s, for which I’m grateful.

And it is nice to see Cecile and her mum again after all of this time.

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Wednesday 11th March 2015 – I’VE FINISHED …

… wallpapering the bedroom.

In fact, it didn’t take all that long. I was late going out to work but I made up for that by going for a late lunch. And in that four hours, I had put 6 drops of paper on the wall. One of them was complicated in that it had to be cut specially to go aroud the window, and abother one needed a couple of pattress holes cut in iit.

I crashed out at lunchtime – and I don’t mean a simple doze but a real crash and I was out for about an hour and a half. But again, I caught up by working late.

I put the final drops on after lunch – one full drop needed a couple of pattress holes cut in it, and the second drop needed cutting down in the width. But I’d left a bit on the second wall so that I could start the third wall in a corner, and the cut-off width went in there quite nicely with a littl trimming down.

To finish off, I masked off around where I’d wallpapered on Tuesday, so that I can make a good start on painting that tomorrow. And I’ll see how I get on with that before I have to go and warm up Cecile’s house?

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Tuesday 10th March 2015 – I’VE MADE A START …

… on the wallpapering today.

This morning, I spent a great deal of time tidying up in the bedroom, sweeping up all of the sawdust and plaster dust and moving a pile of stuff around. I’ve filled four bin liners of rubbish and there’s probably one or two more as well to go. Unfortunately the place doesn’t look much emptier, it just looks different and I’m still worrying where I’m going to put everything. The aim was to make a pathway all around the three walls that need wallpapering, so that I can move the scaffolding around.

And I’m glad that I’ve decided to put a new layer of flooring in, because some of the existing flooring is looking very creaky indeed.

Once that had been done, I made a start on the wallpapering. I’m using this fibreglass wallpaper that covers all known imperfections (except mine of course) and I’ve put 5 drops onto the wall, meaning that one wall of the three is finished completely. Tomorrow I can finish off and then on Thursday, depending upon how I’m fixed for time, I can put the first coat of paint on.

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Monday 9th March 2015 – I’VE FINISHED …

… the wardrobe.

Well, I haven’t actually. It still needs varnishing, the hardware finishing off and a couple of the doors sanding down so that they can close properly. However, all of the woodwork is finished at long last.

The upper fascia panel isn’t particularly pretty, but with all irregular heights and having to carve around the ceiling beams, I’m not sure how else I could have done it. I suppose that I could have fitted a false ceiling as I’m planning to do with the ground floor, but I hadn’t thought of that when I started on the bedroom.

This has now taken me on to cleaning up and tidying ready to start the wallpapering. And I hate tidying up as you all kno. I can’t remember which Harry Potter film it was where Dumbledore had the magic wand that cleaned up that house where the timid teacher was living, but I would give all that I own and more to to have one of those.

But as I expected anyway, there isn’t enough room on the ground floor to put everything that I’ll be taking downstairs. This is going to become quite complicated before I go much further.

I was late starting because, as you know, I had to go with Terry to the quarry to fetch some sand. It was a nice morning out anyway because the sun was shining. However it clouded over in the afternoon and I think that the summer might have gone.

And for tea? Cooking in the verandah again I made one of my huge aubergine and kidney bean whatsist – enough to keep me going for four days. The next three days, I can warm up the food in here.

And tomorrow? I’ll be finishing off the tidying up and then hopefully starting on the wallpapering.

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Sunday 8th March 2015 – WHAT A DAY!

I should have gone to Clermont Ferrand this afternoon for the football. Instead, I stayed in.

In fact, I’ve been in all day and the only time that I’ve set foot outside the door was to take the stats. Such was my day.

I had a nice lie-in though. I was awake at 08:30 but badger that for a game of soldiers. I turned over and went back to sleep. I did the same at 09:20 too and it was in fact 10:15 when I finally heaved myself out of my stinking pit. And that was for reasons totally unconnected with being awake too, as any male of round about my age will tell you.

So after breakfast I spent a couple of hours working on my website. And since then I’ve done absolutely zilch. It’s been a nice relaxing day.

For tea tonight, I had the usual pizza. And it was the first time since I don’t know when that I used the oven in the verandah. As you know I’ve been cooking on the woodstove or else on the camping gas container.

And tomorrow morning I have to go and help Terry with a load of sand.

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Saturday 7th March 2015 – THE EXPERIMENT …

… of leaving the fridge running through the night worked just fine. The voltage in the batteries dropped to a minimum of 12.47 volts, which is quite acceptable and so it will have another run-out tonight.

As I said yesterday, leaving it running for 24 hours per day is something that I do from about mid-May to mid-October. I’ve never had it running 24 hours so early in the year.

It was nice to have freezing cold orange juice, soya milk and soya yoghurt for breakfast. That was well-worth waiting for. And after breakfast I cracked on with the scripts for Radio Anglais. I’ve ended up doing 5 weeks for our recording session at the end of the month because, believe it or not, my services as a long-term live-in carer for the sick might once more be in demand, if an e-mail that I’ve received recently is anything to go by.

I also found time to tidy up in here and on the ground floor a little, and to empty and clean out the beichstuhl. Such exciting jobs that I have to do these days.

Cecile rang up too. Apparently she’s coming back on Thursday for a couple of days, so on Thursday I’ll be spending the afternoon away from here warming up her house for her.

And the football season has restarted after the winter break. Pionsat’s 2nd XI were playing Charensat and ran out 4-1 winners. And that despite playing with just 10 men. Yann, who has been out injured for about three years and has just made two or three 10-minute cameo appearances during that time, played a full match. Clearly not yet match-fit, still nevertheless it was good to see him play the full 90 minutes.

There was a new player too. Almost as old as I am and … errr … somewhat larger than I am. I was told that he had played for the club years ago but had come out of retirement to have another run-round. And despite his lack of match-fitness, it was quite evident from some of his touches that he had played at a much higher level than the Puy-de-Dome league Division 4. He’ll be an asset to the club when he finds his feet again.

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EPIC HALL

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