Category Archives: Eric Hall

Saturday 13th October 2012 – I DIDN’T MANAGE …

… my quiet day at home today. It all went wrong from the very beginning.

The boulangère forgot to come this morning so in one swell foop I’ve gone from having far too much bread to not having enough.

That prompted a quick visit into Pionsat to stock up with bread, and to hope that the boulangère remembers me on Tuesday

Anyway, despite being considerably sidetracked all throughout today what with one thing and another, I managed to finish the Additional Notes for the radio programmes for the month of November.

With the Rock Programme notes already completed, I just need to choose a main text for the November programmes. There’s probably enough in the pipeline already actually but it’s as well to be sure. And when that’s completed I can start writing the Christmas Special

As there was no football tonight, I had a little pause and watched a football match on the computer. Now, Oldham Athletic? Isn’t that another good oxymoron? It’s almost as good as British Intelligence or Government Service.

However, not to be outdone, surfing the internet I discovered that the football in the Creuse is organised slightly differently than in the Auvergne, and there are league matches this weekend, not Cup matches.

And if that wasn’t enough, Auzance’s 2nd XI was at home against Dontreix-Chard in the 3rd Division.

It’s probably 15 years since I’ve been to Auzances and seeing as I think that I should get out more often (a sentiment with which many regular readers of this rubbish will agree) I set off into the unknown.

Quite a charming stadium in a nice urban setting, in what looked as if it might at one time have been an old quarry.

But the match itself was total rubbish. Dontreix-Chard were awful, but Auzances were even worse.

Even FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 3rd Xi could have taken on both of these teams simultaneously and held their own – and everyone else’s too – quite comfortably, I reckon.

4-2 it finished to Dontreix, and the big mystery was how come Dontreix-Chard managed to let Auzances score twice.

Dontreix-Chard’s fourth goal was a calamity that came out of absolutely nowhere.

3-2 down in the dying minutes and having Dontreix-Chard (surprisingly) under the cosh, Auzances win a corner. It’s everyone forward, and even the Auzances goalkeeper decides to go up.

However, as he is about three-quarters of the way upfield, his team-mates take the kick, not having seen him advancing.

The Dontreix players have seen him though, and when they win possession it’s the long ball right upfield over the Auzances keeper’s head, and Goodnight Vienna.

The Auzances keeper throws down his gloves and storms off the field – “I’m not playing with you guys any more”. Reminded me of Roxanne at Primary School when she was about 7 or 8.

There’s a pizzeria right next to the ground, and so I treated myself to a take-away – second weekend in succession after all of these years of doing without. After all, it’s a 35-minute drive back home and who feels like cooking at 22:45?

And a nice pizza it was too, especially the spicy oil dressing

But never mind the Combrailles – how about the Creuse for The Land That Time Forgot? On the D988 out of Pionsat through St Hilaire and St Maurice près Pionsat, it’s a nice two-lane blacktop with clear white lines – a reasonably fast road considering the terrain.

But cross over the border into the Creuze – it’s like the lane up to my house from the bottom road. Narrow, grey gravel, no centre markings, potholes and patches.

It’s a whole world of difference. It’s just like turning the clock back 25 years, which is astonishing considering that here in the Combrailles we are 100 years behind the times.

I forgot to mention that I put out the washing today to let it dry off, and this time I did bring it in before I went out. What has reminded me of this is that it has just this second started to rain.

-4

Friday 12th October 2012 – A RIGHT PICKLE!

I’ve been pickling today, and it looks as if I shall be eating beetroot for the next 100 years, with the amount that Rosemary and I bottled today.

And that tarragon-flavoured white vinegar didn’t half smell nice. By the time that we had added all of the spices to the vinegar and boiled it up, Rosemary’s kitchen smelt like a Babylonian boozer’s bathroom.

Still, it’s all done now.

We also shelled all of the peas and beans and I ended up with two jars of those. A few of them have chitted and so I’m going to try them out as winter plants under one of my patented plastic-bottle cloches. It might be worth a try.

Another thing that we did was to sort out the garlic and onions. I have enough garlic to last me all my life, I reckon, but not as many onions as I wanted.

I’ve no idea what happened to the shallots though – I had plenty of those a few weeks ago but I couldn’t find any the other day.

So first thing in the morning I went off to St Eloy-les-Mines. Firstly, to buy a recharge for the mobile phone, but the Post Office is closed for renovations for a few weeks so that was that.

Secondly I went to the dechetterie to dump all of the rubbish, but they are on winter hours so the blasted place was closed this morning.

After doing the weekly shopping though (seeing as I’m out, I’ll stay out and it’ll save me a trip tomorrow) I nipped off to Rosemary’s for the pickling session.

On the way back this evening, I “picked up a hitcher, a prisoner on the white lines of the freeway” to quote Joni Mitchell.

Only from Menat to St Eloy-les-Mines, but in my youth I spent lots of time hitch-hiking around the UK and France and I was always grateful for the ride, and so it’s nice to repay the debts that I owe.

I made it to the dechetterie and emptied a van-load of rubbish, mostly papers and glass bottles, and enquiries revealed that it is indeed true – if you go to the dechetterie during opening hours but during office hours, you can indeed help yourself to compost, which is freely available

So Saturday I’ll be having a working day – doing the radio programmes. I’m not going out at all, especially as there is not footy anywhere at all around here tomorrow.

-2

Thursday 11th October 2012 – WHAT A DAY!

Someone told me that this was supposed to be the best day of the week.

Well, I suppose that if you were a duck, then they would have been right. It rained from morning until evening, with just two little breaks of about half an hour.

And did I say rain?

Yes, 11mm of rain has fallen today. It’s now been 5 consecutive days that it’s rained now.

This morning, I did the usual work on the website but before lunch went and dug up the beetroot and picked the beans and peas. They are all dry and rattling around in their pods after the summer that we had, and there are tons of beetroot too

After lunch, I did what I said that I would do, and emptied the verandah.

Well, I didn’t. I couldn’t face doing that, wuss that I am.

But all of the paper is out (and I needed the wheelbarrow to move it, there was so much that it was far too heavy to lift) and all of the glass jars, pots and the like have gone too.

Some jars and pots I’ve kept – others have gone into Caliburn to be dropped at the dechetterie tomorrow and once I take down the washing (if it ever will dry, of course) I’ll be able to move around in there.

That will be progress.

I also carried on moving stuff off the hard-standing.

It’s not like me to be out there in rain gear so close to knocking-off time but I wanted to sort out the glass before I go to the dechetterie tomorrow. There are tons of broken bits that need taking.

Looks as if I’ll be busy tomorrow then.

-2

Wednesday 10th October 2012 – AND SO AFTER …

… a really early night I was awoken at 05:00 by a torrential rainstorm.

Ahh well – I just can’t win.

Anyway we had more of the same this morning, but even so, I had a little job to do outside.

There are two banks of solar panels on the barn – one that keeps the good batteries in charge, powered by the solar panels on the end wall of the barn, and the other one which powers everything in there, powered by the solar panels on the roof of the Luton Transit.

That second bank uses some second-hand batteries that I bought in 2004 and which have done sterling service, but recently they have been sliding away into oblivion – not that I’m surprised. I don’t have a clue how old they are

I’ve bought some huge batteries for the house, and the plan is to move the ones currently in the house to replace those that are packing up.

Anyway, what with one thing and another I’m a long way from that point yet, and the batteries in the barn have now finally given up the ghost – they were showing 6.53 volts this morning.

However, there’s another lot of batteries around here – a job lot that I bought for peanuts in 2008 and which never seemed to do what they were supposed to do, and so I wrote them off.

But having a ferret around with a voltmeter, there were three that were still showing 10 volts, which, considering that they have had no charge at all since 2009, is pretty good going, I reckon.

Anyway, while 10 volts isn’t much to write home about, it’s far, far better than 6.53 volts so I changed the batteries over and I now have those three working the barn.

With the charge that they had received during the afternoon, I noticed tonight at 22:00 that the batteries were registering 10.55 volts. I’ll be curious to see what they drop down to in the early morning (the power meter has a “minimum volts” recorder).

I’ll be even more interested to see what they will be at tomorrow night after a full day’s charge.

Later on, I carried on clearing the hardstanding and doing a few running repairs on stuff that was on there and needing attention.

That went on until about 18:00 when we had the downpour to end all downpours (altogether, 10mm fell today) and so I decamped to the barn where, under the light of the LED strip lights, that function impressively well at 10.55 volts, I did some tidying up, just for a change.

Having tripped over something on the floor in the verandah this evening and dropped a load of rice everywhere, I’ve decided that tomorrow I’ll strip out the verandah.

Tons of stuff in there that I don’t need, and seeing as I’ll be on my travels on Friday I can sling it all in Caliburn tomorrow and drop it off at the dechetterie while I’m out.

-2

Tuesday 9th October 2012 – I’M TRYING …

… to think what I did today.

And it took me a while to do that. Thinking is not my strong point, especially at this time of night.

One thing that I have done is to put my back out. I had to move 8 batteries today – 200 amp-hour ones and each one weighing 60kgs. They are in boxes so I couldn’t get at the handles, and lifting them off the ground into the wheelbarrow was not a good idea.

An even worse idea was taking them out of the wheelbarrow and stacking them in the barn., but I’m glad that I did fix the wheelbarrow the other day otherwise I would have been in real difficulties.

This morning was exciting though. Someone has ordered a pile of photos from me.

A few years ago, knowing that a famous football ground in North Wales was going to be demolished, I wandered around there photographing everything that there was to photograph.

And sure enough, as I expected, someone has decided to write a book about the history of the ground and has seen my photos on the internet. Consequently, I spent all morning editing and enhancing the images.

This afternoon, apart from moving the batteries, I moved a few other things too, but a torrential rainstorm, as predicted, put a stop to that.

Anyway, that gave me the opportunity to finish painting the walls of the cupboard on the 1st floor and that’s now looking quite good.

Fitting the flooring should take about an hour or so, and then I need to make the shelves. That will be a big boost to everything around here when that is finished.

-3

Monday 8th October 2012 – I HAD A LATE …

… start going outside to work today. In fact, it wasn’t until 16:00 that I set foot into the drizzle.

What I had been doing was much more exciting than that. I sat down and wrote out the web page for yesterday’s match between FC Pionsat St Hilaire and AS Cellule.

With it being a highly controversial match with two extremely controversial incidents, both of which called for a fair amount of comment from Yours Truly, I needed to be pretty careful about what I wrote.

Even more so as these days you can receive 12 weeks in prison for telling a joke on Facebook (I’m glad I no longer live in the UK) and I sometimes have a tendency to let my flow of enthusiasm overwhelm my discretion.

Back in Ye Olde Days, I always used to let Liz see anything controversial as she had the ability to read things objectively rather than emotionally – something that surprisingly few people have the ability to do these days – but of course that is no longer possible.

Luckily, Krys was on line and so after I finished it, she had a read and then we had something of a chat about it – hence the late start outside.

With the rain showers holding up work outside, it gave me time to reflect and I made a decision about the hard-standing.

As you know, I was planning to clean up the waste land where I had been working and dump onto there the stuff from the hard-standing, but I will need quite a few days of good weather to do the work justice.

It looks like we’ve had that now – the forecast isn’t too good – and so I’ve made a decision to put a large tarpaulin onto the land where I had my first vegetable garden, just in front of the house, and move the stuff onto that.

This is easier said than done too as I have tons of stuff to move and I forgot just how heavy some of it was. It’s going to take a while to sort out all of this.

At the Anglo-French group tonight we were rather thin on the ground and I ended up having a good chat with Cécile – so much so that we stood outside the bar afterwards chatting for a good hour or so.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a decent gossip. I spend far too much time on my own, I reckon.

-1

Sunday 7th October 2012 – WHAT HAPPENED TO …

… Sunday morning?

Well, to be honest, I worked through much of it, but from the wrong end.

03:34 when I finished what I was doing last night.

I was a little wrong with my estimate of what time it was when I woke up. I reckoned about 10:40 – it was in fact … errrr … 12:41.

I must have been really tired and even though this is what Sundays are for, I still felt bad about having missed the morning.

I was having a lovely dream though – I was driving a minibus through some forests on a main road through some mountains and explaining to the passengers that these were the Bluegrass areas of Kentucky (work that one out). We were being chased – not in a threatening way – by two cars, one of which was an old metallic mid-blue Peugeot 403 estate, and they overtook us on a sharp right-hand bend, crossing well over the solid white line in the centre of the road, which was divided into one lane for vehicles going my way, and the other way had two lanes coming towards me. This bit – the overtaking – I was watching from the air – maybe 500 feet up. Strangely, we were all driving on the left-hand side of the road as in the UK, so I dunno what all of that might be telling me.

After that, I had just enough time to grab something to eat and then off to Cellule, near Riom, to watch the football.

But I shan’t be saying anything about the football in this column this evening.

As Ron Atkinson once said, “I never comment on referees and I’m not going to break the habit of a lifetime for that prat”.

Or as Jim Finks, manager of the New Orleans Saints once said, after a match against the St Louis Cardinals in 1986, “I’m not allowed to comment on the lousy officiating”.

We’ll just leave it at that.

But there’s a fruit stall at the side of the road just outside Combronde and I noticed that it was having a sale of apples. I’m getting low on them and so a 3kg bag of Red Gala apples for €2:50 seemed like a bargain, especially as the way fruit prices are at the moment.

So that’s Sunday dealt with. Monday is another day.

-6

Saturday 6th October 2012 – IT WAS SATURDAY …

… today and to be honest, I didn’t do very much.

Up with the alarm as usual, and after breakfast wrote the text for the Radio Anglais rock shows for next month. That seems to be the current way of spending Saturday mornings these days as I try to organise myself so much better.

After lunch I went for a whizz around St Eloy-les-Mines.

LIDL now has acquired a bakery, like the LIDL in Commentry. It was the grand opening today and so they were handing out free bits of bread and also coffee to the clients.

Nothing of any such at Carrefour though, and in any case I just bought the usual items – nothing at all that was special.

It was my day for meeting people though.

In Carrefour I met some friends of my Dutch neighbour Lieneke and we had a lengthy chat.

In LIDL I met Michael from the footy club, and we had a lengthy chat too. And he had some exciting news.

The draw for the Cup was made this morning and FC Pionsat St Hilaire, for their pains, have been drawn against none other than Clermont Foot Auvergne. They were in the French Premier League not so long ago and now play in Division Two – only about 9 levels higher than FC Pionsat St Hilaire.

Even if they send their reserves, which is likely, it’ll still be the biggest day ever in the history of FCPSH. We’ll have to go all out to attract a bumper crowd.

This evening I went to see AS Marcillat play, and a more one-sided match I have never seen.

About 89 and a half of the 90 minutes were played just outside Marcillat’s penalty area and how Villeneuve only scored one goal is a total mystery to me.

Even so, it still wasn’t enough to win the game as during the 75th minute one of AS Marcillat’s players, the n°8, took the ball all the way from his own penalty area through about 30 tackles and into the Villeneuve box. His shot was blocked but another player following up slotted the rebound into the net.

Taking the ball out of the net and kicking it upfield was all that the Villeneuve keeper had to do during the entire match.

And me? I’m off to Cellule tomorrow for FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI match against AS Cellule. Michael thinks that we might be at almost full strength tomorrow and won’t that be a change?

-3

Friday 5th October 2012 – TALK ABOUT EARLY!

Yes, I had knocked off work today by 16:45!

But there was a reason for that.

On my official sky-watching scale, today would be described as “glorious”. So much so that when a small cloud floated by at about 15:30 I stood and watched it.

The batteries were fully-charged by midday and by 16:45 I had hot water at 64°C. All of this can only mean one thing, and so I unleashed the tabletop washing machine.

Loads of washing here as it’s been a few weeks since I last did some, and so that was that. Off we went

Of course, washing means clean sheets, quilt cover and pillowcases.

As for me, I’m still smoking from being too close to the fire that I lit in my brassière the other day. But not to worry – 5 litres of water at 64°C into the solar shower to push that temperature up, and I had a gorgeous and most unexpected shower, followed by clean clothes and the like.

That’ll all go nicely with the clean bedding.

While the washing machine was still going, I went and had another look at these LED strip lights.

The batteries that I had been burning were up to 12.55 volts (of course they didn’t stay like that) and when I switched on the strip light that I had fitted the other day, well, I wasn’t disappointed in the least.

Quite the reverse in fact.

So much so that I disconnected the 12-volt fluorescent strip light over the work bench in the barn and installed a pair of these, together with the appropriate switch. These are impressive, these strip lights, and I’m going to buy more of these wherever I can find them

This morning though I was feeling inspired for the first time for ages and had a good session on the web site. But I was interrupted for half an hour as Terry needed to go to the quarry and wanted a hand.

With being nice and clean, I won’t go to Commentry and the swimming baths tomorrow – i’ll just go for a quick flash around St Eloy-les-Mines. It really was a nice, unexpectedly good day today and I’m glad that I took full advantage.

-1

Thursday 4th October 2012 – I STARTED MOVING …

… the stuff from off the hardstanding today.

I laid down a sheet of plastic behind the Mercedes 240D, covered it in cardboard (the plastic, not the Mercedes), and then stacked up all of the breeze blocks that were lying around.

And as I tool a wheelbarrow-load of rubble up to the rubble pile, I came back with a barrow load of breeze blocks and so the pile down here is growing while the pile up there is shrinking.

Mind you, it’s going to take ages to move it all – not least because I need to rake up all of the rubble from out of the sand and clay that came out of the wall.

And if it’s at all possible I need to remove the sand and clay and use that to fill in the paths between the raised beds.

But even so, I didn’t do too much because at about 15:30 the heavens opened and we had a torrential downpour. Impossible to work outside.

That was the cue to come inside and I had a good search for the mop and mop bucket (which I eventually found) and then I washed out and mopped up the cupboard that I had been building at the back of the stairs.

When that was clean, dry and dust-free I then made a start on crepi-ing the walls.

I’ve gone for crepi in there as it hides all of the imperfections and bad joints – it’s not easy working in a space that’s 1.5m x 0.80m.

I’ve painted about half of it before I called it a night – at 19:55. You can see how much I’m enjoying it, even if it is a swine to apply.

But at least, this idea of having work outside in the good weather, and work inside in the bad weather – that seems to be paying off as I always thought that it would.

-1

Wednesday 3rd October 2012 – I SET FIRE TO MY BRASSIERE …

… today.

As you know, i’ve been scything down the undergrowth next to the lean-to to create a load of space where I can store all kinds of stuff while I carry out stage 2, but I’ve been overwhelmed.

6 trees I’ve cut down, with enough firewood to keep me going for a month I reckon, and I’ve uprooted all kinds of shrubs and undergrowth

But there’s only so much of the shrubs and undergrowth that can be composted, and apart from that, there was nowhere else to put all of the brambles and so on.

And then, of course, I remembered.

Last year I bought a brassière from Brico Depot just for this purpose and so I spent a very enthralling afternoon burning all of the stuff that won’t compost.

And didn’t it burn well too? br clear=”both”>

So this morning after an early start and a couple of hours on the internet I went out to attack the jungle. Like I say, I cut down 6 trees.

But one of these trees was a proper full-sized tree and that took some moving. I must have spent about an hour digging up the tree stump.

But the area to the side and to the rear of the old Mercedes is now clear, and the next job is to move all of the stones and rubble from the wall of the lean-to that you can see to the left.

Once they are all gone, I can rake over everywhere and level it all out and then lay the tarpaulin out.

Once the tarpaulin in properly in position I can then more all of the stuff from off the hard-standing out in front where I park Caliburn. It’s going to take me an age to do it all.

As if it didn’t take an age to do all of that today. In fact I was so carried away that it was 19:20 when I knocked off today.

In other news, my “new” mobile phone arrived. It’s not new, but a factory-reconditioned one with all bells and whistles and on examining it,

I discovered that not only did it have the bells and whistles, it also had the previous owner’s address books, it had her bank account details and bank card PINs stored in the memory.

What a crazy thing for the previous owner to do, especially with the number of phones that are stolen each year. And then not wipe off the data when you part-ex the phone.

And then for the eBay vendor not to do it makes me wonder what kind of “refurbishing” job that this phone has had.

Aren’t some people totally crazy?

-1

Tuesday 2nd October 2012 – I HAD A GOOD …

… and profitable day out in Montlucon today.

Not the least of the reasons being that a chance visit to the LIDL came up trumps with another 5 packets of these LED light strips. That’s all that I shall be needing anyway for the foreseeable future.

So having picked up Rosemary’s window at Lapeyre we went off to Brico Depot. I bought a tarpaulin to go on the ground where I’m clearing, and I also priced up a whole pile of other stuff that I need for this concreting that I’ll be doing (yes, I have another Cunning Plan).

No suitable wood for shuttering though – I’ll have to have some cut at a sawmill.

Grand Frais, the Fresh food place came up trumps with everything that I need for my pickling, except the malt vinegar for the shallots, but then again at NOZ they were selling white vinegar flavoured with tarragon and that will do just as nicely.

So after dropping off Rosemary’s window and helping her with her shutters I came back here and did a little tidying up in the barn.

I found the other missing sledgehammer and a few other gardening tools, and I also worked out why the desk light in the barn, over the battery bank, isn’t working. Seems that the wire has become disconnected and its probably been like that for years too.

So when I finished that I took off the flourescent light and fitted one of these LED strip lights in place.

At first I was disappointed but then I realised that I had disconnected the good batteries and I was trying to burn some old ones, and I had a reading of just 7.8 volts.

With 12 volts it should be pretty impressive I reckon, but that’s for another day.

-3

Monday 1st October 2012 – BY THE TIME …

… that you read this I shall be well tucked up in the Land of Nod. I’m thoroughly exhausted.

This morning nothing much happened but with a good run at the website I managed to do all of the photos and write the text for FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s famous victory yesterday against Briffons-Perpezat.

You can read the text here if you like.

Rosemary came round at lunchtime.

So while I moved the scaffolding and cleared out the weeds, brambles and small trees from around the Mercedes, she dug up the onions and garlic and pulled some dried beans off the plants.

Tons of all of that stuff she harvested too – a good fruitful exercise

But doing this garden is driving me nuts. The brambles have torn lumps out of me, the nettles have stung me to death and so on and some of the tree roots took ages to dig up

But it’s looking all quite good there now. Just that one big tree to cut down and rip up.

Tomorrow I’m off to Montlucon with Rosemary to Lapeyre to buy her window and a few other bits and pieces that I need, and then I’ll be carrying on in this patch of land, sorting out the stones and levelling everywhere off.

Then I can bring everything round there from off the hardstanding.

At the Anglo-French Group this evening we had the biggest crowd for ages with two new attendees. Nice to see some new faces.

Anyway, that’s it. Off to bed before I fall asleep.

-1

Sunday 30th September 2012 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

… that last night was dramatic, what with the Miners coming back from the dead, you should have been at Briffons this afternoon, cos you ain’t seen nuffink yet!

FC Pionsat St Hilaire had no goalkeeper out there today for the match against Briffons-Perpezat for a start.

Michael Bucaud was in the orange and warming up behind the goals. Although he’s not been long at the club, I’ve never seen him play as a goalkeeper before.

And with FC Pionsat St Hilaire being 2-0 down with the game dragging on towards the end, it really did look as if that was that.

But then, suddenly, someone flicked the switch and the team burst into life.

And in the space of probably 20 minutes they scored 4 times to win the match and to progress through to the next round of the League Cup.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything quite like this – especially from FC Pionsat St Hilaire. They are much more likely to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as we all know.

And I bet that you are wondering how come they managed to score 4 times in a match, especially as Cedric was having the day off.

But for a very pleasant change the rest of the attackers, once they had come to life, looked the part as well and tore the Briffons- Perpezat defence to shreds.

Even Vincent, an 18 year old lad who signed for the senior team this year, although about 6 feet tall but weighing about 6 stones, threw himself about and made two goals for his striking partner, as well as hitting the post in the closing stages of the game.

It was a lovely day to be out as well, a really nice day for a long drive, and I arrived at the ground early en.ough to see the second half of the previous game

That was a match in the Ladies’ League.

Briffons-Perpezat won that match quite comfortably – after all, they are second in the league – but the standard of play is much higher than I was expecting.

I was pleasantly surprised by it all. In fact it made me wish that I would have arrived even earlier to watch all of the game.

But this morning, I’m not sure what happened.

Chatting to Rhys until about 02:30, and with it being a Sunday too, I expected to be in bed until midday. But 08:45 when I woke up, and I could not get back to sleep.

So a lazy morning, but I did repair my two chests of drawers that are slowly starting to fall to pieces. At least now they open and close properly.

Anyway, back to work tomorrow. I need to clean out at the side of the lean-to and then move all of the stuff onto there from off the hardstanding.

That isn’t going to be the work of five minutes.

-4

Saturday 29th September 2012 – I SAW SOMETHING …

… this evening that I have never seen before.

I was at St Eloy-les-Mines watching Nord Combraille play Beauregard-Vendon in the league cup, and halfway through the match the home supporters started to hurl abuse at the visiting linesman.

The Miners’ captain ran across the field to his supporters and told them to “fermez la geule” – or “shut your gobs”. And how I wish that more captains of more football clubs would take the initiative like that.

It was an exciting match too – with 10 minutes to go Beauregard-Vendon were comfortably winning 3-1 but then the Miners scored a goal right out of nothing to bring it back to 3-2.

Then, with the last kick of the match, they scored an equaliser from a corner.

Extra-time followed, and the Miners ran rampant, winning 5-3, including as the 4th goal one of the best that I have ever seen at this level of football.

That led to me doing something that I have never done before in all the time that I’ve been here. By the time the match had finished, what with extra time and everything, it was 10:45 and so I wouldn’t be home for another 20 minutes.

Far too late to cook tea, but the kebab house was still open and so I bought a large portion of chips to eat in Caliburn on the way home.

No vinegar, of course, but they were pretty good chips and I’ll go there again if ever I’m out late at weekend.

So what about today then?

I nearly missed my shopping slot at Commentry today as well. But there was a good reason for this.

Just as I was closing down to go to bed (at a comparatively early 02:30) I had a message to ring Rachel in Canada urgently. And so I did, and it turned out that at the garage in Centreville they had mislaid a box which included, inter alia, my bank card that they keep for me.

It’s surprising, if not amazing, that you can spend over 90 minutes talking to people whom you like, about a subject as simple as that (and it was all a false alarm anyway as they found it this morning)

The result of that was that it was gone 04:00 when I finished and then I couldn’t sleep – still awake again at 05:30. and so it’s just as well that the guy up the road started up his chainsaw at 11:00 otherwise I’d still be asleep now.

So what with one thing and another it was gone 14:00 when I set out for Commentry. One of the things that I needed to do was to buy even more tool handles as I’d broken one or two more during the week, and so I needed to strip out the old broken bits before I could go.

At Mr Bricolage I managed to sort everything out (at a price) but the handle for the pickaxe. They didn’t have a wooden handle and so he sold me a fibre one.
“This is unbreakable” said the salesman
“Leave that to me” I replied. “I’ll see to that”.

I also bought the bits I need to do some work for a client with a solar hot water system, and at LIDL they still had a couple of packets of those LED light strips and so I liberated them.

Makes me wonder how many I might have liberated had I managed to make it there last week.

No swimming baths though – far too late to go there, and so I came back here and crashed out for a couple of hours instead after my bad night.

Tomorrow I’m off to the Mont Dore – FC Pionsat St Hilaire are playing Briffons-Perpezat in the cup.

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EPIC HALL

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