Category Archives: St Gervais d’Auvergne

Friday 5th June 2015 – CALIBURN IS BACK

I told you the other day that I had had a phone call to say that Caliburn was ready. And so today, Liz came to pick me up and we cleared off down to St Gervais to rescue him.

I had set the alarm for 07:30 as usual but I was wide awake, up and about at 07:00 without any prompting. I had an early breakfast, I remembered to put the money out for the boulangère and I was good and ready well before 09:00 when Liz was due. I walked down to the end of the lane to meet her.

The bill for Caliburn came to €370, most of which was for a new caliper. And I will say that I have never had brakes as good as this, not even when Caliburn was brand new. This was money well spent, and it makes a total mockery of the €2500 estimate that I had from Barrat Ford of Montlucon.

Liz and I went for a coffee afterwards, where we bumped into someone whom I knew from Sauret football club. We had a lengthy chat about football, as you might expected, but one thing that I did notice was that there were 10 or so people in the bar there and they were all totally pickled – at 10:15 in the morning. It was all quite amusing, not at all aggressive as you might find in the UK, and sitting out on the terrace in the glorious sunshine watching the world go by, you couldn’t be anywhere else except in France. It’s a feeling that you can’t explain to anyone who has never spent any length of time here.

I went round to Rosemary’s afterwards to see how she was getting on. Instead of going by the main road, I went by the old road round the back of St Gervais down the Gorge de la Sioule to Chateauneuf les Bains and then along the road through the gorge to the Pont de Menat. That’s one of the most beautiful roads in the whole of France, I reckon.

We had a good chat and Rosemary even made lunch which was very nice of her. I went off later to do my shopping and was back here by the end of the afternoon.

I’ve spent the evening making a database of all of the music that I’ve played on the rock programmes. This had been getting out of hand so with the new laptop I’ve downloaded an SQL program and I’ve been busy trying to remember everything that I learned when I did my Diploma in Computing at University. You’ve no idea how much I’ve forgotten – or maybe you have. After all, I’m not getting any younger.

As well as that, I’ve been extracting soundbytes from the old time radio programmes that I’ve been downloading. I need to build up my library to use in the rock programme for my “studio guests”

I’ve had the fan on all evening too. The temperature up here reached 33°C this afternoon and outside, it was 36°C at one time. This means that it’s either going to snow tomorrow or else we are going to have a terrific thunderstorm.

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Monday 1st JUNE 2015 – I’M RELIEVED …

… that it’s not just me who doesn’t do mornings. I had to take Caliburn to the garage to have his brakes fixed, and when I arrived (at 07:50) the garage owner was busy opening up the place. I said hello (or, rather, bonjour) and I was greeted by a series of grunts.

Yes, 07:50. I was up and wide awake by O7:00, which makes a change, and having gathered everything that I needed for today, I was on the road by 07:30 and that’s not like me at all.

garage jaillot st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceMind you, I couldn’t help a little smile as I left the premises. Here I was, taking Caliburn to a garage to have the rear brakes fixed, and here are the rear brakes on the garage’s van.

It’s certainly true to say that garages always have the worst cars, just as electricians have the worst electrics, and plumbers have the houses with the most leaky pipes.

abandoned railway station st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceSeeing as I was much too early for Terry, I walked into town. And my route took me past the abandoned railway station here at St Gervais.

The station and the railway line here were closed suddenly and dramatically when it was announced that a snap inspection of the Viaduc des Fades, the highest railway viaduct in the world when it was built, had discovered that the viaduct was totally unfit to take the weight of trains.

But anyone who came with me on out little walk across the viaduct will have noticed that there was nothing sudden about the state of the viaduct. It had been decaying for years and no-one had bothered to look at it – or, rather, they had put off the work so that it would all need doing at once and that would be a good excuse for closing down the line.

Terry and I went off to Riom and much to our surprise, at the sous-prefecture we were number 48, and they were dealing with number 33. That meant a wait of about an hour, a far cry from when I went to register Caliburn in 2009 and I was number 143 and had to wait until after midday.

It was painless at the sous-prefecture and then we went off to have the number plates made for his new van and for me to deal with a taxation issue at the Tresor Publique.

After lunch it was back to Gerzat for the Radio Arverne sessions, and I didn’t feel much like it due to my early start. Liz and I went shopping afterwards and had a coffee, and it was back to see how Caliburn was doing. They had managed to free off all of the mechanism but they needed some parts, which won’t be here until tomorrow. So Liz ran me home and I crashed out. I can’t last the pace these days.

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Friday 29th May 2015 – THIS BACKING-UP …

… of my new laptop wasn’t as straightforward as I had thought it might be. And when I finally did go to bed – at 03:45 in the morning, it was far from finished. Mind you, I was. Keeping my eyes open at this time of night was not as easy as it used to be.

And I was up early to – a good few minutes before the alarm clock went off, and I even had time to make myself some breakfast before setting off to Marcillat-en-Combraille and the radio recordings for Radio Anglais.

Everything went according to plan and we were away quite early too. And that was just as well as I had to go to the garage at St Gervais d’Auvergne with Caliburn. Liz ran me back to her house for lunch afterwards and then Terry and I went down to Riom to sort out the tax payments on his van.

THat was quite straightforward too and we even had time for a run out to Lempdes for Terry to buy a new ladder.

It really was a gorgeous day and we made the most of it, sitting outside having a coffee in the sunshine, and then Liz ran me round to the garage to pick up Caliburn.

All of the mechanism on the brakes is working fine, so the problem isn’t there. If I take Caliburn back on Monday they will strip it all down and check to see exactly what is going on, and why the rear brake isn’t doing what it is supposed to.

The good news is, however, that according to them, there is nothing wrong with Caliburn in the grand. I dida sk them to check it over and their opinion is that he is in good condition for his age with nothing to worry about. The conclusion that I have drawn from all of this is that Barrat Ford in Montlucon will not be able to rely on any more of my custom.

Back here, I carried on with the backing-up and the re-installation of my 3d Program. However, I didn’t get very far. It’s 22:00, I can’t keep my eyes open, I haven’t even done the stats and I don’t care. I’m off to bed before I ……. (zzzzzzzzz)

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Tuesday 26th May 2015 – REMEMBER ME TALKING …

… the other day about the incident at Barrat Ford in Montlucon and my enormous estimate for repairs to prepare Caliburn for the controle technique?

So I duly took Caliburn along to St Gervais for his controle technique this morning, and guess what?

Yes, well done that man. Caliburn passed his controle technique with just a comment about the left-hand rear brake.

The two bald tyres on the rear, according to Barrat (€200 plus TVA plus fitting), have 3.5mm of tread according to the MoT examiner.

The bodywork that is rusted through, according to Barrat, is good for another 10 years, according to the MoT examiner

The knocking from the front end, that is the steering rack about to fall apart and needs replacing according to Barrat (€564 + TVA + fitting) is a worn bush on the anti-roll bar (cost €2:50) according to the MoT examiner.

You can draw your own conclusions from all of this. But anyway, I’ve booked Caliburn in to another garage on Friday for a final check, just so I can have yet another opinion.

With all that was going on, I was wide awake by 06:00 and up and about long before the alarm went off. After a good wash I was on my way and was early at the controle technique.

I had time for a coffee with Liz too. She had come up to St Gervais to run some errands and so we met up. And then I went off for some shopping.

I spoke to Terry too. We’ve agreed to go on Friday afternoon to tax his new van, and on Monday morning to go and register it.

I’m going to be busy these next few days then.

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Monday 20th April 2015 – WELL, I’M ALL SPENT UP NOW.

€790 in IKEA today, and I didn’t buy anything like what I was planning to do.

None of the kitchen worktops impressed me except for one – and that was a mere €399 per m², which is perhaps a little over the top and in any case, I don’t have the machinery to cut the marble.

I’ll have to see what’s on offer elsewhere.

But I now have my bed and a nice and expensive firm mattress, as well as a pile of new bedding, and a nice dark-brown deep-pile rug to go by the side of the bed. I’ve also bought some mirrors for the bedroom.

And that’s where all of my money has gone today. But it’s all good stuff anyway.

This morning I finally finished off everything for the rock music programmes that we’ll be recording next week, and I’m well on the way to doing the next month’s too.

Then it was off to pick up Liz and down to Gerzat to record the Radio Arverne sessions, and then we went to IKEA.

spectacular clouds st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceOn the way back, we had some spectacular clouds. This one over St Gervais really was impressive – much better than it looks in the photograph.

And the town over there, bathed in the sunlight, looked quite good too. All in all, it really was a beautiful evening to be out and about. We could do with a few more of these.

buds on apple trees les guis virlet puy de dome franceDown at Riom and Gerzat, the trees are already in full bloom, so I was quite impressed to see that the fruit trees that I have in buckets outside the front door are now blooming too.

It’s all of a couple of weeks late of course, as I have said already, but it’s still as beautiful as ever when it does arrive. It’s a sure sign that summer is on its way.

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Monday 27th October 2014 – RED SKY AT NIGHT …

sunset auzances creuse birdwatching ornithological centre st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome france… means that Auzances is on fire.

Yes, on the way back home this evening as the sun was setting, I stopped off at my favourite haunt, the St Gervais Ornithological Centre to take one or two photos. The sun setting below the horizon in the clouds in the general direction of Auzances was particularly impressive.

birdwatching ornithological centre st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceThe view in the opposite direction, while not being quite as spectacular, was nevertheless quite impressive in its own right.

Here, with the evening drawing on and the damp mist slowly rising out of the fields, the Puy de Dome looks as if it is slowly disappearing from view behind a kind of diaphanous veil. It gives a completely different aspect to this view, of which you have seen dozens of examples over the years.

This morning we went to record the Radio Anglais programmes at Marcillat-en-Cembraille for Radio Tartasse. We had a few technical issues but they were resolved by simply returning to the very first version of the studio’s computer program. This new upgrade has caused nothing but problems.

We went from there to Clermont-Ferrand and the Auchan where I did a big pile of shopping. I’d run out of oats for my muesli and lentils for my curries, and so I needed to stock up. I also took advantage of the proximity of the Auchan to the recording studios at Gerzat to do a mega-shop.

The radio session at Gerzat went surprisigly well – in fact four programmes of 15 minutes each took just 1 hour and 5 minutes to record in total. It’s never happened like this before and I wish that it had happened like this that time just before I went to Canada.

Afterwards, we celebrated by going for coffee at Menetrol and doing a lap around the Carrefour there to buy the things that I had forgotten.

And after dropping Liz off, I came home via the birdwatching site at St Gervais d’Auvergne.

Tonihgt, I’ve enrolled in another Higher Education course. The University of Birmingham, in its Future Learn Programme is offering a course in the Development of Aviation in World War I and there was a free place even though the course started a week ago. This kind of thing is right up my Alley as you know and I couldn’t resist the opportunity.

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Friday 17th October 2014 – IT’S ALL EXCITEMENT HERE.

Yes, it’s all happening here at Pionsat.

intermarche launderette pionsat puy de dome franceI went a’shopping this afternoon at Pionsat on my way home, and look what I found in a lean-to on the car park at the Intermarché.

Yes, Pionsat now has its own launderette. Not much of a one, that’s for sure, but a launderette just the same. And not only that, there’s a 18kg machine here. That’s good news for me because I haven’t washed the cover on my bed settee in the five years that I’ve had it because I’ve not found a machine big enough to take it since the launderette in Montlucon closed down all those years ago.

And so on the next fine day that we have when I’m at home, guess what I’ll be doing?

And so I did say “on my way home”. That’s because I’ve been out and about this morning. Terry rang me up to ask if I could help him cut some wood.

gorges de la sioule st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceIt was a warm morning today, and with all of the dampness that we’ve had these last few days, it wasn’t difficult to guess where the Gorge de la Sioule is. There is the mist gradually rising up out of the Gorge and dissipating into the atmosphere.

It certainly makes a good photograph, especially in the early morning.

birdwatching centre ornithologique st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceThe photo was taken from the birdwatching centre at St Gervais d’Auvergne, and I wasn’t alone here either. There was a pile of other photographers here admiring the view, although I’m not quite sure what it was that was of such an interest to them.

Still, chacun à son gout as they say around here.

Terry and I chopped up a good pile of wood this morning and Liz made a good lunch for us. Then they went off to the dentist and I came home, via the Intermarché at Pionsat.

Back here, I carried on with the tidying up and despite all that I’ve been doing, I can’t see any improvement, and I can’t see any empty space either. I don’t know why this should be, but there we are.

I’ll just have to keep on at it until something happens or that I die of boredom.

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Monday 13th October 2014 – WE WERE RADIOING TODAY

Yes, it didn’t take me long to get back into the routine, did it?

And with a reasonably-early night I managed to be up and about by 10:15 too, without the benefit of the alarm. And that gave me an hour or so to do a few things around here first.

Many of you who read the rubbish that I write elsewhere will know that I have a thing about clouds and how they reflect the skyline underneath when passing over mountainous areas.

clouds reflecting skyline puy de sancy puy de dome franceThis was quite apparent today as you can see in this photo of the Puy de Sancy taken from my favourite little spec at the bird-watching site near St Gervais.

We’ve had a fair amount of rain just recently so the sky is quite humid. Here sure enough, the moisture has condensed where the air has had to rise up over the mountains and formed clouds that reflect almost exactly the skyline underneath.

We had more vegan lasagne for lunch and then went off to Gerzat to record the Radio Anglais sessions for Radio Arverne. And just for a change, everyone was ready and everything passed off without incident. We were in and out in just an hour and 10 minutes.

While we were there, the weather had changed and we were in the rain on the way back. Liz gave me a doggy bag of leftover vegan lasagne and ginger cake, and I came back here to plot my next move.

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Tuesday 17th June 2014 – SO THERE I WAS …

… out of bed at 06:45, on the road at 07:00 and at Liz and Terry’s for 07:30.

And by 08:30 we were in the queue at the sous-prefecture at Riom. Ticket number 27 which meant that we only had to wait just over an hour – not like when I took Caliburn to be registered in 2009, had ticket 93 and had to wait until 11:50.

Anyway, the Jeep is now registered in France and we went off to the Carrefour to buy the number plates and have a coffee. On the way back we called at the insurance at St Gervais to pick up an updated insurance certificate, and then we went back to Liz and Terry’s and fitted the new plates.

After lunch we came back here and with Terry in the pit and me on the cement mixer, we fitted three rows of breeze blocks. There wasn’t much sun so I could only do the mix bucket by bucket, otherwise the mixer would stall, but we managed all the same and I’m impressed with this little 350-watt cement mixer. Not the quickest or biggest mixer but it mixes the stuff quicker than I can use it.

Tomorrow we’ll do the final row of blocks in the pit and then do the shuttering. That’s going to be exciting because it’s not a square – neither is it a rectangle and it isn’t an quadrilateral either.

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Tuesday 27th May 2014 – 43.5 MILLIMETRES …

… of rain – that’s what we had yesterday. It’s totally unbelievable and must be a new record for here. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Anyway, this morning it stopped for a while and we even had some blue sky. And so Terry rang me up. His Jeep needs to go for a Controle Technique sometime soon but the rear brakes weren’t up to much – could I go for a look at it.

That reminded me. Caliburn’s Controle Technique is up too and so I passed by the place at St Gervais to book an appointment. As it happened, he was in the middle of two retests and so that gave him 5 minutes free and as Caliburn’s check was the “odd year” emissions only check, he did it then and there. Of course, Cailburn passed and so he is all nice and legal again.

Round at Terry’s, I stripped down the rear of the Jeep and it didn’t take long to find the problem. The handbrake shoes were worn down to the rivets and a disc pad had disintegrated. All of that meant that the rear drums and discs were totally shot and so we needed to order all of it.

It was interesting to note that the brake shoe retaining clips were missing in the rear offside drum, and that the brake pads on the front were almost new. What I reckoned is that the previous owner had noticed the brake issues, fixed the front and then taken one look at the rear and given up in disgust, thrown it back together any old how and then sold it quickly.

Jeep spare parts are shockingly expensive if you don’t know where to go for the parts. To give you some idea (and I can’t remember the exact prices but it’ll give you a clue) we needed left-hand headlights for it. In the UK a set was £300. In France, they were about €350. In the USA they were 70 – not Pounds or Euros, but dollars, plus £30 postage.

Terry was also having problems with the handbrake of his van. I had a look at that too and that didn’t take 30 seconds to see the problem either. A weeping rear cylinder has soaked the nearside brake shoes. We ordered a pair of new cylinders and a pair of brake shoes for that.

That means that in another week or 10 days I’ll be round there again dealing with all of that.

So let’s see what tomorrow’s weather brings. Because if it clears up any and stays fine, Terry will be round here repaying the favour. I have a cunning plan.

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Sunday 23rd March 2014 – IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE …

… that last Sunday at Menetrol, at half-time during the footy, we were all lounging around on the grass sunbathing. If I had been to the football today, we would have spent half-time shovelling the snow off the pitch and building snowmen … "snowPERSONS" – ed.

Coming back from Liz at Terry’s tonight, it was snowing like crazy and the road between St Gervais and Gouttières, and over the Font Nanaud, was becoming difficult. Yes, I changed Caliburn’s snow tyres for his summer tyres the other day, didn’t I?

So with an early(ish) night last night I was wide awake, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 09:20 and so even with it being Sunday, I had an early breakfast. But the morning was so depressing – rain, hail, sleet, and probably plagues of locusts and the like too. Pionsat were playing the Chimps at Villosanges but
1) kick-off was at 13:00
2) the weather was positively atrocious
3) it’s a 90-km round trip
4) I wouldn’t be back til after 16:00, I was expected at Liz’s at 17:30 and I still had wome work to do on the radio stuff.
For those reasons I stayed behind and carried on working.

But the weather really is dreadful and (apparently) it’s going to be like this for all of next week. And we have a lot of travelling to do with the radio programmes tomorrow.

BRRRRRR!

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Monday 17th February 2014 – I SEEM TO BE COLLECTING …

car in ditch n227 st gervais d'auvergne pionsat road les guis virlet puy de dome france… photographs of cars in ditches these days. On my way to Liz and Terry’s this evening, there was another one on its side in a ditch just outside St Gervais d’Auvergne. And judging by the state of it, it had slid along the ground on the other side for quite some distance too. No idea what had happened there.

But yes, we’re in the studios on Friday recording the bext instalments of Radio Anglais and so we were rehearsing this evening. A little later than usual as I had to show someone around Cécile’s house at 17:30. And if any proof were needed of how small the world is these days, then this will surely count for something. As soon as the guy stepped out of the car, I said “But I know you, don’t I?” And indeed I did as well – he’s a footballer from Miremont, a club that plays in Division 3 of the Puy-de-Dome league and a regular opponent of Pionsat’s 2nd XI up to last season.

I picked up Cécile’s post too (she had 2 letters) and while I was there I took advantage of her washing machine.

But as for today – totally astonishing. Up until about 15:00 there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and I had an excess of 184 amp-hours, pretty much a record for all time, never mind just February. It took the water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater to 61°C which, from a standing start, is pretty impressive too. In fact, if I had had the shower cabinet which I keep on meaning to build, I would have gone for a shower this afternoon.

As for the work on the house, there is nothing more soul-destroying to be working on a plank of a stair tread for an hour, cutting it in 11 different ways so that it fits to perfection exactly where it’s supposed to go, and then finding that you’ve cut it upside-down. Doing that once, the other day, was bad enough. But doing it a second time, like this morning, well, that’s just inexcusable.

But now I have 6 treads and 5 risers installed, and just one more of each will be enough for now as that brings me round to the bottom corner. From here downwards involves heavy engineering such as replacing the floor, but what I need to do, the whole purpose of this, is to put the plasterboard onto the wall of the sairwell, and I can do that when I’ve done my final step.

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Thursday 9th January 2014 – WOW!

And for several good reasons too.

Firstly, I was up early this morning and I was at LIDL in St Eloy just minutes after the place opened. Not quick enough for the recessed LED lights and fittings that I was hoping to fit in the living room, which is a shame, and there were only 6xGU5.3 12-volt LED light clusters left.

Needless to say, I cleared those right out and when I returned home I had a good look at them.

The 12-volt LED bulbs that I have here are 1.2-watt bulbs which is sufficient for what I want to do. But these new ones are 3-watt. I fitted two, one over the desk and one over the kitchen table nd, well, WOW! It’s like Blackpool illuminations here. I’m well-impressed with these!

I stopped off at Cécile’s to chack her mailbox but it was still empty. And so I had to go off to St Gervais to talk to the Postie. Of course, with no letter of authority, no receipt or anything there wasn’t much that I could do, but I did it all the same.

I started to work on the downstairs lighting too. For years the lights in the verandah have been confusing me – the 2-gang light switches have constantly failed to do what they are supposed to do. I was there for an hour trying all kinds of permutaions and still nothing was working, but a closer inspection of one of the switches – the feed switch – showed that the brass housing seemed to be cracked. I fitted a new switch to see if that made any difference and, sure enough, not only did we have light but proper 2-gang controlled light switching too just as we are supposed to.

I then turned my attention to the light in the ground floor. Fitting it and wiring it all up was no problem but I needed a neutral connection. It was then that I found that I’d done all of the wires in twin-and-earth so there wasn’t a simple neutral cable. I need to cut into a twin-and-earth and strip out all of the insulation.

But then I had another look at it all. For a start, I’ve wired the lights up with blue and brown cable – the same that I’m using for mains wire and I almost ended up cutting into a 230 volt cable. I’d made up my mind long ago that 12-volt would be red and black so this wiring is evidently older, before I sorted myself out.

And it’s rubbish too. When I started doing this, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing and sorked it out by trial and error. It’s been a trial and there are dozens of errors, so I’ve decided that, seeing as how I’ll be starting work down here sometime soon, the wiring will be the first thing to be changed so there isn’t really any point in trying to do anything with it. Consequently I’ve abandoned that plan.

The next WOW! relates to my pile of rubble. In fact, it’s all gone and the floor is free. That’s not to say that there’s no rubble there of course. The big pile went by the end of the afternoon but there are still some bits and pieces.

So tomorrow I’ll be attacking the stuff that’s in there, reorganising all of it and making a work room there. That will mean that the bedroom will be free of clutter so that I can carry on in there.

And that really WILL be a big WOW!

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Tuesday 26th November 2013 – I’VE RESTARTED WORK TODAY

First time since last Thursday too. But there were a few housekeeping jobs that needed to be performed first, including emptying the composting toilet – a gruesome job.

Once that was out of the way the next stop was Pionsat where I needed to post an important letter. And then off to the sawmill at St Gervais for my wood. 21 laths and 12 demi-chevrons of 4.5 metres. The laths are for putting the insulation on the walls outside here – a job that I’ve been meaning to do for a while, and the demi-chevrons are for making the shelves that I want. I have 9 or 10 shuttering planks that I bought in Brico Depot the last time that I was there. They will get me going for the actual shelves but I really need a huge pile more. I won’t be getting them this week as I have a “minder” job to do on Saturday which means only local shopping again.

Back home, I made a start on building my woodshed. For that, I’m using the old chevrons off the house and barn roof. I put them aside specifically for work like this, but some of them are in worse condition than I imagined. Not that that is too much of a worry because what won’t be any good for building will be plenty good enough for burning and you can never have too much firewood, especially if you have somewhere to store it.

Anyway, I’ve selected all of the wood that I need and I’ve almost assembled one side. I’ll finish that tomorrow and then make the seond side, after which I’ll need to dig the holes to plant them into the ground and concrete them in place.

If I can do all of that, this will really be progress with a capital P.

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Monday 21st October 2013 – HERE’S SOMEONE WITH A SORE HEAD

renault clio in ditch pionsat puy de dome franceThis was what greeted me this morning on my way round to Cécile’s house. Someone clearly not paying enough attention last night.

Its not the first time that Ive encountered a car in a ditch of course. Keen readers of this rubbish will recall that on my way to the footy at Combronde a few years ago I encountered another one in a ditch near Menat. On that occasion the driver would indeed have had a headache as there was a head-shaped dent in the windscreen just above the steering wheel, but in the case of this car there was no such evidence (I did look).

But just for a change I was up early, as I needed to be. First stop was fuel at the Intermarche at Piosat, and second was at Marianne’s to pick up Cécile’s keys. Then, passing by the car in the ditch I went on to her house.

font nanaud hanging cloud gorges de la sioule st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceAt the top of the Font Nanaud there was this spectacular site waiting to greet me. Usually, quite early in the morning, there’s a hanging cloud that sits in the Gorges de la Sioule and when you pass by the Birdwatching Centre beyond St Gervais, you can see it.

Today though, it had well-overflowed the Gorges and St Gervais, just down there in that valley, was totally overwhelmed. I hadn’t seen it that dramatically before.

Once I’d sorted out Cécile’s affairs I went off chaud-pied to St Gervais to pick up Liz who had taken the Punto for its controle technique, and we shot off to Gerzat to record the Arverne sessions of Radio Anglais.

That wasn’t as easy as it might have been eiter as Bernard had forgotten that we were coming, and then everything that could possibly go pear-shaped did go pear-shaped and if we had had the time I would have done it all over again.

I took Liz for lunch afterwards as she deserved it, and then I came home. I should have gone to Brussels this evening too but what with a very late night last night (I can’t believe how stressful it is these days dealing with other people’s problems when they don’t really want them dealt with) and I wasn’t up for a 750km drive through the night.

I went to bed instead.

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