Category Archives: Pionsat

Monday 13th July 2015 – IT’S JUST LIKE OLD TIMES …

… up here in my attic tonight. I’m surrounded by papers everywhere – all over the floor and over the bed-settee and it feels so good to have reverted to all of my old untidy habits.

It all started off so promisingly too. I had a nice lie-in to reward myself for my efforts over the weekend and then after breakfast I attacked the dictaphone notes from my voyage to Canada in 2014 – must get that done.

No bread today because the boulangère is off on holiday so I needed to go into Pionsat, and that led to a little complication.

The insurance on Caliburn will expire on Wednesday and here in France, you have a little sticker to put in your windscreen to display your insurance details. I need to put the new one in the windowand I know that I have it – it’s been in my sticky little mitt at least once just recently and I’ve probably put it safe somewhere so that I know where it is.

But where?

This led to a search around up here, in the most obvious places, but it still hadn’t come to light by 14:30 and so, fearing that there would be no bread left at all in the Intermarché, I shot off to Pionsat where I was lucky enough to buy the last baguette. Not even one for tomorrow and that’s sad, as it’s Bank Holiday here and all of the shops will be closed.

After lunch, I started to search in the less-obvious places and that led to an unearthing of a load more paperwork – nothing to do with what I’m trying to find but there’s no sense in ignoring it so that’s being ruthlessly sorted out as well. I’m finding tons of stuff, a lot of which is really important and that I wish that I had found ages ago, but no sign at all of the insurance sticker.

Like I said, I know that it’s here somewhere, but the question is “just where?”

So guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow on my Bank Holiday day of rest? It’s not as if I don’t already have enough to do.

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Wednesday 8th July 2015 – IT WAS HARD THIS MORNING …

… to leave the comfort and safety of my comfortable bed. 3 alarms went off but it was still something of a struggle to heave myself out of my stinking pit. You wouldn’t ever have thought that last night I was in bed by 23:15 and was in such a deep sleep that the midnight buzzer in the verandah woke me stark upright.

After a rather tired breakfast, I spent some time updating the Radio Anglais stuff – the databases that I keep of what we’ve done and when we’ve done it – and then I updated out Facebook page, and now that’s online too. You can see it here if you like. I hope that you’ll pass by and give us a “like”.

When that was done, I carried on with my own website – I want to bring that up-to-date too but that’s an impossible task, which I fully realise.

However, in between times, I put another coat of varnish on the shelves that I cut yesterday and also on the shelf that will be going over the door. The aim was that they would dry ready for this afternoon.

I forgot that the boulangère is on holiday. That meant that I had to wander off to Pionsat and the Intermarché to buy some bread for lunch. And I wasn’t there five minutes either. It was a baguette today, and I have some speciality bread for tomorrow and Friday.

shelf over shower room door les guis virlet puy de dome franceFirst job after lunch was to fit the shelf in the shower room.

Space, or lack thereof, is something from which I’ve always suffered and so I’m fitting as many shelves as possible as I carry on with the development. There’s at least two feet (60cms) over the door in the shower room and that’s crying out for a shelf for the washing products and the like until the kitchen is done (whenever that might be). No sense in wasting the space

But the rest of the work isn’t so straightforward. The flying shelf is actually two layers of wood sandwiched together. The idea is that the electrical plugs and the 12-volt LED strip light will fit in the bottom part with the cables sandwiched between, and the top part will go over the top to keep everything covered.

That works fine with a 20mm-thick shelf when your mains plug is 18mm deep, but when your light switch is 25mm you need to think again. Accordingly I spent much of this afternoon making a pattress out of a pine offcut. 18mm deep, this home-made pattress, and that will do the job quite nicely. And it’s also enabled me to have a think about fitting a 12-volt DC socket there too.

And that, dear reader, took me until 20:20 tonight – something of a record for just recently. But today was much cooler, the temperature in the attic never passed beyond 30°C, and it gave me much more of an incentive to work. I even managed to tidy up a little in here too.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring.

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Monday 18th May 2015 – AS YOU MIGHT EXPECT …

… we had something of a slow start this morning. After my long drive of yesterday and my bad night’s sleep thanks to the Swiss Highway Patrol, I was in no mood for an early start.

Nevertheless, I did heave myself out of my stinking pit at something like a reasonable hour and after breakfast I set to work.

And the result of today’s efforts is, quite frankly, in the words of the old poem three-fifths of five-eights of … errr … badger all.

Anyone reading this rubbish will recall that the laptop that packed up on my voyage is my second Acer Aspire. The first one has a broken screen and a smashed keyboard where something fell on it (but despite that, this is what I’m using regardless, with “cut-and-paste” for the missing letters and manoeuvring the workspace around the screen, which shows you just how resilient they are, not to mention the five hours battery life) so the idea was quite simple – two identical machines so just swap the hard drives over.

After about two hours, during which time I realised that despite the outer casing being identical, they are far from identical inside and not even the batteries will swap over. Moving the disks produces the error message “No bootable device detected” even though the disks are both being picked up by the BIOS.

Acer’s technical help was interesting too. On their live chat system, I had a brief discussion with a “technician” who then copy-pasted a huge long screed about “you need to send your machine in for repair. Please send us £50-odd to open a file for you, and then we will send you instructions”.

So much for that.

The ultimate solution to the problem is a new machine. And there was an Acer Aspire – a more up-to-date version of mine – for £219 which by the time I’ve added the £50 for the file, the cost of a new hard drive, the labour for the installation and the postage and packing is mere peanuts.

So that is that. Meanwhile, any tips for hacking the information out of the old failed drive would be much appreciated.

On that note I went down to the Intermarche in Pionsat to buy some food seeing as how there is nothing here to eat. But badger that for a moment – here’s something exciting.

old citroen 2CV intermarche pionsat puy de dome France may 2015You can tell by the louvred bonnet that this is one of the earliest Citroen 2CV’s, and the deckchair interior goes to prove it too.

And while I was having a good look around, the owner came out. None other than Marianne’s friend Francois Legay, who has quite an interesting collection of old vehicles.

This Citroen is a 1952 model and is about 98% original. The seat material, the cooling fan and one or two other bits and bobs have been replaced, mainly due to the difficulty of resourcing the original parts.

There’s a 375cc engine in there, air-cooled of course, and flat-out, downhill with a following wind the car might just manage 70kph.

So that cheered me up somewhat, and I went off quite happily to do my shopping.

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Monday 4th May 2015 – HAPPY STAR WARS DAY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Saturday 18th April 2015 – I WAS ON MY TRAVELS …

… again during the night.

It was supposed to be in Brussels but not the Brussels that I knew. However I was with Laurence and Roxanne and we were moving from an apartment to a big 1930s-type of semi-detached house in a cul-de-sac somewhere, a house that was situated down in the far corner. And I had a collection of Cortina Mk111 saloons, all different colours such as yellow, white, bronze and so on, and I used to leave a different one outside the house every day. From here, my friend (he who lives in Stoke on Trent) had to go home and I had to go with him to the edge of the city to put him on the correct road to the coast. Of course there was a huge traffic queue at the roundabout so we were there talking when someone came around the outside of the traffic on a kind-of motorcycle which was coughing and spluttering. So I made my excuses to my friend and went off to see if I could be of any help to this guy.

And on that note, I woke up – or rather, the alarm woke me up. And I’ve spent most of the day on the radio stuff. Finishing off the additional notes was not anything of a problem but I’m STILL doing the editing for the live concert and I’m nowhere near finished with that.

But it is a difficult one as all of the tracks are scattered about here and there and the lead-ins for one track are on the end of the previous one (something of a regular occurrence these days) so they have to be cut off and grafted into place. It’s going to take me for ever.

To give you an idea of how much interest the players of FC Pionsat St Hilaire have in their club, there were about half a dozen of them missing this evening – attending a party so I was told (and how true this is I really don’t know). And that’s with the club battling desperately to stay up in Division One. There were half a dozen from the 2nd XI out there tonight and young Vincent was in goal. They lost 4-0 to Sayat Argnat and while it looks like a heavy defeat, Pionsat had their moment with two shots that hit the woodwork, one kicked off the line and a couple that went close.

In fact, had Pionsat had a full team out there tonight, then they could have dealt with this opposition quite comfortably, but if the players themselves don’t care, why should I?

But credit where credit is due. Those players out there tonight played with fire and spirit and two or three of them, who probably never ever dreamt a year ago that they would be turning out in Division One, had the matches of their lives. So never mind the defeat – the performance is the thing and it was a good performance tonight. The only players who let down the team were the ones who couldn’t be bothered to turn up.

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Sunday 29th March 2015 – SUNDAY IS A DAY OF REST

But not for me it isn’t – at least, not today.

Mind you, it was the day of a lie-in and it was 11:00 (or 10:00 in real money because we put the clocks forward today) that I crawled out of my stinking pit.

After breakfast, I carried on with the tidying up. And it looks a little more respectable in here (only a little, though) and another pile of stuff was taken out. I’ll crack this place yet, even if it will take me a century to do it.

At the footy this afternoon, FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 2nd XI were playing Sauret-Besserve. With a full side out, and even a substitute, the team was nevertheless rather imbalanced. Felix, the goalkeeper, was playing in attack and Vincent was in goal. That filled me full of foreboding as his only other match in goal had … well, not been a success.

I was proved right in the first 5 minutes. With a howling gale roaring down the pitch towards Pionsat’s goal, Sauret took the lead with a spectacular 40-yard punt that was picked up by the wind and sailed over the despairing Vincent’s hand into the top corner of the net. And in the first 40 minutes, I don’t think that Pionsat had managed to put the ball in the Sauret half.

Things changed as soon as the wind dropped slightly. FC Pionsat St Hilaire found a lull in the wind and soared upfield into the Sauret penalty area where a rather hopeful cross hit the arm of a Sauret defender. A cruel occurrence, but no-one can really complain about the award of a penalty. It may not have been intentional but it did deprive the attack of an advantage. Anyway, old Eric stepped up and calmly slotted home.

30 seconds later, Anthony did well on the right wing to hold up the play and then he hit another hopeful cross into the area. The Sauret keeper and the central defender both hesitated for a second as each one expected the other to come for the ball, and that gave Christophe just enough of a moment to slide his foot in and push it past the keeper into the net for the lead.

In the second half with the gale at their backs, Vincent (who has a huge kick for such a thin boy) was punting his clearances downfield well in front of his attackers. Nevetheless, Pionsat had three or four golden opportunities to bury the game, including one where Christophe sold a marvellous dummy to the Sauret defence, letting the ball go through his legs for Bertrand, running wide, to shoot across goal when surely it had to be easier to score.

And they might well have regretted that too, had it not been for Vincent in goal who made a couple of excellent saves that his big brother Matthieu would have been proud to make.

But with the game in its dying seconds, Felix (who had a good game up front for a goalkeeper) held up play on the edge of the penalty area, drew the entire defence onto him, and then just at the last minute slid the ball across the empty penalty area for Christophe to sidefoot into the empty net.

Yes, a good game, and a good result too. Pionsat’s team can be very proud of that.

Back here, I had a little fire tonight. Not that I really needed it, but it’s Sunday and pizza night. I may as well be comfortable while I’m cooking.

So tomorrow, back to work. And back to emptying the house.

-1

Saturday 28th March 2015 – I’VE BEEN CARRYING ON …

… the moving round of everything today, despite it being a Saturday.

I’m annoyed though that it’s taking me 10 times longer than I anticipated. I’m nowhere near anything like finished and that’s depressing. Mind you, I did find €2:12 in loose change mixed up in the pile of dust so I can’t say that it wasn’t rewarding. It works out at about €0.25 per hour and you can’t say fairer than that.

Anyway, the two wardrobes up here are emptied and dismantled, and all of the spare bedding has gone downstairs into the wardrobe in the bedroom along with the clothes that were hanging up.

I’ve swept up all of the dust where the wardrobes used to be and moved the desk into that space. That means that the alcove is almost empty and the water tanks can go in there whenever I’m ready to start the plumbing.

There’s tons more stuff to be moved out to the bedroom, and not only that, rearranging things has created piles more rubbish all of its own and all of this will need to be sorted out too.

This is going to take forever.

In between times I went to St Eloy for some shopping. Not to the Intermarche at Pionsat, you’ll notice. And there’s a reason for this. That is that I’ve been noticing a gradual increase in prices there. The fruit and veg are no longer affordable and the quality is going downhill rapidly. I don’t mind cutting down on quality if I’m cutting down on price, or paying more out for better quality, but this is starting not to work. I reckon that ocompared with the prices at the Pionsat Intermarche, I’ve saved about €4:00 on the weekly shopping bill.

At the footy tonight, Pionsat lost 2-0 to Montel Villosanges. No complaints about the result – the Chimps were easily the better side and Pionsat offered very little. The defence was quite rocky, with Matthieu in goal performing heroics to keep the score down, and the midfield and the attack were pretty ineffective. It’s all looking quite depressing.

I was on my travels again during the night. I was with the two guys with whom I played bass in a rock group in the 1970s. We were going somewhere in Bill Badger, the A60 van that I had in those days, and we had a pile of scaffolding to move so we were loading it up on the roof of the van. Ohh happy days!

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Wednesday 25th March 2015 – I DID WELL …

… to light a little fire up here last night. I awoke to a relatively balmy 16.2°C and yet outside we had 5cms of snow. So much for Spring, hey?

And I’d been on my travels during the night too. I had aroused the antipathy of the factory bully who ended up chasing me around the factory brandishing an enormous club. He was intercepted by a few of his colleagues who persuaded him to use a slightly smaller club. But it all ended happily ever after as I ended up walking across the park towards some buildings in the distance, hand in hand (and later, arm round the waist) of a girl who, over the past two or three weeks, has appeared out of nowhere to accompany me on several of my nocturnal adventures. I’ve absolutely no idea at all what has prompted the strange inclusion of this unexpected companion, no matter how sweet many of the people in the park described the pair of us last night.

After breakfast I used up the rest of the cheap varnish on the window and the shelves in the wardrobe, and then I varnished the floor with the first coat. After that, I went off to Montlucon as I predicted.

First stop was Pionsat to sort out the boulangère. Sophie, the regular Friday livreuse, is off sick and so they’ve been taking on anyone that they can get. That explains all of the confusion about the delivery of Friday’s bread, and I hope that we’ve managed to sort it out.

At the LIDL I witnessed a very disagreeable incident of a young guy verbally abusing the young female cashier over the price of an article (but he cleared off before I could have a word in his shell-like) and then at the Auchan I stocked up with the next month’s major supply of food.

At Brico-Depot I managed to forget the floor-join and the brush for the bedroom door but I managed to fix myself up with some tackle to make a couple of Heath-Robinson hanging rails for the wardrobe, as well as a couple more 4-watt LED light bulbs. I also bumped into Pete Marsh and his friend, who were stocking up on supplies for their next contract.

I was disappointed though – the cheap but good varnish is no longer carried. It seems that the supplier has closed down. So to be on the safe side, I bought another large tin of the expensive stuff just in case. If I don’t use it, it’ll come in handy for the ground floor.

Problem solved though over the road at mr Bricolage. They had big tins of cheap clear varnish on offer so I bought one,as well as the glass that I need to do the window over the door. I’ve managed to bring that home in one piece – it’ll be interesting to see if I can manage to get it into the doorframe without dropping it.

NOZ came up with nothing so I came home, crashed out for an hour and then made myself a Heath-Robinson meal of a handful of pasta, sone peas, carrots and green beans, and some olive oil and mustard sauce. Cooked on the oven because I’ve had the fire on again tonight. The left-over wood from last night-s fire and a floorboard offcut and that was sufficient. It’s amazing what you can do with a good fire.

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Monday 23rd March 2015 – THAT STRANGE ROUND GOLDEN THING …

. .. that I glimpsed in the sky yesterday was there for all of the day today. It was the nicest day of the year so far, beautiful and warm, and down by Chatelguyon all of the trees are now in blossom. Spring is definitely on its way, and a couple of warm sunny days will see it here too.

Liz and I were radioing today, starting off at Marcillat and Radio Tartasse. I was there at 09:30 to record the rock programmes and then Liz joined me for the information programmes that we do. Violette was back in charge of the studio today, and you could tell that she’s not quite with it following the passing of Henri.

I had to go to Pionsat on the way back to drop of Simon’s superb floorboard machine (and I gave him a bottle of wine for his trouble) but the boulangère who I wanted to see – she’s back from holiday now but of course Monday is her closing day, so that was a waste of time.

Liz made a salad for lunch and then we went down to Gerzat and Radio Arverne for the next round of programmes there – and it was as we dropped out of the mountains at Chatelguyon that we noticed the trees and the blossom.

We did 5 programmes for Radio Arverne – I need to start to get ahead for the summer or I’ll be catching up with muself if I’m not careful.

Back here, I crashed out for an hour or two. This is becoming something of a habit now.

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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

bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt 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.

bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceEventually, 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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Thursday 19th March 2015 – YOU MAY NOT BELIEVE THIS, BUT ….

empty tidy bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome france… 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.

-2

Tuesday 17th March 2015 – THIS IS PROGRESS

hanging door bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceHere 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.

fitting lock in bedroom door les guis virlet puy de dome franceI 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.

-1

Friday 13th March 2015 – I HAD A …

crazy paving les guis virlet puy de dome france… 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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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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Friday 6th March 2015 – I DIDN’T GET …

… as much done today as I was hoping for – but then again, isn’t this the story of this blasted wardrobe?

Mind you, I have an excuse for at least part of it. Round about 14:30 I noticed that the temperature in the verandah was 26°C. Not only that, the water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load for the excess solar energy had gone up to more than 70°C but there was no room in the tank to put some cold water to cool it down, so I needed to take some out.

This can only mean one thing. And yes, the shower that I had was gorgeous.

Standing in the verandah pouring water all over me out of a jug might not seem like very much to you, but it’s the first shower of the year here so it’s significant in that respect and, of course, it’s all my own work.

And it’s the earliest shower of the year since I’ve been here (that was 2007 when I came to live here) and it’s a sure sign that the warm weather is here. In the height of summer I can have showers every day, and how I look forward to that.

In fact, today we had 207 amp-hours of surplus solar energy. That gives you some idea of how good the weather has been. What I’ve done therefore is to plug the fridge into the permanent circuit so that it runs through the night. Normally the fridge runs on the overcharge circuit so that it only runs when the batteries are fully charged (except in summer when I run it 24 hours per day) but I need to put a little bit of strain on the batteries. This is the earliest that I’ve had the fridge going through the night.

wardrobe door bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceReturning to our moutons, first job in the bedroom this morning was to trim off all of the doors on the upper row. I’d marked them off yesterday so it didn’t take all that long, but I ended up doing the bottom of one of the doors as well because the rest of it ended up looking so good.

I’ve started on the upper fascia panel too – making it out of the cut-off ends of floorboards mounted vertically, so I had to go a-scavenging around the bedroom for the offcuts. The chop saw is excellent though for the cutting.

However, here’s a design fault or two with the machine. A built-in measure would help enormously, as well as an end-stop which you can set in order to cut constanr lengths. I had to invent something for this.

I’m not very happy with this though. Each piece has to be shaped individually once it’s been cut, and some of these shapes around the exposed beams are quite complicated. For one section, I had to cut three different pieces before I was satisfied.

But that’s half-done now and it might take another half-day to finish. And I’ll be glad when it’s done too. I can then crack on with the rest of the bedroom

I finished off tonight by going down to Pionsat and the Intermarche for the shopping. THis means that I have Saturday free. And I’m pleased that I don’t have to go to Montlucon tomorrow for bits and pieces.

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