Category Archives: Michael

Sunday 30th March 2014 – THAT’S MUCH BETTER …

… from Pionsat today. the 2nd XI went down the road to play Le Quartier’s 2nd XI and won 3-1 without really breaking into a sweat either. And Apart from the three goals, they also missed a penalty and had countless shots cleared off the line too.

The irony of it all was that they were playing without an attack either. Up front were Michael the Ist XI reserve centre-half who was available today because he didn’t play last night, and Michael who played in goal for the 2nd XI until he broke his shoulder three or four years ago.

I don’t remember about the first goal now, but the second goal was a driven cross by Michael the 1st XI centre-half that hit Jerome on the knee and went straight in the goal without anyone being aware of what had happened.

The third goal was a peach. Michael the 1st XI centre-half again, this time laying off a ball about 25 yards out to Bertrand who was rushing in like a steam train. He hit it plumb on the volley and normally these go into the field behind the goal, or else into the garden at the side of the pitch, but this one, just for a change, kept low and hard right into the far corner with the keeper a very distant second.

Talking of the keeper however, a more-miserable bad-tempered keeper I have never seen. He started at the first attack, throwing the ball into the back of Michael the 1st XI centre-half. Of course Pionsat were playing away and it’s the home side that supplies the referee in Division 4, so we didn’t even have a penalty, let alone a sending-off. And then every time there was a 50-50 ball the goalkeeper would physically threaten the opposing player, and the referee would intervene to punish the attacker.

Home-town referee, as you can guess. This kind of thing is totally shameful and does no credit to Le Quartier’s football club.

But of course Pionsat’s players are far too naive for even this level of football. They need to learn more about the judicious use of the elbow during high balls into the area from corners. That would have kept the goalkeeper under control.

As for Pionsat’s defence, they were up to their usual antics but Le Quartier had nothing to offer up front. Nevertheless they scored a goal near the end when a sleeping Pionsat defence allowed an attacker through and he scored a goal with a delightful lob over the advancing Christophe.

Apart from that, the change to Summer Time didn’t bother me at all. I was up and about as usual by about 10:15 new time. And I spent a few hours writing up more for the web site.

After the football (which had a 13:00 kick-off) I emptied Caliburn as we have a furniture removal to do this week, and then wrote a pile of stuff for the Radio Anglais programmes.

A chat to Cecile and her mum rounded off the day and that was that.

Back to work tomorrow.

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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?

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Friday 16th December 2011 – JULIE’S MUM …

loaded caliburn ford transit… said to me that I could fit a few extra things in Caliburn, because her son in law (Rob) had told her that it would be quite empty coming back.

Well, absolutely. As you can see.

Shall we run through all of the stuff that isn’t there? Like no scaffolding for a start? No rolls of insulation?

As Clare said when she saw the photograph “it’s a good job that I forgot to ask you about the three-piece suite”. Plenty of room for that.

I left my hotel fairly early and did another trip around the supermarkets and tool supply places like Screwfix and Toolstation, all for stuff that I had forgotten.

Another trip down to my storage box and collect the last of the stuff that I had ordered. And my luck was in again – I managed to source another Ford Transit wheel for Caliburn’s winter tyres.

Northampton was next, and Michael very kindly sorted out a 98-litre immersion heater for me from his plumbing supplies place. This is for the solar hot water at home.

Rosemary had asked me to call at a place in London for 7 rolls of this space-blanket roof insulation, and then back out to Luton for Rob and Julie’s stuff.

No wonder I was exhausted.

I made it down to Pompey – Portsmouth – with time to spare – which surprised me totally. Enough time in fact to go to the chippy for another huge dollop of beans and chips all smothered in malt vinegar, just like the evening that I arrived, which seemed like a year ago.

Now I’m sitting in the queue for the ferry, which leaves at 23:59. I hope that there’s a nice corner for me to curl up into. I’m exhausted!

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Wednesday 28th April 2010 – Today was busy.

This morning first thing I had to go round to Michael’s. He’d just come back from the UK and bought me 10 kilos of oats. And as he was off again this afternoon I needed to rescue them (and pay him) before he went.

Back home I had time to plant some of the seeds that Clare had given me before leaping aboard Caliburn, my trusty steed, and heading off to St Gervais d’Auvergne to meet Liz and go on to Gerzat to record our radio programme. And of course to meet this photographer guy who wanted not just to photograph us but to interview us too. It seems that in the Combrailles we are becoming major news and our publicity is reaching its height. Yes, we are going to be the feature article in … errrr …. a free advert-type newspaper in the Combrailles with a circulation of about 350.

Not quite Le Monde or Paris Match I know, but we remain confident that one day we will be there. I’m eagerly awaiting the day that we will be asked to open our first brocante or be the guests of honour at a concours de belote.

Back at St Gervais d’Auvergne Liz and I went for a coffee or two and discussed our plans for next week. We are going to hit the Chambre de Metiers et de l’Artisanat in Chamailles and get all our business affairs in order. Neither of us has received our formal inscription of our business registrations despite having had an acknowledgement almost a year ago. High time we did something about it.

Back here I planted all of my early potatoes. And I think I’m going to run out of room for the lates and so I’ll have to invent something about that. And I should have gone to football training this evening but today was the hottest day of the year and it’s still 25 degrees up here even with all of the windows open. That’s not a temperature for someone of my age and my level of fitness to be running around. But the weather is supposed to break tomorrow or Friday morning, with rain (the first since April 9th) and a major drop in temperature. If that holds, then training at the Friday night session is a distinct possibility.

Now where have I put my footy boots????

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Friday23rd April 2010 – I’ll be back …

… on the road in about 10 minutes. And I’ll be very late getting away tonight, much later than I wanted to be, but then again, a lot has happened.

Firstly we had yet another “end of an era”. Long-time followers of this organ will recall the white LDV that I bought in 2002 and which ran for ever once we put a new engine into it but which was defeated by rust and lack of spare parts. It’s been sitting outside the apartment at “Expo” for three years since Caliburn came along and everyone was moaning about it, so I had someone come along and take it away.

A vehicle dismantler in Brussels has an LDV and he can’t find spares for it either so he gave me €100 for it, which I reckoned was excellent value.

Cleaning it out discovered hordes of goodies that I had forgotten all about too as well as a full set of tools, so it was quite profitable all told.

After that I went for lunch with Mike, who is doing my old job as chair of the Open University Student Association’s North European Revolutionary Forces. And I had quite a laugh as on the way there I saw a billboard saying “You have won the lottery. Where will you be dining now?” Well, I had effectively won the lottery with disposing of the LDV and I was taking Mike to a fritkot. My generosity knows no bounds.

And so, after paying all of the bills and so forth, I cleaned up Expo just a little bit, loaded up Caliburn, and hit the road.

I also found some time to call in at the IKEA Anderlecht (where I was one of several persons involved in an argument on the car park) for one or two things that I need at home.

And so, all in all, it is going to be a very late departure and I’m not planning on making it all the way home in one go. After all, I’ve had quite a busy day.

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Thursday 1st April 2010 – We’re cracking on in the garden!

gardening raised beds les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou can see the seventh raised bed – it’s the one on the extreme right at centre-height in the photo. Having dug over everywhere yesterday I made the raised bed – out of Brico Depot Bargain Basement shuttering board, of which I have a considerable amount as it is very handy stuff to have

The older raised beds were made out of board and were 1.40m square, but this board comes in 3m length so I have done this one 1.40 x 1.60.

Once I organised that, I started on digging over where the 8th raised bed will be – behind bed no7. This took ages to dig over – in fact it’s only had its first digging – on the grounds that there are tree roots everywhere and they all need to be hauled out. Mind you I might have made much more progress had I left my bed this morning long before … errr … 10:40. I dunno what’s happening to me about this.

After breakfast I did a couple of hours up here and I’ve put two of the footy web pages on line – this one and this one. Only another 12 to do.

This evening I went round to Michael’s and we had a bit of a jamming session. Because he’s not been playing guitar long I had to teach him some music theory, which is quite difficult as I don’t know it myself. He’s off to the UK in a couple of days time but we resolved that when he came back we would try to get together maybe once a week and see what we shall see. In the meantime I’ll have a rummage through my record collection and look for some 12-bar blues stuff (some Flying Aces stuff or JJ Cale – that kind of thing) and make up a disk of stuff to have a play with.

And all day we had intermittent showers, hailstorms, heavy rain – you name it, we had it. And last night the temperature dropped below freezing.

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Monday 29th March 2010 – We now have SIX raised beds in the vegetable plot.

6 raised beds garden les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe last one of these I had to cut a couple of new sides as the original ones had split. The next couple of beds I’m going to have to build up from scratch.

There’s only two more to make, but I’m going to be building a new cloche about 3 times the size of the existing one and about twice as high. That’ll be for melons and cucumbers and so on and I’ll use the existing one for strawberries.

MInd you there was a point when I didn’t think I would get anything done today. What with the change in hours today I found it a little difficult to leave my stinking pit. And then I had a phone call, a parcel from the postwoman, a parcel from a courier (my new Nikon camera has arrived!!!!) followed by a visit from my Dutch neighbours. By the time I’d finished my breakfast it was almost 12:00!

This morning started off bright and sunny snd for a moment I thought that Spring had come back. But of course it wasn’t to last and it clouded over progressively until by teatime it was positively pouring down with rain.

You might remember a few months ago I had a jamming session with a guitarist and a drummer in Montaigut. Michael the guitarist phoned me up this afternoon and asked if I wanted to get together again. So with being out tomorrow night at a CREFAD meeting, wednesday football training and Friday in Clermont Ferrand, that only left Thursday evening.

Do you know that when I lived in Brussels there was so much more to do and so many more people to do it with, yet I never seemed to do very much. However down here in the back of beyond I’m rushed off my feet and have far more going for me than I ever did back there!

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Saturday 31st October 2009 – I had another working day today.

This morning I masked off everywhere in the room and then went off to St Eloy for the shopping. I spent up in LIDL – they were having a musical day so I bought a couple of guitar stands and a guitar tuner.

Also buying a guitar stand was Michael – I haven’t seen him in ages.
“Do you play?” he asked me
“Yes – bass guitar” I replied.
“I’ve started to play electric guitar” he said

So we had quite a chat about guitars and music and other exciting stuff. I told him I was planning to get back on the road, and it turns out that he knows a drummer that lives near to him. He’s going to put me in touch with him
“You can come and join in too” I suggested
“I don’t know enough chords” he replied
“Look – Status Quo toured for 30 years and they only knew three chords!“
“I see what you mean“
I might be on to something here.

At Carrefour my favourite shop assistant (she’s the spitting image of a girl I used to work with) was there. But she’s had her hair cut!
“Who cut it for you?” I asked
“The coiffeur at St Pourcain” she replied
“Doesn’t he like you then?“

Back at home I spent the afternoonpainting attic walls painting, as you can see. Half of the room is done, and I’ve used half of the paint. So it isn’t going to get a second coat any time soon. I’ve brushed it on too rather than rollered it – to make it go farther.

Krys’ suggestion of cream would have been an excellent choice but it’s a bit too late now. Blue will have to do. It’ll get the rest tomorrow and if I run out I can do one of the walls in white.

And while I was up on the ladder doing a complicated bit the blasted phone rang. I scrambled down, lowered the ladder down again and climbed down to the phone but just as I got there the perishing thing stopped ringing.

Once I’d finished the first tub of paint I cleaned myself up a bit and set off for Clotilde’s, who was having a farewell evening before she goes into hibernation at Annemasse. But I must have driven around Lapeize about three times and I couldn’t see her house. Nowhere with plenty of cars parked outside. Even some local yokel couldn’t set me right for her house so after gnashing my teeth I came back home again.

As you know I don’t do “social stuff”. It takes me a whole load of effort to get out of my house but it’s one of the things I need to do so I force myself. But it’s twice now I’ve been to some social event like this where the directions have been … errr …. rather vague and I’ve ended up not going. maybe it’s fate trying to tell me something.

In other news, LIDL has been having a British week and selling loads of traditional British stuff, most of which I imagine has never done anything more British than watch an episode of Coronation Street on satellite TV in some factory in South Korea. One of the things that they have on offer are boxes of Jelly Babies.
And do you know how you can tell which of a box of Jelly Babies are the illegitimate ones/
The answer is really easy.
If you turn the box upside down, all the b@$t@rd$ fall out.

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