Category Archives: bernard

Monday 19th November 2012 – WE WERE RADIOING …

… today

But I almost wasn’t.

Coming into Marcillat-en-Combraille I encountered a large red lorry, and the closer I approached it, the farther it drifted out across the road into my path.

I ended up with two wheels on the pavement and a big bulge in one of my tyres. And just before I come to the UK too. I could have done without that.

Just for a change, things went according to plan at Radio Tartasse and we weren’t there long. I put some diesel into Caliburn and then went down to Liz’s for lunch – hot-pot, apple crumble and custard.

That was followed by some of Cecile’s chocolate cake and Liz’s carrot cake, all the leftovers from yesterday evening, and very nice they were too.

Radio Arverne was surprisingly well-organised too and we didn’t stay long there.

I’ve been planning a new format for the presentation of the programmes and that seemed to work quite well – a vast improvement on piles of scattered papers all over the place.

Bernard the engineer finally managed to track down some of the programmes that were lost following his technical hitches in March and September but the rest are, unfortunately, irretrievably lost which is something of a shame.

Back to Liz’s for more coffee and carrot cake (I really am so lucky) and that was that

Tomorrow it’s back to work and I’ll be doing the flooring in the shower room I hope, unless I have any more interruptions.

That should keep me out of mischief for a while. 

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Friday 28th September 2012 – WE WERE RADIOING …

… today

And just for a change I was up with the alarm clock – I’ve been just a little lazy just recently.

After breakfast I went off to Marcillat-en-Combraille to record my Radio Anglais rock music programmes for Radio Tartasse for the month of November – we are trying to keep a good two months in advance.

Back here afterwards I had yet another quick clean-out of Caliburn. Somewhere is the spare battery for the Nikon D5000 camera and I reckoned that if I was going to be on a roll for finding stuff I might as well try to find that too.

But no such luck as yet. That needs further work, I reckon.

While we are on the subject of finding stuff, on the way down to Liz’s to pick her up for Gerzat the Nokia phone rang – it was Liz reminding me about this afternoon.

But that goes to prove that the SIM card works, and so does the old Nokia and so that’s progress of some sort. And also that Liz is still reading my blog. Anyway at least I’m wired to the world again.

At Gerzat we ran through the 5 Radio Anglais radio programmes for Radio Arverne in no time at all. Bernard was squeezing us in between a couple of other things and so we had to get a move on.

We were back at Liz and Terry’s for before 17:00 and that doesn’t happen too often.

Tomorrow, if I don’t fall asleep again, I’ll be off to Commentry.

The weather has improved again and it might be nice tomorrow, so I’ll go for a swim if I’m lucky.

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Monday 27th February 2012 – IT WASN’T QUITE …

… as warm up herethis morning.

A mere 13.4°C up here in fact.

But considering that the temperature had dropped to -2.2°C outside last night and that I had no heating on in here last night either, I was quite impressed by that.

I’m wondering in fact whether or not it’s staying warmer up here since I finished the ceiling in the room below. It does seem like it.

This morning I went off to Sauret-Besserve and picked up Liz, and then we made our way down to Gerzat to record the Radio Arverne programmes. And wasn’t that a farce? They have had new computers and new programs installed and Bernard didn’t know how to work it all.

It took quite a bit of telephone assistance together with a little first-hand aid from Yours Truly to organise everything.

At one stage it looked like we might have to come back and do it all over again – an idea that didn’t impress me too much.

Instead of being a quick hour or so it ended up more like two and a half hours. Both Liz and I had things to do this afternoon so that meant hurrying back up here to get ready, and then off to Radio Tartasse in Marcillat en Combraille to carry out another little task, more of which anon.

Today we had well over 11 hours of solar energy – a huge improvement on winter’s previous best of 10:49. It seems that the weather has suddenly opened up.

So much so that when I came back from Radio Tartasse I did a little gardening – not on my garden but in the lane there are several small trees starting to grow and their branches have been scratching the side of Caliburn. I spent a pleasant half hour or so cutting them down.

I had a fire up here tonight although it wasn’t strictly necessary. And the temperature went to over 25°C while I cooked my baked potatoes and ratatouille.

It won’t be much longer before I have to abandon the idea of cooking up here on the stove. It’s warming up far too much.

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Sunday 27th November 2011 – I WAS A BIT PUT OUT TODAY.

But before I tell you about that, let me first tell you the good news.

Although it was late when I went to bed, I managed to sleep for 6 hours or so. And after breakfast, I finished off the scripts for the radio programmes that we will be recording this week for Radio Anglais

I had to rush though as Pionsat St Hilaire’s 3rd XI were playing away at Combronde at 13:00 but just as I was stepping out of the door to go, Percy Penguin chose that moment to ring me.
“You fell on your head? It might knock some sense into you”.
It’s nice to have friends, isn’t it?

And so at Combronde, 5 minutes late and the place all deserted. There was no-one around at all. So what’s going on here?

col de ceyssat puy de dome franceAnyway, that was an hour and a half and 75 kilometres wasted. There was clearly no point in staying on here so I fuelled up and went off to Ceyssat for the 1st XI match instead.

That long drive took me round by the Puy de Dome – right past the foot of it, and it was remarkable to notice the change in the weather. From my humble abode to round about St Bonnet it was grey miserable and overcast.

But south of there we had glorious sunshine. The Puy de Dome (and you pass within about 200 metres of it) was especially nice. But once over the Col de Ceyssat I drove straight into a fog and that was that.

I met Bernard the club president. he said that the 3rd XI match was cancelled, and so I berated him for not sending me a text – after all, I told him last night that I would be going. It’s a couple of times now that they have done this on me and I’m becoming rather fed up.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire football club de foot olby ceyssat puy de dome franceBut the actual match cheered me up considerably.

Olby-Ceyssay were a pretty poor side and FC Pionsat St Hilaire had no trouble whatever in demolishing them 4-0, hardly breaking sweat in doing so.

it’s a shame that they can’t play like that every week.

From there I went on round to Liz and Terry’s where we rehearsed our radio programmes – we’re recording next week.

Liz had baked potato pie and rice pudding for afters, and she even made up a doggy bag and a lump of fruitcake for me to take home. It’s that kind of thing that makes it worth-while having good friends, and helps me to forget all of the worries and disagreements.

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Saturday 2nd April 2011 – BACK IN BELGIUM

After my vicissitudes on the road yesterday, I finally came to rest on the service area at Nivelles at about 03:00 – a 19-hour day (teachers, please take note).

At least it gave me the opportunity to have one of the best nights’ sleeps that I’ve had on the road for quite some time so next morning I was up and about and ready for anything.

loading belgian land rover minerva onto ifor williams trailer brussels belgiumNext morning I went round to Bernards to load up the Minerva. It’s not that heavy and we managed to push it onto the trailer without even the hint of a winch – really!

I’ve left the trailer parked up at Bernard’s house now waiting for me to go back to pick it up tomorrow late afternoon. I have plenty to do (like shopping and the like) and I don’t want to drag all of this around behind me through the streets of Brussels and anywhere else.

After spending 2 hours discussing solar panels with 2 guys from the Congo (it’s better than Nigeria I suppose) whom I met outside Carrefour, I did some shopping and then went to the flat where I half-loaded the van.

But you all missed the excitement there as well – and Terry would have loved this.

  1. A van pulls into the private parking space of someone while it unloads some stuff
  2. the owner of the private parking space pulls up behind and blocks them in – and then walks away
  3. the owner of the van goes to fetch the President of the Conseil de Gerance
  4. the President of the Conseil de Gerance accuses me of parking my van there (it’s a small white Volkswagen we are talking about here by the way) so we have “a frank exchange of views” about this and he won’t be coming to talk to me again.
  5. the owner of the car says that he is going to leave his car parked blocking this van in – and obstructing the passageway – all night
  6. The President tells the owner of the car “yes, you do that – it’ll serve these bastards in this van right”
  7. The President and the car driver wander off arm-in-arm more or less, to the accompaniment of some ribald commentary from Yours Truly.
  8. The woman from the next garage can’t get her car into her garage
  9. The man in the previous garage can’t get his car out of his garage
  10. The police are called.
  11. Having stirred the pot by coming out with my usual round of … errr … helpful comments, I wander away.

Isn’t life exciting in Brussels?

And now just for a change, I’m in a small hoted in Ghent. I’ve been for a walk around and I’ve had some chips and a vegetable kebab and I’m okay. Here I’ll be staying until the morning.

It’s a departure from the usual procedure, I know, but I just fancied doing something a little different. And why not?

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Wednesday 2nd June 2010 – The quarry opens …

montaigut quarry tipping 30 tonnes of stones les guis virlet puy de dome france… at 13:30 after the lunch break and at 13:40 the lorry turned up. It took him a good 15 minutes to negotiate the tight angles and corners around here, but once he was in position, he promptly deposited 15 tonnes of gravel.

The lorry then went away and half an hour later it was back with another 15 tonnes which was likewise promptly unloaded.

There is a downside of all of this, and that was that he left with a cheque for €628. Hasn’t that torn a huge hole in my budget for this year?

mini digger hardstanding caliburn parking les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd if that wasn’t enough, at 16:30 Sebastien and Bernard turned up despite their bereavement and immediately set to work.

They were only here for an hour or so before they were all finished, so it didn’t take too long. Mind you, they did tell me that they were here all Saturday afternoon digging out and moving about 30 trailers worth of rubbish and so on, depositing it in the waste land up the lane, and they did an hour of spreading and tamping down with the digger.

hardstanding caliburn parking les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt’s cost me another €200 for the labour and machinery for everything that they did, which might sound like a lot to some people (but certainly not to me) but when you think about it, at a minimum wage of €8:50 per hour, €200 represents about 24 or 25 man hours of labour alone. And would this ever have been done by a man working 25 hours with just a shovel?

Anyway, they’ve left behind them about 80 square metres of hardstanding. And you have to admit that this looks pretty good too. This was much better than I was ever expecting.

underground spring hardstanding caliburn parking les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut we’ve hit a problem in that we might have uncovered a hidden spring. Water is bubbling up and of you look closely in the middle of the image there’s a large damp patch. After they went I spent about an hour sinking rocks into it to bind together the sand and gravel and also to allow the water to bubble to the surface if that’s what is happening. It’s best to get it to come out in one place rather than undermining the hardstanding, and then I can simply lay a trench and pipe it away.

However I reckon that the weather might have something to do with it. You know about all the rain we’ve had recently and we had another 24mm today. There’s water everywhere.

Jean and Elizabeth and their friends popped round today as well to see how I’m getting on. Elizabeth is impressed with the garden and Jean is impressed with the work inside. It’s been a long time since they came here.

Tomorrow I’m going to take it easy. It was hard work shovelling that stuff today.

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Sunday 16th May 2010 – Football isn’t everyone’s cup of tea …

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire puy de dome ligue de football league france… and as we were all staggering off towards the pie hut at half-time today during the match at St Maurice pres Pionsat I couldn’t resist taking this pic of a Biollet St Maurice supporter overcome by emotion due to the hectic pace of the game.

But the young lady fast asleep by the touchline and the blue sky will give you some idea of the weather today. Summer seems to be back – and about time too.

puy de dome franceMind you, I can’t blame the girl for falling asleep because it was one of THOSE games this afternoon. The heat was clearly getting to everyone and so it was played at something of a leisurely pace and in the end, finished as a 0-0 draw.

Pionsat were the better side though and did have one or two chances to take the lead during the match, but I do have to admit I’ve seen many more exciting games than this one. At least, is was a pleasant day out.

I woke up at 09:57 to the sun streaming in through my windows here. It looked beautiful and I couldn’t resist thinking to myself that it was so nice that someone was bound to spoil it. And right on cue the phone rang. Bernard, the football club chairman, wanted to tell me that his son (he who has the digger) wanted to talk to me and could he come round.

So I hauled myself out of bed to wait for him. I asked Bernard a while back if he knew of someone with a digger who can dig out where I want to park Caliburn and he recommended his son. But he was stuck on a chantier in all of this bad weather. It now seems that they’ve been able to work and it may well be that by Friday they’ll be finished. So he came to see the job and reckons he’ll ring me on Friday or Saturday to tell me when he can start.

I told him about Simon’s job and he’s keen to do that too. And by the purest coincidence it seems that where Simon is living is the old workshop of Bernard’s uncle and Bernard was born in the house just next to Simon’s.

This world is getting far too small for me.

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