Category Archives: roncey

Thursday 21st June 2018 – I WAS WRONG …

… about doing a few bits and pieces and then having an early night last night.

Yes, its a real puzzle. That’s a couple of times that I’ve been so wrong just recently and that’s not like me at all. But then no-one can predict what is going to happen when it comes to dealing with the Worst Bank In The World.

There was an e-mail sent to me from them about this payment.
“In order to action your request we need to speak to you … please get in touch on ******** by 17:00 (UK time) on 21/06/2018…If no reply is received by the date and time quoted, your payment request will be cancelled.”

It’s timed at 18:30 which, coincidentally, is the time that their International Branch closes. But it arrived in my mailbox at just about 22:00.

So the bank that refused TWICE to speak to me about this transfer now wants to speak to me about this transfer.

The mail also read “We have been unable to contact you on the telephone numbers we currently have recorded on our system” which is hardly a surprise seeing, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall, the bank entered my phone number incorrectly in its database.

But nobody speaks to me like this, least of all anyone who has so much of my money as they do. And so I hit the customer services department’s all-night line.

A 25-minute wait was not guaranteed to improve my humour at that time of the night and when I finally did speak to someone, the help that he gave me was “call back in the morning”. So he had an earful too.

After a great deal of discussion and much insistence on my part, I was eventually put through to the all-night complaints line. The girl there refused to listen to my complaint and after the discussion became rather heated, she hung up the phone on me.

And so I spent the next half-an-hour tracking down the on-line complaints department.

And do you want to see what you get when you click on the link to the on-line complaints service? It’s a real Third-World Bank isn’t it?

But I’m nothing if not persistent and I eventually tracked down a method by which I can make a formal complaint. And now they have had a 3,000-word formal complaint from me about all of this.

It also goes without saying that I didn’t call them back today either. I’ll call them tomorrow and if they don’t make the payment I’ll be closing all of my accounts. A man can only take so much garbage from the Worst Bank In The World.

The result of this was that I was completely stressed out after a couple of hours of extremely heated argument. In the old days I would have gone for a run – guaranteed to calm me down. But I can’t run these days, so I ended up having the worst night for quite some considerable time. None of my relaxation techniques seemed to worK

So much for trying to lead a stress-free existence these days.

Despite everything, I did manage to crawl out of the bed at an early hour, and following a shower and breakfast, Caliburn and I hit the road.

We called at Roncey to pick up Liz and then we went off to IKEA.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a year ago I bought the first instalment of furniture for this place, and I needed a second load.

However I’ve not managed to make it there in Caliburn, and as Liz wanted to go to purchase some bunk beds for her grandchildren who will be arriving shortly (much to Strawberry Moose‘s delight as they are amongst his most devoted fans). So today was the day.

We had a lap around buying the small stuff and making a list of the big furniture. Then we went for lunch, and I lost the list, so we had to go around again.

And having made a second list, we could buy up the stuff that we needed and load up Caliburn.

All in all, it took much longer than it otherwise might have done because there were plenty of coffee stops as we went around. It’s hard work looking for furniture, and even harder work hauling it about.

Back at Liz’s we unloaded her purchases and she made a baked potato, salad and beans for tea which was very nice. Saved me a job.

Caliburn and I returned home to find that there was a music evening in the town and all of the roads were closed. It took some negotiating to find our way back here.

Interestingly, despite the dreadful night and the exertions of today, I’ve not crashed out at all. Bizarre, that. maybe it’s because I’ve been keeping busy today and the adrenalin levels have been high. Perhaps I ought to argue with more people more often?

But not tonight. I really am going to try for an early night.

Tomorrow is another day as we all know.

I wonder which b@$t@rd$ are going to come along and spoil it.

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Saturday 24th February 2018 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

And it was so nice to receive so many greeting from so many different people.

And it’s so nice to be here too. It’s been a long, hard road this last 27 months or so and there’s plenty more to come as regular readers of this rubbish will recall.

But despite everything, I wasn’t here last night. I was away with the fairies.

I’m not sure now who I was with at the start of last night’s travels but it quickly developed rather distressingly into a family affair and I don’t need that right now. But first I was with two other people – whom I forget right now – and I can’t remember what it was that we were actually doing. But it had snowed quite heavily and there was plenty about. All of these kids were enjoying themselves in the snow and we quickly organised them into two teams, one of boys and one of girls, and arranged for them to have a snowball fight. My father made an appearance and made a ribald remark, to which I replied that the boys were at the top of the hill and the girls at the bottom, and no doubt they would all meet in the middle at some point in the fullness of time. But what depressed me was that here the kids were, having no end of harmless fun and the headlines on the local radio news programme were all about “gangs of marauding youths rampaging through the town” – and it was nothing like that at all.
From there we repaired to my brother’s house. He was having all kinds of printer issues so I spent a while examining everything. It appeared that he was putting too much paper in, for a start, and was aligning it wrongly so that only one of the guide wheels was picking up the paper, and so pulling it in off-centre. So I told him what to do and showed him how to do it, and left him to it. Half an hour later he told me that it was still doing it, so I went to see. And not only had he changed the printer from the one that we had used before, he had the bad habit of pulling backwards on the paper – just like you would do with the elastic of a catapult – just before the printer went to drag it in. And so the paper missed.
Next stop was my niece. She was printing her right-wing revolutionary tracts in a kind of purple-red ink but she too was having printing issues. Her scanner had an automatic feed but it was feeding all of the papers in at a time rather than feeding them in one by one as it was supposed to. And as a result we ended up there for hours having to feed them in one by one by hand.

And it was cold in the living room too when I awoke. The temperature outside had fallen to minus 1°C outside during the night. And while that’s a far cry from the minus 16C and minus 19°C that we used to have in the Auvergne, it’s nevertheless the coldest that I had recorded since I’ve been here.

After the medication and breakfast and so on, I had a shower and then went off to the shops. And I spent more than I intended too too. I’ve let supplies run down a little this last few weeks and I needed to stock up somewhat.

So LIDL And LeClerc felt the benefit of my largesse, as did NOZ. I treated myself to three DVDs – an obscure spaghetti wewtern and a couple of 1950d cowboy series collections. As well as that, there was a kind of shoulder bag thing, quite small but with several pockets and just the right size for the new camera and telephoto lens. Only €4:99 too.

Almost every petrol station had a queue at it this morning too, and so as I was quite low I fuelled up with diesel. And then had a close encounter with a motorist who decided to reverse out of a car parking space without looking, right in front of Caliburn.

Back here, I … errr … had a relax for a while and so consequently had rather a late lunch. And then set about to organise a load of washing. However I was interrupted as one usually is when one is in a rush so I was rather late going out.

Liz and Terry had invited me for a Birthday tea so I went for a good chat too. Liz made me a nice vegan birthday cake but with no candles on it. Apparently she’s rather concerned about Global Warming. I did tell her that these days you work backwards and count the years that I have left, but that cut no ice with Liz.

ON the way back the floodlights were on at Cerences so I stopped to watch the last 20 minutes of football. I couldn’t tell you who they were playing because the guy whom I asked mumbled something that I couldn’t understand. So I asked him again, and he repeated it in exactly the same fashion so I’m none the wiser now.

And in the time that I was there nothing exciting happened either.

So now my birthday is over. And I’m off to bed. Will I still be here next year? Who knows. But what I do know is that my next six-month session of treatment starts at 08:50 on Thursday 15th March.

I am not looking forward to that at all.

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Tuesday 13th February 2018 – THE BEST-LAID SCHEMES O’ MICE AN’ MEN …

… gang aft agley, as the old saying goes.

And that’s certainly true of many people, particularly of me, as regular readers of this rubbish will recall only too well.

I’d had yet another decent sleep, and been to Brussels to see my old friend Enzo, who proudly told me that he had a job of work to do at 16:00. And that was a shame, as I also had a jo for him to do at 16:00. But never mind. With a smiling grace, he cheerfully accepted both jobs, so I left it to him as to how he was going to work it out. My next port of call was to wander around Nantwich to a small marquee where several expensive cars were on display. One of them was a Rolls-Royce – or maybe a Bentley – and the salesman was showing a surprising disinterest in his product. When I queried it with him, he told me that he has just been sacked for having made, in what he thought was a secure confidence, some kind of derogatory comment about the product that he was selling. It had reached the ears of his employers and they had told him that when he goes home at the end of the day, not to bother coming back. He was complaining that he now had no work to do, and so I told him that my friend Enzo had two jobs to do at the same time, and he wasn’t complaining.

I just about beat the second alarm, organised the medication and then had my breakfast. I put the heater on in the bathroom and was settling down waiting for the bathroom to warm up, and the telephone rang. Terry was once more having vehicle issues.

He’d been taken to a garage down in Avranches but had no way of returning home. So I quickly had a shower, set up the washing machine and then headed off down there.

Finding the garage was not easy, and then we had to wait ages while they sorted out all of the paperwork. As a result it wasn’t until midday that we arrived at Roncey. Luckily Liz was back from work so she made coffee and lunch and we had a good chat.

After that I headed home, only to find that all of the post offices are closed for Mardi Gras. So all of the letters that I had written yesterday – they’ll have to wait for a few days now.

Up to that point the weather had been absolutely gruesome – one of the worst days of the year. And that didn’t bode very well for the Carnaval procession. But dramatically, the clouds cleared and we even had a little sun.

Consequently I nipped down to the town to watch it all go by yet again, was once more pasted in confetti and had a couple of dances with a couple of female performers. That’s not like me, is it?

But I couldn’t keep it up for the rest of the afternoon and came back here, for a … errr … little relax.

For tea I finished off the tortillas and stuffing, with spicy rice, and then had my usual walk.

Tonnes more photos to edit and upload, something that I was planning to do this morning. But that will all have to wait now. I’m not sure when I’ll find the time now to get around to it.

But now it’s bed-time. I have an early start in the morning as you know. With it being Shrove Tuesday today, it must be Sheffield Wednesday tomorrow.

And as I’m writing this, I realise that, in the confusion, I have forgotten to do my urine sample for the hospital. So I won’t be taking the p155, which is a shame.

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Sunday 3rd December 2017 – THE ONE PROBLEM …

… about going to bed early is that there’s a tendency to wake up early. We all know this and we are all prepared for it, but even so, being wide-awake at 01:30 is rather an extreme example.

And so, after a couple of miserable hours of being awake and not being able to go back to sleep, I was resigned to being still there when dawn broke.

Nevertheless, I did manage to go back to sleep, and even managed to go a-wanderding.

We started off in a very rare coach – a “P” (as in 1975)-registered Duple Viceroy-bodied coach but fitted with a MAN diesel engine (in the days when the only foreign-engined coaches on the UK roads were the very occasional Volvo B58s) and how after about 30 years the company was considering upgrading it to a more modern one, and there was I hoping that I would be chosen to drive it.
From there we passed to much more exciting things. Some young guy was arrested for belong to some kind of secret organisation -and these people were possessed of a certain power in that firstly they could fly, and secondly they could change identity with anyone of a similar grade in their organisation. how they did that was to hold up their hads with a number of fingers visible – the number of fingers visible being the grade to which they belonged. Anyone of a similar grade seeing the sign would hold up a similar number of fingers and they would exchange identities. This young guy escaped from police custody and there was a hue and cry, but he succeeded in exchanging identities with several people, including the policean who was chasing him and taking his girlfriend as part of the deal.

It was 09:20 when I finally crawled out of bed. That was much more like it for a Sunday.

However, that kind of behaviour means that a great deal of the morning has gone – and with it my plans for (thinking about) tidying up the apartment. So why is it that when your living accommodation is spotlessly clean and tidy, no-one ever comes to visit; but when your place is like a disgusting tip because you’ve been too ill to clean it for the last three weeks, half of the building comes to call?

After lunch, I had a shower and then I hit the road. It’s Liz’s birthday very soon so we were having a little party. I’d picked up some chocolates for her from the manufacturer in town.

The road were greasy and muddy, and Caliburn is in a right filthy mess now. But we all had a good chat and Liz had made some vegan meat loaf, with enough left over to make a doggy bag for me.

But I didn’t stay too long, because I’m not up to much just now. I came home, clutching a Christmas present. And I can guess what it is.

Back here, I went straight to bed. No walk tonight and no surfing about on the internet. I’m definitely feeling the strain. Let’s hope I have a better day tomorrow.

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Sunday 5th November 2017 – I’VE HAD A …

… very nice, busy day out today.

I’ve been round at Liz’s for most of the day. We decided a while agos ago to have a bake-in one of these days – an so we fixed on today.

We spent most of the day baking and making soups, and ended up with a huge pile of stuff. There’s –

home made baking liz messenger roncey manche normandy france

  • carrot, coconut and ginger soup
  • pepper, squash and tomato soup
  • apple crumble
  • vegetable piee
  • coriander hummus
  • beanburgers

There’s enough here to keep us going for a couple of weeks, I reckon.

We split the proceeds between us but I could only bring a few bits and pieces home as my freezer is, as you know, pretty full right now. And I do wish that I had bought a bigger one.

I can pick up the rest another time.

This morning it’s Sunday and so there was no alarm. And so no-one was more surprised to see when I awoke that it was all of … errr … 05:10. But badger that for a game of soldiers. I went back to sleep until a more realistic 09:10.

I’d been on my travels too. A long complicated voyage but all that I remember of it now is being on a couple of cable-hauled barges going in opposite directions on the Manchester Ship Canal.

After breakfast – and nice fresh muesli too – I had a shower and a clean-up. And then I hit the road in the driving rainstorm. Liz’s two neighbouring kids were there and were in quite a chatty mood. Once they had gone, we could attack the cooking.

Lunch was carrot, coconut and ginger soup, and tea was pie and mash with peas. And delicious it all was too. But it was quite exhausting doing it all and I found it hard to keep awake. In the end I had to come home and crash out for an hour.

In view of the weather I didn’t feel like going for a walk. It’s not a good diea too because I seem to have acquired a streaming head cold after my night out last night. I’m going to bed in a moment instead.

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Tuesday 8th August 2017 – BRAIN OF BRITAIN STRIKES AGAIN!

I had to go to the Bank this morning. And as I was running a little low on fruit and stuff I decided to make a list and go to the fruit shop in town and pick up a baguette while I was there.

So down I strolled, picked up my fruit, picked up my baguette – and then came straight back up here having forgotten all about the bank!

I’ll just have to go another time, won’t I?

Bu I don’t think much of the fruit shop though. It’s quite expensive and the quality is nowhere near as good as in the Leclerc.

I’m still not getting the hang of this sleeping thing though. 02:30 when I went to bed last night and awake after just 4 hours and 28 minutes of sleep, of which 3 hours and 58 minutes was restful sleep and the other 29 minutes was restless. Maths is clearly not the strongest suit of my Fitbit, is it?

A minor crisis in which I have run out of muesli, but I’m not making a batch just for a couple of days. Luckily there’s a packet loitering around here from when I was living in “digs”. That’l do until I go.

And talking of going, I’ve been synchronising the computers today. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I bought a new laptop in the sales in June. I still have the old one, slow that it is, because of its light weight and extraordinary battery life. That will be coming with me on my travels.

Despite being the worst, slowest computer that I’ve ever owned, it’s done some sterling service and been on some incredible travels. And it will be on some more too. The synchronisation isn’t finished, but I’ll be dealing with that on Friday.

Not possible to go for lunch on the wall today. Every time one sets foot outside one’s apartment one is drenched with a squall of rain.

This afternoon I was on my travels again. I’d been invited for tea chez Liz and Terry as a pre-holiday treat.

Having had a shower to make myself look pretty (hence the Fitbit stats – I charge it up while I’m under the shower), I took the opportunity of

  1. going to the railway station to pick up the railway tickets for Saturday (you can’t trust these machines to work when you need them).
    That was exciting because there was nowhere to park (I pinched a car hire space in the end) and also because the machine wouldn’t give me the tickets either without the bank card that I used to order them.
    “See the clerk in the ticket office” said the machine. And so I did. And she asked me for my bank card too.
    Regular readers of this rubbish will recall me being stranded in Arizona in 2002 when a bank card was “suspended due to unusual transactions – and so now I have six different cards – and so we had quite a performance trying to decide which the card that I had used.
    Eventually we sorted it out and I went outside to be greeted by the manager of the car hire concession and we had words.
  2. going to Centrakor to buy some luggage labels. All luggage has to be fully-labelled these days and my suitcase – would you believe – does not have a luggage label supplied. At that price too!
    So I bought a pack of flourescent lime-green ones. They’ll stand out on a baggage carousel.

But the traffic through the town was horrendous. One of these huge mobile home things driven by a novice having difficulty in manoeuvring through the streets. And so much time at the railway station that I was stuck in the rush hour and it took ages to move through the town.

Liz had made vegan burgers, which went down nicely with chips and peas, followed by fruit salad and vegan chocolate cake (and a doggy-bag for me). Liz let me borrow her printer to print off my flight tickets too, so that’s all sorted out.

But I was struggling to keep awake all evening so I made my excuses and left. No walk this evening – it was pelting down outside so I sat down to do wome work on the laptop.

But having fallen asleep three times in the middle of a couple of keystrokes, I gave it up and went to bed.

Totally wasted.

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Tuesday 25th July 2017 – I KNEW …

… that it was going to be a lot of hard work today when Terry offered me a slice of Liz’s home-made vegan ginger cake as I arrived.

And I wasn’t wrong either.

I’d had a bad night too. With crashing out so convincingly earlier, it was well after 01:00 when I went to bed. And it wasn’t half an ungainly stagger into the bathroom this morning when the alarm went off.

Having done a bit on the blog (I’m trying to update at least 2 entries every day no matter what) I hit the road. But it wasn’t so easy as it might have been as the telecommand for the barrier didn’t work. I had to rely on a helpful neighbour.

Calling at the Casino for some fuel and the boulagerie in Cérences for some bread, I arrived at Terry’s for coffee and cake.

A quick dismantle of the remote control showed that the battery wasn’t seating right. So I took 10 minutes to repair it properly and even made the warning light function – and that’s a first.

All morning was spent sanding down the walls that we had filled yesterday. Terry had the machines and I was doing it by hand in the corners where the machines wouldn’t reach – Terry couldn’t do that because of his shoulder.

By the time we stopped for lunch we were looking like snowmen.

This afternoon we finished off the sanding, and then we had the cleaning. And I’m not sure which took the longer either.

Final job was to sweep the chimney, which was blocked. This involved a trip around all of the neighbours until someone produced a brosse de ramonage – Terry had packed his so well when he had moved house that he had no idea where it might have been.

Terry was up on the roof and I was down below holding the ladder and checking the fire.

By 17:00 I was totally finished off (remember that I had given up all of this work) and came home. First thing that I did was to have a shower (I forgot yesterday) and rinse my clothes of the plaster dust.

Second thing was .. errr … have a snooze, and until 20:00.

I’d had the remains of Liz’s apple flan for lunch, but Terry had sent me home with the remains of Sunday’s hot-pot so that was tea quickly organised. And just as well too because I’ve seized up, aching everywhere and in far too much pain to move.

But I’ve freed off a little now so I’ll go for a short walk around outside, just to say that I’ve been.

And then an early night – I reckon that I’ve deserved it.

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Monday 24th July 2017 – I HAVE JUST MADE …

… one of the best curries that I’ve ever made.

It’s a chick pea and mushroom curry, and I’ve no idea why it should taste so different (or so nice) but it certainly was. And there’s enough for three more days too.

And I’ve been out this morning too. Apparently there was home-made vegan ginger cake being prepared at Roncey so of course Terry needed a hand with the plasterboard in his living room, didn’t he?

So after breakfast I bunged a load of dirty clothes into the washing machine and Caliburn and I hit the streets for Roncey.

I went out there via Intersport. Liz had seen my fitbit on Saturday and was having a play around with it. She asked me if, next time that I was passing, I could pick one up for her.

And it was a good job that I was outside the shop already when it opened its doors, because they only had one left! They don’t have any now!

Terry had fitted the plasterboard but having pulled a tendon in his shoulder, couldn’t reach up to infill the joints. And so I spent a pleasant morning with a pile of pollyfilla (I thought that I had left all of that kind of work far behind me).

There’s plenty of vegan ginger cake left, so I reckoned that the pollyfilla would need a good 20 hours to dry, and I could go back tomorrow morning and sand it down.

Back here, I crashed out for a good hour. Clearly even doing that amount of work was too much for me, but you will be amazed at the lengths to which I will go in order to get my teeth stuck into a slice of Liz’s home-made cake.

So curry for tea tonight, and now a walk. And then a shower (for my nice, clean bedding) and an early night. I need to build up my strength in order to justice to another slice of Liz’s cake.

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Saturday 22nd JULY 2017 – SO WHAT …

standard lens nikon 1 j5 granville manche normandy france… do the following four hotographs all have in common then?

Apart from the obvious fact that they were all taken from exactly the same viewpoint.

And I’m sorry about the choice of viewpoint, but if anyone really thinks that I was going to look for a more scenic viewpoint in all of the torential rain that we had for most of the day yesterday, then they are mistaken.

standard lens nikon 1 j5 granville manche normandy franceRegular readers of this rubbish will recall that about a week ago I told you that I had just made (yet another) major expense.

And I also said that the other day I’d had a visitor. The visitor was the man from FEDEX and he had brought me my parcel from Germany.

And I’m now the proud possessor of a new camera.

Cost me an arm and a leg too, but I’m sure that it will be worth it.

The Nikon, after many vicissitudes, has temporarily given up the ghost. It needs a new lens at least I reckon, and I have just the aforementioned – sitting back in Virlet. No good there, of course.

So being rather stranded for my holidays, I’ve splashed out.

Rhys (and a couple of other people too) are extolling the virtues of these new mirrorless digital SLR cameras – small, lightweight but very rugged, and there have been some good offers going around just recently.

And I’m now the proud possessor of a Nikon 1 J5.

It’s quite small, not the thing if you have big fingers or are wearing gloves, that’s for sure, and it’s comparatively heavy for its size, but it really is pocket-sized, which will be very handy.

And it’s with this camera that the first two photos were taken.

The lens with which it comes is a 10 – 30mm, so it’s a 0.6 to 1.6 zoom – the first photo taken at min and the second photo taken at max.

With all of the photos scaled down to 800×533 from their standard format of … gulp … 5568×3712, quality to 60% and size to 170kb from … gulp … 11,000kb, they aren’t bad at all

30-110 lens nikon 1 j5 granville manche normandy franceAs for the following two photographs, the camera was not the only thing that I bought.

While I was at it, seeing all of the fun that I had had with a cheap telephoto lens, I lashed out and bought a zoom lens.

30-110 zoom it is, so with the focal length of a standard lens being 18.5mm, this is something like a 1.6 to 6-times zoom.

30-110 zoom lens nikon 1 j5 granville manche normandy franceNot as powerful as the big one that I had, but these cameras are in their infancy and good second-hand stuff is hard to find right now.

The first shot was taken at maximum zoom, and the second one is at minimum.

It’s a little grainy and not as sharp as I would like at maximum zoom, but like I said, it will be a while yet before decent second-hand stuff comes on the market.

So when I was wondering where most of the day went, now I know.

I was up early – and reasonably brightly considering my late night last night – and I did manage to dodge the rainstorms down the pick up the baguette – but that was about the limit. No going out for butties on the wall, I’ll tell you that.

I cracked on with the blog for the morning and I’m advancing quite well, but knocking off for a coffee round about midday I started to play about with the camera.

Later this afternoon I was invited for tea round at Liz and Terry’s. Vegan home-made hot-pot followed by vegan glazed apple flan and soya cream. Terry is busy plastering the living room but has hurt his shoulder and finding the rubbing down of the joints very painful.

So in a moment of weakness (my spirit easily succumbs when it’s tucking into Liz’s baking) I shall be out working on Monday – and maybe for a couple of days afterwards too. Talk about the blind leading the blind!

But the drive out to Roncey was a nightmare. And living here might be bad for my health – I’ll tell you that.

Grockles wandering down the street pointing to the sky going “oooh look Doris, a seagull” and stepping off the kerb without looking – I bet that he had to go back to his hotel and change his trousers when Caliburn let fly at him with a volley on the motor horn.

And perishing grockles driving along at 10mph admiring the seagulls when I’m in a hurry. And bleeding grockles simply driving out of side streets totally oblivious of give-way signs and road markings – I bet that he had to go back to his hotel etc etc.

And blasted Belgian grockles who can’t figure out how the cash card reader at the petrol station at the Casino supermarket works (and I bet he had a surprise when I told him what I really thought of him – and in Flemish too!).

And the flaming road closed at Donville-les-Bains as they lay out the street for some kind of street festival tomorrow.

I didn’t go for a walk either – what with the rain this evening.

Ahhh well!

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Monday 26th June 2017 – I SEEM TO HAVE ACQUIRED …

… a washing machine. And it’s sitting in the back of Caliburn right now.

Terry rang me up – and at 08:30 too. “Doing anything? I can’t get the dumper to start”

Actually, I wasn’t in the mood right then and there. If you had been through what I had been through during the night you would not have been either.

I had had a dreadful night, and there was a time round about 02:00 where I thought that I would never ever go to sleep. So much for the early night that I promised myself.
But I must have done at some time or other because I had a visitor during the night.

I’m not sure why Nerina came to visit me but, as this little girl who was in my room at the time remarked, she was wearing a black cloak – and there were various references to all kinds of famous fictional characters. The meeting at first was quite acrimonious but after quite some time it mellowed and in the end we finally agreed to a division of our assets. But not our physical assets – agreement was reached over that years ago – but all of the paperwork. And there we were, during the night, dividing up all of the paperwork sheet by sheet, regardless of whether the division made any logical sense for the accounts or the correspondence that were involved.

Ohhh, how I didn’t want to get out of bed, but I did, and managed some breakfast -and while I was vegetating over a hot mug of coffee the telephone went. Fetching it back, I answered it and it was Terry.

I had a few things to do – like updating a couple of entries on the blog (I am determined to do some of it every day) and having a shave and a shower – and then I hit the road to Roncey.

Terry was right – the dumper wouldn’t start. But I made it start by pouring some drops of neat petrol down the air filter. Fired up a treat but it wouldn’t run on.

So knowing that it fired up, then it can’t have been an electrical or mechanical fault – must be fuel. Plenty of fuel in it and it was going down the fuel lines into the carburettor and the float chamber was full.

Here we were interrupted.

Liz has an old washing machine that only works on one programme and which rattles about the floor of the bathroom like a jive dancer on sherbet dabs. But having had a good month at work, she’s bought herself a new super-duper mega-washing machine and it came today. We signed for it and spent an hour mauling it into the laundry room and installing it.

What a beast.

And the washing machine is awesome too.

“Right, let’s sling the old one into the trailer. I’ll run it down to the dechetterie this afternoon”
“Why?” I asked. “Has it finally handed in its chips?”
“Ohh no” said Terry. “It still works like it always did – maybe more rattly these days – but it’s no use to anyone now we have this one”.
“I can think of someone who will have a use for it” I said. “Let’s sling it in the back of Caliburn”

I know that I decided that I would only have new things here in this apartment, and a new washing machine is high on my list of things to purchase, but you’ll remember that the other day I told you that I wasn’t going to spend any more money for a while and go to have a good time in Canada instead.

So it’s the launderette for me then for the rest of the year and that’s extremely inconvenient for all kinds of reasons. So any old washing machine that will keep running for 6 months or so will be a big bonus for me. It’ll save me €50:00 down at the launderette as long as it keeps on going.

Back to the dumper, and with fuel getting into the float chamber, it was time to take off the carburettor.

The carburettor is held on by just two bolts. But if I were to tell you the performance that we went through in order to gain access to the two bolts, and then to disconnect all of the throttle and choke linkages, you wouldn’t believe me. It was like that stupid Hyundai Trajet that I did two years ago – all assembled onto a subframe on a bench and then fitted into the framework, so you can’t get at anything.

That took us to lunchtime.

After lunch with the carburettor in my sweaty little mitt I went to take out the jets – but they are fixed in – can’t be dismantled. So I had to work out where all of the air passages were and use a compressor to blow them out backwards.

Sure enough, I eventually discovered a passage that was blocked and so with a fine wire I probed the orifice and eventually cleaned it out. And then a few more blasts of air to make sure.

I checked the float to make sure that it wasn’t holed, and then reassembled the carburettor. And then, I had to stick it back on the engine – which was even more interesting than taking it off.

The good news was that with the first pull (it’s a recoil starter) of the starter it fired up correctly. And Terry and Liz (who was by now back from work) reckoned that it was running better than it had for quite a while.

Liz made a gorgeous tea and afterwards we sat around in the beautiful evening sunshine chatting about this and that.

And now I’m home. And with a washing machine too. Terry and Liz think that they might be on their travels at the weekend so they will pop by and help me bring it upstairs and install it. So this weekend I might even be able to do my own washing. And isn’t that progress?

It’s looking more like home every minute.

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Friday 2nd June 2017 – HAVING A RIDE …

sand sculpture crocodile montmartin sur mer manche normandy france… on Rosie the Crocodile – and just look at those big scary teeth!

While I was out doing my shopping his morning I had a phone call from Liz. “We’re all going down to the beach at Montmartin sur Mer this afternoon after lunch. Would you like to come with us?”

Do bears go for picnics in the woods?

Last night was a really bad night for me. I was still wide awake at 04:35 and wasn’t sure that I would ever go off to sleep. But I must have done, and crawling out of bed at 07:00 wasn’t very easy either as you might expect.

A shower brought me round somewhat, and then I noticed a little calamity – something along the lines of the fact that I seem to have run out of clothes again. I had a good rummage around and managed to find a few clean things but I really shall have to go to the launderette next week. I have actually found one in the town by the harbour.

Once I’d organised myself I headed off to the shops. Going on a Saturday morning, is, as we know, a waste of time. I went to the Bio shop for some vegan sausages (I fancy sausages, beans and chips), to Mr Bricolage for some fittings for the curtain rail in the bedroom, and to LeClerc for the groceries and some diesel.

But I’m going to have to think again about the bio shop. The stuff in there is quite expensive, the choice isn’t up to much and the staff is quite surly in there. I shall have to see what I can find in the way of mail-order outlets once my bank account is FINALLY organised.

And we weren’t alone on the streets either. By one of the roundabouts was a police motorcycle patrol who was interested in vehicles entering the town. Not quite sure why, but he took a note of Caliburn’s registration number.

After lunch I headed for the beach at Montmartin sur Mer.

french army aeroplane montmartin sur mer manche normandy franceWhile I was on my way up the coast I was overflown by a flight of four aeroplanes. Big four-engines French Army transport planes of some description – I’ve no idea at all what they might be.

But when I was walking down onto the beach after parking up Caliburn they flew back again, directly overhead. This gave me a good opportunity to take a close-up photograph of them as they roared by. They were certainly impressive – and noisy. Just imagine what 500 Avro Lancasters going by overhead must have sounded like. No wonder you needed an intercom

french army aeroplane montmartin sur mer manche normandy franceAt the end of the beach, away in the distance, they performed a U-turn and flew back off at a tangent somewhere inland. They were clearly up to something, that’s for sure.

As an aside, it was explained to me later that there’s to be a drop of parachutists over the Invasion Beaches to commemmorate D-Day in a couple of days time. I reckon that these would be just the type of aircraft to carry paratroopers and so maybe they are having a quiet rehearsal of low-flying over the beach.

lighthouse pointe d'agon montmartin sur mer manche normandy franceWhile I had the camera out – do you see that lighthouse across there? That’s the lighthouse on the Pointe d’Agon where we were the other day. We’re actually at the mouth of the River Sienne (not the Seine) and the currents offshore are gradually shifting the mouth southwards by that huge sand bar over there.

Built in 1856 on the site of an old fortress washed away in 1776 by an exceptionally high tide, the lighthouse is now a good kilometre from the mouth of the river today.

We had fun building Rosie the Crocodile and then the lack of sleep last night took hold. I can’t think of any finer way to spend a sunny afternoon out at the beach than by having a good crash-out for a couple of hours. I was well away. And everyone was laughing because I’d put my cap on my face to protect my face from the sun, and as I was breathing in and out, my cap was going up and down like in one of these cartoon films.

Liz and Terry very kindly invited me back for tea and we all had a really good chat, as Kate, Darren and the kids are going home tomorrow. And then , I came home.

It had been a long day and so it wasn’t any longer that I hung about before going to bed. I have no plans for tomorrow so we’ll see what that day brings.

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Friday 5th May 2017 – SO HERE I AM …

… about to spend my first night in my new chez moi.

Last night I had a really good sleep and was awakened from the dead by the alarm. I knew absolutely nothing about anything in between. I’d been on my travels but all memory of them had disappeared by the time that I had come round.

It was something of a painful breakfast – I’ve clearly been doing too much just now – and I ad to sit around for half an hour or so before I could hit the road. But I ended up at NOZ just as it opened.

NOZ was something of a disappointment. It’s a shop that sells all kinds of ends of series, bankrupt stock, all of that, and I was hoping for a pile of stuff to help me set up home, but it had almost nothing whatever.

I had much better luck in Centrakor where I spent almost €100. Tons of stuff in there that I needed, but most important, after a decent big waste bin of course, was some bedding. A single quilt, pillow and quilt cover. I’m sleeping on the sofa until I can sort out a bed, and I’ll need these to keep warm. It won’t be wasted because if I have friends to stay, they can use the bed and the double quilt that I’ll be buying, and I’ll use the single on here.

After that I went to LeClerc and stocked up with whatever I couldn’t get and also a pile of food. And then I came here.

Still creaking and groaning, it took me a while to bring everything up and then I sat down and made my butties – only to be disturbed by the man from EDF. It took him just 5 minutes to reconnect the electricity and another couple of minutes to show me how to figure out the switch to the immersion heater so that it works on off-peak hours only.

Once that was organised I went into town. I had to pick up the lease for this place, but the estate agent wasn’t in. And then I had to go to my internet provider to pick up a new box. On the way back, seeing as how I now have a working fridge, I picked up a box of strawberry sorbet. I may as well make good use of the freezer drawer I suppose;

This new portable halogen hob thing that I bought in IKEA a couple of months ago isn’t half the bee’s knees. Once I’d worked out how to make it function, it cooked a quick meal for me in minutes flat. It just shows you how out-of-date this old technology is. When I organise the kitchen I’ll be having a couple of halogen hobs to cook with, and I’ll see if I can’t find a halogen oven to go with it. I’m very impressed.

There’s no internet here for another week but I’m in luck because seeing as I am so high up here on the rock, I can pick up some really good signals and my internet supplier has a public wi-fi point in the vicinity to provide a service to the hostel for young workers just down the road. With my own ID and password I can connect into it, so here I am. I’m not sure just how reliable it might be though.

So now I’m going to try for my first night here in my new place. No curtains on the window so I’ll be awoken early.

And that’s the cue for an early night then, isn’t it?

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Thursday 4th May 2017 – HAPPY STAR WARS DAY

My last day here at Roncey today. And I can’t say that I’m sorry.

Well, actually yes I can because I’m here in the best of company with Liz and Terry and with food that is second to none, but the last time that I had a home of my own was in mid-November 2015 – over 18 months ago. Ever since then I’ve been living out of a suitcase in all kinds of different accommodation of varying quality. Now that I’m within touching distance of having a place of my own, I’m in a hurry to go there.

Last night I went to bed early-ish and took ages to drop off yet again. But when I did I was Gone With The Wind until about 06:45.

I’d been on my travels too. I had a selection of vehicles, one of which was the Escort van that I still have somewhere. It was taxed but not MoT’d, and I had other vehicles which were MoT’d but not taxed, or there was no insurance on them. And it occurred to me that I was dissipating my energies and why didn’t I put everything into just one vehicle and keep it properly taxed, tested and insured? Instead, I went to catch the bus. One bus drove past me while I was crossing the road. This was the bus 31 – a green Crosville single-decker of the mid-late 1950s. I could have caught that if I had hurried but instead I went across to a house where an old lady (formerly a passenger of mine on the taxis) and a few other women too (regular readers of this rubbish will recall what I mean when the word “beguiled” springs to mind). When I arrived the woman let me in and I noticed that she had a suitcase already packed as if she was ready to go on holiday. I wondered if I was disturbing her but apparently not.

Breakfast was with Liz and after she had gone to work Terry and I filled the cracks in the plasterboard that we had fitted yesterday and then insulated the walls. And seeing how easy all of this went together with metal studding and sheets of Rockwool I really wish that I had done my house like this.

We had to put a waste pipe in this afternoon and this was where the fun began. The soil at the rear of the house is backed up against the wall so we had to dig out a hole where we were passing the waste pipe through. It’s a good job that my digger is here. And then the hole filled with water off the water table so we had to pump it out. And then the wall is 1 metre thick and we only had a 24mm drill that long – and we needed a hole of 40mm. So we had to drill through as a pilot with the 24mm drill and then go in from either side with a shorter 40mm drill – but the holes didn’t line up exactly so the first try with a length of waste pipe fouled up and broke.

That meant a trip to Coutances for another length (in fact I bought two, to be on the safe side) and that’s where we ended up.

Now I’m stiff, aching all over, thoroughly exhausted and worn out. I’m not as young as I used to be.

So when I wake up tomorrow I’m heading off back to my new chez moi in Granville and I hope that the electrickery will be there some time during the course of the afternoon.

And then I’m going to sleep for a week.

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Tuesday 2nd May 2017 – THAT’S ME FINISHED!

Yes, I’m thoroughly whacked and I’ll be off to bed in a minute, where I’ll sleep until my name changes to Eric van Winkle.

It all started going wrong last night. I’d been too busy chatting and ended up going to bed quite late (for me just recently anyway). And then it took me ages to drop off to sleep. It seemed like for ever.

But sleep I must have done because I was off on my travels during the night again.

There were four of us working in an office. Our job was to oversee the writing of laws for a particular community. But suddenly three of us were transferred to law enforcement, which was not a very desirable job. It turned out that our fourth colleague had “invented” a gadget that had actually been something that we had all worked on, but he had claimed the rights to it and persuaded our boss that it was his. As a result, he was given the department all to himself and he had even gone and had a sign put on his desk that he was “lawmaker” before anything official had even been announced. I took this gadget down to the boss to explain to him about how we had done it but he refused to listen. I was so incensed by all of this that I was all for strangling him and ended up fighting with him like you would fight with an annoying cat.

The alarm awoke me this morning and hearing movement about, I went to join Liz for breakfast before she went off to work. And then I went for a quick trip out, as far as the boulangerie in the village for bread, seeing as how we didn’t have very much.

By the time that I returned, Terry was up and about. And then we set to work.

First task was to demolish a wall in the kitchen here. Terry was swinging the hammer and I was cleaning uo and taking the rubbish down to the trailer ready for the tip. By the time that we had finished, Terry’s mate had arrived so we insulated the kitchen ceiling and then plasterboarded it.

We had lunch after that, and then spent the rest of the afternoon constructing the studding for the plasterboarding on the walls throughout the kitchen.

By the time that 19:00 came round we were all completely exhausted. It took us an hour to recover before we could even put the tea in the microwave.

And I’m supposed to be ill too! I will be after all of this, I’ll tell you.

So I wonder what will be on the cards tomorrow, apart from more of the same.

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Monday 1st May 2017 – HAPPY BELTANE

Or Happy May Day. Or Calan Mai Hapus, or Happy whatever else it is that you have celebrated today. Here in France it’s the fête de travail, the Festival of Work, and everyone celebrates that by having a day off work.

Not that anyone ever would be going anywhere because it’s been pouring down with rain today. I actually set foot outside – for all of 30 seconds when I went to fetch something from Caliburn. And that was that.

What with all of my exertions yesterday, I was in bed by 22:00. and despite trying yet again to watch the same film that I’ve been trying to watch for the last 100 years, I fell asleep more-or-less straight away. Mind you, I can’t have been asleep for very long because the film was still going when something awoke me.

After that, it took me a while to go back to sleep, despite how warm and comfortable the bed was, but once I was gone, I was gone until about 06:30 when the most terrific storm rattled me awake.

It must have been a good sleep though, because I’d been on my travels again. I’d moved house into a new apartment – and I do mean new because the building was definitely the latest thing. It wasn’t quite 09:00 and so there were people queueing up to enter it (it was doubling as an office block too) and there were security guards checking people’s bags and the like. I thought that this was going to bode well for my new abode if I could only enter it during office hours and then at the risk of being searched. But even though I had a blue IKEA bag full of shopping, somehow I managed to pass the security check without being bothered too much.
From there I found myself in an underground multi-storey car park, one that I’ve been in on many occasions during my nocturnal rambles over the years. But this time, I couldn’t really remember what I was doing in there.

Although I was awake early, I couldn’t hear anyone else moving about in the house so seeing as it’s a Bank Holiday today I disregarded the alarms and had a lie-in until 08:30. About time I took it easy, I reckon.

I’ve spent all of the day either reading a book, reading stuff off the internet, catching up with some work on the laptop or watching the cricket. And having a little … errr … relax too. That’s been about my lot really.

Liz made a nice vegan curry for tea and furthermore there’s enough left over for tomorrow too, which is very nice. It’s nice to have some decent food for a change.

Now I’m going to try for yet another early night. I wonder if I’ll manage to stay awake long enough to finish my film.

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