Category Archives: Nan

Friday 31st October 2014 – THE TIDYING UP …

… didn’t happen today. I’ve been doing much more interesting things instead.

I actually started on some more tidying up but it didn’t last long as Terry and Rob put in an appearance at the door. It seems that they had finished a contract a day earlier and so with a free day they had come to concrete the rest of the hardstanding where we had run out of ready-mix in the summer. This was to be Rob’s payment for me having gone to pick up his car from Rouen in August.

And so I dropped everything and went to give them a hand. And it was just as well that I did as we had a whole succession of equipment failure. Although we are having a dramatic late summer here, there wasn’t enough power to run Terry’s big cement mixer (my small one needs some attention at the moment) and so Terry had brought his big generator. After about an hour, that gave up the ghost. I couldn’t start my ancient generator (it’s not been run since 2000) and we couldn’t get to the huge diesel one that I have hidden away in the back of the Luton Transit.

Next step was to repair my cement mixer so we could use that. That worked for a while and then packed up again. It’s thrown the Woodruffe key out of the pulley on the crankshaft. In the end we found a bolt and squared it off on the angle grinder and then hammered it it. That seemed to hold and so we could progress – until the sun started to go down and the sunlight went off the solar panels.

It was then that I had a brainwave.

I have some heavy-duty plugs and sockets, the kind that fit on flying leads and I’ve been using them here and there around here, mostly to plug in the power board with the electric meter and the 600-watt inverter in various places around the barn. What I did was to wire up one of the sockets to the battery on the Kubota B1220 (that’ll be useful for the electric winch and all kinds of other things too) and plug the power board into the circuit. And much to everyone’s surprise, at 2500 rpm the Kubota produced enough power to run the inverter to power my small cement mixer, and it worked an absolute treat.

concreting car park area les guis virlet puy de dome franceHere we are. The finished product. That’s the last of the cementing for this year, I reckon. And it’s a good job too.

Unfortunately we ran out of material yet again which means that it’s about an inch lower than it should be, but that can’t be helped and it doesn’t seem to be worth getting another small load just to skim the top. It’s not as if anything really heavy is going to be driving up and down on it.

I was thoroughly exhausted after all of that – completely unexpected but welcome nevertheless – concreting session. I struggled off to the Intermarche at Pionsat nevertheless and bumped into Nan on the car park, so we had a long chat. I treated myself to a sorbet at the Intermarché – I felt that I’d earned it – and then came back here to crash out. I was in bed by 22:30 and I’m not surprised. All of the alarms are disconnected and I’ll sleep for a week.

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Monday 7th April 2014 – I DON’T BELIEVE IT!

strawberry plants raised bed les guis virlet puy de dome franceWell, I suppose that I ought to really. It should be something that I’m used to by now. But do you remember me saying that I replanted 4 strawberry plants the other day? I had a look today and there are now only 3, with a hole in the soil where the 4th one was, as you can see in this photo.

I’ve no idea what happened there. I suppose some local bestiole has taken a fancy to it.

But you can see the soil just there – clay with a barrow-load of sand worked in. That should lighten it considerably.


garlic shallots raised beds potager les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs for the garlic and shallots though, I don’t know if you can really see them here in this photo but they have mostly done the business.

One or two garlic bulbs seem to have failed but I have some of last year’s crop to plant in there to replace them. And one or two of the shallots needed reseating, but otherwise they are fine. The onions in another bed are pushing up too.

Nothing stirring with the carrots, parsnips and radishes yet. I’m not surprised about the parsnips, but the carrots might have done something by now and I’m bewildered by the radishes. They should be almost ready.

I have a courgette plant about to rear its ugly head out of its pot too. And where there’s one, the others shouldn’t be far behind.

So today after website work I went out and the first thing that I did was to empty out all of the herb beds. I have a row of flower boxes and I use them as herb beds and they were all overgrown.

If anyone wants some mint and thyme cuttings, let me know as I have tons of the stuff here. It really did run wild while I was away last year. Anyway, everything is now rosy in the herb beds and I even had fresh rosemary from my own garden in my onion and mushroom gravy tonight.

For the rest of the day I’ve been sowing seeds in pots. And here’s a list of what’s gone in –

  • Aneth
  • Coriander
  • leeks
  • cucumbers
  • lettuce
  • aubergines
  • basil
  • chives
  • cayenne peppers
  • mixed peppers
  • broccoli

They are all in pots in the little greenhouse thingy that I bought the other week.

I also have some beetroot seeds soaking ready to plant tomorrow, and I’ll also look at the rest of the brassica to see what I have an what I need.

All that needs doing then is to make some more pea and bean frames and then start some of those off, and to sow some more carrots and parsnips.

Mind you, that’s not all that I’ve done. I went to St Eloy at lunchtime and spent a whole shed-load of money, in fact the only time that I’ve ever spent more money than this was in buying Caliburn and buying my various houses and apartments. Yes, there will be a new arrival here shortly, more of which anon.

And I forgot two pieces of news from yesterday. Firstly, the mystery of Matthieu’s appearance on the football pitch Saturday night is now solved. He had no intention whatever of playing, so it seems, but someone couldn’t make it at the last minute so he went out rather than let the teamplay short-handed. If that’s not courage and devotion to duty after all he’s suffered with his injury, I don’t know what is.

And Nane rang me up for a very long chat, in the middle of which she announced that a mutual acquaintance of ours had died on Saturday. It’s never nice to hear of a death, especially of someone that you know, but this friend and I did have some issues between us that have been the subject of a considerable rant from me in the past. Nevertheless I wish her bon voyage to wherever it is that she wishes to go.

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Wednesday 10th July 2013 – OHH GOOD! COMPANY!

st gervais d'auvergne fire brigade la batisse puy de dome franceAnd how!

Yes, the pompiers – the fire brigade from St Gervais d’Auvergne came to call upon Cécile this evening. And at Cécile’s request too.

As I told you the other day, she’s put her house up for sale, but a group of squatters has other ideas.

st gervais d'auvergne fire brigade la batisse puy de dome franceA swarm of bees arrived and seem to have taken up residence in Cécile’s chimney.

She needs to encourage her visitors, not have them stung to death by bees.

No local apiarist was available and so she did the next-best thing, which was to call out the fire brigade.

st gervais d'auvergne fire brigade la batisse puy de dome franceIt’s amamzing, the things that you learn. I didn’t realise that this is a free service in the Auvergne, although one is expected to make a contribution to the Fireman’s Ball.

Apparently they hold a Fireman’s Ball every December in St Gervais d’Auvergne, and the fireman is becoming rather fed up of it.

Anyway, by about 22:00 the fire brigade had gone and Cécile and I carried on working.

This morning I was up as usual and after breakfast I didn’t hang about.

First job was to empty out Caliburn – I don’t know where all of the rubbish inside him comes from.

having done that I drove round to Cécile’s to pick up my stuff and to help her organise herself, although what good I might be at that I really don’t know.

While I was there, I ended up working on the Berlingo. This is Bill’s old car but Cécile has bought it as her Micra is creaking a little around the edges.

The Berlingo failed its controle technique on a couple of silly things, like a frayed seat belt where the Hound of the Baskervilles had had a go at it, so I was sorting all of that out.

Nan came round too to say goodbye to Cécile so we had a really good chat.

Nothing like a convivial evening among friends.

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Thursday 8th November 2012 – I’M BACK!

And I bet that you didn’t know that I’ve even been away.

You may remember that a couple of weeks ago a small group of us went round to Nan’s for some kind of soirée – well tonight, we all went round to chez Gilles.

6 of us there were – Nan, Cécile, Zoë, Gilles, Yours Truly, and Isabel. We wined and dined and then played a board game.

It’s quite rare this – me socialising, isn’t it? But I think that I really ought to get out more, and that’s an opinion which everyone else shares.

This morning I didn’t have my usual go on the website.

In a change to the advertised programme, straight after breakfast I attacked the shelf unit and varnished it all. This would give it much more time to dry, of course.

And then I had a problem.

When I went to take off the lid of the varnish tin, I discovered that it had rusted on and so I had to chisel it off. And what I had to do to it to make it come off meant that it was clearly in no fit state to go back on afterwards.

It was a large tin – and expensive too – and so I had to find a few more paint tins, throw away the content, clean out the tins and pour the varnish into that.

Such is life.

Once the varnish had dried I fitted it all into the cupboard – not without having to do a few little alterations, it has to be said, butnow it fits beautifully – exactly as it should.

7 shelves there are, and soon there will be 8.

The metal shelf unit that I had brought upstairs and put in the shower room to store some of the bits and pieces that were loitering around – what was on there didn’t even take up one shelf on the new unit.

Yes, it’s a monster and quite right too.

Actually I’m impressed – it goes quite well in there and fits the little cupboard quite nicely.

And it’s amazing – with that I’ve already managed to put on there, there’s already so much more room to move around in the bedroom and work

When I’m organised – whenever that might be – and the house is well-advanced, there will be tons of room in there to store all kinds of stuff – you can’t have too much storage room.

Tomorrow I’ll finish off rounding things up and stacking them on the shelves. and once it’s all done I might even have enough room to start cutting plasterboard again.

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Thursday 25th October 2012 – A BIG THANK-YOU …

… to everyone who thought about me while I was ill. I appreciated it very much.

A couple of you have suggested taking it easy for a while – sentiments with which I totally agree. Accordingly when the alarm clocks went off, I turned over and went back to sleep for a while.

Most of the day has been spent with paperwork – or rather, fiddling about with the printer so that I could print off a pile of paperwork.

It didn’t print in black last month and so I did everything in blue, but today I spent ages cleaning the heads and managed to get half a black printout.

One of the nozzles is blocked, and so I went to clean the heads again, and it ran out of black ink. I changed the black ink, but it still wasn’t printing properly and so I cleaned the heads again.

This time it ran out of blue ink.

I changed the blue ink, cleaned the heads, and it’s still not printing properly in black.

This means that for the foreseeable future I’m back to printing everything in blue again. I never seem to have any luck with printers.

This afternoon, I selected all of the music for the rock programmes but this evening was something exciting and unusual – Nan was having a little do and I was invited, as were Cécile, Gilles and Zoe.

We had a snack and played charades and so on for a few hours. It’s not like me to be sociable, is it?< Tomorrow is recording the Radio Anglais rock programmes for Radio Tartasse and so I won't be doing too much tomorrow morning either.

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Monday 24th September 2012 – WE HAD SOMETHING …

… of a change of plan today.

I did manage to crawl out of my stinking pit and make it to Marcillat-en-Combraille in time for recording our Radio Anglais programmes for Radio Tartasse this morning.

And after that, Nan met us and we all went for a coffee as she needed to pick our collective brains about an initiative that she has for the nouvels arrivants.

From there usually it’s down to Liz’s for lunch and then off to Gerzat for our Radio Arverne round of Radio Anglais.

And as I was following Liz down the road I gently mused to myself “wouldn’t it be funny if she put her foot on the brakes and I ran into the back of her car”.

And even as I spoke, she did just that and I very nearly did.

However, when we arrived at Liz’s, we discovered that Candace from Radio Arverne had phoned. The machinery had broken down and so we couldn’t record today. Could we come back some other time?

And so I went back home and worked on the photos that I had taken this weekend.

And as I was preparing to go outside at my usual start time, I listened to the howling wind and the driving rain and it was getting worse and worse and so I stayed up here and had an afternoon off.

I did absolutely nothing at all – not even making any lunch.

Of course it’s a waste of a day and I feel even worse than I did before but, anyway, there you are.

But really, even I know that I can’t afford to mess around like this – I really need to motivate myself as I have a lot to do, but sometimes that’s just how it goes.

I’ll need to work twice as hard tomorrow but somehow I doubt very much whether I will.

I’m off to bed now.

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Sunday 8th July 2012 – 11.5 mms …

… of rain fell last night. And apart from the very start of the downpour I heard nothing at all because I was in bed by 23:40 or so and that was that until Marianne rang me at 10:00.

Well, almost, because if I ever find out who it was who telephoned me at about 04:00 or thereabouts, I shall go round to visit them with a piece of lead piping.

Despite my early night it was still a struggle to crawl out of bed this morning and I was late for Marianne, but eventually we arrived at La Cellette and set up Marianne’s exhibition even though I wasn’t feeling much like it.

la cellette string quartet rick the trailer hire guy st fargeol puy de dome franceNane was there and she made me a cup of coffee and that made me feel a little better, and Rick the trailer guy was there with his string quartet – they were doing the music today and a very good job they were making of it. That made the day so much better too.

The crowd was rather disappointing though, but better than last year when, rather astonishingly, no-one turned up at all.

This afternoon I finally finished sorting out all of the photos – all nicely arranged, stored and documented – and I’ve sent the ones off that this author guy wants. That’s that out of the way and hopefully the cash will be in the bank in early course. Some photos were in triple, if not quadruple, examples and I’ve cleared tons of room out on the external drive that I’ll be storing them on from now on.

But there are files stored on there from when I first started backing up on external drives, back in 2002, and what might be a good idea would be to go through them all and make a proper continual stream of files instead of having them stored by reference to the hard drive that they used to be on. Another thing that I might do is now that the big desktop computer is redundant, to take one of the 500GB drives out of that and fit it into a caddy that I have lying around here, and make an external drive just for photos. You’ve no idea how much space these photos take. The first few years of digital photography, 2001-2005, take up less than 1 DVD of space. In one week in Canada in 2010 I used more space than that.

And before I forget, for I’ve already forgotten twice, a big thank-you to Rhys as the phone that he sent to me arrived on Friday and it works fine.     

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Friday 9th December 2011 – I WON’T BE …

… here tomorrow night either.

I’m going to the UK next week as you know, and I’ve been checking ferries.

And to my surprise, the ferry from Le Havre (2 hours closer to here than Calais) to Portsmouth (nearer to the Midlands than Dover) and return for Caliburn and Yours Truly is a mere €129.

Only problem is that the sailing is at 17:00 which would ordinarily mean an early start but as you know, I don’t do early. My plan is to leave here the night before and getting a couple of hours on the clock.

Anyway, this morning was rather … errr … late and had I not had a spam phone call I would probably still be in bed right now.

And then I had another call – someone wanting to visit. That meant no work of course, and tidying up in here instead, tip that it is. That took me quite a while.

So Nan came around and we discussed the initiative that she is doing for some organisation or other about co-projects (car-sharing and that kind of thing) in the area.

That’s the problem with being a minor celebrity … “chortle chortle” – ed … – people are always sounding you out for things like this. Not that I mind, of course. It’s nice to have visitors.

This evening I’ve been buying stuff on eBay. And getting it shipped to my mailbox in the UK. You’ve no idea how much money I’m saving by doing that. It’s the best £25 a month I’ve ever spent.

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Monday 3rd October 2011 – WELL, IT’S BACK …

… to the daily grind now. Or, at least, it should have been, except that at instead of the early night that I had promised myself,I was still wide awake at 05:00. Sleep issues again – it must be my guilty conscience.

Obviously, 08:15 never happened and it was about 10:50 when I heaved myself out of my stinking pit ready to face the world.

This morning I spent writing up my notes for the match yesterday. I’m amazed about how much I wrote and it’s probably going to take me all week to do the web page for it. But I need to exert myself and not let things drag around like I have been doing.

This afternoon I moved a few things around on the car park and managed to get at the immersion heaters under the tarpaulin. There’s a newish 50-litre tank there that Bill gave me because it has a leak in it somewhere so I’ve connected it all up to all kinds of pipes so that I can fill it with water and then close it off. I’ll leave it like that for a day or so to see if I can see where it’s leaking from. Then I can fix the leak, fit a 12-volt element in it and then use it in the lean-to as the new dump load.

>A pleasant surprise at the Anglo-French Group tonight where we had two new members. Peter brought his ladyfriend along to take part, and Nan turned up, seeing as she has now moved to la Cellette. we had a really good time as well and we were all quite animated. It’s nice to see that kind of thing happening.

But that’s it basically and I really am going to be going to bed in a minute. These late nights are catching up on me and I need to be up early tomorrow.

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Wednesday 13th January 2010 – It’s back up again.

Well, erichall.eu is, anyway. Lesguis.com is going to have to wait a while longer. So anyone who sent me a mail that bounced – you can resend it now and I’m sorry for the inconvenience.

Mind you, once more, my address book, research subfolder and the like have disappeared into the ether. That’s a real pain in the aspidistra and what’s worse, it’s not the first time that this has happened either. You’d think that I would learn.

In other news, that weatherman we have is still up to his tricks, having wild and unpredictable guesses that fall hopelessly short of the mark. He promised us overcast and cloudy conditions with rainfall, but yon golden object was in the sky for the whole day more-or-less and I’ve had another reasonable solar day. Still not earth-shatteringly marvellous but it’ll do for now. I’ve also been cracking on with the insulation but I’ve come to a stop, on the grounds that I’ve now run out of insulation. But at least I can move. I dug Caliburn out of a snowdrift and went for a run up the lane so I reckon that this weekend I’ll go and do a mega-shop in Montlucon and have a shower at Neris.

Talking of showers, I hear that the OUSA Executive committee are to go “on the road” and “visit the regions”. The East Midlands is the first port of call and the Derby/Nottingham area has been suggested for the location. Of course, someone has suggested that they stay in the town of Clowne – after all, it’s midway between the two and somehow quite appropriate.

This afternoon I cut my hair, had a wash and shave, and changed my clothes. Well, it was 8 degrees in the verandah. In fact it was quite a major operation and I hed to tell the water board that it was on its way. But I must admit – I am looking forward to a good swim and a good shower, and I’m not talki …. “you’ve done that” … ed.

I’ve also been in great demand today. Firstly, the girl who came round here with Francois the other day – she phoned me up to talk about this and that. There’s an eco-fair in Clermont Ferrand next weekend and she’s going with Francois. There’s a spare seat in the car and she asked me if I wanted to go. Most people who read this blog are of the opinion that I ought to get out more often and so I’ve decided to go. It’ll do me good.

Next it was the turn of Terry who wanted a chat about one of our long-term projects. It’s nice to hear from him and Liz and have a good natter.

Thirdly, the guy from SMADC (the Society for the Mutual Aid and Development of the Combrailles) called. We are supposed to be having a meeting with a producer from a French radio station, and it’s now been arranged for Monday afternoon. This is looking uncomfortably like it might happen, this idea of an English-language radio programme on French radio.

Finally (at least up to now) Antoine called. He has an idea for a business opportunity for himself now that he’s taken early retirement and wanted a chat about it.

Meanwhile, in other other news, the McCann Media Circus is back on the road, suing anyone and everyone who says naughty things about them. It’s becoming a right money-spinner for someone – this disappearing daughter – and it’s spawned countless imitations right across the globe with kids hidden in settees, kids being dragged away by weather balloons and the like. But the McCanns are really starting to take the mickey now. Over a million quid they want now for their hurt feelings. The money will of course be paid to the “Find Madeleine” campaign, which might well fund further trips to exotic corners of the globe to visit more law courts to sue more people to get more money to pay to the “Find Madeleine” campaign that might well fund further …. “that’s enough of that” – ed.

What the McCanns don’t realise is just how lucky they are. If Mrs McCann had been a single mother and black-skinned, leaving a baby home alone to face a tragedy would have got her 7 and a half years in prison without any trips to any exotic corners of the globe – let alone any charitable funds and any sympathy from a gullible public.

It’s high time someone put a stop to all of this.

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Wednesday 23rd December 2009 – I thought that I would post …

stairs staircase first floor les guis virlet puy de dome france… a pic of the completed stairs on the ground floor. It’ll take my mind off the gruesome weather.

I woke up this morning to that weird golden thing in the sky and not a cloud in sight. So I quickly shinned up onto the roof and onto the roof of the old Luton Transit to brush the snow off the solar panels to take advantage of everything.

But I needn’t have bothered for 10 minutes later the wind changed, a whole heap of cloud came over and blocked the sky. We had 10mm of rain!

And as I type I have the long-range weather forecast up and every day for the next week is totally overcast with rain forecast. Monday and Tuesday we are promised 15 and 16 degrees. They say Centigrade but I bet it’ll be more like Fahrenheit.

stairs staircase ground floor first floor les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo I stayed in and shovelled up tons of rubbish and piled it up elsewhere and I now have a path through the rubble to the stairs. it’s impressive. I also tidied up a few things and sorted out the wood. You can see the door that I bought in the Brico Depot sale. That’s for the front – lots of glass to let in the light. Light is at a premium around here.

At lunchtime Francois came round, with a woman in tow. He was amazed at the progress since he last visited here in September. This woman is renovating and she is interested in recycled materials and Francois had told her about my reccycled plastic slates. She was well-impressed.

This afternoon I started to tidy up the verandah which I use as a kitchen. But my heart wasn’t in it “No surprise there – it’s a cleaning job” … ed – and at 17:00 I called it a day. And then crashed out up here for an hour. All this work has been taking its toll of me.

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