Friday 31st July 2015 – I’M LOSING MY GRIP!

I’ve done something really silly today and I’m still bewildered as to how I managed it.

I was busy doing some electrical wiring when I glanced at the clock.

18:15! Blimey! The shops will be shut in 75 minutes!

So I quickly changed my clothes, leapt into Caliburn and head for the hi … errr … St Eloy.

The road down the hill from Montaigut was packed with traffic and I did wonder what it was all doing at that time of evening. But on the other hand, LIDL and Carrefour were comparatively empty. LIDL did have some 12-volt LED bulbs (it doesn’t now, of course) and Carrefour had some soya deluxe desserts reduced on special offer.

I picked up some cash ready for my voyage in 2 weeks time, and then drove home.

While I was organising a few things the stop-work alarm went off. 19:00.

What?

Yes, 19:00. It appears that it wasn’t 18:15 when I shot of to St Eloy but actually … errr … 17:15. D’ohhh!

I blame last night, though. I couldn’t sleep and I was still wide-awake and working on the laptop at 03:30. And with an alarm at 07:30, no wonder I’ve been feeling rather feeble today.

I had the usual sessions on the laptop and then after lunch, stripped off all of the masking from the door, fitted the air vents and wired in the socket at the head of the stairs on the landing so that I can plug the livebox in there. And that was where I was at.

But the air vents looks good in the door. The idea is that warm air heading up the stairs (once I finally have the fire going downstairs, whenever that might be) will go in through the vent at the bottom of the door, rise up through the shower room and out through the air vent that you might remember me drilling out all that time a couple of years ago. And that will stop condensation building up too.

So tomorrow, if the parts for this Hyundai haven’t come, I’m sure I’ll find some other things to do around the house. But do you realise – in 2 weeks time, I won’t be here?

But then again, I’m not all here now judging by my performance this evening, am I?

Thursday 30th July 2015 – HERE WE ARE THEN.

This is the engine of this Hyundai, with the cylinder head removed. And you can immediately see one of the problems.

If you look in the foreground of the photo you’ll notice that one of the waterways is blocked. And diagonally opposite in the bore of the cylinder is a little trail of rust. Water coming along the waterway is hitting the blockage and being forced out under pressure, right into the bore of number two cylinder.

My suspicion is that we are going to find that the head will be slightly warped. I hope that the new gasket will take that up.

But there’s another major problem with this engine.

Look carefully at the crown of the piston in the foreground. Can you see how damaged it is? That’s either major impact damage or else it’s a severe heat seizure, and seeing as how there is play in the bore, I suspect the latter.

Apart from the play though, the bore isn’t too bad. It’s not scored or marked.

However, this engine is ruined. It’s not going to last long and with us having disturbed it, it’s probably not going to last even that long.

So what we are going to do is to replace the cylinder head gasket and patch it up with other previously-used components and then just drive it until it stops. 5 miles, 50 miles, 500 miles, who knows? But it won’t be doing much. And there’s no sense in throwing good money after bad

This is an object lesson for anyone – don’t buy vehicles off Ebay. This is about the seventh or eighth that I’ve encountered that has turned out to be a pile of scrap – a bodged repair job after major damage and quickly moved on.

There aren’t half some dishonest people out there.

So after an early night, I was up quite early having had yet another really good night’s sleep. And I cracked on with revising this blog that I’m trying to update relating to my voyage around Canada.

I must have written about 5000 words I suppose, one entry being nearly 1500 words. Clearly I don’t have anything better to do.

And later this evening, I replaced the door furniture on the shower room door where I’d varnished it.

But what a waste of time that this is turning out to be. This Hyundai has really p155ed me off, what with everything that has happened and what I’ve discovered today.

Wednesday 29th July 2015 – I FEEL A LITTLE …

… better today, after an early night and a really good uninterrupted sleep.

It was still a bit of a struggle though to leave the bed and I had to wait until I’d had a good coffee before I felt like anything at all. And an instant coffee too. It was a wet, grey winter day with a winter’s amount of electricity being received – a portent of things to come – so no percolator today.

But now all of the radio programmes are up-to-date, including two live concerts that I’ve had to cut down and edit. And I’m surprised at just how well the songs fitted together. My technique must be improving.

I’ve heard that the parts have been ordered for this Hyundai and might even be here tomorrow – but we shall see. But according to the engine number, it’s not a Hyundai engine that’s in it but a Kia engine. It’s all looking very confusing to me.

So I’m going to have a very early night and charge up the batteries for tomorrow. And they’ll need it too.

Tuesday 28th July 2015 – I’VE HAD A BAD DAY TODAY

The alarm went off at 07:30 as usual, followed by the reminders at 07:45 and 08:00, but there was no way that I was able to leave my bed.

I ache just about everywhere – in places that I didn’t realise that I had places. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m far too old to go crawling around under cars the way that I did. Nice and leisurely, with a cup of coffee and a couple of biscuits every hour, I can manage that and I’m quite happy to do so. But working like I did yesterday, 9.5 hours non-stop without a pause, mauling some really heavy equipment about – I’m far too old for that.

But that wasn’t the worst of it. On a reasonable car where everything is there within reach, it’s quite easy. For example, with a Ford Cortina with a Pinto engine (of which there are dozens around here) the only time that you have to lie down is to take off the bottom pulley on the crankshaft. And that is that. The rest you can do standing up. With this blasted technological marvel of the 21st Century, you need to be up on top and on your back down below at the same time with three hands each.

And I have to do it all again when I need to re-assemble it.

But I can see now how it is that the vehicle has come here to be done. It’s quite simply that no-one else will touch it. And I can understand why.

But at least I had a nice concrete pad to lie down on after our efforts last year. Imagine trying to do this lying on damp gravel.

So I eventually crawled out of bed and I sat down in my chair and that was that. I couldn’t even move to make myself some food so I’ve just been nibbling on what I could reach.

Rosemary rang me up for a chat and instead, she had 90 minutes of me venting my spleen and letting off steam. Poor Rosemary. I just hope that I feel better tomorrow. I couldn’t even think about tiling today. And this is going to annoy me. I wanted to finish my tiling before I go away but Caliburn is parked up the road while this pile of scrap is parked in my drive and so I would have to carry all of the tiles and the sacks of cement 200 metres down here. There was no way that I was going to do that today and I probably won’t feel much like doing it tomorrow either. So it’s not just losing two days of work by working on this car, it’s also losing several other days while I recover from my exertions and no-one will ever think about that. I wish that I had never offered to do it now. It’s messed up all of my plans completely.

So starving, hungry, cold and fed up, and aching just about everywhere, I’m going back to bed. I hope that I have as much excitement as I did last night when I was once more back at school in Nantwich with a mini-traveller loaded with stuff and all kinds of people trying to peer in to see what there was. And an old girlfriend of mine, Ann, putting in an appearance too. Whatever was she doing here?

Monday 27th July 2015 – I HATE CARS

Especially mass-produced monsters made in Korea.

I had to take the cylinder head off one today , a job that normally takes about two or three hours at the very most. And so we started at 10:00 and finished by … errr … 19:30. And that with no break, no stopping for lunch, no stopping for a drink, anything. Working non-stop.

The issue with these cars is that the engines are all assembled and mounted onto a subframe, and the body is lowered on top. And this leads to all kinds of complications – the most astonishing of which was that in order to adjust (or slacken in order to remove) the cam belt, which you need to do in order to take off the cylinder head, you need to take off the belt cover. But the bolts of the belt cover ground out on the inner wing of the car so you can’t do that.

And take the exhaust manifold. It can be removed in about four different ways, each one of which involves the removal of a pile of nuts and bolts. And in every case, you can take out all but one, and then you are stuck.

I’ve never seen anything like it.

We finally removed it and the horrible thing about it all is that we have to put it all back together again in a couple of days time. I’m as black as the Ace of Spades, just as I used to be when I was pulling Ford Cortinas to bits all those years ago, and I’m never going to get myself clean.

And, of course, it was raining this morning while we were doing it, after all these weeks of glorious weather. Isn’t that typical?

But I was worn out before I started, having been awake since 05:00. I’d been on my travels, back to school in fact. And I had no shoes – I’d left them downstairs in the main hall but there, when I went down to retrieve them, was a three-piece rock band playing, right by where I had left my shoes. I chatted to the guitarist/singer in the interval to ask him that if he knew of anyone looking for a bassist, to let me know. “But I have a bassist” he said, indicating a young boy playing with him. “And I can sing” I said – “but my sister sings with me if I need a singer”. “But I don’t mean you – I mean anybody” but he was so negative that I quickly picked up the hint – that it was too much trouble for him and that he was not going to do it

Sunday 26th July 2015 – IT’S BEEN THREATENING …

… for quite a few days but today it finally happened. Summer ended and the weather broke, and we’ve had rain this evening.

This morning though I had a nice lie-in until 09:30, and quite right too, for I was well-away during the night. I’d made my escape from a concentration camp – an extermination camp in fact – that was actually a fortress something along the lines of Colditz Castle. I’d made it to safety but two young girls whom I encountered (I know who they are but I can’t recall them now) insisted on going back to see for themselves what it was like back there. And so I took them, and I wanted to introduce them to a girl whom I knew there, but I was warned off because it would be likely that I would be arrested and that would be the end of me. So I spent all of the night skulking around the town with these two girls, trying to evade capture.

And you’ve no idea how exhausting that can be. I was totally worn out when I finally awoke.

This morning I’ve been carrying on editing my blog and I’ve made an outstanding discovery. Well, it’s not a discovery because it’s such an obvious requirement that it must be a possibility, so perhaps I had better say that I had worked out how to do it.

And that is that I can write up blog entries and then change the posting date so that they relate to an earlier date and fit in, in the correct chronological place. And so where I didn’t make a blog entry back in 2010 because I didn’t have internet access, I can do it right now.

And here is one that I made earlier.

After lunch I started to write up the text notes for another topic for our radio programmes. And although it’s a subject about which I know a considerable amount, it must be something of a record that I was able to sit down for just 2 hours and 15 minutes and dash off 2131 words. That should keep us out of mischief for a month at least, but nevertheless it was quite impressive.

Tomorrow I have this car coming and I’m not feeling much like it, but I’ll have to fix it, I suppose. And I know exactly how it’s going to turn out because of past experience. But if I’m this depressed about the thing before I’ve started, whatever will I be like tomorrow eveing?

I shudder to think.

Saturday 25th July 2015 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

… that working late on a Friday night was exceptional, how about working on a Saturday morning too? Yes, I reckon that I didn’t even have 12 hours off.

And I wasn’t alone while I was working either. I had company – or, rather, an interested spectator.

I don’t know where Shelob came from, or where she went back to, but she was certainly there while I was sweating away. And to be honest, I don’t think that I’ve ever seen a spider quite like this one before. The photo makes it look huge, but nevertheless …

And I was there for a good couple of hours too this morning.

But now we have all three coats of varnish on the doors and on the shelves and it does look good in there. And all of the wiring is finished and the recessed LED lights are in place. And wasn’t it a good plan to buy that pile of recessed light fittings at Brico Depot? That works in spades, doesn’t it?

And you’ll see the LED striplight on the far wall. The bathroom mirror will be going under there when the tiling is finished. And that’s the next job, starting on Monday when I’ve done this car that I have to do.

Just as I was settling down, Lieneke came round for a chat and she stayed here for a good few hours. She was really impressed with the work on the house too – and so am I, it has to be said. It’s looking quite good so far.

But that diverted my attention and I’ve not done anything after that – just relaxed. Tomorrow, I need to press on with the radio programmes.

Friday 24th July 2015 – WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME …

… that you heard of me working at 21:10 in the evening? I might have done at one time, I think, but I didn’t make a note of it, so this time might well be the first official occasion.

And not only that, I’d been to do my shopping at St Eloy in between too, so that’s something of a rarity too.

This morning I managed to tie with the alarm going off and then after breakfast I had a nice uninterrupted morning on the laptop sorting out another pile of previous blog entries. If I crack on doing four or five each day, I can finish the Canada 2010 and do Canada 2011 before I go away – at least, that’s my aim.

After lunch, I finished off all of the masking, dismantled everything that needed dismantling and then put on the first coat of varnish. It was then 18:00 and the drying time for a second coat is 2 hours. Thus I leapt into Caliburn and headed off to St Eloy in order to do my shopping.

Back here by 19:30 and I had to wait for another 45 minutes or so, and then I put the second coat of clear varnish on the wood. And when I’d finally finished that, I could knock off and have tea.

Tomorrow after breakfast, I’ll do the third and final coat and while that’s drying I can carry on with the blog. And when the varnish is finally dry, I can fit the recessed lights and reassemble the ironmongery.

That will mean that, in between dealing with this car that’s coming here on Monday, I can make a start on the tiling.

Thursday 23rd July 2015 – I DIDN’T GET …

… anything like done what I was hoping to do today.

For a start, I failed to beat the alarm clock this morning. I was all set to go to bed nice and early when someone with whom I needed to speak came on line. So I went for a little chat. And I would probably still be there chatting now had the battery not gone flat at 02:05.

So it was rather a bemused and befuddled Yours Truly who struggled out of his stinking pit this morning.

Of the computing jobs that I’ve been trying to catch up, I’ve finished one of them, which is a big sigh of relief. But another – tidying up the blog entries for my 2010 journey to Canada, I’ve hit the part where I was writing in shorthand with no photos, due to being out in the depths of Newfoundland somewhere. So with all of that, it’s taking much longer than anticipated. But to see where I’ve reached, just go to this link and work backwards. If you want to comment on any of the posts, do so on here.

And that reminds me – when I started editing this blog to correct the errors from when it was transferred here, I was having 10 and 12 comments a day regularly. Today, even though readership has tripled, the comments are now at about 10 or 12 per year.

Don’t be shy – if you have something to ask or something to say, then make a comment. If you are new, it won’t appear immediately until I’ve approved it, but that’s no reason to stop you.

After lunch I started to mask off in the shower room, and I’m nowhere near finishing that – that’s the problem with buying doors with small glass panels. And in any case, Rosemary rang up for a natter for a good half an hour.

And I had to fill in a few gaps in the woodwork – I did that by filling the gaps with wood glue and forcing clean sawdust in with a stiff spatula.

One thing that I had forgotten was to drill the holes in the bottom of the door so that cold air will enter the bathroom and prevent condensation when I’m taking a shower (whenever that might be) – anyway I did that today and that took me up to 19:25 when I knocked off.

And this shower room is never going to be finished – I have a car to dismantle on Monday now.

Wednesday 22nd July 2015 – I DIDN’T MANAGE …

… to beat the alarm clock this morning. It was a little more difficult to crawl out of my stinking pit this morning.

Still, I had breakfast and had the usual several hours on the computer sorting out a few things that have been hanging around for a few years. I also had one of these telesales people on the phone trying to sell me window shutters and I kept him on the telephone for 30 minutes.

After lunch, I attacked the bathroom ceiling and I can now say with complete assurance that it’s all finished. It didn’t seen too much trimming either, much to my surprise. Just a case of nipping off a couple of edges with a mallet and chisel.

I was half-expecting to have to trim down a full length of board, so no-one was more surprised than I was about how good the fit was. I couldn’t have done it better had I measured it up purposely.

The bathroom ceiling is lower than the ceiling on the landing so it needed an end-piece. A rummage around in the barn produced an offcut length of floorboarding that was soon cut down to size (I’m as impressed with this new circular saw as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin) and trimmed to fit, and then sanded off with the belt sander. And it’s come up a treat, that’s for sure, fits quite nicely and looks quite good as well.

I finished off the afternoon by tidying up in the bathroom and that’s almost completed. If I can finish that off tomorrow and do the masking off, I can start to varnish the ceiling. 3 coats of that and I’ll be ready to do the tiling.

For tea tonight I made a mega-red-pepper-and-lentil curry to keep me going for the next four days, and I’ve noticed that I seem to be overrun with ants in the verandah and the downhill lean-to. Where have all of these come from? Is it a coincidence that we had another brief shower of rain earlier in the evening?

Tuesday 21st July 2015 – I PASSED …

… the inspection today. Rosemary came by and gave the place her seal of approval.

And so she should have, too. I was awake long before the alarm went off, having my breakfast by the time it finally did, and then, fortified by a pot of strong coffee, I attacked the house.

The attic is tidier now then it has ever been since I have been living in it and there is no doubt about that. The rubbish has been taken out and the composting bin emptied and cleaned.

The bedroom had a good clean-around too and I even managed to bring a little order into the chaos that is the ground floor where I’ve been working. All the tools have been put away, the floor has been swept with all of the sawdust now in a tidy pile, and there are pathways through the tulips where one can tiptoe without breaking one’s neck falling over something.

I even managed to give some attention to the shower room, and I emptied and cleaned out the beichstuhl, even though it didn’t need it, but one can never be too considerate to one’s guests.

All in all, Rosemary was impressed and awarded me half a melon, which went down a treat for pudding this evening. She arrived at 14:00 and was here until 18:25 – some flying visit! I treated myself to a shower too, although I had to wait until 19:45 and the water had cooled down to a delightful 38.5°C – the temperature at 18:26 was a mere 42.0°C – not far off the highest that it has ever been.

I don’t mind visitors as long as I know that they are coming. It’s a good opportunity and incentive for me to tidy up and clean the place. And it does need it sometimes. I ought to pay much more attention to my accommodation.

But I’m surprised that I had the energy to do all of that this morning, seeing as I had been on my travels again. I was in a Ford Cortina estate (they aren’t half featuring quite regularly in my nocturnal ramblings these days) and testing the handbrake by the simple expedient of rolling backwards down a hill on this new housing estate and pulling on the lever. Of course, in this case the handbrake didn’t work and the car gathered speed. The houses at the bottom loomed up rather too rapidly for my liking and so I did a handbrake turn (with no handbrake, of course!) to pull up parallel to the kerb. A tabby kitten came out of the house right by where I was stopped and so I started to stroke it. Then the cat’s owner came out to see what was happening, and it was none other than a girl who has been previously described in these pages as “the one that got away”. Anyway, she invited me in for a coffee and we had a really good nostalgic chat about old times.

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Monday 20th July 2015 – I HAVE NEVER FELT …

… so bad as I felt this morning.

There was no alarm call in the room this morning so I was quite surprised to be awake and sitting up on the edge of the bed at 07:40. But never mind getting up – the way that I was feeling, I was ready to crawl straight into the grave and I wouldn’t have cared at all. You would never ever have thought that I had had a really early night either.

Mind you, I had been on my travels during the night. Back in Brussels in fact, and I was back working at the EU which had somehow managed to transport its offices to Boulevard Reyers. I had a ground-floor two-bedroom flat somewhere in a traditional built-up area such as that on the bottom end of the Avenue Molière. Two-bedroom, it was, and a typical 1920s “3 pièces en enfilade”, but tidy as it might have been, the two bedrooms were under renovation so I had my double bed in the kitchen. This was rather inconvenient when I invited a young lady from the office back to my apartment to stay the night, but nevertheless, she came and stayed, and I was quite happy. Next morning, who should I bump into but Nina, a girlfriend from way back in the early 1970s. She grabbed me and said something along the lines of “now that I’ve got you, I’m not ever going to let you go again” – rather inconvenient seeing as how I’d invited the other girl to a rock concert that night. So I asked Nina if she fancied going to the rock concert, to which she replied “no”, which took a weight off my mind so that I could carry on with my plans, but Nina then said “but we can do something else instead” – and that threw me back into an even more confusing situation.

So with all of that, it’s no surprise that I was thoroughly out of sorts this morning.

Anyway, to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … after having an agonising couple of hours, I made a pot of coffee and drank it. And then I do have to say that I’ve never felt better after that. In fact I attacked a few things that had been built up for a while and dealt with them with gusto.

After lunch, I attacked the ceiling in the shower room, now that I have bought the tongue and grooving. And I was glad that I had had that coffee, because it was a struggle. I had to –

cut a few pieces with some fancy, intricate cuts
drill a large 60mm hole in one plank for the recessed light up at that end
rewire all of the lights
fit a batten to the beams under the suspended ceiling to attach (with some very long screws) the light cord switch
reroute a great deal of the wiring
wire in the 12-volt extension to the circuit that runs to the back of the wardrobe in the bedroom

And then I could start to fit the rest of the planks of tongue and groove.

Two more to fit and the ceiling will be finished, and even so, it was 19:25 by the time that I knocked off.

I’ll have to have a good pot of coffee tomorrow. I need to tidy up here because Rosemary is coming for an inspection, and she phoned me tonight to make sure that I hadn’t forgotten.

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Sunday 19th July 2015 – SUNDAY IS A DAY OF REST …

… so when I rolled over to see the time and it was 07:20, I said “sod this for a game of soldiers” and went back to sleep. 09:20 – that’s much more like it.

And quite right too because I was thoroughly exhausted after what went on during the night. I’d been imitating John Belushi and his mates in Animal House, causing mayhem at a school graduation ceremony by doing all kinds of things, and a girls’ school at that, to be precise, and everyone was looking for me.

In the end I had some of the girls lined up in the quad posing for me while I was taking photos of them with the camera on my phone. I was seen by the principal who came running after me with his cohorts, and I made good my escape by simply leaping over the precipice and sliding down the cliff, knowing full well that they wouldn’t follow me. By the time they had returned to their car, driven down the road and round to the foot of the cliff, I’d be miles away.

Strangely enough, when I was at Colditz just now,we had been discussing an escape that had taken place just like that.

But to return to the plot, I found myself in a flat by the seaside and we were pretty crowded in there and it was overwhelmed with small black flies like there are in Canada. And from there I was wandering about and encountered a young girl – with a lot of very pale blond hair, glasses, a blue sweater and pink jeans (or was it the other way round?). I was quite attracted to her and was keen to have a long opportunity to chat to her, but each time I tried to speak to her, she was quite keen but it was always about something that I couldn’t do, such as “go you have ten one-pound coins for a ten pound note?” and when I couldn’t help he rout she’s run off and ask other people. And then she’d be back to chat and ask for something else that I couldn’t do, so she’d be gone again. This was all becoming quite frustrating.

So it’s not surprising that I was totally exhausted when I awoke. I’ve had probably the quietest day ever, done nothing at all, and ask me if I care

And now I’m off to bedfor an early night, and i don’t care about that either.

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Saturday 18 July 2015 – THIS IS NOT SMOKE FROM A FIRE

Of course it isn’t. This is one of the typical Auvergnat weather phenomena that one encounters around here – a hanging cloud. And it’s blowing up the valley through the trees in my forest.

That’s right. We’ve had a storm here today. And much to my (and everyone else’s) surprise, the weathermen had it right too because they forecast it for today. The first time since I don’t know how long – at least 25 days – that we have had rain apart from two small showers. 12.5mm of rain fell during the hour that the storm raged late ths afternoon.

This morning, I crawled out of bed with some difficulty and hit the road straight away. I Was at Brico Depot by 08:45, in time to have a couple of mugs of coffee. And buying the tongue-and-grooving (and a bag of 8mm nuts bolts and washers that I can’t find around here) didn’t take long.

So why did it take until 10:00 am to leave the car park?

There was a white Ford Ranger, just like Strider, on the car park. British plates too, and while I was admiring it, the owner and his wife appeared. He’s from Devon, a new arrival and a footballer. His wife is from Belarus and knows Minsk, which was one of my old stamping grounds behind the Iron Curtain in my Salopia Saloon Coaches days. Consequently, we had an enormous amount to talk about.

Off then to LeClerc and shopping. And that was supposed to be a quick visit where I was going to buy everything regardless of price in the interests of speed. But as it happened, while I was being dealt with by the cashier, I realised that I had forgotten to weigh my fresh veg. Dashing back to the scales, there was only one working and the queue was a mile long. I was obliged to abandon it all and ended up going to LIDL which was disappointing, because I could have saved a pile had I bought half of the rest of the stuff in LIDL anyway.

Back home here for midday and bumped straight into Lieneke who is now here. And then I came back and watched the weather change, doing a pile of tidying up in the attic too.

And today was the first day in I don’t know how many weeks that I had to heat up the water in order to do the washing up. That tells you how bad the weather was today

So tomorrow, I’m having a lie in and a day off. Recharge the batteries before I start back to work on Monday. It’s going to be a hectic week.

Friday 17th July 2015 – WE ARE NOT ALONE!

I had a visitor this evening, and peering through the gloom I managed to take a photo of it.

A nice deer has come out this evening looking for food, or perhaps looking for Strawberry Moose – after all, it is that time of year and he does need to get back into practice seeing as how he’ll be off to Canada in about three or four weeks time.

I really don’t understand why anyone would want to kill anything as beautiful and graceful as this.

I was awake once more before the alarm clock, mainly due to the heat, and after breakfast I had another really good session on my wen pages. The trouble is though that the more I do, the more there is to do and rather than catching up, I’m falling even further behind.

I was driven out of the attic by the heat too, and I ended up wedged in a corner in the bedroom with the fan blowing full-on at me. Even then, it was almost impossible to keep cool.

After lunch I turned the house upside-down looking for some more tongue-and-grooving but that was completely unsuccessful. There is now no alternative but to go to Montlucon tomorrow and buy some more.

What i did do was to sort out the plasterboarding in the shower room ready for tiling and ready for finishing off the ceiling, and then to attend to some more outstanding bits of wiring. And that was where I reached at knocking-off time.

I finished off today by having a good shower – more to cool me down than to actually clean me off. And that’s me set up for the weekend now.

All ready for Montlucon, in fact.

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EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality