Tuesday 18th November 2014 – I DON’T KNOW QUITE WHAT HAPPENED …

… last night, but it wasn’t until 06:00 until I was tired enough to go to bed. The only thing that I can thinkof is the cup of coffee that I has with Liz yesterday morning at Marcillat. But surely that can’t be right. Nevertheless, something went wrong yesterday.

Even more surprisingly, I was up at 08:30 – not that I felt much like it. But anyway, there I was.

After breakfast, I set to on the battery box. All of the old breeze blocks that were in the way have now been moved, and the new breeze blocks are cemented in in the correct position. A couple of them needed to be cut and one of the joys of having these new batteries is that even in a dark, gloomy, overcast day like today, the angle grinder whizzed around them with not even a hiccup.

While I was cementing in the breeze blocks, Terry came round. He was looking for a 12mm Allen Key socket for the sump plug on his FIAT. I had to have a good search around but eventually found what I was looking for. We also spent some time having a good chat and he had a look around at the progress that i’ve been making;

I had been struggling for breeze blocks. I have dozens, if not hundreds, of 20mm breeze blocks but I had to have a good scavenge around for some 10mm ones. In the end I had to demolish the raised step into the house and so this afternoon after lunch I built a proper one out of the old stair treads from the stairs that I demolished all those years ago. The circular saw came in handy too, and once again, the new batteries earned their corn.

And tonight, I’ve finally succumbed and lit the fire in here. The temperature dropped to 12.8°C and anyway I had to cook my mega-meal for the coming week. Thsi involved moving the kitchen up here before I knocked off this evening. And I’ve also moved the camping gas stove up here too. I’ve decided that my morning coffee will be much better made up here in the warmth as the winter approaches. It’s supposed to be a bad winter this year, so they say.

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Monday 17th November 2014 – WE’VE BEEN RADIOING TODAY

Just at Marcillat though. Liz had to work this afternoon and so we recorded it as she drove past. And Henri doesn’t look too good at all. He’s aged 100 years this last few weeks and I am concerned.

Afterwards we went to the hotel up the road for a coffee and a chat seeing as how we had half an hour to spare. And here we learnt some more devastating news. The owner of the hotel is retiring at the end of the year and there is no successor. It is therefore closing down. The other cafe in the town went a while ago, and so the place will be left with no facilities.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when we were discussing a year or so ago the Mayor of Pionsat’s plans for the town and his aim of expanding the commercial facilities available, I predicted that this will have a knock-on effect on the other small towns in the neighbourhood. I didn’t expect to be proved so right so quickly.

After that, I came back here and started on the next batch of radio programmes. I’ve fallen behind with the rock music ones and I can’t afford to do that. I need to put in a couple of decent shifts on these and build up an advance catalogue of programmes for the future. It’s teeming down with rain again and so I may as well do that as anything else

And it’s cold tonight. Hovering just above my magic limit of 13°C in my attic here. I try to hang on for as long as I can before the first fire, but once that limit is passed, I’ll light up the fire. Probably by the end of this week if it carries on dropping.

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Sunday 16th November 2014 – I HAD YET MORE VISITORS TODAY

I have never ever been so popular. I reckon that I’ve had more visitors this year than I have had in total for all of the rest of the years that I have lived here.

This one is, well, shall we say, just a little different.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when I first came down here tolive, I fell in with a bunch of these New-Age people who believed in co-operation and mutual help and all of the like. We had regular weekend work-ins at different people’s houses but what happened, and what goes to show that these New-Age people are even bigger hypocrites than the capitalists whom they despise, was that as soon as one person had his or her work finished, they discreetly removed themselves from the network list, deleted everyone from their list of contacts on social media, and abandoned their debts to other people.

I’ve spoken about this before – earlier this year, wasn’t it?

Anyway, the upshot of this is that I was the only one who never had a chantier at my house, and I’ve been abandoned.But before you think that I’m in a oh me miserum frame of mind, I do have to say that, having lived in a commune for a (very short) while in the 1970s I was expecting this to happen. Cynic that I am.

And so to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … one of these people sprang dramatically back to life about a week ago. Commenting on my posts on myb Social networking site, joining in the discussions and so on, just like a long-lost friend.

And so here comes the crunch. “I’m in your area on Sunday. Can I come round?”

We agreed on 12:00 and so true to form, it was 13:10 when my visitor arrived (punctuality is the Politeness of Princes of course, but there are no Princes in the New Age, where the inhabitants think that others have nothing better to do than sit around and wait for their caprices).

We had a brief exchange of pleasantries (and I do mean “brief”) and then we got down to the crux of the visit. “I have this solar panel in my car. Someone gave it to me. Does it work?”

And so here I am on a Sunday, my Day of Rest, out with a multimeter and a test rig.

“What do I need to wire it up on my caravan?” So I had to draw a schematic diagram

“How do I wire it up?” And so I explained.

“Where can I get the stuff that I need?”
“Well, I’m off seeing my supplier this week and so I’l quote you some prices when I’ve seen them”
“Ohh, don’t you have anything I can use?”

Yes, quite.

Quite frankly, it’s totally dishonest. I have a living to earn and a business to run, and not only do people think that they can pick my brains for free, they want me to give them stuff. And these are people who profit from your own good nature and goodwill, take what they want, and then don’t want to speak to you until they want something else.

I’ve had several of these people, all of them these New-Age hippy-types. They are nothing but scroungers and scavengers for the most part. The acid test of all of this will come when I submit an estimate for the work that this German hippy needs. I bet you any kind of cash you like that once I do that, I won’t be seeing him for another three years until the next time he wants something.

People like him make me sick.

And to add to my marvellously-good humour, which you have noticed, Pionsat’s cup match this afternoon was postponed due to a waterlogged pitch. Now there’s a surprise too.

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Saturday 15th November 2014 – I SOMEHOW MANAGED …

… to sleep right through the cacophony of a racket that goes on here 6 days per week between the hours of 07:30 and 08:10. There’s a whole procession of different kinds of alarms and so on, and yet I noticed not a one.

In fact, had Rosemary not rung me up at 09:30, I would probably still be asleep even now.

And I’ve not been out of the house all day today (except for the usual reasons). I’ve been a busy little bee.

I need a live concert for the radio programme that we are recording on Monday, and I’m struggling here at the moment. However salvation appeared in the form of a group of whom I bought a handful of CDs earlier in the year. Each CD was padded out with a live “bonus” track and when I added up the length of the live tracks, it came to 52 minutes or thereabouts.

However, I’ve been practising quite a lot with this Audacity sound engineering program just recently as you know, and my technique is improving rapidly. I was able to pick a studio recording of another track 5 minutes long and overdub it with applause and voices and so on so that it sounds like a genuine live track, and then engineer and mix all of the tracks together to make a seamless live concert 57 minutes long, and you can’t hear any of the joins. I’m well-impressed with this.

So that was my Saturday – I’ve done nothing else. Although it did take absloutely ages to engineer this concert. Tomorrow, I’m having a Day of Rest.

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Friday 14th November 2014 – 24mm OF RAIN …

… from about 10:00 until 21:00, and it’s still raining even as we speak. Summer has well and truly gone, and winter is just around the corner. As far as solar energy goes, you know that I have 4 banks of solar panels here with a total of 1260 watts, and I’ve received less than 2 amps of solar energy in total. And all of that came before 10:00.

I’ve been out today too, and I’ve come home with a new toy. Seems to be the story of my life just recently – I’ve never spent so much money.

kubota mini digger les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd here it is – an old Kubota mini-digger.

The story behind this is that I was looking for a new heavy-duty trailer as you know, ever since the bottom fell out of the Sankey trailer. I’d heard about a big heavy-duty Indespension plant trailer for sale, and so I had gone to see it. And sitting upon it was this old digger.

The trailer is exactly what I want, without any doubt at all, but when the vendor mentioned the price for them both, which is what I would have paid forthe trailer had I gone to the UK and bought a new one, there wasn’t any question about it.

The digger works well enough for its age and it’ll do what I want.

Of course, I already have half a digger – you may remember that Terry and I bought one a few years ago between us. But that was quite modern and quite expensive and we don’t use it that much. There’s a lot of money tied up in that, and so the idea is that we sell that, split the money between us, and my share will more than cover what I paid for this.

So I brought it home and had a play outside, in the driving rain, and I was soaked to bits. I’ve spent the rest of the day curled up under the quilt to dry off and keep warm. I don’t want to catch anything.

But here’s a thing. I had to pay €2050 plus VAT for something today, and that meant a trip to the bank. And how long would it take you to work out what the VAT is on that? VAT is of course 20% here and so €2050 x10% is €205, and another €2050 x10% is another €205 and so the total VAT is €410. The bill thereforecomes to €2460. It took the bank clerk 15 minutes, and the help of a colleague, calculator and a computer to work it out.

That’s a bank clerk in the local branch of mybank. No wonder the banks are in such a mess if this is an example of the skilled and intelligent staff that they are employing.

I despair.

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Thursday 13th November 2014 – I HAD A DAY OFF TODAY

Rosemary had been talking about going to the new IKEA down at Clermont Ferrand and so we had decided to go there together. Today was the day, so I was up and about quite early and went to pick her up.

We arrived there at about 10:20 and while IKEA is easy to see, it’s nothing like as easy to find the entrance to the car park. Nevertheless, after a mystery tour around the Michelin factory there we managed it.

I was hoping to be there much earlier but it would have been a waste of effort as the place doesn’t open until 10:00. I’ll have to bear that in mind. And who should we bump into there but another Eric whom we know. He’s the presenter of the chanson francaise programmes on Radio Arverne and they are recorded after our sessions there. Radio work doesn’t pay, of course, and so he’s working there at IKEA to pay the bills.

Rosemary vowed before we went in that she wasn’t going to buy anything. Of course I have heard this a thousand times before and this time was no different that any other. I spent about €40,about half of which went on a new dinner service. It was part of the reduced goods on offer and it certainly looks the business. I’m quite impressed with it as it is exactly what I was seeking.

We had lunch and then went to the Auchan to swap a defective temperature gauge and to do a pile of shopping, as well as buying some diesel as it was only €1:21 per litre. The Auchan doesn’t sell the light green bottles of gas so we had to go to the Carrefour at Menetrol. I think I mentioned that the gas that powers the cooker in the verandah is getting low and with the temperature still quite reasonable and with no fire up here yet, I’m still cooking down there.

I rescued my roofing ladder from Rosemary and we had a coffee and spent a good couple of hours putting the world to rights.

There won’t be much done tomorrow either as I have several errands to run and a new toy to pick up. I wish I could have a good few weeks non-stop on this perishing house.

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Wednesday 12th November 2014 – I WAS BACK …

… at work on the enlargement of the battery box today. But I didn’t make anything like the progress that I had intended.

First job was to move the home-made 12-volt immersion heater as it was in the way. And that wasn’t as easy as it sounds either as a load of other stuff needed moving too. The fridge and the chest of drawers upon which it sits too for a start.

Moving the fridge was a problem as there wasn’t any spare room between the legs of the stairway. It wasn’t half a tight fit and I reckon that it had grown during the time that it had been in there.

But once that was out of the way, I found that the chest of drawers had collapsed. No wonder that it had seemed to be sagging a little. I thus had a very pleasant half an hour repairing that and now that will last another 60 years.

With the chest of drawers out of the way, that gave me an opportunity to clean up underneath the stairs and it’s looking quite nice now. With the chest of drawers back in, and in a different position, there’s lots more room now.

I could then move the stack of insulation further down along the wall and this gave me space to put the immersion heater, but not as much as I wanted because we then had an issue about the length of the cables (you might remember this from a few months ago). Accordingly I had to build a level platform on the floor and that wasn’t straightforward either as I was right over where i’ve been digging out.

By the time that I had done that, the place was a total tip and I spent an hour tidying it all up. It’s even better now in there than it ever was.

This afternoon I knocked down the side of the battery box, the one that is next to where the extension is, and chiseled out all of the bits that remained cemented to the floor. I’m still impressed with the quality of the cementing that I did. I must be improving.

I could now get in behind the battery box and with the hook end of a crowbar I could rake out behind it. This was part of the plan as a couple of years ago I had dropped a whole pile of wire connectors down there. I recovered a whole pile of them, a load of screws, several pens, two screwdrivers and all kinds of things.

There’s still a ton of stuff down there and so I shall continue the raking out at the next available opportunity but I ran out of time. Nowhere near finished which is a shame, as that was the aim for today.

Still, never mind. It’s looking much better than it did.

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Tuesday 11th November 2014 – BANK HOLIDAY TODAY …

… and so I had a lie-in until all of 09:25.

And then I spent all day working on the laptop and that was all that I did today. I didn’t even cook anything for tea. The only piece of excitement was Terry phoning me up.

But one thing that I have noticed relates to these new batteries. I had the inverter running for 14 hours today and at the end of the day, there were 12.6 volts in the battery bank. I’ve never had that with any of the old batteries that were here. And don’t forget that at the moment there are only three of the large batteries there out of the 8 that I bought, together with 5 of the small older Hawker batteries. I’m quite looking forward to having all of the 8 big new batteries in place.

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Monday 10th November 2014 – I COULD HAVE STAYED IN BED …

… today. It’s a Bank Holiday here tomorrow and I owe myself a couple of days off.

However instead I went downstairs and made a start on enlarging the battery box. And by the time I knocked off, the base had been finished and all concreted in.

I had to rake out the under-floor next to where the existing battery box finishes. And once I had done that, I needed to level it off. Next job was to make up a framework for the extension and lay that into position.

You can’t simply concrete within the framework as the damp will be through there in minutes. Remember that this is the original problem with the flooring that led to me digging it out. There has to be a damp-proof membrane underneath and that can’t be laid flat on the floor as the rough surface will puncture it. I sifted some of the rubble that I had dug up and ended up with a pile of soft damp sand. That made a good cover over the rough surface and then I could put dow

The damp-proof membrane needs a layer of sand on it too. Putting stones onto it for a base might puncture the membrane from above otherwise. And so I sifted another load of rubble to produce more damp sand and that all went over the membrane.

All of the stone that I had removed made a good hardcore base, and then I mixed four or five buckets of concrete which filled it all up nicely. Even nice was that I finished just five minutes before knocking-off time too.

But to give you some idea of the kind of dampness with which we are dealing here, I had to remove part of the framework for the floor of the old battery box. And that was rotten as a pear in places.

This floor really is damp and that’s the reason that I’m going for the suspended flooring here.

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Sunday 9th November 2014 – I DIDN’T WANT TO …

… haul myself out of my stinking pit this morning. But that was just the point – my pit wasn’t stinking at all. In fact it was nice, clean and comfortable in there and I was rather enjoying it.

Once I was up and had breakfasted, I spent an hour or so on the laptop and then set off to Sayat for the footy – kick-off 13:00. And it occurred to me as I was driving towards Manzat that when I saw a sign for St Angel, that it’s twice now that I’ve run (or, rather, walked) the line for Pionsat. Last night against St Angel, and a couple of years ago when Pionsat were playing away at … St Angel.

There were roadworks on the road to Volvic and the diversion took me miles out of my way, but I managed to arrive in time for the kick-off. I needn’t have bothered because the least said about the match the better. It was not good.

On the way back, I noticd that there was snow on the peaks of the Puy de Sancy already. It’s getting cold now – temperature down to 13.4°C in here – close to the temperature where I allow myself to light the fire up here. Winter is on its way, sure enough. It was only two weeks ago that it was over 20°C up here.

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Saturday 8th November 2014 – I HAVE HAD …

… the best shower that I have ever had today. And I really mean it too.

Feeling rather filthy after all of my exertions, I resolved to go to the swiming baths today, especially as it was a nice warm day for the time of year. So after spending the morning writing more stuff for Radio Anglais, I headed off to Commentry for the shopping.

Having done that, I set off towards Neris-les-Bains for the swimming but, being rather early, I went for a detour to see if I could find the swimming baths that have recently opened in Commentry. Sure enough, there they were, all nice and modern. And not only that, they were open.

It was more expensive than the swimming at Neris but the saving in fuel was more than enough to cover the distance. The pool is small and the water is freezing, but I had a good work-out in there. There’s also a small pool where the water is quite warm and there are pressure jets that are as good as any of the hydro-massages that I had at that health spa in March.

And then we had the shower.

There are two enclosed showers and so I used one of them, so that I could have a really good soak. The water temperature is able to be changed and so I had it on full, and almost scalded myself. Once I’d found the best setting I had a good 15 minutes in there and it was wonderful.

To cap it all off, there’s even a coffee machine there, something that they don’t have in Neris.

Yes, I can see myself going back to the baths at Commentry.

This evening FC Pionsat St Hilaire beat St Angel 6-2 in something of a canter. And as there were no officials present from the home side, I ended up having to walk the line.

Notice the phrase – walking the line. Not running it as I’m rather past that, but I did my best and didn’t cause any controversy.

Tonight, seeing that I’m nice and clean, I’m going to change the bedding and have really clean sheets and quilt covers for tonight. I’m looking forward to this.

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Friday 7th November 2014 – I’VE BEEN REALLY POPULAR TODAY.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had so many visitors.

It started off with my friends who were staying at the Queue de Milan. They had come by especially to see the house and the set-up of solar panels and wind turbines, as well as all of the other things that I have on the go here. They had the full guided tour and explanation and it was bizarre that, over a lengthy distance in both time and geographical location, our ideas have been following along similar routes.

As they were preparing to leave, Rosemary turned up for a chat. She’d been to make an appointment for the dentist and was told that she could have one that same afternoon, so it was hardly worth her going home.

We had a coffee and spent hours putting the world to rights and then she cleared off I made myself some lunch. By this time it was late in the afternnon and I didn’t feel much like restarting work so I had an early finish. I reckoned that I had earned it after my exertions of Wednesday night and Thursday.

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Thursday 6th November 2014 – THE BIG PROBLEM …

… about portable telephones these days is that there are fewer and fewer public telephone boxes.

Consequently when Yours Truly and his sidekick Strawberry Moose are off in Caliburn on a Mission to rescue people in distress, there is nowhere for us to go to put our underpants on outside our trousers. As a result, we drove all the way to Rouen dressed quite normally.

The drive was quite uneventful and I found a place to park up in the secluded car park of a restaurant right on the edge of the city of Rouen and froze to death all night. It really was cold.

I had my phone call at 06:40 and then went to look for the hotel. And I do have to say that I have come to hate the centre of Rouen – really hate it. It’s all one-way streets and pedestrianised areas and I couldn’t reach the hotel. IN the end I had to park up and let my “client” come to me.

It was 08:00 when we finally met up, far too late, and then went off to Pissy-Poville (yes, it really does exist) for this recovery job. There was no way to remove the vehicle involved and so we had to empty it of everything – and I DO mean everything. That wasn’t as easy as it might sound either as it was so misshapen that we couldn’t open the doors. We were there for ages with a series of heavy crowbars and hacksaws, but we managed it in the end.

It then took ages to fill up Caliburn and once that was done, we had a drive back gome. And that wasn’t quite so easy either for we had a really full load up on Caliburn and he wasn’t impressed at all. Still, at 18:00, I was all unloaded and back in Pionsat.

What a day!

And it wasn’t finished either. I have some friends coming here and I’d booked them in at the Queue de Milan Hotel in Pionsat. I went round there to pay for the room now that I was free, only to find that they were there and had paid the bill. Consequently I took them to the Dauphin restaurant in Montaigut, giving them a guided tour of the town while we were at it.

I came back here and crashed out – hardly surprising given what I’d been through today. I’m far too old for this.

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Wednesday 5th November 2014 – ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE DAYS …

… where things don’t go according to plan. And I need to have this place finished for my guests too.

This morning though, it all started quite well, although it might not sound like it.

The last few weeks I’ve noticed that the battery bank hasn’t been charging as quickly as it ought to be, and discharging quicker than it ought to. Furthermore, the overall charge has been slowly dropping overnight when nothing has been running.

I had a look inside the battery box and, sure enough, another one of these Hawker batteries has burst. And again, just as you might think, it’s the one that is at the input/output end of the battery bank. The burst was causing the battery to overheat and that was where all of the power from the battery bank was going.

It was therefore time to bite the bullet and start to install the new batteries that I bought a while ago – those enormous 200 amp-hour batteries that I can hardly lift up. This involved expanding the base of the battery box, and I’s started on that a while ago, but hadn’t finished. Nevertheless, by rearranging the surviving Hawker batteries and knocking out three of the breeze blocks that form part of the side of the battery box, I could fit three of the large batteries.

So that is what I spent all of this morning doing – reorganising the battery box so that I could fit the three large batteries in. And moving the three batteries from the barn to the house was quite something. lifting 58kgs from a standing start is one thing – actually carrying it is quite something else.

It involved a very late lunch, and with tools and rubbish and all kinds of things littering the nice, clean and tidy floor from yesterday.

Just as I had finished my very late lunch and about to go and tidy up everything, the phone rang. Someone has suffered a calamity and needs my urgent attention. And this event has occurred in Rouen, no less. Keen readers of this rubbish will recall that I had to go on a breakdown to Rouen just before I went off the Canada, and now I need to go back. I have to be there for round about 06:30 tomorrow morning and so this means that I need to set off round about now and find a place to settle down somewhere on the outskirts of the town ready for things to happen.

So much for my nice, tidy living room floor – and my plans to have both myself and the house all nice, clean and tidy for my visitors. And that reminds me – I wasn’t able to contact them to tell them what was going on and so I’ve been leaving messages all over the place. I hope that they will find at least one of them.

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Tuesday 4th November 2014 – WHAT A DAY

Yes, the weather really has changed today. It’s rained for most of the day and we’ve had almost nothing at all in the way of solar energy – quite a change from last week, isn’t it? And it’s cold too – 7°C throughout the day and tonight there was a chill in the air that reminded me very much of an incoming frost.

Today I’ve been in the bedroom emptying it out and now that looks quite respectable too. And so it ought to, given the amount of time that I’ve spent in there today. Three bags of rubbish have been ejected.

I’ve also tiied up all of the reels of wire that were all over the place. I’m amazed that I have much more than I thought I did, which is hardly a surprise seeing in how much of a confusion I’ve been working. With not knowing what I have and where I have it, I’ve been buying things in duplicate. It won’t go to waste as I have the barn to rewire in due course.

So now the bedroom and the shower room have been emptied out and cleaned and swept, and I’ve also swept the stairs and the ground floor. It’s amazing how different the place looks now.

Finally, I was in the barn measuring up the batteries that I bought a couple of years ago. This week I’ll be wiring them into the system but the battery housing needs amending. That’s tomorrow’s task, I reckon.

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