Monday 3rd November 2014 – LOOK AT THIS!

It’s a 2008 Ford Ranger 4×4 Sport pick-up fitted with a 4.0 litre V6 engine. And furthermore, it’s mine. All mine.

Long-term readers of this rubbish will recall that I am thoroughly fed up with the price that I’m having to pay in North America to hire a vehicle every time that I go over. And not only that, what laughingly passes for “customer service” with Avis Car Hire is appalling. Every time I go there, they try to chisel extra cash out of me for all kinds of excuses and reasons and it’s gone beyond the point of embarrassment.

So to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … I’d asked a couple of garage proprietors in New Brunswick to keep me informed about any suitable 4×4 pickup taken as a trade-in, and one of them has come up with the goods.

Bearing in mind how much I’m paying for car hire, this pick-up will pay for itself in one-and-a-half visits to Canada. and if I can find a lightweight slide-in camper back for it, I will be really in business.

Consequently, I spent most of the morning on the phone to a couple of people in Canada – the garage proprietor and my bank – and now the deal is done.

Apzrt from that, I’ve finished the verandah today. Totally stripped out, cleaned and tidied and you can actually see the worktops now. I’ve also cleaned and refurbished the chemical toilet now that you can reach it, because that will be useful for visitors.

Finally, I tidied up a little more on the ground floor and that’s showing a great improvement too.

Tonight, I cooked one of my famous augergine and kidney bean whatsits, accompanied by one of the most wicked rainstorms that i’ve seen for a while. The weather really has changed now.

Sunday 2nd November 2014 – THE WEATHER HAS CHANGED …

… today. The sun disappeared quite early on and by the end of the day today, it was raining. First time since I can’t remember.

And I know that the sun disappeared early today too because despite it being a Sunday and my traditional day of rest, I was up and about at some silly time like 08:35 – so much for my day o rest – but I made up for it by doing almost nothing at all. I think that I’m entitled to one day a week where nothing at all happens.

And having done (or not done) that, I’m off to bed early. I have a lot to do next week and I need my beauty sleep – not that it does me any good of course.

Saturday 1st November 2014 – THAT WAS A WASTE OF TIME …

… wasn’t it just? Yes, my early night was interrupted by the mouse that is trying to hibernate in the ceiling, and then when I finally did go back to sleep I was wide-awake and up and about at all of … would you believe … 07:30. So much for my long lie-in.

After breakfast, I’ve spent all day doing nothing. I forgot to mention to you that it’s a Bank Holiday here today. I’ve been just organising files on the laptop and that’s about it.

Well, not quite. I’ve had to make a few phone calls today, two of which were to Canada, and more of this anon. Another one was to book a room at the local hotel, because I’m having visitors here et the end of the week.

Another thing that I’ve done is to have another shower today – the “bucket and jug” type of shower. Well, it was bright blue skies all day, temperature in the home-made 12 volt immersion heater had gone off the scale and the temperature in the verandah was 24°C. And now, I’m all clean, smell of coconut and have noce clean clothes on.

There’s a pile of dirty clothes here now. I need to consider the washing machine at the Intermarche at Pionsat again. That’s probably the most useful thing in town, I reckon.

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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.

Here 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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Thursday 30th October 2014 – I HAD ANOTHER …

… garden fire today. But to be honest, it was really the same one as yesterday, with a lot more fuel added to it.

Outside the house, the tidying up is done as much as I can do for the moment and it really is a great improvement on how it was before. That, at least, is noticeable. And where I couldn’t reach with the lawnmower or the brush cutter, I’ve poured a load of weedkiller over. That’s something that I’ve always been trying to avoid, of course, but sometimes it is necessary, especially as time is something of an issue right now.

Having dealt with that, I’ve been in the downhill lean-to. I’ve done some (but not too much) tidying up in there now and I can move around again. Dealing with that properly and comprehensively is another mediul-term goal of mine, and that depends upon what the winter this year is going to bring us.

This afternoon, I spent a considerable amount of time on the telephone. Firstly, I had to call the UK and my bank there to find out why a banking transaction hadn’t gone through. After what can best be called “a frank exchange of views”, this transaction might go through properly now, and there will be some news about this on these pages in early course if all goes according to plan.

The second call was to Canada and to my niece and her husband. This is something else that is going to involve a considerable financial outlay, but my best estimate is that it will pay for itself in just three voyages to North America, and I’m looking to reduce my outlay in this respect seeing as how it’s becoming a regular thing, these voyages. And there will be more of this anon too..

Once those were out of the way, I spent a delightful afternoon downstairs on the ground floor of the house tidying up all of that, and it’s now back to the pristine condition of how it was in the Spring. That left me just ebnough time to make a start on tidying the first floor where the bedroom will be.

As it went dark I had phone calls from Terry and from Rosemary. I’m exceedingly popular these days. I can’t be feeling myself these days.

And quite right too. It’s a disgusting habit.

-1

Wednesday 29th October 2014 – I HAD A FIRE …

… today in the garden. The first of the year, if I remember correctly.

And it was the best garden fire that I’ve had since that one a few years ago and which was so hot that it set fire to the guttering on the barn and melted three dustbins 30 feet away. This one was not quite of that standard but it was still impressive.

And where did all of the material come from? The answer to this is that this morning I moved everything from off the land between the barn and the house, and then attacked the weeds and brambles with a pair of loppers and a big rake. By about 13:00 I had as much out as I could get, and so attacked what was left with the brushcutter

After lunch, I sorted out the lawnmower and mowed everywhere where I could reach. That wasn’t easy either, as we are having lawnmower issues. It’s proving extraordinarily difficult to start right now as the choke isn’t working corectly. You need to start up the mower and then keep on pumping the wobble pump until the engine is warm enough to run without the choke.

Anyway, it’s all mown as far as I can reach, and I’ll need to carry on a little further when I can clear some more room.

I had a little chat with the old woman who hangs around here helping her son who is a vacancier. She was telling me a story about what had happened to her 20 years ago, and apparently she had had an argument with the farmer who reckoned that her car was in the way when he was moving his cattle the other day. Not that surprised me any, because her car is never parked – it’s just abandoned in the road.

But having had 10 minutes in her company, I can understand why it is that Eskimos put all of their old folk onto ice floes and push it out to sea.

Last night was exciting though. I had 16 sacks of papers to take to Pionsat for the big paper collection. But there wasn’t much about the town. I reckoned that I had more waste paper than the rest of the town combined. IN the end, I had to drive around the town, dropping off a sack here and a sack there so that it didn’t look just like a big pile from me.

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Tuesday 28th October 2014 – I HAD A SHOWER TODAY.

Well, it wasn’t actually too much of a shower but when I came back downstairs after lunch the temperature in the verandah was 24.2°C and the water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that is the dump load for the overcharge on the solar panels had gone off the temperature scale ie over 70°C. Yes, over 100 amps of excess solar charge today.

I mixed 10 litres of water to 40°C and had a shower in the corner of the verandah. Nothing complicated – just a water jug and a large bucket of nice hot water but it didn’t half fetch me up nice and clean, just for a change, and in no time flat too.

And, yes, in the verandah too. Because this morning I was out there at 09:30 going through absolutely everything. I’ve made enormous headway in there, although it doesn’t look all that much different as you might expect. But the floor is clear now, hence the space to have a shower.

There is still a great deal to do in there however but the aim was to round up all of the loose paper that needs throwing out.

Having done that this morning, then this afternoon I went around the house and rounded up another pile of scrap paper, as well as all of the plastic bottles and tin cans as they can also go into the yellow sacks, according to the notice on the side of the sacks. This is an exciting discovery and saves me a journey down to the big dechetterie at St Eloy in the near future.

All in all, there are no less that 16 yellow sacks for me to take down to Pionsat tonight for the morning collection tomorrow and that’s really something. But it really doesn’t look much different here all the same.

Tomorrow, I’m going to start outside tomorrow, tidying up out there. I’ll have this place looking pretty even if it kills me, which it probably will.

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Monday 27th October 2014 – RED SKY AT NIGHT …

… means that Auzances is on fire.

Yes, on the way back home this evening as the sun was setting, I stopped off at my favourite haunt, the St Gervais Ornithological Centre to take one or two photos. The sun setting below the horizon in the clouds in the general direction of Auzances was particularly impressive.

The view in the opposite direction, while not being quite as spectacular, was nevertheless quite impressive in its own right.

Here, with the evening drawing on and the damp mist slowly rising out of the fields, the Puy de Dome looks as if it is slowly disappearing from view behind a kind of diaphanous veil. It gives a completely different aspect to this view, of which you have seen dozens of examples over the years.

This morning we went to record the Radio Anglais programmes at Marcillat-en-Cembraille for Radio Tartasse. We had a few technical issues but they were resolved by simply returning to the very first version of the studio’s computer program. This new upgrade has caused nothing but problems.

We went from there to Clermont-Ferrand and the Auchan where I did a big pile of shopping. I’d run out of oats for my muesli and lentils for my curries, and so I needed to stock up. I also took advantage of the proximity of the Auchan to the recording studios at Gerzat to do a mega-shop.

The radio session at Gerzat went surprisigly well – in fact four programmes of 15 minutes each took just 1 hour and 5 minutes to record in total. It’s never happened like this before and I wish that it had happened like this that time just before I went to Canada.

Afterwards, we celebrated by going for coffee at Menetrol and doing a lap around the Carrefour there to buy the things that I had forgotten.

And after dropping Liz off, I came home via the birdwatching site at St Gervais d’Auvergne.

Tonihgt, I’ve enrolled in another Higher Education course. The University of Birmingham, in its Future Learn Programme is offering a course in the Development of Aviation in World War I and there was a free place even though the course started a week ago. This kind of thing is right up my Alley as you know and I couldn’t resist the opportunity.

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Sunday 26th October 2014 – GRRRRRR!

Yes, I asked last night at the footy where the 2nd XI would be playing today. “St Maurice” was the answer, “but don’t forget that the kick-off is at 13:00”. So at 12:50, there I was at the football ground at St maurice, and I was there all on my own.

At 14:00 someone finally turned up, and it was then that I discovered that the kick-off was actually 15:00. It seems that I had been misinformed. But it wasn’t necessarily a waste of time, for I had brought my laptop with me. So I had sat in Caliburn and done another radio programme while I was waiting.

Pionsat’s 2nd XI lost 3-1, which was no surprise seeing as how they only had 8 players there. Nevertheless, at one stage they were 1-0 up. What changed the match was one of the outfield players being injured just before half time and so in the second half he went in goal and the keeper ended up playing up front (and he was the one who scored the goal, strange as it might seem).

But there was something good that came out of the doom and gloom nevertheless – and that was with Didier (the right-winger) and Vincent (the centre-forward) playong together as a completely impromptu central defensive pairing. And until they tired late in the game (which was hardlly surprising given the circumstances) they never put a foot wrong for 80 minutes and no-one was ever going to get past them. It was a revelation as far as I was concerned and they can both take a bow for their performance.

This morning though I finished off the rdio programmes that we will be presenting tomorrow morning and then after the footy I went round to Liz and Terry’s for rehearsals. Liz had made a vegetable crumble and while it might sound rather bizarre, it tasted really good. That’s something else that I will be adding to my repertoire when (if ever) I work on my kitchen.

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Saturday 25th October 2014 – A GAME OF TWO HALVES

I’ve just come back from the footy at Pionsat where the home side has been defeated by one of the teams from the suburbs of Clermont Ferrand, Clermont Biblioteque.

And if ever there was a game of two halves, then this was it, that’s to be sure. Clermont were a big, quick, powerful team and they were sprinting through FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s makeshift defence almost at will.

4-0 up at half-time without even breaking sweat, although I do have to say that a penalty that they were awarded was not ever in a million years a penalty – the keeper clearly pushed the ball away from the Clermont player and that latter fell over the outstretched keeper’s leg after the ball had gone. Not only that, the fourth goal was the last kick of the first half and had the referee blown his whistle 2 seonds earlier this goal wouldn’t have counted anyway.

When Clermont scored their 5th goal straight from the kick-off, all sorts of horror stories were running through my head. And then a most astonishing thing happened.

Nico found the ball in plenty of space about 30 yards out, looked up to see the keeper about 15 yards off his line, and lobbed the ball right over him into the net.

10 minutes later, Pionsat won a corner and the ball broke out to blond Frederic who was about 25 yards out on the left-hand side of the penalty area. He launched it low and hard back into the area and, unbelievably, it sailed right through the crowds and into the far corner of the net.

If that wasn’t enough, about 10 minutes after that, Anthony lobbed a beautiful ball over the defence into space and Nico, beating the offside trap cleverly, beat the keeper comrotably to score a third.

Clermont launched a couple of huge waves of attack and only some desperate defending by Pionsat kept them out. And if they had defended like that earlier in the game they wouldn’t have been in all of these problems. It really was magnificent stuff.

The match ended with FC Pionsat St Hilaire back on the attack, camped in the opposition half trying to claw their way back into the game. It was a shame that a couple of Clermont’s early goals had counted.

Apart from that, I’ve been radioing today – writing a couple of programmes and a rock show for Radio Anglais in my comfortable abode up here. And I crashed out for a couple of hours too – I can’t think why. It’s not as if I’ve been overworking just now.

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Friday 24th October 2014 – THE DEED IS DONE.

Yes, William Shakespeare would have something to say about this place now. There’s nothing in here now that shouldn’t be in here (mind you, I bet that there is). It’s all been moved out and there is now plenty of room to move about. The next day that I have plenty of power, I might even vacuum the place with that 500-watt vacuum cleaner that I bought in the spring.

You wouldn’t recognise the old place now.

I have radio stuff to do this weekend and we are recording on Monday, but seeing as how the paper collection isn’t until Wednesday, I reckon that on Tuesday I’ll do as much as I can to collect as much waste paper as possible from around the place. That should make quite a difference.

And when that’s done, I’m going to have a go at clearing up some of the outside.

And the weather is definitely becoming colder. In the lean-to last night the temperature dropped down to 12.9°C. In here, it fell to 17.1°C and that’s a sign of things to come, isn’t it?

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Thursday 23rd October 2014 – AT LAST …

… it looks as if there has been some progress in here. For a start, the desk is completely cleared and there’s nothing on there except what should be on there.

Everywhere else in the attic has been atended to now and so by the time I finished this evening, all that remains is to take out everything that needs to be moved. And then I’m hoping to see some difference in here because, to be honest, as I have been saying for the last week, ther doesn’t look much difference (except on the desk as I metioned yesterday).

And, as you might expect, I’ve been finding stuff that I’ve long since given up for lost although there are a few things that I know should be up here and I’ve yet to discover

Mind you, I didn’t feel much like it this morning. i’m still being troubled by a mouse or something in the roof and for a couple of hours it was scratching away, keeping me awake when I was trying to gt off to sleep. That was really annoying.

I also had one of these vague telephone conversations with one of the radio companies that broadcasts Radio Anglais. It’s always difficult dealing with this particular radio station, for a whole variety of reasons, and today was no exception.

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Wednesday 22nd October 2014 – BRRRR!

It looks as if winter has arrived here. Last night the temperature outside dropped to 3.7°C outside, the coldest that it’s been in this latter part of the year. No wonder I didn’t feel much like getting up this morning.

So I had another leisurely morning on the internet and then carried on attacking the attic here. And by the end of the afternoon I finally managed to make a good start on the pile of rubbish that is the desk. I’ve been piling stuff up on there since I din’t know when and this is the one place that I really need to tackle.

We’ll see how it develops.

Rosemary rang up again as there has been another change of plan at her house and she needed to chat about a new project there.

And then, I had a quiet night, although for some reason I found it difficult to get off to sleep and I was still awake at 03:00. I need to do something about this;

-1

Tuesday 21st October 2014 – NO ONE CAME …

… from miles around … errrr, yes, no-one came to visit me today which was just as well.

After something of an easy morning during which I did some work on the web site, I carried on with the tidying up in here. Still not much difference in how it looks, I suppose, but I have to keep on going.

And Rosemary rang me for a chat this evening. She has the builders in at her place so she was telling me how things were going, and she was interested to hear where I’ve got up to with the tidying up.

And that, dear reader, is that.

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Monday 20th October 2014 – I’VE HAD SOME MORE …

… unexpected visitors today. I happened to glance out of the window this afternoon and there was an old woman and three kids, two aged about 8 and a girl aged about 13 or 14, staring at the house. Further enquiried revealed that the old lady used to live here years ago and she just happened to be passing.

She insisted on a guided tour, which was quite embarrassing given the state that the place is in, but I suppose that I couldn’t turn her down, and she went off quite happy. She says that she might have some photos of the house from 60 years ago, and she’ll let me have copies if she finds them.

It disrupted my afternoon considerably, but I know that had I turned up like this at somewhere where I had lived 60 years ago, I would have hated to have been turned away.

But I do wonder who is going to be the next person to turn up here.

This morning I was up and about comparatively early and after breakfast I dealt with a pile of paperwork and put a load of web pages on line. You can now quite happily follow my journey around the Saguenay.

I also wrote a couple of letters that needed doing. And after a good hour or so’s work, I finally have a working printer here. I’m not sure how long it will keep going because, as regular readers of this rubbish will remember, I get through printers here about every 3 months and I’ve no idea why.

I also loaded up Caliburn with all of the clothes that I’ve sorted out. I needed to go to the Post Office of course to post the letters so on the way back I went to the dechetterie in PIonsat to drop them off seeing as how they have a clothing skip there. I also picked up a couple of rolls of yellow sacks as there’s a waste paper collection in Pionsat next Wedneday.

Back here I attacked the waste paper mountain until I was interrupted, and once my visitors had left I carried on again until knocking off time.

You still can’t see much of a difference in here unfortunately, but I must be on the right lines somewhere with all of this stuff that’s being binned.

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EPIC HALL

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