Tuesday 5th August 2014 -I’VE PUT UP …

… the scaffolding at the front of the house. It took quite a while because it’s not easy to do it on your own and it becomes more difficult the higher up you go.

Not only that, it was quite hot today and so I was melting away in my overalls while I was up there.

However, by 18:00 it was all compleded and I accomplished my first task, namely to take off the shutters that I fitted in 2000 and which have slowly fallen to bits ever since.

This morning, after a decent night’s sleep for a change I was up early and working on the website as usual. But I’d been on my travels during the night again. I’d been selling all of my furniture at an auction including the valuable stuff that’s stored in the barn. Someone who had belped me considerably was really interested in the big dining room table but couldn’t afford however much it was going to be, and I was certain that it would fetch a substantial sum. However, seeing as how this person had helped me so much, I asked how much she could afford. She showed me her chips (it was as if we were doing this in a casino) so I resolved to push the price right up until any other bidder dropped out and take whatever money that this girl had.

Monday 4th August 2014 – I HAD A …

… bad night last night.

Whether it was the two cups of coffee that I had yesterday late afternoon, I don’t know but I was still tossing and turning in bed as the dawn was breaking. I managed to be out of bed at the usual time and I had breakfast, but I don’t remember too much about the rest of the morning. I didn’t make much progress on the website.

After lunch I went outside and, for the first time in 5 years, I cleaned out all of the stuff that was in front of the house. And there was a load of rubbish too. When I finally get round to doing it and finally have the time, there will be tons of stuff going down to the dechetterie.

That took ages to do, as you might expect. But once everything was moved out of the way, I started to fetch the scaffolding round from the farmer’s field. I’ve now started to put it up, and it’s not easy when you are on your own. It takes ages to start it off as you need to make sure that all four sides are perfectly level by adjusting the feet, and then you need to make sure that both pairs of sides are perfectly parallel.

Once the first row of the first bay is up (which is where I reached at 19:10), starting off the second bay and then building upwards is pretty straightforward even if it takes a great deal of effort. I’m hoping that I can finish erecting it tomorrow and make a good start on the things that I need to do.

-1

Sunday 3rd August 2014 – I HAD A LOVELY …

… afternoon out today. Rosemary rang up this morning for a good chat and so we agreed to meet up at St Eloy at 15:00.

At St Eloy we went to the cafe by the little beach at the lake and ended up staying there chatting until 20:00, such is the way of things. But it was lovely to get out and about for a change and the weather wasn’t quite as bad as it might have been.

Rosemary wasn’t the only one to phone up either. I had Julie on the phone for ages having a lengthy chat this morning too.

I had something of a restless night last night and was awake quite early. When I finally got out of bed it was only 08:40 and that was rather disappointing – so much for my nice Sunday lie-in.

After breakfast I finished off the tourism part of the Radio Anglais programmes and then hunted down some topics for the main text. I wrote two small articles that might do for three weeks or so – there’s planty of stuff in store that will fill in for the rest of the time.

I’ve also found another good topic that I can expand upon and if I do that next weekend I’ll be ahead again, which is where I want to be. I need to get ahead as much as I can with my impending voyage to the colonies.

-2

Saturday 2nd August 2014 – WHOSE SILLY IDEA WAS IT …

… to open the sides of the swimming baths at Neris-les-Bains today? It wasn’t actually all that warm today. The water temperature was 29.5°C in the pool but the air temperature inside was just 21°C. That’s a long way short of the usual summer temperature of 28°C.

I should explain that when the pool was built, it was a nice open-air Art-Deco swimming pool but these days there’s a marquee over the top of it, with sides that can be rolled up in the summer.

But today was not the day to do that.

There weren’t all that many people in there today either which was a disappointment. No attractive women of the opposite sex to ogle. Yes, I still eye up all the ladies, but I can’t remember why.

After the swimming baths (which unfortunately did little to relieve my cement burns) I went off to Commentry to do my shopping, and I was back home by 19:00

Before going swimming though, I’d been working on the programmes for Radio Anglais. I’ve prepared another live concert – something that takes me ages to prepare but having heard one that was edited and spliced by the people at the radio station a few months ago, I’m going to be doing them myself. I’ve also written almost all of the notes for it too.

That just leaves the tourist information for out travel guide, and with a bit of luck I can finish that off tomorrow.

Friday 1st August 2014 – I’VE FINISHED …

… the rear of the house this afternoon. I put in two big buckets full of lime mortar before lunch, and then two-and-a-half buckets full went in this afternoon.

Not only have I finished the pointing that I wanted to do, I managed to cut down a pile of brambles embedded in the wall between the field and the public highway on the other side so that I could get to part of the wall of the lean-to that badly needed doing, and I’ve done that as well.

While I was cleaning off all of the tools and so on, the 19:00 time signal went off and so it was 19:10 when I knocked off. Later, I crashed out once again while watching Carry on Columbus
. Many people think that that is probably the best thing to do while watching the film – it had some dreadful reviews – but I personally think that it’s a film that is rather underrated and deserves more credit than it ever received.

I’d been on my travels again during the night.

I ended up playing in goal for Pionsat’s football club through the night.It was an indoor match in some kind of Sports Centre. And I was total rubbish. I must have let about 5 or 6 goals in in a space of about 5 minutes but luckily no-one noticed 3 or 4 of them that had squirmed out of my grasp or under my body. I do remember Pionsat’s regular goalkeeper (no-one I knew) having a shot at goal that bounced off the sidewalls five or six times before finding the opposition net

From there I went into a little gift shop to look at the Teddy Bears. There was nothing that I particularly fancied but I do remember that I was carrying so much stuff with me that it took me four trips to get out of the shop. There were several cars parked outside and a few of them had left their lights on so I wrote some notes to stick underthe windscreen wipers of the cars. One though, a big white American muscle car thing, had a few kids playing in it and so I gave the note to them to give to their dad.

While I was working on the website I was interrupted firstly by the boulangère, and then Rosemary telephoned me for a chat. So one day I might even finish what I’m working on if I’m lucky.

Thursday 31st July 2014 – THE WEATHER …

… didn’t improve too much today, but at least it didn’t rain and there was plenty of blue sky. I even have some hot water in the 12-volt immersion heater that uses the excess solar charge.

The day started as it meant to go on, with me dropping my breakfast all over the floor downstairs. That was rather a shame.

And I didn’t go outside until after lunch either. I was working on the website as usual and then became sidetracked in some research that I had been doing and which ended up with me having to rewrite a pile of stuff that I had just written.

Back outside, I finished off digging all of the roots out of the back wall of the house and it looks pretty good there, although it took ages to do that. Next task was to start to chisel off a pile of loose cement from the rear wall, and that wasn’t a job of five minutes either.

By 17:00 I was ready and so I mixed up a pile of lime mortar. Two big buckets went into the wall where I’d chiseled off the cement and pulled out the roots. I’m about one third of the way along. Three or four more big buckets might do the trick next time that I’m out there.

And I finished bang on 19:00 too. That was good timing.

Wednesday 30th July 2014 – THIS MORNING WAS THE FOURTH TIME THIS SUMMER …

… that I’ve disconnected the fridge as there has been insufficient power this last 24 hours for it to function adequately. I recall having done that twice in summers in the past since the current set-up was established in August 2009, but four times from May to the end of July (and this is before we talk about August and September) is verging on the absurd.

Last night too I closed all the windows in the attic and I was sitting up there in a sweater. That’s the second time that this has happened this summer. All in all, it just shows you how depressing this summer has been so far

There was a similar summer to this once when I was living in Brussels. Everyone who went away in July came back drowned, many of them long before their holidays were over. Together with the wet, mild winter that we had, this is probably one of the worst years that I can remember so far.

Going downstairs to make breakfast there was a big hanging cloud everywhere again and we were totally stuck in it – hence the decision to unplug the fridge.

However as the morning went on this strange orange thing in the sky did put in an appearance and by the time I made it outside there were even some bits of blue sky visible. That was the cue to put a great big bucket-load of lime mortar into the cracks in the wall on the lean-to. That took me until 14:25 when I knocked off for a rather late lunch.

After lunch I dismantled the scaffolding as I no longer need it. Everything else that needs doing I can reach from the floor. It’s not as easy as you might think dismantling a scaffolding on your own and I nearly dropped part of it on my head.

I spent the rest of the afternoon digging roots out of the main wall of the house. The stinging nettle and thistle roots came out fairly easily but the bramble roots are proving to be difficult and the two big tree trunks that represent the base of the ivy
are proving to be almost impossible. I’ve made some progress, but only with the help of an axe, a couple of masonry chisels and a large crowbar.

If the weather is fine, I’ll carry on chiseling out the tree roots. Then I can fill in the gaps with a load of lime mortar. Hopefully whatever tree roots still in the wall would be killed off by the lime mortar and I shan’t be troubled by ivy again.

But with the blue sky and the sun that came out, I plugged the fridge back in. Now I can unplug it again next time we have a spell of a couple of days of hanging cloud

Tuesday 29th July 2014 – SO WHAT HAPPENED TO THE STARRY NIGHT THEN?

When I was outside last night taking the stats before going to bed, there was a beautiful, clear sky with millions of stars shining brightly – the portent to a beautiful morning. When I awoke though, we were having a hanging cloud and light drizzle. And it’s the end of July too. Summer is halfway over before it’s even begun.

And I was on my travel again during the night. I’d come up from the south of the USA heading towards Canada and upon entering New York State I’d been stopped by a flying customs patrol who charged me $108 duty on the fuel in the tank of the car. I had to go to fetch some money, and that involved a bus trip of 20 minutes to the local Burtons clothes retailer. The cash point wasn’t in the shop but outside, but nevertheless I had a good look at the clothes in the sale that they were having and decided to buy a few, although I kept on telling myself that I don’t need any clothes like these.

Back at my car, I couldn’t find the customs officers and so I was tempted to drive away and forget it, but I was worried that all of my details would be in the computer and I’d be stopped by another patrol, or at the customs, or extradited from Canada and I would be in even more serious trouble.

So after breakfast and back on the website. But not for long. With the rain now falling heavier and heavier, I rather lost interest and went on to other things.

After lunch I stuck my head outside and the rain was falling quite heavily and so I decided to do something that I forgot to do on Sunday and Monday – to wit emptying the beichstuhl. And it needed it too.

But after that, the weather was such that I had no intention of working outside (so much for my fine words yesterday) and so worked inside. I took off a piece of badly-fitted plasterboard to find out why it wasn’t seating properly, and in the end I had to pack it out to the correct position.

Once that had been done, I did some work on the wiring. I’ve rerouted a couple of cables, something that involved cutting a few notches out of a few beams, and then threaded some cable through some conduit and then wired up the light in the cupboard at the back of the stairs.

That took me until about 19:10 and that was that.

Tonight, I made a green pepper and chick-pea curry – enough to last for several days. I don’t fancy cooking for the rest of the week.

Monday 28th July 2014 – NOW HERE’S ANOTHER THING

Yes, when I knocked off working this evening it was 19:40. Much later than my usual time of course and that’s not something that happens all that often. My excuse was that I had been up on the scaffolding redoing some of the mortar that I did on the lean-to in 2012.

Three buckets-full went into it today and it took ages as I had to rake out all of the loose stuff. As well as that, I had to adjust the scaffolding. Another level has been demolished meaning that there’s only one level left to do.

The night as interesting too.

I didn’t go to bed particularly early, and I was awoken at about 05:00 by the most tremendous rainstorm – by far the best of the rainstorms that we’ve been having this year and, of course, the problem with living in the attic is that I can hear every drop of rain that falls.

And it was a shame that I was awoken because I was in Sheffield watching “Yes” on tour. Every one of the spectators was hovering in the air looking down on the performers who were all illuminated with LEDs and spotlights and the stage setting was magnificent. I was of course focusing on Chris Squire the bassist who, despite being one of the best bassists in the world, lets himself down by over-elaborating – playing 10 notes where three or four would be much more effective (but isn’t that the story of “Yes”?) and he was in some kind of well or pulpit fashioned out of a couple of giant-sized bass guitars and it was ever so spectacular.

But anyway, I struggled out og bed at about 07:50 for breakfast and while the kettle was boiling (not enough solar energy for the percolator in this weather of course) I went to look at my guttering. That was quite rewarding – the rain cascading down the roof into the guttering and then cascading out of the downpipe onto the lean-to roof and down the downpipe off there to where the underground water tank will be. I’m glad that that works, anyway.

I carried on with the website this morning and after the rain stopped, I went outside and started the cementing.

This evening, I’d just settled down with a good film, only for Rosemary to ring me up. It was well after 22:00 when she hung up so I just made a quick tea.

Tomorrow, I’ll carry on with the cementing. It won’t take much longer to finish off, but I’ve said this kind of thing before, haven’t I?

-1

Sunday 27th July 2014 – NOW HERE’S A THING …

I actually had a coffee percolator running here – all 850 watts of it – and it’s the first percolated coffee that I’ve ever made here with my electrical system. We are definitely making progress here.

WHen I turn the clock back to 2008 and the abuse and insults that were heaped upon me, all behind my back – in a public discussion forum by a so-called friend of mine when I talked about running a microwave oven here, well, the coffee machine draws the same current as a microwave and run for about the same length of time. I’m totally convinced that a microwave will run here and if I can find a cheap second-hand one as a test bed, I’ll be giving one a try.

Mind you, I did have a problem with the main circuit breaker tripping out as it has done on a few other occasions too. But this time, I was there when it happened and I could see exactly what was happening and it’s left me with a bit of omelette sur le visage. When I set up the system originally, I had a 600-watt inverter here. Consequently I wired a 75-amp circuit-breaker into the system, which was more-than-enough. Since then, I’ve installed a 1200-watt inverter and I seem to have … errr … forgotten to uprate the circuit-breaker.

Of course, 75 amps is the equivalent of about 950 watts and when I have the fridge running and a few other things besides, then a 850-watt coffee percolator is expecting rather too much.

Apart from that, I had a nice lie-in this morning, until 10:45 too and about time. And after breakfast I had a few things to do and then after lunch and the incident with the coffee machine, I did some shopping on the computer to buy the stuff for the Sankey Trailer and also some ink for the Hewlett Packard printer that I inherited. And that wasn’t as easy as it sounds either. I tried about 4 different cards before Paypal accepted one of them and to my surprise, it’s the one from the little rural bank here. None of the multinational cards word work.

I should also have ordered a new circuit breaker or 6 while I was at it but I forgot.

Anyway, that’s the end of the weekend and I’m back to work tomorrow.

Saturday 26th July 2014 – WELL, THERE I WAS …

… lying in bed this morning waiting for the alarm to ring, and after a while I thought that this can’t be right. Yes, it was 08:30 and bith the battery in the phone and in the alarm had gone flat through the night. What are the odds on that happening?

So after a rather late breakfast I sat down and dealt with this outstanding programme that I have to write for Radio Anglais. I did five and a half weeks, and there’s just the bit about tourism to finish off. Then there are two rock programmes and some information notes to do.

I tried a different tactic about shopping today. I worked on the radio programmes until about 14:45 and then ent straight to Neris and the swimming baths. It wasn’t as nice as last week – just a mere 9.5 out of 10 – -and there were a couple of bizarre goings-on in there too today.

I then went to Commentry to do the shopping and ran straight into a motor-cycling weekend and the town was packed with people and motor bikes.

I didn’t buy anything extra either today, and I was back home at 19:00, nice and clean (for a change) and shopped. And then I crashed out yet again for half an hour.

And that was today finished. Tomorrow is a day off and a lie-in.

Friday 25th July 2014 – WELL TODAY DIDN’T GO ACCORDING TO PLAN

With the late finish last night it was something of a later-than-usual start.And this was interrupted by the boulangère with today’s bread. She’s going to be spending the weekend making jam and so seeing as how she seems to know what she is talking about, I took her to show her a tree and some fruit growing thereupon. She considers that it’s small plums and there’s no reason why I can’t make jam with them – but not for a while yet until they are ripe.

Back here I was sidetracked again with some research and so it was quite late by the time I made it outside. First job was to pick up all of the scaffolding that I’d dismantled yesterday and stick it over the fence into my garden.

Once I’d done that, I went up on the scaffolding and attacked the woodwork, putting the second coat of preservative on where I’d done the first coat yesterday.

I also attacked the bolts on the Sankey trailer with the angle grinder but this was where things went wrong and I ended up spending the rest of the day dismantling the angle grinder to find out why it keeps on stopping. It’s not been right for a while.

The brushes were worn and there’s a wire with a bad connection, as I discovered after I dismantled it. And I hadn’t finished it (and not by a long way either) at knocking-off time.

Up here later, I fell asleep watching The Naked Gun. I’ll see it again tomorrow and fall asleep in a different bit.

-2

Thursday 24th July 2014 – SO DESPITE THE LATE NIGHT …

… last night, I was still up at something like the correct time. And we had the usual procedure this morning of breakfast and then work on my website until midday. It was interrupted by a phone call from Rosemary – it’s nice to have phone calls from friends.

When I went outside, I went up onto the scaffolding in the beautiful weather and sloshed a pile of wood preservative onto the wood in the roof – the bits where I did the first coat yesterday.

While I was up on the scaffolding I untangled the mooring wires for the wind turbine. There’s only one attached to the wall at the moment and over the passage of time the other three have become tangled. It was a complicated manoeuvre involving a 4-metre lath of wood and a garden rake.

This afternoon I started checking over the rear wall of the house, slowly making my way down the scaffolding, dismantling it as I descended. I’ve arrived at the level of the roof of the lean-to and so I sloshed a pile of wood preservative on that too and I’ll do the second coat tomorrow.

I’m at the stage where I need a couple of buckets of mortar for the wall of the lean-to – some of the mortar that i did in the summer of 2012 needs some attention.

That’s tomorrow’s job and I finished off my working on the Sankey trailer. Of course, with it being ex-British-Army from the 1950S and 60s it’s a mixture of AF and Whitworth nuts and bolts. I have all my AF spanners but I’ve no idea where my Whitworth stuff is and so it wasn’t easy. I’ll have to use the angle grinder tomorrow on that. But the chassis isn’t as bad as I thought and even a manual wire brush cleaned it off quite well. I’ll still get the wire brush on the angle grinder to do it properly.

After knocking off, I watched The Spy Who Shagged Me, the same film that I tried to watch last night. And tonight I fell asleep in a different place and woke up in a different place too.

One day I might get to see all of it.

Wednesday 23rd July 2014 – IT’S 02:40 …

… and I’m still awake. Serve me right for crashing out for an hour after I finished work earlier this evening. And that’s something of a surprise as I was in bed well before midnight too.

No rain or anything to wake me up so I slept right through and after breakfast I carried on with my journey around Lac St Jean and the Saguenay Fjord.

Outside later, I finished off the guttering.

It was too much like hard work to set up the big electric SDS drill, and so I had a good go with the bigger Ryobi Plus One drill. I was quite impressed because once I put a new battery in it, the Ryobi did the job quite well. So that enabled me to fit the brackets for the downpipe and then fit the downpipe.

It’s all now glued into position and quite solid too as you can see.

With having the scaffolding in place where I want it, I put in a higher row of planks so that I can reach up along the chevron on the outer edge and I put a couple of coats of wood preservative on there and also on the end of one of the roof beams. I’ll wallop some more on there tomorrow too.

I spent a delightful hour or so tidying up the concrete hardstanding, stacking everything neatly where it should be, so now there is plenty of room to move about there too without tripping over anything.

Next, and as it happened, the last job for today was to look at the Sankey Trailer. I ripped out the flooring and ripped out the electric wiring so that I could have a good look at the chassis.

It’s not actually as bad as I thought it was. What I’ve been mistaking for rot on the chassis is about 10 layers of flaking paint. I reckon that if I attack it with the wire brush on the angle grinder and remove all of the loose paint and the loose rust, I can get down to the bare metal. I’ve a pile of dark brown metal paint that is suitable for painting over rust so a couple of coats of that should sort out the chassis and the inside of the trailer body. For the outside I have some yellow hammerite-type paint to match Caliburn.

For the flooring, there’s all of that that we fitted on a caravan chassis all those years ago – some heavy-duty 30mm planking. That should make a really good floor for that.

Once I’ve fixed that, I can go and collect some concrete from the quarry to finish off the job here.

And we finished the day in sunshine too. Even better, there’s a bright clear sky tonight with not a cloud in sight. Is summer coming back?

-1

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 – DESPITE THE LACK OF RAIN …

… during the night, it was still 04:00 when I went to bed this morning. I’ve no idea why I’ve been having trouble sleeping this last couple of days. I even managed to raise myself in the middle of the night to visit the beichstuhl as well so I ended up with even less sleep. Perhaps it’s old age – I dunno.

After breakfast I carried on with the website until midday and despite not feeling particularly up to it, I had a really good morning’s work. I’m half-way up to the head of Lac St Jean at the moment.

Outside, I dismantled half of the scaffolding from the uphill end of the house and re-erected it on the downhill side.

Dismantling it was somewhat problematic because the part that remained erect wasn’t particularly stable once the whole of the other bay had been dismantled. It would have been much easier had I had another pair of feet so that I could have erected the downhill side of the scaffolding as I dismantled the uphill side. I’m sure that I bought 8 feet just so that I could do this, but despite an exhaustive search I could only find 7. I’ve no idea what has happened here. I can’t think where that one has gone to.

Anyway, now it’s up, and quite stable too, and I’ve started to glue the top end of the downpipe into position.

Tomorrow, I’ll be drilling the wall for the mounting screws for the downpipe brackets and then I can glue all of that in place. This will be the guttering finished.

There are a few other things that I can do while I’m up there and I can look at all of that tomorrow too. I may as well make the most of having the scaffolding up there because I don’t want to put it un there again.

Not until I can find my missing foot anyway.

EPIC HALL

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