Monday 18th July 2011 – AND SO I’VE BEEN AND GORN …

… and now I’m back after my mega-voyage of this weekend.

Yesterday evening was, as you know, quite an exciting dash through the wilds of rural Burgundy, but this morning it was a totally different story.

There were hay lorries, tractors, all kinds of things on the roads. No wonder I like to travel at night. And the final straw was near Moulins where they had part of the N7 closed for resurfacing – it took an hour to travel 6 kms, such is the traffic on the N7.

Bback home here though, I encountered all of the storms and the rain. I’m not unloading Caliburn in this weather.

And the solar panels on the end of the barn, those that I fitted before I went? They are producing about 20% more than those on the roof of the Luton Transit. I was hoping for more but never mind – it’ll do.

I was however back home in time to attend Lieneke’s party, where I spent most of my time chatting to Tyas, Simon and Desiree. It’s been a while since I’ve seen them.

And as you might expect, it all caught up with me later so I came home and crashed out. No surprise here.

And do you know what? I have to go back and do exactly the same thing next weekend too!

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Sunday 17th July 2011 – NEXT MORNING …

… after a good lie-in (well, it IS Sunday!) and a leisurely breakfast, I drove round to Marianne’s for lunch, which was very nice of her to invite me.

It was heavily overcast today just by way of a change, but it was reasonably warm and so in the afternoon after lunch we went for a walk in the Bois de la Cambre down the road.

It’s been a couple of years at least since I have been for a good perambulation in the park and there have been some considerable changes here in that time. They seem to have been spending their money quite considerably.

But the most important change is over here.

The old pie hut on the island that burnt down a while ago has now been completely rebuild and is now a magnificent chalet – the Chateau Robinson – doubtless named for Robinson Crusoe.

Access out there is by a boat, which you can see mooed up to the quay just to the right of centre. It costs €1:00 to take the boat out there, and the return trip is free, which is just as well given the price of the coffee out there.

I would very much like to say that I took my coffee this afternoon with Price Laurent of the Belgians, and I bet that you are thinking that I’m joking too.

But far from it in fact.

Although he wasn’t acually sitting at my table, he was close enough – and he wasn’t surrounded by armed policemen and crowds of bodyguards either. Just out en famille for his Sunday afternoon cuppa.

Mind you, I bet that the two or three people at nearby tables who stood up discreetly to leave just as he was leaving “had some interest” in the matter.

Then Marianne came back with me to the flat, I dismantled the bed in Caliburn and Marianne helped me load the heavy stuff that was remaining.

We had a really long chat and what with it being Sunday we went out for pizza, seeing as how she had given me a useful hand. However we were sidetracked by a new restaurant advertising, would you believe, a Vegan section. And I had the most magnificent penne al arabiatta that I have ever eaten.

Dropping her off, I was back on the road. The plan was to head home as rapidly as I could and go as far as I could before stopping for the night somewhere, but I was rather side-tracked.

I’d noticed once or twice over the course of the years that the Rue de la Loi in Brussels looks magnificent at night with all of the street lights and vehicles that flood the street.

One of the things that I had wanted to do was to take a few photos of the place before I left. So off I went, and took about half a dozen. Here’s one of them to titivate your palette

Having done that, Caliburn and I bounced happily all the way to near Auxerre where I crashed out for the night at some silly time of the early morning.

And wasn’t that uncomfortable? It seems that Bane of Britain had forgotten that he’d left his sleeping bag and pillow back at the apartment.

GRRRRRRRR!

Saturday 16th July 2011 – HAVING SPENT THE NIGHT …

… parked up on the Motorway Service Area at Drogenbos, a good (for once) sleep led to a major shopping expedition and I have finally found a new whistling kettle – I’ve been hunting one for ages.

And then after lunch it was round to the apartment.

You might recall that back in the winter we tried everything that we could to undo the lock on the cellar to empty it. And nothing we tried would make it work. This time, I took a couple of enormous extensions and a drill and angle grinder. And of course, trying to unlock the door just one more time “for old time’s sake”, it came undone with no issues whatever!

Just like Sam Gamgee’s rope in Lord of the Rings in fact.

And so that was emptied and the racking dismantled in no time flat and all loaded up into Caliburn. I don’t know how people can function without vans, I really don’t.

And so with plenty of time to spare, another shopping trip, this time to IKEA where I discovered a few exciting items in the sale.

Having called at the Simonis Fritkot for my assiette falafel, I headed off to my motorway service area for a kip. But in fact I spent quite a while fixing a car for a British guy returning from holiday with his family and whose electrical charging circuit had broken down.

No peace for the wicked, is there?

Friday 15th July 2011 – AND HERE I AM …

… all nice and safe and sound back in Brussels yet again.

The morning was spent organising Caliburn and making a flask of coffee for the road. Caliburn runs on diesel as you know, but my intake of coffee must rival his fuel consumption.

And after lunch, I headed into Pionsat where I needed to arrange a few things before leaving. And then it was Damien’s funeral.

The first thing that stuck in my mind about it was “never mind standing room only, there were people standing outside”.

Packed to the rafters was the church, such was his popularity. And after the service, which took quite a while, the crowd heaved its way up to the cemetery. I’ve never been to a French funeral before and so it was all a new experience to me, but anyway once the crowd had gathered we all filed past the coffin one after another to pay our final respects. The more religious people made a sign of the cross and sprinkled holy water over the coffin while the laity such as Yours Truly simply made their peace with him. Then everyone left the cemetery except for the family and close friends who stayed behind for the interment.

It was at 17:22 when I left Pionsat and at 02:22, exactly to the minute 9 hours of driving, I was in Brussels. And that includes a fuel stop and stopping for some chips and salad. I averaged 83kph for the whole journey which was quite impressive seeing the roads that I use.

And you can tell that after much time and plenty of trial and tribulation, I have found out how to work the statistics function of the SatNav. And aren’t I in my element now?

Thursday 14th July 2011 – And just by way of a change …

Continue reading →

Wednesday 13th July 2011 – I’m having a change of plan …

… for tomorrow – and it’s just as well. I woke up this morning, once more before the alarms went off, but there was no way that I was going to get up. I could hear the rain thrashing down on my roof and it wasn’t a day for working outside. That’s another day lost of course but it can’t be helped. I went back to bed for an hour.

When I finally crawled out of the stinking pit I began to tidy up in here looking for the data head – but even though I even went as far as to move the bed settee, no luck. I wonder where that has gone. Just typical.

After lunch I went to the bank to pay some cash in and then to the funeral parlour to enquire after Damien. His funeral is at 15:00 on Friday and hence the change of plan – I’ll have to miss the Friday in Brussels and go once the funeral is ended. I can’t not go to see Damien off. I’ll just hope that I’ll have time to go to the bank before I pick up Marianne. I can book my flight tickets another time.

Back here I carried on doing a little tidying but at about 17:00 the rain stopped. That was the cue to go outside.

The framework on the barn is now finished and I have one of the solar panels in place. It’s not quite fastened up but it’s certainly there. And that took me until 20:30 and I bet you can’t remember when was the last time I’d worked so late. I know I can’t.

Anyway, tomorrow I’m going to get one of the panels off the roof of the Luton Transit and put it on the end of the barn. That will be two banks of two (one on the barn wall, one on the Transit roof) and while I’m away I can see how well the performances relate.

I’m hoping to have at least half as much again off the ones on the end of the barn.

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Tuesday 12th July 2011 – I’m off to bed …

… in a minute. I’m whacked.

Yes, 08:30 starts are all very well but not if you were still up at 04:15 repairing a rain gauge. And then I was having a most weird and interesting dream featuring Percy Penguin and something to do with the postcode of where she works. No wonder that I woke up bolt upright before the alarm went off, given the most unlikely nature of what I was dreaming.

After computing for a while I went round to Jean Lauvergne’s for 13:00 to do his photography for him. And what an interesting afternoon that was – no wonder I’m whacked.

We went to Le Quartier for a good nosey and inter alia uncovered the source of the River Boron, visited the local presbytery and did some informal archaeology at the Chateau d’Anglard.

From there we visited the mills of the Boron, went to see a ford where there used to be a sawmill that was water-powered, and then went to look at this Roman spring that fed water to Neris les Bains, 25 kms away. But that was a disappointment – Jean couldn’t remember where it was, after all that!

Back at Jean’s house, he allowed me to peruse his extensive library of documents, books and press cuttings. And then I cam home through the hailstorm in time to watch the Storm of the Decade through my attic windows.

Who knows? I might even be able to have a whole day carry on with my solar framework tomorrow.

But on another, sadder note, if you have been following the pages for the Pionsat Football Club, you will have noticed that I make considerable reference to Damien. He played for the 3rd XI and when they were short of a goalkeeper he bravely volunteered to go between the posts and stayed there for a whole season. What he lacked in skill he made up in courage.

Last season he took up refereeing and while he maybe made many decisions that I had seen from a different viewpoint, he was never lacking in willingness to go out there and do it. In fact, he was always the first to volunteer for anything and you could always rely on him. There was always something amusing and exciting happening wherever he was.

Yesterday evening he went out for a bike ride and when he came home he told his mother that he was tired and would go to sit down for 10 minutes. At that moment he had a severe heart attack and died on the spot.

30 years old is no age for a person to pass away, especially under those circumstances. He is going to be a very hard person to replace at the football club this coming season.

Sleep well, Damien.

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Monday 11th July 2011 – I really don’t know …

… what happened to today.

For a change I was awake reasonably early and after breakfast I had my nose pressed firmly to the keyboard here by 10:00. I’ve been working this morning on a bit about Canadian Railways and so I was pretty much engrossed, and what with one thing and another it was about 13:20 when I stopped.

I nipped outside after that to carry on with my solar panel frame. First task was to sort out all of the fittings that I bought in the UK. But hereby hangs a tail – half of them are missing – including the important bits for my framework. Sudsequent enquiries reveal that there were two boxes of stuff for me at Benchdollar, but they only gave me one of them. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Next task was to cut the scaffolding poles to the right length. And could I find my angle grinder? Could I elephants. In the end I found the old one, rewired that and used it (having to use two drills and a screwdriver to change the disk). And of course, after all of that, as soon as I had finished, I found the proper one as you might expect.

That took me to, would you believe, 16:30, and time to get ready for the Pionsat Patrimoine meeting. Here, I have never known so many people gifted with the capacity for fitting the smallest amount of thought into the largest amount of words. Everyone was jostling for position and you could here the egoes banging together. Absolutely everything became a conflict – it was awful and I was glad to get away. It surely can’t go on like this. It was worse than a meeting of the Open University Students Association

We went off to St Gervais d’Auvergne and the Anglo-French Group afterwards. Terry is talking about adding a dumper to the fleet and I’m thinking seriously about a cherry picker. We’ll have a famous pool of equipment at the end of it all.

Tomorrow, I’m off hunting a Roman spring, so I won’t be finishing this flaming framework either.

Sunday 10th July 2011 – I’m going to bed in a minute…

… in fact, I’ve already crashed out once this evening . . . and so I won’t have the tine to upload any of the maybe 20 photos that I took today.

This morning I was awake at 10:00 and by 10:10 I was out of the house and away. At 10:15 I was round at Marianne’s in Pionsat and we went off to St Hilaire pres Pionsat for the fete touristique that was being held there.

That was probably the most interesting of the ones that we have done so far. There was a group of local musicians and a team of local folk dancers and they put on quite a show, the dancers dragging people up out of the crowd and teaching them the moves.

After the fete touristique had finished Marianne took me across the village to see where the old chateau used to be.

It was formerly quite big and quite well-known, and its demolition was rather a controversial matter. Marianne, who merely mentioned the fact in her book Le Canton de Pionsat, was the subject of some … errr … criticism and adverse remarks despite the way that she phrased her remarks. Had I written the book I would have expressed things differently.

We went for quite a walk around the village in the lovely weather, and discovered quite a few exciting things about the place.

This looks as if it might be a spring, and it emerges in the side of one of the houses in the village. If it is, I’m not quite sure about what looks as if it might be a waste pipe from a sink draining into it. That doesn’t sound like a good idea.

There were lots of other things to see here too. This looks very much like a millpond to me and as we looked around, we saw what might have been an old mill-race. this leads me to believe that at one time there might have been a mill here in the village – not that that would be anything of a surprise.

I also saw an old Peugeot van – either a D3A or a D4A – in someone’s garden but it was surrounded by all kinds of stuff and I couldn’t have a clear shot at it with the Nikon D5000.

This afternoon I went off to the brocante at Marcillat en Combraille. The Combrailles is the brocante capital of the world and the brocante season is now in full swing. I’ll be going to plenty more of these throughout the summer.

But today was good, and for three reasons too.

I met Karl and Lou from Lapeyrouse. We had a wander around together and then went for a coffee and a good chat. It’s nice to meet good friends.
I met a guy who does roof cleaning and facade cleaning on big buildings. We got talking about his cherry picker and it extends to – would you believe – 100 metres in height. And he hires it out too! Yes, no more clambering up ladders and scaffolding for me if I’m installing a wind turbine on someone else’s property. I’m going to do the job in comfort. In fact, thinking on, a cherry-picker might be a useful addition to the fleet.
I made a few good finds. The 12-volt to 7.5 volt adaptor was fine for 50 cents, but the small tripod for €4:00 was excellent. I have a really decent heavy duty tripod that lives in Caliburn and that comes in extremely useful, but it’s far too big to tote around on my travels. This new one folds up to about half the size and so it will fit comfortably into my suitcase of backpack if I’m going for a wander around.
Star of the show though is a 12-volt motor rated at 50 amps. That’s 600 watts or so and that’s a lot of 12-volt power. I have a bench-saw without a motor and this motor will run that a treat. I can also convert an old washing machine to 12-volt with a motor like this – it will run a twin-tub no problem. And the motor was only €2:00 as well. That was a find!

And so after crashing out I had tea and I’ve been listening to music. I bought a pile of CDs for my birthday – they are all good but some of them are magnificent.
I don’t need to say anything about Liege And Lief by Fairport Convention. It’s the best folk-rock album ever, and I bought it to replace an old worn-out tape recording. That’s another album that has not been off my playlist for 35 years, and the “additional track” of Sandy Denny singing “Sir Patrick Spens” has to be worth the price of the album alone.
Made In Japan by Deep Purple is another outstanding album. It’s one that impressed me back in the mid 70s when it first came out but the thing that got me was why I never ever owned a copy of it. It’s hard to imagine that it’s taken me 35 years to get my hands on a copy of it. That’s a long time.
The third, though, is something else. The subject of the group “Colosseum” came up in a conversation a whle ago and I was obliged to admit that I had never heard anything by them. I’m one of these people who think that there’s no place for saxophones in a rock band, and I never really rated Chris Farlowe’s singing all that much. But there was a copy of Colosseum Live for sale on the internet at a reasonable price and so I took the plunge. And I’m astonished! I can’t believe just how good this album is. It’s a proper jazz/blues album featuring jazz/blues played just how it ought to be played – nice long jamming tracks which – just for a change – are tuneful and meaningful and contribute to the whole. Chris Farlowe’s singing still grates on me but it actually fits in with the music, and his life performance and stage ad-libbing are just superb. “Take me Back to Lost Angeles” has taken my breath away. I can’t believe that I’ve waited so long to get to grips with this group and this album.

In other news, my other friend Marianne from Brussels has had her first novel published. When I get the ISBN I can publish a link to it. What with Rhys’s High-Speed Photography book, Liz about to start work on the Memoirs of Strawberry Moose and the first Marianne’s book on Pionsat as mentioned above, I’m in danger of being left behind by my friends.

I need to get my Trans Labrador Highway book up and running PDQ.

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Saturday 9th July 2011 – There’a an old French saying …

… to the effect that “il faut etre vu pour etre connu” – which roughly translated means that “you have to be seen in order that people will recognise you” and this is what I keep telling people. You need to get out and about and visit all kinds of events possible and make sure that people recognise you, so that you stick in their memories.

I take it to extremes of course – I drive a yellow-and-black van and all the clothes that I wear are yellow and black – corporate clothing. And it works too. Some people came up to me in LIDL today – “you’re Eric, aren’t you? From the Anglo-French group. We recognised your van on the car park”. And of course, being colour-coded, they knew whose van it was. Works every time.

But with the idea of being out and about, and going to all of the events possible, some times you come up trumps as well.

Francois, the local environmental activist from Barrot at Le Quartier, was having another one of his events and he’s asked me to go along. I like Francois very much and his friends are quite friendly too and interested in what I’m doing, and so I went along with pleasure.

But I never expected the French television chain TF3 to have a camera and a reporter there

.

Luckily Caliburn is sign-written and so I parked him in a strategic place. But I’ve learnt something of a little lesson here ahd what I’m now going to do is have a banner made – one that I can keep in the back of Caliburn together with a few bits and pieces of samples just in case anything like this happens again. You live and learn.

And so it just goes to show – you need to be prepared for all eventualities and have everything to hand. You never know who you are going to meet when you are out. Nothing like this would ever happen if you stayed indoors brooding and sulking.

And I wasn’t the only one who goes in search of publicity and seeking a presence in front of the television cameras.

Strawberry Moose was pleased to see the television people too and took the opportunity to have his views aired on television. Appearing in public before his fans and making new friends has always been top of his priorities

Interestingly, one of the guys at this meeting was talking about building his own wind turbine. Even more interestingly, this American company I was talking to yesterday sells all of the complicated machinery that you need that you can’t manufacture yourself when you are building your own wind turbine.

I have a feeling that I might well be on to something here.

Friday 8th July 2011 – Well I finished the wiring today

And that’s hardly surprising given the time that I had to do it, as when the alarm went off at 08:00 I was already up and about. How about that for a change of habits?

And so by 12:00 I was fed and watered, done a couple of hours on the computer and been in discussion with an American company about some stock and a dealership, I was outside.

The wires that come from the wind turbine and anemometer, and those which go to the solar panels – they are all sheathed now properly (and I seem to have got the hang of doing that now? and go where they are supposed to – down to where the new battery box will be.

And that wasn’t without difficulty either. I managed to finish off the hole in the floor that I started yesterday but as luck would have it, it’s right over the beam. So another hour or so to drill a couple of new ones and saw out between them to give me enough room to feed the conduit through. The charge controller is in place and the wind turbine is wired up to it. Let’s see what that does.

This afternoon I was working on the length of wire to connect the solar panel array to the batteries in the barn – the part of the wiring that is outside. That’s all nicely sheathed now and going where it’s supposed to. And after that, I was fitting the junction box onto the solar panel mounting rails.

That’s as far as I got, seeing as it was by then 19:00 and so a solar shower and that’s me finished for the weekend. Monday will see me finish off the junction box and cut the lengths of pipe that will stand the lower solar panel mounting rail off the wall at the correct 70°C angle. And then maybe I can start to fit the solar panels.

I’m glad that the anemometer is all mounted and that the wiring is properly installed. All I need to do now is to find the data head and I will be in business. But finding anything in my little attic room is an impossible task. Neitzsche said “Out of chaos comes order” but he had clearly never ever set foot in my attic.

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Thursday 7th July 2011 – I was right …

… about this wiring not being easy. I still haven’t finished it.

After a morning on the computer and another hour or two proofing this website for Dave, I had another start on the wiring. I’ve put the wiring in place on the mounting for the solar panels – that was the first thing – and then connected those wires up with those for the wind turbine and those for the anemometer and tried to feed them through the roof.

After about half an hour, perched precariously on the top of the ladder, I managed to make some progress, and so it was from there to inside the barn with the ladder to pull it all inside.

Of course, it was miles short and it didn’t look at all right. Yes, it was hooked up on a stone that was stopping it moving. And so back with the ladder outside, pull the cables back and then start again. Was it three or four times I had the ladder in and out of the barn? I dunno, but it’s finally all inside.

An added complication is that the join in the cable for the wind turbine is now right where it can’t be accessed – so I ended up back outside with the ladder, pull the cables back outside, make the join, and then pull it back again.

So now the cable is all in place, I need to cut a hole in the barn floor and I made a start on that. But going downstairs to search for something I noticed that it was 19:30. Where did the time go?

Anyway, I knocked off and I’ll have another go at finishing it tomorrow. And once that’s done, I can turn my attention to mounting the solar panels. Yes, there are all kinds of strange things going on here.

In other news, it’s not for me to comment on the affairs of the News of the Screws. All I can say is that it’s about time that Rebekah Wade got hers, but it seems that Murdoch would rather sacrifice a newspaper and 200 staff rather than a favourite acolyte. If you can guess the reasons why, write your answers on a plain brown envelope and post it to me. There will be a prize for the most interesting response.

But what of course will the usual suspects do on a Sunday morning now that the News of the Screws has gone? Well this is the whole point of this posting. A friend of mine in the newspaper world tells me that all of a sudden the domain names “Sundaysun” and “Sunonsunday” are “no longer available to purchase”. No surprise there, then.

Wednesday 6th July 2011 – If you look carefully ….

… at the bottom of the wind turbine pole on the barn, you will notice a new addition. Yes, I have a new toy – a professional anemometer.

I’m in the process of major discussions about having a wind-turbine custom-made, and one of the questions I’ve been asked is to what are the wind speeds here. I’ve a little anemometer but that’s not up to all that much and so I reckoned it was about time I had the proper kit. I mean – I’m measuring everything else around here, but nevertheless, the cost of every other data recorder in total (excluding of course the charge controller data panels) doesn’t add up to the cost of this anemometer.

I hope I have my money’s worth.

And so this afternoon I made myself a handy bracket (and wasn’t that a good move, buying that L-profile aluminium strip) and mounted it up on the wind turbine pole. I’d ideally like it to be higher up there but there is a limit as to what I can do and where I can reach when I’m on my own around here.

Feeding the cable through the roof apex is not easy. I’m going to have a good look at that tomorrow, but that involves taking the ladder into the barn. And that won’t be easy either.

And so that was this afternoon, but this morning was rather awkward. because I had a nocturnal visitor. At 03:30 a bat flew into my attic through the tiny open window. It took me an hour to find it – moving everything around in my room (which now looks like a US drone missile has exploded in here) – and then another hour trying to coax it out of the room into the rest of the house where it can do what it likes.

But …. DISASTER. I trapped the thing in the doorframe and that, unfortunately, was that. I was terribly dismayed by that.

But even worse. I was asleep dreaming about a very good friend of mine – no longer with us. She always vowed that she would come back to this life as a bat and it didn’t occur to me until much later that this bat might have been her – coming back here for a look around. And now I’m in a thorough depression after all of that.

A friend rang me up a little later for some computer advice, and that depressed me too, for although it might well have been a normal time for someone normal, I’m a night owl anyway and in any case I was dealing with bats until dawn.

While I was working on the website, Dave (who follows the blog and comments on here every now and again) rang up – he wants the new additions to his website proof-reading.

In other news, I have today been appointed the Central France representative for a French company selling small-scale renewable energy equipment, and I’m in active discussions with an American company that wants a European agent for its d-i-y products in the Renewable Energy field.

Things might at last be moving here.

Tuesday 5th July 2011 – I managed to make …

… the time to do the guttering this afternoon. All of that netting stuff that I bought for €1:00 per roll seems to work fine – there’s still some left on the roll after doing this – it didn’t take much.

I was going to hold it on with cable ties but while I was looking for something else I came across (and how often does this happen?)a reel of that green plastic stuff that is used for fastening plants to canes. That did the job exactly how it ought to be done, and this should hopefully prevent all kinds of nonsense falling into the guttering, and keep the internal filter much cleaner.

But the proof of the pudding is the eating and what we need to test it is some rain, but there’s no hope of that for a while. It was another glorious day here. My solar shower reached 44.5°C so I had another scalding shower (at 19:00 it was still 42.5°C) and the water in the immersion heater went off the scale – that is, more that 70°C. In fact the washing up water was scalding as well – at 22:00 when I washed up the water in there was 64°C.

But there’s no doubt that my hot water – at least in summer – seems to be working fine. In the winter of course I’ll be having one of those stoves that heats, cooks, and boils water. But that’s a long time off just now.

This morning I emptied Caliburn of all of the stuff that was still inside (and that was about half a tonne) and took the solar panel off his roof. And then Marc and I went to Montlucon for the plasterboard for Marianne’s house. It’s a good job that Caliburn has a good roof rack as 9 sheets of 13mm plasterboard weighs a tonne – that’s the reason I use 10mm plasterboard – remember I’m on my own and I have to manoeuvre it around myself. 10mm is of course lighter.

But at Marianne’s she showed me today’s local newspaper. There’s one of my photos in all of its glory, suitably cropped of course. But I wish that one day they will put my name up in lights.

And in other news, another event that I have been foretelling has finally come to pass. A Dutch court has ruled in effect that the Dutch Army was responsible to a large degree for the massacre at Srebenica.

If you don’t know about this, Srebenica was advertised constantly as being a “safe haven” for Moslems during the Civil War in ex-Yugoslavia (although why a safe haven was declared and why the UN didn’t insist on all of ex-Yugoslavia being a safe haven and enforcing that is something that I never really could grasp), and it was guarded by part of the Dutch Army. And when the Serbs invaded the area en masse the Moslems flocked en masse to Srebenica and what they were promised was safety.

However, when the Serbs arrived, the Dutch commander drank a toast to them and then kicked all the Muslems – even those working for the Dutch Army – out and stood by watching as they were all slaughtered. The Dutch commander said that he was outnumbered and outgunned and didn’t want to needlessly risk the lives of his soldiers. But “needlessly” – when over 8,000 civilians were being slaughtered before their very eyes – that was always a shameful comment. The Dutch soldiers never even fired a single bullet to protect these civilians.

Everyone (well, everyone except Yours Truly) is said to be surprised by this verdict today. I’m surprised too – but surprised that it took all this time for the correct verdict to be given.

Monday 4th July 2011 – What’s happening?

Yes indeed. I forgot to check the stats on my website last night and so I did that this evening. And to my surprise, Sunday (which is usually a quiet day) I had three times the usual average number of visitors. And today so far, I’ve had 50% more than usual. Clearly something is up.

That was more than I was this morning. Another late start again and then a couple of hours on the computer as usual – I’m touring Halifax at night at the moment.

And when the battery went flat, I went to work on my magnum opus for the Anglo-French group – as it’s Independence Day over there, I made a quiz of 30 questions for the group, and that took longer than I anticipated – it didn’t leave me with much time in the garden but I managed to do some weeding, move some more of the fallen tree and plant some lettuce that I’d bought at the weekend.

Another beautiful day and so a nice solar shower at 40°:C and then off to this demonstration about the closure of one of the classes at Pionsat’s Elementary School. Only about 50 or so people turned up, which was a huge disappointment.

What was even more surprising was that the manager of “La Montagne” turned up – but without his camera. And so Yours Truly became an officially-accredited Press Photographer for the evening. No sense in having a trumpet and not blowing it, and if you have friends in the Press you should be taking advantage of the opportunities that they pass your way.

Another surprise at the Anglo-French Group was that Pete turned up – and we haven’t seen him for ages. That was nice. It seems that there are all kinds of changes going on in his life right now and he needs a little company..

Tomorrow I have to go to Montlucon – Marianne needs some stuff for her house and needs a van to transport it. And I suppose that I owe her a favour for the evening’s work that she found for me.

One good turn, etc etc.

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EPIC HALL

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