Monday 9th August 2010 – As you know by now …

… my favourite photography spot is at the birdwatching point near St Gervais d’Auvergne where there is one of the most marvellous views in the whole of France.

And just as I crested the rise the sun came out from behind a cloud and shone right onto the radio mast on the summit of the Puy de Dome.

It was well-worth a quick stop to take a photo even though, like most photos, it just cannot do justice to the view that we had. Nevertheless I reckon that it has come out rather well and I’m quite happy with that.

I say “we” because I was with Marianne the local journalist on our way down to Liz and Terry’s. They had very kindly invited a few of us round this evening for a drink and a chat. And it’s always nice to be with friends.

Mind you, I’d been with Terry – and Simon too – for most of the day as we have restarted work on this roof of Lieneke’s.

Before I tell you anything at all about what we’ve been doing, let me first post a photo of what we’ve actually done so far. Here i this photo you can see that we’ve finished off the main roof. It’s all properly edged and trimmed and you can see the new woodwork that we’ve fitted to support the slates.

But back on the new task today, what we need to do is to build up this edge to a level and then slope the sides upwards to reach the roof.

There was a flat roof here but a flat roof is no good around here, as a couple of modern builders will find out this winter. We have tons of snow and it lies on a flat roof without falling off, gradually melting and as the melt water is locked in by the snow on top the only way for the water to go is downwards. It percolates through the roof and the joints and then drops into the room below. A sloping roof is an essential – and a good slope at that. 40° is not excessive.

We built the scaffolding up at the end and at the sides and ripped off the old roof Once that had been done Terry built a brick pillar at the far edge to make a level with the half of the wall nearest the camera and with the stone pillar that was halfway along the wall

While Terry was shopping for breeze blocks Simon and I filled in the old window space with stones and I may say that we did an excellent job of that And when Terry returned I carried on mixing while Terry and Simon built up the rest of the wall

While I was clearing up, I had a visit from the Jehovah’s Witnesses – the second time that that has happened The first occasion was ages ago and two nice young women; today was some guy with a beard I don’t have an issue with them as long as they don’t harass me If they believe in what they are doing and don’t try to proselytise then that’s fine by me. At least it keeps them off the streets.

-3

Sunday 8th August 2010 – It was Sunday today.

And there was a vintage vehicle exhibition and brocante at St Maurice pres Pionsat as well.

And so I stayed at home.

Mind you it was … errrr …. 11:30 when I woke up and so I’d missed a good deal of the day. And then with working on my web site until 14:00 I missed a good deal more. But I went into Pionsat to the baker’s – and it was shut! It seems that last Sunday was a one-off seeing as how it ought to have been Pionsat’s brocante last week. But as I was quietly GRRRRRing to myself, out of the door came the boulangere, and so she sold me what I needed. It must have been my lucky day!

Back at the ranch, seeing as I wasn’t going anywhere I lit a huge bonfire and burnt a pile of stuff that has been lingering around here, and I also burnt the dried weeds that I had pulled up when I was working with Lieneke. In fact one of the reasons why I’m still awake now is that the fire is merrily burning away and I can’t go to bed leaving it unattended. But make the most of the sunny day – it won’t last, this weather.

I also installed the compost bin properly in its proper place this afternoon after the temporary installation last night and added the compost from the collapsed plastic composting bin. At the moment it’s four sections high and the three that are currently unused are in shot. I’ll have to think of a place to put them.

You can also see the chassis for the Citroen 2CV that formed the basis of the Lomax kit car I once owned. There’s also a solar garden light and one of the solar cookers for the composting toilet. The others have now been incorporated into the compost and given a liberal dosing of potash.

Nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus are the essential ingredients for any fertiliser. There are plenty of nitrogen and phosphorus in the contents of a composting toilet and wood-ash is a good source of potassium. So all the essential ingredients for my garden are right to hand. Now all I need to do is to work out how I can move the methane digester and add the contents of that to the compost. I reckon that I ought to neutralise its contents with plenty of wood ash and sawdust first though but that will just add to the weight.

Nevertheless, things are slowly moving around here. The composting bin was another thing that I’ve been meaning to do for ages and I’m glad it’s in position now.

I was so engrossed that it was 18:30 when I knocked off. And on a Sunday too! A nice hot 41°C shower rounded the day off quite nicely. Tomorrow I imagine that we will be back on that blasted roof.

-3

Saturday 7th August 2010 – If you don’t maintain your property ….

… then this is the kind of thing that can happen. I was on my way back from the Mairie this afternoon when I happened to notice this property. I’ve no idea how long that it has been like that because I don’t go this way all that often.

This is a holiday home owned by some people from Paris and whenever they arrive here for the summer they are going to have a surprise. Part of the wall of the barn has collapsed and it’s taken all one end of the roof with it. Luckily the house is unscathed (just about) but it’s still pretty serious.

I was at the mairie this morning to have my passport photo signed. I have the wanderlust again and I feel like I’m ready for a voyage. As the passport has expired I can’t go anywhere at the moment so I need to get that all sorted out.

I also took the opportunity to find out about this land I want to buy (STILL receiving attention – it’s only 16 months) and to ask about having my name added to the list of local artisans, now that I am registered.
“Do you have your SIRET (the registration certificate)?” asked the mayor
“It’s in the van” I said, going to fetch it
So he photocopied it and promised me that he would update the information board.

Talking of going anywhere I shoud have gone to Montlucon this morning – and I was up and about even before the alarm went off, which is something of a surprise for me. I should have taken someone there to pick up a mattress and I rang him up to see if he was ready but all I got was a groan. Apparently he’d been to a barbecue last night and had stayed out late.

Still – no matter. We can always go again.

Instead, I stayed at home (apart from my trip to the mairie) and built myself a compost bin.

The plastic one that I bought has definitively collapsed and as I rely heavily on composting I designed and built one.

It’s modular in that you start off with one level and the lid level (the lid will be hinged just as soon as I buy anyhinges) and that will give you a height of 300mm. As your heap expands you can add more 150mm sections to it to increase the height.

As your heap settles down you can take away sections to start your second heap. You need two on the go at any one time – one for filling and the other one festering away. When the one that you have been filling becomes full you can empty the festering one (it would have been festering away for about a year) and start to fill that from scratch, leaving the other one to fester for a while.

So now I’ve put it in place and tomorrow I can start to fill it from all of the stuff lying around. It’s time I had a good clean-up.

-3

Friday 6th August 2010 – I had a bit of a day out today.

One of the places that I visited was the Meandre de Queuille – where the River Sioule makes an incredibly tight turn around a promontory of hard rock (yes, we ought to put a cafe on it – I know).

I’ve never been here before, even though it is something of a local tourist attraction that brings the crowds a-flocking. But maybe that’s the reason – having spent as long as I did working in the tourism industry my cynicism has made me immune to all this kind of thing.

That’s not the only thing that’s interesting about this place – at least, from my point of view. There’s also a dam – or barrage – across the Gorge de la Sioule just here and a very early hydro-electric generating plant.

Following the success of the hydro plant across the Sioule at the Viaduc des Fades, they built this one here in 1905. There’s a drop of 24 metres that powers 6 turbines that have an output of something like 20,000 volts and the power was supplied to the city of Clermont Ferrand.

I had set out originally to go to see these Health Assurance people. As I’m now a French businessman the health cover that I have is deemed insufficient. I’m required to take out a complementary assurance. But as luck would have it, the cover that I do have is recognised by the French government so I only needed to take out a top-up cover that makes up the difference between the total cost of any treatment and the amount that I would be reimbursed.

It isn’t cheap but in actual fact it is cheaper than the insurance I could take out in Belgium.

After that I hit the shops – Carrefour, LIDL and Bricomarche in Riom and the Auchan in Clermont Ferrand. And nothing of any real excitement except a USB fan for €3:00 – I’ll install that in Caliburn.

Outside the Bricomarche I saw the absolute ideal trailer. It’s 4 metres long, takes 2 tonnes in weight and has a double-axle with 13-inch wheels. It’s a bit knocked about but it’s not all that bad. It belongs to a company that is rebuilding part of the Bricomarche and the manager says that they haven’t used it in years. “So is it for sale then?” I asked optimistically. “Dunno” replied the manager “but I can find out”. So now that he has my phone numder we will have to wait and see.

But the most interesting part of the day was just outside Chatelguyon this morning. You’ve all heard of staff-and-ticket single line railway working. On single track railways there’s a danger that if two trains are heading towards each other they will have a collision. So what they do is to divide the line up into lengths with a signalman at each end and a passing place. These sections are called blocks.

Each block has its distinct staff – a brightly coloured stick – and no train can proceed into the block unless the signalman can give it the staff. If he cant give it the staff, because it is with the signalman at the other end, the train has to wait in the passing place until a train coming the other way brings back the staff. With only one staff then of course there can only be one train in the block at any one time and hence the risk of collision is nil.

Of course it may be a while before the staff comes back to our signalman from the signalman at the other end of the block and if two trains are following each other this could be inconvenient. What our signalman would do then is to show the staff to the first driver who would then sign a movement book in the signalbox to say that he had seen the staff, and he would be given a ticket to proceed, which he would hand to the signalman at the other end of the block in lieu of the staff – effectively reminding the second signalman that the staff is still at the other end of the block and that another train is following.

And so today they were resurfacing the road in the hills outside Chatelguyon. The road was cut down to single-track and there were no traffic lights but a man was there stopping the traffic. There was a stream of cars coming the other way and the last car stopped and handed the workman a brightly-coloured object. Once that car had gone the workman waved us forward and showed us all the object – his authority to allow us to proceed and which he would presumably give to the last car in the queue to take to the other end.

I’ve never seen this done before on the public highway. I was impressed!

-2

Thursday 5th August 2010 – Look what I had for tea tonight.

Yes, a pile of spuds. And all grown with my own fair hands too. And when I finish off this tin of veg I opened the other day I’ll be on the home-grown beans and carrots, because my vegetable garden has now suddenly sprung into action after long last.

The beans have gone berserk and are producing all over the place and a sample carrot that I pulled up looked quite promising too.

The potatoes tasted really nice with some (home-grown) mint sprinkled into the water. It’s definitely so rewarding having your own garden and growing your own food.

Apart from that, today I’ve done … errrr … badger all. And I mean that too. I’ve had a day off. I’ve been working hard on that perishing roof for a couple of weeks and so I reckoned that I’ve earned it. Tomorrow I have to go to Riom to discuss health insurance.

-2

Wednesday 4th August 2010 – We’ve finished this roof!

It looks quite impressive from down here, and so indeed it ought to because although we started at about 09:00 this morning it was 19:00 when we finished!

The first bits were easy. Fitting the broken tiles to the edge of the roof and then trimming down with the angle grinder, and then fitting the demi-chevron that will support the edge tiles. No problem there.

The ridge tiles were another matter. We only had three and we needed six. There were two extra but one had a large lump missing and the other one had a hole in the top.

So we did the tour of builders’ merchants and considering that this is the most common tile in the whole area and almost every house has them, not a single builders’ merchant had any, or could tell us where to go for them.

But that gave me an idea and so I said to Terry “to the woods!”. Not too far away from where I live is a ruined building that had fallen down years ago and was totally abandoned. And taking our lives into our hands amongst decaying walls and fallen trees we managed to rescue three ridge tiles. I’ve seen better ridge tiles, I have to say, but what can you do?

Nailing them in was an issue as the central beam is … errr … rather thin but the other neighbour managed to find a 10-inch nail and we made do with a couple of transverse battens and some very long screws for the rest.

The pointing was uncomfortable but we managed it, but the real fun was reserved for the crown piece and the first of the edging pieces. I shudder to think how long we were messing around trying to get them to fit and I reckon that of the game of “twister” – the one where there is a couple of you on a mat trying to move your hands and feet into different positions – ever became an Olympic sport then Terry and I would win the gold medal judging by some of the contortions that we were doing. At one stage there were both of us lying on the roof nowhere near the ladders with Terry holding the crown piece in position with a screw in the screw hole and me swinging a hammer blind over my head and his head to hit that screw somewhere down the side of the roof where neither of us could see it.

But when that was done the rest was fairly easy. We reckoned that at about 17:00 we could knock off but seeing as how we weren’t far away then we may as well stay and cement everything in and have a day off tomorrow.

Yes, a day off tomorrow, and I’m having a lie-in. So you just watch some b@$t@rd spoil it by ringing me at 08:00!

-5

Tuesday 3rd August 2010 – We cracked on with this roof …

… today.

First thing that we did was to fit all of the laths, and it was far easier doing that this morning that it was trying to do it last night when all of the cement was still wet.

Once the laths were on we had to fit the voltige in between them. This is very thin wood and it is designed to stop snow and the like penetrating underneath the slates. Snow of course is a real issue round here in winter. Personally, I wouldn’t have gone for the voltige. Under my slates, as keen readers of my outpourings will know, I have sheets of waterproof plywood and you simply nail the laths on top. It’s much easier but then again this isn’t my roof. And of course we did my roof from scratch – here we are trying to match it to whatever is there already – and has been there for probably 100 years – but that’s not an easy job.

Once the laths were on we refitted the tiles. And as we have extended the roof we didn’t have enough of course and this led to Yours Truly grubbing around in the undergrowth unearthing another 20 or so.

Tomorrow we need to fit the half-tiles to the edge and trim where necessary with the angle grinder, then a demi-chevron to support the edging tiles, then fix the edging tiles, then cement them in place, then fix the ridge tiles and finally fix the crown. Once all of that is done the rest of the chimney needs re-pointing and that will be that. It will then be time for phase two.

After Terry had gone home I carried on with the flooring in my lean-to. There was a strip of about 140mm that needed doing and luckily I had some lengths of 70mm left over from a previous project and so I used them.

You can see fairly well the hole in the floor. There will be a hatch there that will open upwards, with a set of stairs going downstairs. That’s much more civilised than having to shin up the fence and climb in via the window. It’ll look pretty good in here once I can sort out a tarpaulin to go over it where there is no roof as yet.

But if we finish the roof on Lieneke’s house pretty quickly and Simon comes to give us a hand with phase II then it won’t be much longer until I can crack on in here on a permanent basis.

-2

Monday 2nd August 2010 – We talked about the rain.

And I can tell you with complete confidence that in the 18 hours from about 14:15 to 08:15 this morning we had a total of 42mm. Now that is not all that far short of a record, and it gives you some kind of an idea of what kind of weather we had just now.

The morning was dark and miserable – at about 10:00 I was getting a total of about 2 amps of my charging system, a right winter’s day type of charge. Mind you this afternoon it brightened up considerably and it was quite warm. But it didn’t last and as I was leaving Pionsat after the Anglo-French group meeting we were having torrential rainstorms again.

As I turned up the lane to here I noticed the sun setting between two heavy rain clouds and so I quickly took a pic. I didn’t have much time to set up and what with the driving rain it’s not come out as well as it might.

But it’s impressive just the same and I’m getting to like this new Nikon D5000 camera. And that’s just as well, considering the money that I spent on buying it. I’d be disappointed with anything else.

We managed to get a load of work done on the roof today in between the rainstorms. All of the chevrons are on and they are bricked in and cemented into position. It looks quite impressive. Tomorrow we can add the laths and the voltige and put the tiles back on, that is if the weather lets us. It’s looking pretty ominous outside there right now.

After we knocked off on this roof Terry came to give me a hand in this lean-to for 10 minutes, for which I was grateful. We took out the collapsed beam and fitted the new one, and then fitted the other new one into the beam hangers against the wall.

After Terry left I had a root around upstairs in the barn and came across some 25mm planks. They are now fitted and you can see the hole in the floor where the stairs will come in from downstairs.

Once the floor was fitted I roofed the place over with a pile of corrugated iron sheet that I have found over the years in various places. I have some others but they are underneath firewood, gravel, hardcore and the like, preventing that from being infiltrated by weeds. I looked out for a tarpaulin but the only one I could find was a 6×4 meter and I don’t want to waste that. I’ll have to buy another 4×2 metre that should do, and I’ll need a thin piece of 25mm to fit against the wall.

And I was carried away doing that and so almost missed the start of the Anglo-French Group meeting tonight. That shows you how keen I was.

-1

Sunday 1st August 2010 – Blimey!

This weather is totally crazy.

When I woke up ( at ….errrr ….. 11:33 this morning, and my excuse was that I was having a really good dream about a new house that I had bought) the weather was beautiful. So I had a leisurely breakfast and messed about a bit on the computer before deciding to go to the brocante at Pionsat.

But a flaming phone call interrupted me and I was there discussing the Palestine question with someone and it was gone 14:00 when I left. Bright sunshine when I left, and in the 5kms it takes to drive to Pionsat the heavens opened with a deluge. In the village square all the stallholders had gone due to the rain and that was that.

By the time I checked the stats at 31:45 we had had 22mm of rain and it’s still bucketing down. Thunder and lightning and all sorts. It had better clear up if we are going to have another go on that roof tomorrow.

In other news, I noticed a little giveaway phrase in a press report about the situation in Afghanistan. Hidden in all of the rhetoric is the little phrase that NATO “hopes to reverse the Taliban’s momentum”. Translated into English that means that the Taliban is advancing in Afghanistan and NATO hopes to push its forces back. Now if the Taliban is advancing, it means that NATO is retreating, so what a giveaway this phrase actually is.

But then again I’ve been saying for a couple of years that the Taliban has had NATO on the run and that Khazi’s writ doesn’t run any wider than the gates of his palace in Kabulseye (and only then with American permission).

To make matters worse, the Dutch pulled out of Afghanistan today. Not that the Dutch forces amount to much – who will ever forget the craven way that the Dutch Army, who had been sent to defend the town of Srebenica and its population, surrendered it to the Serbs and then stood by idly as the Serbs massacred the population – but it’s a sign that the Coalition of the Willing is becoming less and less Willing as the war marches on. What with the Germans also likely to pull out before the end of the year and the Poles and Canadians to be the next to run away, the Septics and the Brits are going to be left with the oeufs all over the visage. And with more and more countries pulling out, the likelihood of persuading more and more countries to take over so that the Septics can secure all of the mineral rights in Afghanistan will be less and less. It will mean that more and more Brits will be dying so that more and more Americans can become richer and richer.

July 2010 was the second-most-deadly month for NATO forces in Afghanistan. And when was the most deadly month for them? Why, June 2010 of course. But of course nothing of this is surprising. For every innocent child that NATO kills you have half a dozen people shouting for revenge. And Afghans and other tribesmen (“tribespersons please” – ed) are much more likely to pick up a gun and go to war that your average North American or British Couch Potato.

And how long has this war been going on? 8 and a half years? And instead of things getting better and better they are getting worse and worse. The Brits and Septics have been dragged into the very bloodbath that they promised that they would avoid. But then again, the way of dealing with a group of freedom fighters, most of whom were Saudi Arabians, led by a Saudi and financed by a Saudi company, leading to an invasion of … errrr …. Afghanistan was something that mystified almost everyone on the planet.

The funniest thing about all of this is that when the Russians invaded Afghanistan the Afghans fought the Russians off – armed by weapons supplied by the west. The Russians had the right to feel aggrieved by that. And 20 years or so later here are the Afghans fighting off the might of the west with no help from anybody at all. No wonder the Russians are p155ing themselves laughing.

-1

Saturday 31st July 2010 – Tomorrow the world!

I can’t get into the greenhouse for the moment because this monster is in the way. It’s supposed to be a squash plant and it does indeed look as if it’s quite a squash in the greenhouse.

That’s especially the case seeing as yonder tryffid is being backed up by another one of its ilk as well as a rogue tomato seed that fell onto the floor and is now likewise threatening to take over the world. It’s quite impressive in there.

I actually have piles of tomatoes ripening in the mega-cloche, as well as peppers and chili but these are the plants that I bought at the St Gervais d’Auvergne plant fair. The ones I planted aren’t doing much. The brassica are doing well but the one surviving pea plant has turned brown and died.

Elsewhere in the garden the beans are going berserk (especially those I planted the other day), the spuds have gone wild and the carrots are doing the biz. The onions are now swelling at long last and the garlic is dying off so that will be ready to lift in early course.

Today is Saturday and just for a change there was a brocante at St Priest les Champs. It’s not natural to have a brocante on a Saturday – it’s like your body clock is all wrong when you have other things to do. But not to worry – it’s Pionsat’s brocante tomorrow. I’m still looking for a milk churn, and Liz saw one at St Priest today and rang me up to tell me about it. I went round there chaud-pied, as they say around here to have a look but it was only 15 litres and that isn’t big enough.

I’m also after a car CD player so I can build a unit to play all of my CDs around the house, and that’s not as easy as it sounds either.

Nothing of any use at Carrefour or at Lidl so it’s been a bit of a non-day today. But they were selling tubs of sorbet at LIDL for €0.89 and they looked ever so enticing and after all it has been quite a while since I had an ice-cream …..

-3

Friday 30th July 2010 – I’m making progress …

… with this floor in the other lean-to. I’ve done about two thirds of it and the only reason that I stopped (it was 18:42 when I did) was that I had run out of the wood that I had bought.

It’s 25mm planking and I might even have some more in the barn – some of that cheap concrete shuttering that I bought from Brico Depot. I need to go and have a look.

But I won’t be doing all of the floor – I’ll be having a kind of ladder-type of stair so that I can get up here from inside rather than climbing up the fence and in through the old window.

One of the two heavy beams in the foreground is to replace the broken one in the middle of the picture and the other one is to attach to the wall on some hangers that are there. The third heavy beam is sort-of in position at the low edge of the roof.

Once the floor is done and the woodwork is in position I need to build up the far wall and the low wall (it was the low wall I was doing when I became ill – that was the one that collapsed and I repaired it up to floor level) and then I can start to think about a roof. I hope I have enough recycled plastic slates left over.

This morning Terry was round and we built up the scaffolding and took the tiles off the roof. After lunch we knocked part of the wall down to fit the horizontal beam extensions and then started on the chevrons. And I managed to drop a huge rock onto Terry’s hand – right onto his scar tissue – and he wasn’t impressed. But them I have told him a million times that he didn’t ought to be working downhill from me. But his response was that he prefers it. If I do something he can simply grab my leg and yank me off the scaffolding. Ahh well.

But this roof is a mess – nothing is straight and nothing is sound. It’s not possible to work in straight lines as the more you dig into it the more defects you find. Replacing a chevron, we discovered that it had been rotten for years and all of the surrounding wood had collapsed. A new chevron went in straight (as they do if you don’t buy them from Brico Depot) and then we had to put a broadener onto it when the wood that fits under the tiles promptly collapsed under the strain of the new wood. Instead of a broadener we should have replaced the voltige back to the next chevron, but where do you stop? What would happen if we were to discover that that chevron was rotten too?

The only solution as I have said before is to replace the entire roof and make everything new. Patching it like this isn’t really the solution as it won’t be long before the bugs that are creating the ominously-huge cavities in the old wood move house into the new wood and that lot all comes crashing down.

-4

Thursday 29th July 2010 – Today was exciting.

This evening I picked the first courgette out of the garden and made myself a delicious courgette and lentil curry. It was magnificent, and furthermore there’s enough left over – and stored in the fridge – for 2 more days

I also went in search of strawberries as there were quite a few when I last looked, but it seems that mildew has done for most of those and there were only two left. And they were delicious too.

This morning we were back on the roof. One side is finished, complete with edging tiles all in place and properly cemented in.

We did however have a problem – the roofing tiles are 40cm so I dunno what possessed someone to buy 43cm edging tiles. Because of that, they don’t fit properly!

Still, we managed to get them to look very nice by using an aluminium straight-edge and an angle-grinder but it would have looked nicer with 40cm edgings.

Now that we’ve done all of that, this afternoon we took down the scaffolding and put it up around the other side of the house. But that is on a slope and, like the Irish expedition to climb Mount Everest, we ran out of scaffolding.

We’ll have to finish off the other side of the edging tomorrow, and then re-position all of this scaffolding and then start to strip the roof.

After Terry left I went home and did something else that I was meaning to do for quite a while – years in fact. Keen readers of these outpourings in one of their many previous forms (it was after the Xoom blog but before the Yahoo one – might have been the Bravenet one) will remember that back in 2002 I was repairing a collapsed outbuilding when I collapsed, and it was never finished. But that is where the composting toilet is and where the washroom will be and I’m fed up of being rained upon. I can’t refit the roof just yet but I can put in the floor at the first floor level so I made a start on that. At least I won’t get p155ed on now when I’m riding the porcelain horse.

But, quite strangely, I’ve been hearing some bizarre noises in the verandah just recently and as I was coming back from this roof I heard a similar noise coming from the barn. I stuck my head inside just in time to see a flaming huge hedgehog drag a plastic bag full of wire rope off into one of the deepest and darkest recesses.

What is all that about?

The amount of stuff that I can’t find in that barn that I know full well is there – there’s probably a group of hedgehogs about to open a hardware store somewhere in the vicinity. I bet they will be doing deliveries too – using a SatNav that they will have acquired from somewhere.

-3

Wednesday 28th July 2010 – I had another day off today …

… because Terry was elsewhere, and I celebrated it with something of a lie-in.

After breakfast I did some more work on my website, which has fallen way behind schedule, and then I finally managed to do a big load of washing, what with the wind and the weather being all right for that sort of thing. It’s amazing how much washing there was but then again I haven’t done any for a while.

After a late lunch I emptied Caliburn out. I’ve lost my SatNav and I’ve no idea where it might be. It’s nowhere in Caliburn as far as I can see and it’s annoying me, this.

Terry suggests that I look elsewhere for it in case I may have taken it out of Caliburn at some time, but around here, where on earth do you start? You can be here for a week and only just scratch the surface. I reckon it’s well and truly gone.

But at least Caliburn is now fully empty, and he needs to be. We have a scaffolding to pick up in a week or so and the other trailer has now apparently gone tits-up. This is annoying me! We are going to have to collect it in the two vans.

When I knocked off I had a shower – the solar shower was showing 36 degrees and that’s warm enough. The automatic heater fired itself up as well today and reached 33 degrees, 11 degrees above the ambient. Add on another 11 degrees for a closed lid and another 11 degrees for insulation and you can see how this is all going to work when I install a tank instead. I noticed by the way that even with the fridge running and the water heater working there was still an excess of solar power. I might have to fit two elements instead of just one.

But talking of the fridge, there’s no thermostat on mine and so it runs 24 hours per day 7 days per week. And at 5 amps that’s a total of 120 amp-hours, or about 1.45Kw. But Conforama where I bought my bed settee from, they are offering a table top fridge – twice as big as mine – that uses just 0.37Kw per day – or about 32 amp-hours. And it’s an A+ so there’s bound to be a ton of insulation stuffed into it, so I’m currently thinking about abandoning my 12-volt fridge, buying a small inverter that will power the fridge and then having the inverter switched into the dump load. When the batteries are fully charged the inverter will fire up and run the fridge as well as the water heater and when the battery charge drops the inverter (and the fridge) switch off.

The big advantage of this is that on a good day it takes until about 12:30 for the batteries to be fully charged. with no fridge running through the night the batteries will be fully-charged in an hour or so and that’ll give me more time for the water heater and the fridge will be running away in the background on its minimal power requirement.

I shall have to look into this.

-3

Tuesday 27th July 2010 – Terry had other things to do today …

… so he didn’t come down today. Mind you he did ring me at 08:00 to tell me not to wake up, which was kind of him.

So I had a relaxed morning doing not very much. I checked on Lieneke’s house to make sure things were okay and that was that. I was going to do some washing but the weather wasn’t stable enough for that. I need to do some soon as I’m running out of clothes.

This afternoon we went to record our monthly programmes and this was full of hitches. The guy who takes us had his floosie with him and so engrossed were they in talking that he missed our exit on the Motorway and we had to drive miles out of our way to get to the studio. And then they had a technician in repairing the computer so we had to wait an hour or so.

And then the computer still wasn’t working so we had to record our programmes on the analogue tape machine.

And then the tape jammed

And then we ran out of tape.

So all in all it took hours.

And that is really that. I’m thoroughly exhausted and I’m going to have another early night. I’ve not even managed to make myself any food.

But summer has returned. The solar shower reached 35 degrees and if I had made it home earlier than 18:15 I would have had a shower. And the automatic water heater started up again. Only 20 minutes but it pushed the water temp up by 4 degrees.

Tomorrow I may even have a shower if the weather keeps up.

-4

Monday 26th July 2010 – Lieneke asked me …

… to take a photo every day of the progress on her roof now that she is back in the Netherlands. And I forgot to do it until it was almost going dark but nevertheless here we are.

What we’ve been doing is to take off the roof tiles from the right-hand edge as far as the little window in the roof, replace a couple of chevrons, strengthen the principal horizontal beams and lengthen where necessary, extend the roof out from the chimney line so that it protects the stone wall of the house and then replace the tiles and add the extra for where the roof has been extended (basically, the bit to the right of the roof ladder).

So this morning we finished off the joinery and then replaced the rest of the tiles. This afternoon we took our lives into our own hands and pointed the chimney. It looks much better now than it did and it’s certainly more solid, although there isn’t anything that you can do about the tilt.

Finally we started to fit the edging tiles but one or two of them proved to be more difficult than you would think. And we were at that stage where we know from bitter experience that nothing will ever go right no matter what you do and how long you try to do it, and so we called it a day and we’ll finish it tomorrow.

But I wasn’t surprised. It was 18:10 when we finished and Terry was here at 08:50 so that’s not far off 09:30 hours that we were working. And it’s hard work too. Terry’s had me running up and down that scaffolding all day with buckets of nails, buckets of screws, buckets of tiles and buckets of mortar. It’s keeping me fit, that’s for sure, but it’s wearing me out as well. So much so that I’m going to press “send” and then have an early night.

-4

EPIC HALL

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