Coming back from Commentry yesterday I could see a huge cloud of smoke in the distance up in the hills in the general direction of where I live. And as I got closer to home the pillar of smoke got more and more intense.
I finally tracked down the smoke – it’s the Abbey at Bellaigues just across the valley from me. There was so much smoke coming out of their chimney that I had to check on the radio to see if the Pope had died or something.
But have a quick look at the church on the right-hand edge of the photo. Half the roof is tiled, the other half is rusty corrugated sheet. And on a building of historical importance too. And there are people who complain about my regard for Building Regulations and the like!
A couple of the buoldings in the shot are worthy of note. There is one where the monks go to deal with their filthy habits and underneath the toliets is a room where they bottle their own water.
Regular readers know that I once tried the monastic life but I had to abandon it due to the monotonous diet. Only two monks were allowed to work in the kitchens – the chip monk and the fish friar.
Today I was going to have my huge bonfire and bake my spuds outside. And it looked so nice out there too early on (if 10:24 can be called “early” – I don’t have a clue what it was like before that, for obvious reasons. After all, it is Sunday). Anyway I did a load of work up here and just as I was going outside I noticed the weather. We were having a hurricane, the big wind turbine was going round like the clappers and it was pouring down with torrential rain.
It’s the first day today since the 16th that the temperature hasn’t got up to around 20 degrees. It reached only 14.4 degrees outside today, still unseasonably warm, but it got up to over 18 degrees in here. It’s currently 16.8 degrees and I’m quite comfortable in here. It’s been 10 days since I had the heating on and it’s been interesting to see the temperature in here steadily rise since I moved in.
I’ll be interested to see what happens when the temperature plummets outside. In early January we had minus 15. I bet it won’t be 16.8 degrees in here then!
