… since I’ve posted a picture of my attic. Despite it being my week off I’ve been slowly moving things upstairs and I now have all my clothes up here.
You can see the blue fold-up wardrobe. I can’t remember where I bought that but it’s been hanging around for a while here and there about the place. I’m quite impressed with it – almost as impressed as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin – and I wish I had bought more than one.
It’s not quite big enough to put my jumper holder in, and it’s difficult to hang that anywhere given the sloping roof in here. That came from the USA in 1999 along with a hanging wardrobe that I have nowhere to put
There is also the white chest of drawers that I bought from the brocante at Virlet a while back.
Also in shot is the green curtain that keeps out the draughts. I have two of those and they both came from the Dunns menswear shop in Crewe in the late 1970s. My brother worked there when they were having a major refit and the changing rooms received a makeover. The old curtains that had been there longer than anyone could remember were consigned to the dustbin and I liberated them. They are good-quality heavy stuff and ideal for here. Not very colour-co-ordinated, but I have some nice dark blue curtains with lining back in Brussels.
In other news, the plot sickens with regard to this digger. I’ve now received an e-mail from “Mr Ben” who runs “Le Garage Ben” – email address “garageben@ …. errrr ….hotmail.fr” – (now isn’t that a surprise?) and he wants me to confirm delivery details. He won’t take a cheque but he’ll risk the cash even though he was robbed after making a delivery a while back.
And now I see the scam unfolding – he’ll get the cash for the digger and then claim that we robbed him afterwards and took the money back. He’ll have witnesses to prove it, of course, and he’ll get the police to recover the digger and meanwhile keep the money. Then they will go off and sell it again.
Much more likely that you’ll be robbed as you go to meet him.
There probably isnt even a digger.
Lol. My tactic would be to set up a video camera a couple of hours ahead of time to video the scene from a locked vehicle then to leave for a few hours and come back to watch the scene as he looked for you, digger on trailer.
Yes, there not being a digger is one of the options that we considered. That’s why the plan is for one person to go to the meeting all alone without any money while four or five of his friends sit with their pickaxe handles (I’m not into globalisation – I don’t “do” baseball bats) in an unmarked Transit van parked across the street.
It’s been a good long time since I’ve been in a good street brawl with the odds weighted in my favour. Fighting off with my bare hands crazed French farmers armed with pitchforks is about the best I’ve managed just recently.
And by the way, hello and welcome to the mayhem, Gary. I don’t recall you posting before.
Have you thought of going to the police and explaining that you think this guy is dodgy and that you think there may be a scam? They may want you to go through with the meeting to provide evidence of dishonest practices but at least then you’ll be covered legally and clear no matter what this guy later claims.
This is France. Pretty much anything goes in France. It’s like the wild west and the closer to the country you go, the wilder it gets. Given that country French are largely white, you can bet that a villain from Benin will get a pretty rough ride regardless.
A suggestion for your wardrobing problems. If you got two shower curtain rail holders and a long broom handle. Fox one end to the wall beside your blue wardrobe and the other to your ceiling beam it would give you shirt legnth hanging space and you could do a brick and plank shelf underneath. The to keep it out of sight you could put up some net curtaining wire and light-weight curtains to hide it away. and down the side a shaped piece could be drawing pinned from the inside to the beam, eh voila! fitted wardrobes-R-us 🙂
I’m not too sure that the police would be interested in this right at the moment. There is no evidence to suggest that any crime is being committed other than the fact that I’m the world’s worst cynic. And I’ll look pretty stupid if the guy DID turn up with a digger that was kosher.
I think that the idea of arranging a meeting in a very public place with a load of independent witnesses hanging around is probably the safest way to proceed right now.
It’ll probably be me who has to go and do the initial meeting anyway (it usually is!) and I’ll feel happier if there were some friends in the vicinity.
And I like the idea of the shirt hanger – except that there is a doorway in the way. I#ll have to think about that.
And France isn’t as wild as the USA Rhys. Judging by the things that you tell me your neighbourhood in South Carolina is a cross between the OK Corral and Fallujah after an American offensive (and nowhere have the Septics been as offensive as in Fallujah).
It’s not that bad. There are some gang members shooting each other in Waterboro – somewhere in SC. Apparently they now have all the police on patrol all the time now. I say let the gangs shoot each other. Won’t be any gangsters left pretty soon 😀
Which wouldn’t be a bad idea if you could get the bullets to agree to hit only gang members. Trouble is there are always innocents around when things kick off.
Eric, about your shirt hanger. How often are you going to need to get into the storage? If you got one of the hangers that allows the pole to lift out then you could still open your door with a bit of shirt shifting 🙂
A friend of mine who observed the bomb damage in Germany after World War II said that if World War III breaks out he will ask the RAF for a list of targets and then go and stand right in the middle. He reckons that that is the safest place to be when the RAF decides to bomb someone.
And wasn’t it a Rhys that was an innocent bystander shot in Liverpool by a gang a while back?
And Krys, at first glance it didn’t look like “shifting” that you wrote. I must improve my eyesight.
ROFL, You’ve clearly been doing too much poncing and got dust in your eyes ;-)))
Krys… Villains that shoot innocents get those shootings added to their rap sheets. Victims that shoot innocents by accident in the middle of a self-defence gunfight suffer no consequences. Instead the villains get charged with that shooting as they caused the armed defence to be needed.
How does that bring the innocent victim back to life though?
> Welcome to the mayhem.
Hi. Been lurking since your old blog via your website (via my interest in renewables).
Still waiting for the les guis/epic hall Youtube channel 🙂
Well, it’s nice to see you anyway.
And now that I’m back at work (well, starting tomorrow anyway) I’ll be devoting more time to them.
I need a movie camera for the Youtube bits though – the movie function on the old Fuji only does 20-second instalments.
If you want to do films then pretty much any digital compact will do that. Webcams and microphones are great for studio stuff. For the out and about then a camera is useful. The little Flip cameras are excellent. If you can get an old Canon S1/S2/S3 IS then you can record up to a hour of video on a 1GB card, with sound.