…. earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone”
You know, I had no idea that Christina Rossetti lived here in the Combrailles. Last night the temperature outside dropped to -7.1 and in the heat exchanger it plummeted to -10. Consequently in order to get through the ice in my water butts so that I could have some water, I went in search of the pickaxe.

Now that a wind has sprung up blowing the snow everywhere the temperature has warmed up to a balmy -1.5. It might even struggle up above freezing point tomorrow if we are lucky – the first time since Sunday afternoon.

This morning I actually managed to hear the alarm and so I was up and about comparatively early. I went straight into St Eloy to purchase my Christmas present at LIDL and luckily they still had some in stock. Of course I can’t tell you what it is as I don’t open my presents until Christmas morning. On my way to St Eloy that weird golden thing put in an appearance for 10 or 15 minutes and then it was back to the snow again.

From there I went round to Pionsat to speak to the new owners of the “Queue de Milan” where our group meets on the first Monday of every month. It turns out that the previous owners had forgotten to mention us to him.
“Do you eat here then?” he asked
so I explained to him about our group and how, as it happens, he might be able to do something for us for our Christmas meal.
The conversation then turned to other matters and one of the subjects we discussed was the football and how they were discouraged by the previous owners. With the ground being right next to the hotel I reckoned he should do his best to talk to them.
“Will they eat here after the match then?”
Ahhhhh – right. Not a hotelier, not a bar keeper, just a restauranteur.
Pionsat is a typical small Auvergnat town of maybe 1200 people if it’s lucky. It’s true that there’s no other restaurant for a good few miles but then again the place is hardly heaving with people. A place like the “Queue de Milan” should be the focal point of the area with its hotel, its bar, its little salle de fetes and, yes, its restaurant. It should be all of those things. The previous owners tried to run it as just a restaurant, closing down the bar as the football ground turfed out and things like that, but that of course went tits-up. So if the new owners are trying to follow the pattern then it will end in its own logical conclusion.

Which of course reminds me – the “Queue de Milan” being the hotel-restaurant for the area. Many people are now getting into the detailed planning for Christmas and looking for places to eat out over the festive season. Many ex-pats such as myself live in deplorable circumstances in the middle of house renovations and the like. This is the time that family and friends like to be together and if you don’t have the facilities to lodge your guests you stick ’em up in the local hotel.

So it’s no surprise to anyone for me to tell you that the “Queue de Milan” is closing down tomorrow and reopening on the 4th January once the festive season has ended. And they complain that the business isn’t paying. It beggars belief.

After that I went round to Claude’s. He’s finished with my acrows (he’s only had them for 8 years) and he’s also found the rotavator attachment for my brushcutter, the three-wheeled lawnmower and a few other things. So Caliburn and I went round to pick them up. And what a surprise! He’s been tidying up and found in the pigsty his reserve stock of metal window shutters. They are now surplus to requirements and so he heaved them into the back of Caliburn. That was really nice of him!

So having got the morning out of the way this afternoon I fitted the vertical that I was trying to fit in the dark yesterday – it’s amazing just how easy everything is in the daylight when you can see what you are doing. I followed that by cutting and shaping another vertical which I then installed. And that then split up the vertical length by a good foot. Luckily it’s split outward from the joint so that the weight is still being taken by the unsplit part. I drilled and screwed it to keep it together but I’m fed up of this awful crappy wood from Brico Depot. This is the second one that’s split on me. Someone ought to take the quality control manager outside and shoot him.

Tomorrow I’ll be cutting and fitting the three last beams and once they are in position I can do the remainder of the stairs. I also have some floor to fix as well – I narrowed the stairwells as you might remember so the part between the old beam and the new beam needs to be floored over. That has to be done before I fit the second half of the stairs.

And I also have to go to Glastonbury in the very near future. Someone had seriously annoyed me and they and their entourage are going to be on the receiving end of a really good kicking.

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