Tag Archives: les guis

Friday 5th March 2010 – I had another good day today.

I’ve now finished clearing out the space where I’m going to put the two halves of the old Transit. I’ll move the drainpipe, drag them across there and then put the drainpipe back and extend it further down the hill..

That will free off a space of about 8 metres by 5 metres and that will be where the new vegetable garden will be.

You can tell how long I was working out there though as when I took the picture the light was going so that would make it about 18:45. That’s quite a departure from the norm – usually on Fridays I knock off early and have a good wash but I was on a roll so I kept on going. And I bet I’ll pay for that tomorrow, but at least it’s done now. A couple of days to dry everything out and I can start moving stuff around.

The weather has gone colder now. Last night it went down to minus 5.4 but today was a glorious perfect blue sunny day. I generated about 240 amp-hours of electricity, that’s just under 3KwH and a new record. I had the heater on up here for five hours.

And that’s got me thinking – a modern automatic washing machine uses about 0.9KwH for a full load on maximum wash. If I could rig up a way of having hot water to feed into the machine and running it on a standard wash I reckon I could do a load in about half of that. I’ll bring my washing machine back from Brussels and have a play with it. In the meantime I might ask someone to check the consumption of a washing machine on that kind of load.

Tomorrow is Saturday and as it’s the first of the month that means Montlucon, Brico Depot and a megashop. I’m going for all my gardening materials too. I’m going to have my work cut out for the next month or two.

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Thursday 4th March 2010 – I had quite a surprise this morning …

… despite the torrential rain all yesterday afternoon, evening and through the night, the garden fire was still smoking this morning. It wouldn’t restart though, but nevertheless it was quite something to see.

I’ve finally reached the hedge at the back of the vehicles – you’ve no idea how many brambles I’ve had to scythe my way through – and I’ve made a start on cutting down the overhanging branches (and there are plenty to go at).

I’ve also cut around the far side of the old Transit so that is now totally clear of undergrowth so once I’ve burnt all of the weeds and brambles and the like (that’s another fire for tomorrow) I can drag that out of the way.

So this afternoon I emptied the greenhouse and got ot ready for cleaning. I’ll be buying some seeding soil on Saturday to get ready for the sowing but I need to clean the plastic sheeting of the greenhouse and get it ready to move it to its new home. It’s all getting quite exciting.

I also had a play with the Ford Escort but I couldn’t get it started – I think that the fuel cut-off valve is stuck. Ordinarily it wouldn’t have mattered very much – I would have just pulled it out with Caliburn, dragged it down the lane and then rolled it backwards down the hill into its new position. I might have managed it on my own but it’s one of those things that’s unequivocal – once you have started you really need to finish it because you can’t leave it blocking the lane and at the point where it’s likely to become stuck there isn’t anything like a handy tree to attach the chain winch to help me along. It’s the kind of project that I’m going to leave until I have visitors.

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Wednesday 3rd March 2010 – I didn’t get as much done today …

… as I was planning to. First thing I did was to put the battery on charge for the Escort and while that was brewing away I carried on down in the field where my garden will be.

It was quite a reasonable day this morning and so I cracked on, and I managed to uncover the scrap Cortina and the W123 Merc. Of course, the Cortina will never go anywhere much under its own steam. It was built in 1980 and spent its entire working life on a salt mine and by the time it was scrapped in 1994 it was rotten in places that Cortinas don’t even have places. It was driven through the night from Middlewich to Brussels in 1995 and since then it’s been moved around Europe on a towing dolly or an A frame, finally coming to rest down my field in 2000.

Its purpose is the provide spare parts for XCL – the Cortina Mark V estate that was my pride and joy for many years and which is languishing in a lockup garage in Montaigut. XCL has many happy memories for me – that was the car in which I came over to Belgium from the UK in 1993 with all my worldy goods in the back and for a few years we drove for tens of thousands of trouble-free miles all over Europe.

The Merc on the other hand has another significant memory for me. I was stuck without a reliable car after the Senator and I parted company in 1997 and I had to go to the UK to pick up a caravan for down here (the one that I lived in and was trashed by rats). A lovely girl called Annette from Guyana or Trinidad or somewhere like that and worked in the Guyanan or Trinidad embassy in Brussels wanted to go to visit the UK for a while too on a kind-of conducted tour so a decent car was essential if I were to take her. So I mentioned to a friend that I was looking for something respectable and he produced the Merc. And I had a lovely week in the company of Annette all around the UK. She really was a lovely girl and I was quite upset when she was transferred back home to the Caribbean.

We had a torrential rainstorm this afternoon so I decided to take the towing dolly (which you can see in this photo with the Subaru that Ric and Julie gave me being towed by the old LDV back in 2001) round to Bill’s. He has an old car he needs to remove from off the public highway. I got round there and asked him when he planned to move the car, to which his response was “well we could do it now if you’re free“. No straps, no chains, no anything, but so what?

We winched the Rover on board and with nothing to hold it on I set off to turn round. First bump in the road the Rover bounced out of the wheel traps and the car’s towing eye wedged up against the dolly’s mounting bracket. So when we finally got everything into position where Bill wanted the Rover to be, I had to jack the car out of its position with a trolley jack, two axle stands and a huge pile of blocks of wood. And all the time it was teeming down with rain.

It was just like old times when I had my taxi business back in the 1980s, doing crazy things with old cars in torrential downpours. I was soaked to the skin and I took ages to dry out afterwards. I’m trying my best to get warm now before I go down with pleurisy or something.

+10

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Tuesday 2nd March 2010 – Well, the Passat has a new home.

In fact I’ve moved it to where we cleared out yesterday. It’s not actually where it’s going to stay but we had a little operational difficulty about that – namely it will be parked right over where we had the fire yesterday – and that it still burning – or it was at 17:30 this afternoon.

Well done to the Passat though as it went everywhere under is own steam, the first time it’s seriously moved since 2003 as keen readers of these pages in one of its many former reincarnations will remember that it was when I was down here from Brussels with the Passat in 2003 that I was taken seriously ill, and Lieneke drove me back which meant that the Passat had to stay here.

So I charged up the battery on the solar panels in the barn but the battery wouldn’t hold its charge (no surprise there) so I had to jump it off Caliburn. None of the electrics were working either so I had to hotwire the heater plugs and after three rotations the engine fired up. Smoke everywhere, especially from the damp that was everywhere and having to dry out) but then again so would you if you had stood around for 7 years and someone put 13.4 volts through you.

The handbrake had seized so a simple rolling backwards and forwards freed that off, and then I set off down the lane, negotiating the elageur who had miraculously appeared in order to mow the banks. At this point the throttle cable snapped, so I wedged the throttle stop open with a piece of wood (to go faster, you just stick a thicker piece of wood in – all hi-tech this, you know) and I eventually got it into position.

Tomorrow I’ll be moving the Escort van and the Sankey trailer, and taking my towing dolly round to Bill’s. Once that is done I can sit back a little.

I’ve also been hacking my way through the undergrowth in the garden and as well as that I’ve been moving he rubble out of what will be the bedroom. I’m not short of work round here at the moment.

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Monday 1st March 2010 – Dydd Gwyl Dewi!

We celebrated St David’s Day by having a work-in here. Just Terry, Liz and Yours Truly but of course it’s quality that counts, not quantity.

As you know, I’m looking for a place to park the Escort and the Passat (and also the Sankey trailer) so that they can get access down to the fallen tree and the collapsed house. I have a patch of waste ground that has old trees, stones, rocks, brambles, thistles as well as rusty beer cans and hibernating lizards and so we set to clear it out so I can move everything down here.

This led to one of the biggest fires I’ve see down here (in fact it’s still burning even now) and the space is totally clear of rubbish and I can start moving the cars down there tomorrow. I was a little disappointed in Liz who refused to play the starring role in my production of “Joan of Arc” but there you are.

I’m ever so impressed with what we accomplished today.

I needed the heating on again tonight as the temperature has fallen again. But it’s the wood-burning stove doing the business right now. Liz has found someone who does the compressed blocks of wood and he’s given me a couple to try. I need to saw them in half though – they are too big to go through the hole in the stove.

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Sunday 28th February 2010 – Phew!

I didn’t wake up until past 11:00 this morning But that’s no surprise as I didn’t get to sleep until God knows what time. What kept me awake for most of the night was the hurricane we had. It started to blow round about 19:30 but by the time 01:00 came round it was howling away like a good’un. The crescendo was at probably 04:00 when there was everything howling around. You could hear the wood that I had neatly stacked up come crashing down and it was round about this time that the bathroom window was blown in.

What was surprising though was how warm it was. it was 12 degrees outside during all of this – a good 10 degrees warmer than usual. In fact when I woke up it was almost 14 degrees in here and it rose steadily during the day.

So first job after breakfast was to fix everything. But in reality there wasn’t all that much. The barn has lost a pile of slates but it will be going to lose all of them in early course – the same with the bathroom window which is going to be replaced. So the permanent damage is about nil. Mind you it wasn’t half impressive.

And most of today has been spent cleaning and tidying. It’s about time I did something like this. Nietzsche said something like “out of chaos comes order” but he clearly hasn’t ever been around anywhere that I have been.

I’ve had no heating today either – the first day of the year. And it’s still 13.4 degrees. Sumer is definitely acumen in. Lude sing cucu, what?

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Saturday 27th February 2010 – I had a quiet day today.

Up early enough and then after breakfast I did a few rearrangements downstairs and then came up here to catch up on some correspondence.

Lunchtime saw me head into St Eloy and shopping. There was nothing exciting at LIDL and so apart from the usual necessities my hands stayed in my pocket. I went to see the European Cardboard Box Mountain otherwise known as Claude’s new apartment and made sure that he and Francoise were ok.

This afternoon I went to the mairie to see the mayor. I’m a firm believer in turning things to my advantage and what with the Parisian being up to no good and the roadmaking project for Claude’s barn I’ll get my parking spaces yet! No harm in turning the screw a little.

This evening Guus and Lieneke came round. They are going back to the Netherlands tomorrow and so I invited them to have some birthday cake. They bought me a little birthday present which was quite nice of them.

And that was that really. No football so I haven’t done anything else.

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Friday 26th February 2010 – I knew I’d pay for yesterday.

Yes, I wasn’t feeling anything like it today. But then again thats what usually happens so I have to make the most of it.

I started again on cutting the wood but not as quickly as yesterday. And I was interrupted for an hour or so by Claude who came round to visit, with two important pieces of news.
Firstly Beethoven has died. And that’s devastating news. He was an Old English Sheepdog and had reached the age of 16 with all his faculties more-or-less intact although he did have to burrow under the fence to escape after the young lady dogs of the area rather than leap over it as he used to in his youth. He had bags of character and was the only dog I ever took to. However this last few weeks he had developed an ulcer on his nether regions that turned out to be a cancer. The vet had given him antibiotics but it seemed that they failed to work.
The second piece of news is much more exciting. Claude hasn’t sold all his land here – he’s still kept the plot down in the forest with the ruined barn. And he tells me that yesterday when he was up here doing something or other at his old property he heard a chainsaw in the forest. So off he wandered – and caught the Parisian in flagrante delicto cutting down one of Claude’s trees. And who should be strolling down the lane right at that moment but one of the mayor’s assistants. Claude and the Parisian hate each other with a passion that goes off the Richter Scale – and I have to say that I find the Parisian gratuitously disagreeable, and catching him red-handed with an impeccable witness in attendance is an answer to Claude’s dreams. From here on in, the matter is sub judice, as you might say.

I went round to see my new neighbours as well to bid them welcome and to offer them a bottle of wine as a housewarming present.There’s no harm whatever in laying the good foundations of friendship. They are Dutch and have moved here permanently so I told them about the Anglo-French group and the activities of the Reseau Rural – even though I don’t get on with the organisers of the Reseau as regular readers will know, I still support the aims of the organisation and give it all the encouragement I can.

In other news, the first buds are coming out on the trees.

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Thursday 25th February 2010 – When I took the rain measurements just now …

… there was 1.5mm in the rain gauge. And if I had taken the measurements 10 minutes later it would have been completely different as we had the most terrific thunderstorm. Lightning, thunder, hailstorms, torrents of rain – you name it, we had it.

But I dunno what happened today but I was feeling quite enthusiastic – I haven’t felt like this for a while. I was up early and after breakfast I sorted out the seeds for this year’s garden. I’m throwing away all of the older stuff and starting afresh. I took the opportunity to plant a few lettuce seeds seeing as the weather has improved. I improvised a hot bed – a container in the verandah right over where I cook so the heat will keep the container warm.

So after that it was outside shifting piles of things around – like pallets, bags of gravel, that kind of thing. I’ve laid some corrugated iron roofing sheets down and I’m using one for storing the grave and some others for the rubble inside the house, starting with what used to be the bedroom wall. That led to some more pulling up of brambles and some cutting of wood. And that got me started on the wood and all of the remains of the trees thatI demolished last year and left lying where I’m hoping Bernard is going to flatten – I’ve started to cut them up into sies that will fit my stove up here.

After lunch I nipped down to the quarry to enquire about roadstone and delivery and so on for when Bernard comes to dig out, and then back here cutting wood until the rain drove me inside. I hadn’t finished then – in fact I carried on insulating the back wall until it grew dark. Working until 18:30! Whatever next!

All in all it’s been an impressive day and I’ve no idea how come.

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Wednesday 24th February 2010 – Happy birthday to me!

Yes but at my age you don’t count the years you’ve had you count those that you have left. Liz and Terry kindly invited me around for tea and Liz made me a vegan chocolate cake. There were candles on it too and I went to blow them out but I was driven back by the heat.

Best present though was from Amazon. Many of you know about the Amazon waiting lists where you add your name and your offer of a price to a list of any out-of-stock item you want and then some retailer does his best to match the stock. Now back in 1976 Hawkwind did an album entitled “Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music” and Jackie Marshall liberated a copy from Nantwich Library for me to tape. It’s totally worn out now as it’s had plenty of airtime due primarily to “Reefer Madness” and “Steppenwolf” – the latter of which was my “theme tune” for a number of years and still is I suppose. Unfortunately Dave Brock didn’t like the album (and I really can’t think why) and so when it was released on CD back in 1986 he quickly suppressed it. It’s as rare as hens’ teeth and second-hand copies have changed hands for over a hundred quid. But yesterday morning a copy appeared in my mailbox for just £12:50. I’m ever so impressed.

The neighbour was at work again down the lane and so I’ve been reflecting about the situation. And what I’ve decided to do is to enlist Terry and Liz to help me clear some of the waste land around here one day early next week and put the Passat and the Escort onto it so that they are out of the way. And then enlist Bernard from the football club with his digger to dig out the patch I was always going to dig out, put some stones onto it and use that to park Caliburn and the trailers.

Sometimes you need something of an incentive to get you motivated.

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Tuesday 23rd February 2010 – I once knew a girl ….

…. called Summer (she had a sister called Sky – you have to feel sorry for kids with parents like that) and she had a boyfriend who was absolutely devoted to her. They used to have their own private little moments and like all teenagers they would get up to no good – in one particular way that pleased the young gentleman greatly.

After a while Summer moved on to pastures new and the young gentleman (whose name I forget) was devastated. No subsequent girlfriend that he found could make up for what he had lost. One day he confided in a girlfriend exactly what it was that made his relationship with Summer so special.
“That’s no big deal” she replied. “i have no inhibitions about that”
So a short while later, right after one of these private moments, she turned to him and said
“Has that helped you rekindle some of your enthusiasm for life?”
“Well” he replied, “one swallow doesn’t make a Summer”.

And that’s really the story of what has happened here this last few days. The temperature has warmed up dramatically and it’s feeling warm. I told you the other day about the temperature in the verandah. Yesterday it reached 30.6 degrees which is the highest total since October 30th.

Today though was not so impressive. The morning was fine and I finished round by Claude’s at 13:45. It’s sad to see the fruits of their 46 years of married life end up like this but age and ill-health catch up with everyone sooner or later. I got back the two huge armoured cupboards that I gave him back in 2002. He also gave me two kitchen unit bases – the 600mm size – and I’m going to put them upstairs in the barn with a plank or two across the top to make a joinery bench, using the two large cupboards to store my tools, nails, screws and the like. I’m glad I put a trapdoor in the barn floor when I redid it, so that I can lift stuff up and down.

This afternoon I carried on in the garden but the torrential rain that fell later on drove me inside. I continued with the insulation on the bedroom wall for a while until the light went – this torrential rainfall (we had 9mm in minutes) plotted everything out.

And the Parisian is nosing around the ruined house by here and hacking away at the undergrowth. He’s up to something, my nasty suspicious little mind tells me, and I wonder what it is. He had a whinge about the Passat and the Escort blocking the track. He’s right but there’s nothing much I can do about this until the local Mayor pulls his finger out and does something about my proposition about buying the communal land round here. I suppose I’d better go and have a chat to him on Saturday.

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Monday 22 February 2010 – Only one more day …

…and this furniture removal will be over. And I can’t say that I’m sorry either. Today we took the final two loads to the new flat in St Eloy and then afterwards the first of the loads to the dechetterie. And just for a change the guy who was working there was extremely helpful and did his best to sort us out, including getting his own hands dirty.

But amongst the rubble set aside for the next visit to the tip (the first one of tomorrow) was an incredible find. Long-term readers of my ramblings will recall the discovery at the Montaigut brocante in the summer of 2008 of a parabolic heater attachment for the 920 series of Camping Gas bottles, together with an almost-full bottle. In the rubbish for the tip was a cooker attachment for the 920 series of bottles, complete with an almost-full bottle. I have issues about standardisation when I’m living in Caliburn and I’ve been trying to settle on a heater and cooker system that uses the same gas bottles. I’ve had to resort to those tube canister things with a stove and heater but they aren’t all that satisfactory. But with this find to go with the heater, I’m now set up exactly as I want.

Lieneke is here too and I went for a chat with her after I finished with Claude. It’s nice to see her again and we had a good old chinwag. after that I came home and lit the fire in the woodstove and got a nice roaring blaze after many tribulations. But then someone called me on the phone and kept me chatting for ages and the blasted thing went out.

+10

-6

Sunday 21st February 2010 – Today got off to a really bad start.

Yes – someone rang me up this morning – at 09:41 would you believe. And what is worse is that this certain someone had already been told twice about ringing or trying to ring me on a Sunday morning while I’m having my beauty sleep – and with a face like mine I need as much beauty sleep as I can get.

The answer to this is of course simple – you transmit your message to the offender by beating it into his skull in morse code with a pickaxe handle. I have never known that to fail and it may well come to that of it happens again.

It was a gorgeous day today as well though – at least in the morning. So much so that I had the heater on in here and I also did a load of washing. But I have this magnificent way of summoning up the rain. Never mind your rain dances, or seeding clouds or whatever I just hang some washing up and down comes the rain. But not before we had 26.1 degrees in the verandah – the highest total since 21st November of our Indian Summer. Spring can’t be all that far away.

I caught up with the mailing that has been outstanding for a week and I also sent out the circular for the Anglo_French Conversation Group. And one person sent me a mail back saying “please take my name off your list”. This person is the webmaster for the Reseau Rurale – the organisation that co-ordinates the activities of the Alternative Community around here.

As you know I don’t see eye-to-eye with the Reseau following the events that I have described earlier surrounding the legendary Goatherd of Teilhet – so much so that they are refusing to e-mail me the details of their events so that I can broadcast them on my radio show (you’ve no idea how far some people will carry a vendetta – cutting their noses off to spite their faces is nothing compared to the activities of this lot).

But this takes the biscuit.

Readers of my outpourings in its previous guise will recall the events of September/October 2008 when the webmaster’s car broke down. I was out one night until after midnight trying to fix it for him and then when it was diagnosed as being irrepairable it was “run me here” “take me there” “fetch me this” “carry me that” every blasted five minutes. Not that I minded, of course – we foreigners out here are all in it together – but the moment he bought a car (and it was me who found it for him and made the appropriate enquiries about it) that was that and he hasn’t spoken to me since! That’s gratitude for you!

The answer to this though is of course “power”. You give some henpecked, downtrodden person a little bit of power and they can’t resist using it to the fullest, most extreme limits possible … and this blog is?” – ed … so really you ought to feel just a little sorry for people like that. But it makes you wonder what else goes on in their lives that they feel the need to behave like this. Still, I don’t care. I’m fed up of trying to “understand” people and “making allowances” for them – no-one does it for me after all. I think that at the end of the day the only answer is the pickaxe handle and the message in morse code.

+10

-10

Saturday 20th February 2010 – I went to Montlucon today

It wasn’t part of the plan but Terrry and Liz were going and there was a spare seat in their van so I hitched a ride. We went to order some made-to-measure windows for the back of their house and I saw a beautiful Caliburn-coloured kitchen. But beautiful though it might have been, the standard footprint was all of €1900 so it’ll have to stay in the shop.

After that it was off to Brico Depot and exchanging some stuff for Terry. I got enough to keep me going for a week or so – I can’t buy too much as I don’t want to fill Caliburn with Claude’s removal still pending. So it’s mostly insulation and a pile of proper plasterboard screws seeing as they were on special offer. And at Brico Depot they are now starting to sell sliding door kits – just what I want for the wardrobe in the bedroom. I could be on to something here.

Pierre was in there working this afternoon. I asked him if he was playing tonight but he replied that all of the football matches are postponed this weekend. Another weekend with no footy. Whatever am I going to do?

But it makes a whole mockery of this clamour for a winter break in British football. When would you have it? And what guarantee would there be that it would be at the right time of the year for the bad weather?

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Friday 19th February 2010 -This furniture removal is wearing me out.

I’m clearly not as young as I was. Today was the heavy stuff, and heavy it certainly was. And I’m not sure what is worse, running up and down the stairs a few dozen times with a pile of loaded cardboard boxes, or struggling up and down stairs half a dozen times with some enormous and heavy furniture. I broke both my knees in a motorbike accident when I was 17 and today I was feeling every single one of the splinters.

At least the weather was fine and the view was spectacular out towards the north.

Later this afternoon I came back and crashed out. It’s clearly getting to me and I shan’t be sorry when it’s finished.

I’ve discovered the secret of why grandfather’s chair is following her around in all of her many removals. Apparently her grandfather and her father both died in it. I told Claude that if ever Francoise tells him to sit in it then he knows his days are numbered.

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EPIC HALL

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