Tag Archives: les guis

Thursday 18th February 2010 – I got back into the swing of working today.

batten bedroom wall insulation les guis virlet puy de dome france
I’ve started to put the framing on the wall and I’ve attached the first row of insulation to the back wall. That’s the north side of the house so it needs a good cladding. Not for nothing will I be installing the wardrobe across that back wall either.

Mind you I think that the weather had something to do with it. For the first time in weeks it was warm in the verandah this morning and when you can eat your breakfast in the warmth and the calm it makes for a good start to the day.

Brilliant sunshine for most of the day too and I ran the heater up here for almost three hours to use up the surplus electricity.

So having lined part of the wall I needed to remove a pile of rubble to get at the rest. That involved fetching a sheet of corrugated iron from the garage and that involved tidying up a bit in there. And once I’d found a space to lay down the sheet it involved fetching bucket loads of rubble downstairs. But I didn’t do too many for the ground where I’m going to put my new raised beds had all dried out already even though the thaw is only about 24 hours on. So I set a big fire and spent the rest of the afternoon weeding.

With it being light until later I was still out working until 18:15 and I was quite enjoying myself.

There’s no doubt that good weather all helps to cheer you up.

In other news, seeing as I have nothing to lose I’ve written a stinking letter to Pentax. I’m thoroughly p155ed off with their after-sales service.

-3

Tuesday 16th February 2010 – Radio Stars!

eric hall liz messenger radio anglais arverne gerzat puy de dome france
Well, we made it onto tape, and next week we’ll be on the airwaves! After all of the hard work that Liz and I have put into our efforts we went down to Radio Arverne’s offices in Gerzat along with Julie, our special guest for the month of March.

No-one had told us how it was to be presented so we worked out our own system of presentation and production which would have done the trick – to record the five weekly “what’s on” sessions and then do firstly the chat with Julie about her experiences in the French hospital system followed by the chat about building permits and then chop the chats up into chunks to fit around the “what’s on” bits in order to make five programmes of equal lengths.

So having worked that out, as we were all grouped around the mikes ready to go they then decided that what they wanted was for the programmes to be recorded in their sequence of events. Now how on earth can you do that when you don’t know what people are going to say in advance and you have to watch your papers, watch your guests and watch a clock at the same time?

We managed to record three programmes and we have to go back on March 9th to do the other two (March is a 5-week month). And after our recording efforts we still had to do some editing so it really defeated the purpose of what we were trying to do and they could just as well have edited it from our proposal which would have been quicker to record. Ahhh well!

We listened to some of it afterwards and it sounds terribly amateurish but in actual fact we ought to be proud of what we did. We were three people effectively just off the street with no formal training and with very little “previous” in this kind of thing and we were given no guidance at all yet between the three of us we managed to get something like three half-decent radio shows on the very first take. You can’t ask for more than that.

And I was wrong about the temperature last night. We had a mere minus 9.7 degrees. Round at Liz’s she saw minus 17. This morning in the verandah it was 1.2 when I went down for breakfast but in the 20 minutes that I took to eat it the temperature rose to 5.2. The sun was such that I even ran the electric heater up here this morning.

I’t’s 1.2 degrees outside now and everything is melting. I don’t reckon the winter is over yet though.

-4

Monday 15th February 2010 – Well, the Pentax is Kaput!

Or rather, no it isn’t but it very soon will be because I’ve just had the bill for repairing it. FIVE HUNDRED AND TEN EUROS. That’s about as much as it cost new and a new body only in the USA I can buy for FIVE HUNDRED AND FIVE DOLLARS – or less than €400.

Totally ridiculous – and why Pentax couldn’t have pointed this out to me and made me an offer on a new body I just do not know.

But in any case there’s a major sale on in a leading camera supplier in the USA and there is a Canon EOS with lens on offer at $499 (plus VAT when it gets over here) and I’m wondering if that might be the route to go down. They use lithium battery packs instead of AA batteries (and AA batteries was a major selling point) but if I buy a spare and keep it charged up that might be another consideration.

I can then flog all my Pentax gear and use the dosh to buy a decent lens.

The RRP of the Canon is $799 – Body only by the way so this looks like a good price to me

I’m giving this some serious thought.

It was absolutely taters this morning – I dont think that it’s ever been so cold at 09:15 so after breakfast I came back up here and warmed up.

Once I had reached a decent ambient temperature I dressed up – not in fishnets and stockings, basque and high heels Rhys – but in two pairs of trousers, two fleeces, two pairs of socks, my overalls and a coat and then went to seal off the fireplace downstairs so that I can run the woodstove up here.

I had a piece of leftover plasterboard that was a good size and so I trotted off to find the silicone sealant. And you might or might not believe it but it was frozen solid! In a tight-fitting plastic tube. It took ages for it to thaw out.

But it seems to have worked because the small fire that I lit in the stove burnt away to nothing in minutes without the slightest trace of a smell around the house.

I’m going to track down a sack of compressed wood pellets now and see how they burn.

This afternoon I carried on with the battening of the rear wall in the bedroom but the batteries in the power tools kept on going flat so I gave it up in the end. But with the sun shining gloriously and the day warming up (it reached 6.5 degrees in the verandah) and with fully-charged batteries in the house and barn I felt much better.

But once the dusk gathered the temperature plummeted and as I set off for the Anglo-French group it was already minus 4. But still – 18:40 and it was still daylight. So the days are lengthening considerably. It wasn’t so long ago that I was packing up at 16:30.

The roads were gruesome and the return journey was even more gruesome as the temperature has dropped to minus 8. A clear blue sky with thousands of stars and a strong easterly wind. The moment the wind drops the temperature will fall through the floor.

We could well be on course for the coldest night of the year.

And tomorrow we shall all be radio stars!

-4

Sunday 14th February 2010 – We’ve still got tons of snow …

… even if nothing much has fallen within the last 24 hours. I only had to breathe on the solar panels and the light scattering of snow blew away. Hot stuff am I, what?

So after a … errr … leisurely breakfast I came back up here and swotted up on French building permits and so on. I can tell you everything that there is to know about it – including the fact that I can erect a statue of 11.99 metres height and 39.99 cubic metres volume in my garden without planning permission! Dunno about you but my imagination is working overtime. Just think of it – Turdi de Hatred, Caligula and Her Horse, Pol Pot’s Sibling, Andy Pandy and Aunt Ada Doom (and whatsisname that she saw in the woodshed) 11.99 metres high and right next to the beichstuhl! I could have hours of endless fun with all of that.

Works of art are also covered by that exemption and that gives me enormous scope. When you think of Tracey Eminem’s unmade bed being exhibited at the Hate Gallery I’m sure that my verandah and its contents would be covered by this. And when you think that the disorder that I can create even in an empty room, well just imagine it – “no, this object 11.99 metres high and 39.99 cubic metres volume is not a new house – it’s next year’s hot favourite for the Turnip Prize!” In any case, anything that I ever build is certainly a work of art and people come from miles around to gaze in bewilderment at my efforts.

This afternoon I went down to Liz and Terry’s to discuss this programme. Julie should have come with me (she’s our first guest) but she’s snowed (or rather iced) in. This is one of the perils that you have to risk when you buy a house by a bridge alongside a river – the only way out is upwards and with the gorges around here being so steep, if they don’t grit the roads then you are stuck.

So I went on my own instead – but not that I minded, it just meant more vegan fruit cake for me! Down to Pionsat was … errr … interesting but the D227 between Pionsat and St Gervais was clear even over the Font Nanaud. From St Gervais to Liz and Terry’s was also exciting.

So having done what we could I came back. And that was even more exciting as it was trying to snow down there. But I encountered two snowplough-gritters so they are taking it seriously for Monday morning’s commuter traffic. It’s also forecast bright sunny weather too for tomorrow but as you know I have my suspicions about that kind of thing.

And Claude’s removal is postponed again. His son never came up and so nothing has been packed. They’ll be running out of time at this rate.

-4

Saturday 13th February 2010 – I must have been tired last night.

Crashing out for a couple of hours and then going to bed early and then sleeping through the cacophony that is my series of alarm clocks and not waking up until 10:24. At least I’m feeling better though today. I think it must be all of these bad nights of sleep catching up on me.

This morning that strange gold thing put in a brief appearance up in the sky so I quickly climbed up onto the roof and brushed off the solar panels. I caught a few amp-hours of sun before the heavens clouded over again. But I also dug Caliburn out of his snowdrift and went for a spin up the lane to see if I could get out. Good job I have my new snow tyres because I did manage to make the public highway with a little bit of luck and perseverence. A wise decision to get these tyres, I’ll tell you.

So with a little tidying up I came up here and carried on reading my book. It’s called The 91 before Lindberghand it details all of the successful Transatlantic air crossings before “The Flying Fool”. It’s a fascinating book, especially for me, because as you know I have quite an interest in historic aviation and on one occasion while poking around on an old industrial estate on Long Island I came across a replica of the “Spirit of St Louis” and I had the extreme pleasure of being able to sit at the controls.

Furthermore the book recounts the early airship developments for Transatlantic flight that took place at Atlantic City in New Jersey – another place that I have visited – and then goes on to talk about the legendary near-miss between an airship and a four-masted schooner at Barnegat Lighthouse, yet another one of my haunts.

After that, seeing as there was a gap in the snowfall I went into St Eloy to do some shopping and pick up some gas. I was going to say “nip” into St Eloy but in third gear at 25mph all the way then “nip” it was not. It was an awkward drive but I managed okay and I’m now stocked well up for whatever else this weather can throw at us.

In other news, it’s the 25th anniversary round about now of an event that could have got Nerina and yours truly five years inside without the option. We’d seen a house that we liked and so we put Gainsborough Road on sale and priced it for a quick conclusion. Unfortunately the owners of our dream house wouldn’t reduce the price by very much and the only offers we were getting for Gainsborough Road would have left us with a shortfall.

Now you might think that a mortgage or a bank loan would be the answer but we were both self-employed running my taxi business. And with taxi businesses being what they call “cash businesses” the cash had a tendency to … errr … evaporate long before it made its way into the accounts so the accounts only bore what might be described as “a passing resemblance” to the true state of affairs of our business. We could easily afford the kind of loan that we needed but the accounts didn’t seem to bear it out.

So what we did was that we scratched around for work – any kind of work at any price and it didn’t matter at all if we were never ever going to be paid to do it as long as it looked good on paper – and heaved it into the accounts of the taxi business. It vastly inflated our “recorded” turnover and made everything look so impressive. So much so that the Bank loved our figures and started to heave huge wads of cash at us.

Luckily – and I mean luckily – the chain collapsed. The house we were interested in was taken off the market and so we took mine off and handed the cash back. And why “luckily”? For the simple reason that going to dubious, if not spurious means to inflate your company’s turnover for the purpose of getting an additional loan from a bank or a building society almost inevitably guarantees you a one-way ticket to Shrewsbury nick (or in Nerina’s case, Styal) because sooner or later your little fraud and deception will be uncovered.

Running my taxi business for eight years taught me an awful lot and many of the things that I learnt I would have been better off not knowing. But then again what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and I had a few incredibly lucky escapes. When I realised all of the risks that I had been running it completely spoiled my appetite for nefarious activities and I certainly wouldn’t do it again. It’s not something that I would advise anyone else to do. If you need to go to these lengths to support your lifestyle then you need to change your lifestyle to one that you can support and if you can’t do that on your own then you need to find professional help.

-6

Friday 12th February 2010 – I’ve not been feeling myself today

plasterboard stud wall bedroom stair cupboard les guis virlet puy de dome france
“Quite right too – filthy habit” – ed. I woke up with a headache and couldn’t get out of bed. And when I finally got up I couldn’t get my breath – even climbing the stairs left me quite exhausted. After breakfast I started on some more plasterboarding but it couldnt make much progress as it was wearing me out.

By 13:30 I had to call it a day and go and lie down. In fact I crashed out for a couple of hours. Liz rang me up to see how I was and Terry battled his way here through the snow (it’s carried on snowing non-stop and I’m up to my waist in it) to pick up some Ford Transit snowchains that are lying around here.

But I’m not moving. I fact I didn’t make myself any tea tonight. I’m going to just stay here and sleep it off.

In other news this webhosting thing isn’t going to die down any time soon and more correspondence has been received.

And as I said elsewhere –
1) having had an “encounter” with this webhosting service my own experience is that despite the manager’s verbal belligerence the truth is somewhat different and it was interesting to see how quickly the manager caved in when OUSA banged the big stick back in April last year. No question about legality, no question about defending customers’ rights and the privilege of free comment despite all of the previous hype from several years ago, OUSA banged the big stick and the manager jumped. And jumped by deleting files from the server, of course, without even notifying the owner of the files that they had been deleted. Now how illegal is that?
Now just imagine the situation where all of the OUSA branch files are in one place on one web server managed by one manager who has “previous” of caving in to OUSA. Any time someone posts something critical of The Powers That Be, all TPTB need to do is to wave the big stick at the manager and the manager is likely to simply remove the files with no warning if past experience is anything to go by. No court order necessary, no solicitors consulted, no right of appeal. Signing up to this offer is effectively giving OUSA the green light to censor all of your websites with no right of appeal. Editorial control of all of your websites in the hands of a OUSA Executive Committee sycophant – it’s an Executive-Committee dream come true.

2) I’ve also been told the price of this contract. It’s a commercial rate of £120. Now I reckon that there are over 200 sites likely to be affected by this – and all for £120. As you can imagine, its something that isn’t sustainable at that price. It won’t even cover the cost of the hard drive let alone the cost of the server and the administration. I give it four weeks at that price.
But on the other hand it could be £120 per site. And that’s not a commercial rate at all! My four sites cost me a total of £178 and two of them, as you know, are huge with tons of traffic. Hostgator will do you a website hosting for $4.95 per month – or about £40 per annum. When I managed OUSA Belgium’s website it was hosted on Bravenet for ZERO pounds per annum if you didn’t mind the odd pop-up every now and again. I don’t call £120 per site a commercial deal by any stretch of the imagination.
But do the maths – about 200 sites each paying £120 – that’s a turnover from OUSA funds of £24000, which is an awful lot of money when your organisation is struggling for cash to the extent of trying to ban disabled people from attending the annual Conference. It’s also a very healthy turnover for any company to show in its books and accounts, even if at the end of the accounting year it plans to hand it all back.

It makes you wonder what the purpose of it all is supposed to be.

-2

Thursday 11th February 2010 – One of the major problems …

heavy snow les guis virlet puy de dome france… with doors that open outwards is that when there is a heavy snowfall you can’t open the door. And so with the …gulp…18 cms that fell through the night I ended up having to use the front door in order to visit the beichstuhl this morning.

Then it was to shin up onto the roof and shovel the snow off the solar panels again (and in fact I did that a couple of times throughout the day).

heavy snow les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut the temperature was against me again. Last night it dropped to minus 9.1 and this morning it was minus 6 outside. In the verandah it was minus 5.4 and in the house it was minus 4.8. You can’t work in these conditions so I came up here, put the fire on and read a book for a while. By about 1100 it had warmed up sufficiently for me to continue putting the plasterboard on the false wall but I could only keep it up for a while before my hands froze on the metal tools.

heavy snow les guis virlet puy de dome franceWhat is interesting is that before I insulated the floor in here, a temperature of minus 9 outside caused the temperature in my room to drop to 2.8 degrees. After doing the floor a similar temperature outside would lead to about 6.8 degrees in here. With starting to tongue-and-groove the downstairs ceiling it was 9.4 degrees in here this morning. So the sooner I can do the entire ceiling the better. And, of course, if all of the insulation is keeping the heat inside the attic then it will also keep the external heat out and thats encouraging for when I start to heat up the inside of the house.

Doing the stats tonight I noticed that the total snow that fell today was 28 cms and that’s a record for a single day. I’m properly snowed in now and I can’t see me going anywhere for a while.

In other news I’ve been sent a … errr …. document (or copy thereof) about this webhosting thing that I told you about yesterday. The document is dated 4-6 December 2009, which is some seven weeks after I received an e-mail from the same webhost saying “We are yet again moving servers. This time for the last time as we are getting out of the hosting business …..The move will take place in November (2009)”. And so OUSA is somehow being asked to go into some kind of partnership with a company to provide a service that the company abandoned a couple of weeks previously. And, of course, money is to change hands in this respect.

Now leaving aside the self-expressed lack of technical capability to deal satisfactorily with the issues that arise and which I described yesterday, just what the hell is going on?
1) If the company is still conducting its business of webhosting, why is its manager telling me that it isn’t?
2) And if it is to restart its webhostiong business after having ceased (very unlikely as the last communication that I had with this company – in January 2010 – was to the effect that the cession was definitive), do the successors to the previous business know about this?
3) And what were the terms of the cession to trade which resulted in existing customers being passed over to the successor company? Will the webhost be hit with some kind of legal complication that could see each individual OUSA website being hit with a demand for more money under a service agreement with the successor company in respect of a “restraint of trade following cessation”? In other words, a sale of goodwill?
4) And given the self-expressed lack of technical competence and my own experience with this company, how will all of these OUSA webmasters react if all of THEIR files, e-mails and contacts lists were to disappear into cyberpsace?
5) And if the web host gives assurances that this won’t ever happen again, and I remind them that I received the same promise TWICE – a promise that was filled with empty air – how much weight will the webmasters attach to it?
6) And if the webhost does manage to fulfil its promises to provide an uninterrupted service, what reasons could the webhost advance that it couldn’t do it for me over the last couple of years and thoroughly messed up my service through a mixture of incompetence and petty vindictiveness?

And I note from the document that I have in my possession that the amount to be charged is “the current commercial rate and will be renegotiated annually when the 12 month contract expires”. I wonder if anyone would like to hazard a guess about what is likely to happen at the end of the 12 months, and how many websites and associated files are still going to be intact next January?

I smell one big, enormous rat in all of this. There’s something clearly not kosher about the events surrounding this company over the last couple of months. Kicking all its existing clients off, telling them that it’s closing down while at the same time negotiating a completely new deal with a whole new raft of clients.

Yes, sign the contract at your peril.

You have been warned.

-4

Wednesday 10th February 2010 – I’m cracking on …

upright stud wall stair cupboard plasterboard insulation les guis virlet puy de dome france… with my cupboard at the back of the stairs. If you look closely you can see that as well as plasterboard all round, it has a ceiling and a light. The ceiling is of course tongue-and-grooving for several reasons namely
1) it hides the polystyrene insulation stuffed between the joists
2) it’s easy to fix when you are on your own and there’s no-one to hold up the plasterboard while you screw or nail it
3) I have plenty of it lying around and I’m rather short on plasterboard.

The light is a recessed fitting (it needs a 40mm hole) with an MR16 fitting – in other words a 12-volt capless halogen fitting. But as keen readers of these pages will know, LIDL sells 12-volt LED lights with MR16 fittings. And at 1.2 watts per bulb and they don’t half chuck out the light I shall be using them. It’s not wired in to my circuit as yet and it won’t be for a while but at least it will be in position once Ive varnished the t&g.

So that’s tomorrow’s job and it will be followed by me tidying up a little (yes, Terry) and then starting on plasterboarding the false wall that I’ve built. But I shan’t be starting that right at the wall. If you look at the horizontal, you’ll see that it has a let cut into it. That’s where I’ll be putting the framework for the fitted wardrobe. That part of the wall will be done in hardboard. I’m going to have a fitted wardrobe right across the back wall in the bedroom.

In other news, I’ve received something of a communication that has caused my eyes to pop out and I’ve had to re-read it half a dozen times. There’s definitely something weird going on. It seems that one member of the Executive Committee (probably the only one as it appears that over this last few weeks all of the others have resigned due to not being “given” the posts that they wanted in the forthcoming reshuffle or something like that) has offered to host the OUSA website.

Now won’t that be exciting?

I’ve had personal experience of this web hosting, as followers of my blog will recall in graphic detail. It’s probably useful to recall them –
1) regular and relentless changing of server hosting causing all of my stored e-mails and my address books to disappear into cyberspace every year.
2) arbitrary deletion of files by the “I have never been in favour of censorship” manager of the hosting company because she doesn’t like the content
3) The webhosting manager proudly announcing “you have any information that the others won’t publish? Send it to us and we’ll publish it – we’re not afraid” and then caving in at the first attack.
4) arbitrary suspension of the website simply “to attract my attention”.
5) sending out bills for renewal and then deleting the mail during a server change before it’s had time to be opened and read – and then deleting the website without notice because the bill hasnt been paid.

The of course there was the incident back in the Spring of 2006 when the “I do object to unfounded allegations of stalking” above webhosting manager posted the personal details of a website holder (thankfully not mine) into a public forum to which 200,000 people had access.

I could go on. And on. And on “not with a bayonet through your neck you couldn’t” – ed.

But that’s not the best bit. Back in November this particular webhost suddenly announced that it was closing its doors. And in a subsequent phone call I was told “I no longer have the technical expertise to deal with the problems that arise so I’m closing down and passing all of my work on to someone who is more technically-capable“

So how come this particular technically-challenged ex-webhost is offering to host the OUSA website? It sounds like a recipe for total disaster if you ask me.

OUSA should feel right at home.

Unless of course I am reading this report totally wrongly.

Or unless someone is telling me a huge pack of porky-pies.

But then nothing surprises me any more. I recall the particular incident when X’s details were posted in a public forum and he was simultaneously accused of all kinds of things (simultaneously of course, his “rival” for an elected position was being wined and dined and “offered accomodation” by the Returning Officer in the election but that is of course by the way). I asked the person concerned in leaking this information why she was doing it.
“It’s called ‘negative campaigning‘” she replied. “We’ll do anything to stop him being elected“. (Yes, I have all of my hard drives from 1999 here now).

And so he duly wasn’t elected and OUSA chose in his place a convicted pedophile to lead the organisation. That was one campaign that backfired a little, didnt it? Or maybe that might have been the aim. Anything is possible in OUSA.

But then again we fast-forward to 2009. Due to one thing and another, X is sumoned before a disciplinary hearing. And guess who volunteers to chair it? Absolutely! Never mind “prior knowledge” – never mind “parti pris” the world’s favourite webhost gets the job.

And I wonder if you can guess what the disciplinary committee decides?

Dead right. Candidate X “shall not be eligible to stand for any elected post within OUSA…” . I bet you never would have guessed it, would you?

And in other other news it’s snowing like hell outside. I’m prepared for another seige.

-6

Tuesday 9th February 2010 – This radio programme is taking shape

We were out at the SMADC offices today – the SMADC being something like Syndicat Mixte pour l’Amenagement et Developpement des Combrailles – where we discussed our tactics for the radio programme. Christian was there with his floozy and I was there with Liz. I have plenty of ideas and Liz approves of them and as far as the SMADC and the radio station go, then I don’t imagine that they will care less as long as we do it.

Apart from that, this morning I cracked on with my plasterboarding and it’s all but finished now. All I need to do now is to join things up with the tape and then fill over it. Of course I have put my jointing tape somewhere safe – so safe in fact that I can’t find it now. That’s a badger! But as soon as I find it and tape things up I can start to do the ceiling – with tongue-and-grooving. I can do that on my own and I don’t have any inhibitions as to how it’ll look.

And Claude came round. Yesterday finished him off for good and he wants to pause until Monday. He’s getting his son up over the weekend to move the heavy objects ready for us to load on Monday. But on Monday Terry is giving blood, Tuesday Liz and I are in studio and on Wednesday we are all at the bank. This timetable for moving Claude is shrinking rapidly.

-8

Monday 8th February 2010 – We started on Claude’s removal today

And so well did we do it and so well did we pack the vans that everything that was prepared for today was in the vans with space to spare on the first load and we had to go scratching around for stuff to make the trip worthwhile. And it’s amazing just how much stuff you can pack into a couple of Ford Transits.

For the second load we took the fitted kitchen that had been hawked all around the South of France and is destined to be hawked all the way back there again even though it has seen far better days , and also another huge pile of boxes. The thing that worries me in all of this is that this is the end of day One (we finished after the two loads because there was nothing else ready to take) out of Five and the apartment is pretty full. By the end of day Five I’m just wondering how Claude and Francoise will be able to fit in there.

Tomorrow is a day off as Liz and I are going to see the guy from SMADC to talk to him about building permits in France. That’s going to be the subject of our first radio programme. It’ll give Claude and Francoise a chance to pack up some more stuff (if they stop throwing boxes at each other) so that on Wednesday we can have a really good go at this moving lark.

-6

Sunday 7th February 2010 – We’re back in the usual routine.

A nice lie-in on Sunday morning interrupted by a torrential downpour. So out of bed by 09:45 (which is early for me as you know) and breakfast followed by tidying up the verandah. After that it was back up here and try out the new power supply for the old Lenovo that gave up the ghost back in the summer. Hunting around the other day for a replacement I came across one on eBay at a grand total of £7.45 plus £3.50 postage. And much to mysurprise it actually works! So now I can recover the data that wasn’t included in the last back-up.

st eloy les mines nord combraille football club de foot puy de dome franceThis afternoon it was down to St Eloy to watch Pionsat’s 1st XI play the Miners. And they lost 4-1. Mind you the scoreline is a totally unfair reflection of the result and they were so unlucky – they hit the woodwork three times. But in truth they offered litttle up front with no Cedric, even though the Nord Combraille goalkeeper was a pretty busy man rushing out after all of these through-balls. Pionsat had a patched-up defence and an injury to Yann made things even worse. By the time the final whistle went, Pionsat’s back-line consisted of Gregory the left-winger playing at left-back, Sebastien who plays midfield for the 2nd XI at centre-half partnered by Pierre from Brico-Depot who usually plays on the right wing, and someone who I had never seen before playing at right-back. Nevertheless it was a really good match and I quite enjoyed it despite the scoreline. Two of Nord Combraille’s goals were absolute peaches.

That wood-burning boiler that Terry bought does not weigh 270 kilos. In fact it weighs in at well over 300 and it’s blasted heavy and awkward. But with the aid of two scaffolding planks and a carpet we got it into the kitchen. It’s just as well as it’s Claude-moving starting tomorrow and Terry’s van needs to be empty!

-9

Saturday 6th February 2010 – We all went shopping today

Liz and Terry wanted a new wood-burning voiler for their house and so yours truly was co-opted onto the buying committee in order to lend his translation skills and his muscles. And it was just as well as the boiler weighs in at 245kg – about a quarter of a ton.

But shopping with Terry is … errr … exciting. The liveliest moments are when Terry knows absolutely and definitely what he wants but Brico Depot doesn’t have it in stock and can’t see why he wants it anyway. But in the end we sorted something out and tomorow when the tiles have dried out we can unload the boiler and put it in the kitchen. I’ve had spinach for tea in preparation.

And it’s that time of year again. The footy season has restarted and the 3rd XI were in action against Marcillat. Pionsat had 11 players, Marcillat turned up with only 9 and even so Pionsat were at one stage 3-1 down. The final score was 3-3 but only thanks to a somewhat “severe” penalty and a load of injury time, mystery time and Manchester United time. The Marcillat players were furious at full-time and I have to say that I can understand their position.

Tomorrow afternoon it’s the local derby against hated local rivals Nord Combraille and the Miners are hosting the game in the big super-stadium. That’s luxury for you. I’ve not seem a footy match in there yet so there’s a first.

And I’m up to my neck in mud and rain again. It’s just like old times.

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Thursday 4th February 2010 – We had a really good go at Terry’s kitchen floor today.

After we emptied the kitchen we set out to do the tiling. We had something of a production line going, with Terry measuring, me cutting and shaping and then him laying. As well as that, I was mixing and carrying.

And it’s amazing but once you get into a rhythm it’s amazing just how much you can do and we would have had it finished if the light and the weather had held up.

Of course there were lentilburgers involved in this, and also vegan chocolate cake so I am well-satisfied with today.

After tea we sat and synchronised our diaries. The lengths that we are having to go to now that things seem to be moving around here. I don’t know where I’m going to find the time to fit it all in.

But one job we can delete from the list for the moment is Claude’s removal. They switched on the water and the gas this afternoon in his new apartment and the boiler exploded. So “don’t call us – we’ll call you”.

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Wednesday 3rd February 2010 – The really big problem …

… with making offers on properties that are for sale is that when the offer is accepted unconditionally, you always wonder just how low you could have gone. And this was what happened today. So I am now a half-owner of two more houses in the local area – or at least I will be on Friday when the signing takes place. Normally when you sign for a house here you pay a compromis – or deposit and it’s almost always 10%. The estate agents want us to sign on Friday but it’ll take a few days to round up all of the dosh so we suggested we delay the signing for a few days. But ohhh no –
“Could you manage 5%?“
Clearly they aren’t intending to wait until we sober up. It’s either a case of if we wait until Monday to sign, the houses might fall down over the weekend or else the people at the estate agency need to eat this weekend.

Rhys was wondering, with all this talk about letting them, whether we were going to let out the rooms by the hour. I said that if we were to do that he could come and be the receptionist. We would supply the high heels, fishnets and basque but he would have to supply his own whip. There would also be the question of taking the sheep for a walk every morning.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I had another really good day of electricity and so I had the electric heater on for three hours. It increased the temperature by 4 degrees and with it being an oil-bath radiator it was still keeping the room something like warm even at 18:00 – three hours after I’d switched it off.

lining wall space blanket insulation les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ve finished lining the walls of this cupboard place with the insulation blanket stuff and I’ve started to fit the plasterboard. Another day would see that all finished but I’m going to be a tiler’s labourer tomorrow. Terry is tiling his kitchen floor and needs to complete one half of it so that he can move the gas oven over. Liz is going out so I got the short straw. What with all of this moving for Claude, signing for houses, preparation for this radio programme we are doing and all of this our plans have become somewhat shaken up.

And if that wasn’t enough I hear on the grapevine that there might be a chauffeur’s job coming up for a couple of months. It’s enough to drive you to drink.

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