Tag Archives: les guis

Saturday 19th December 2009 – Sometimes I wonder …

… how far I might have made it in the world if I had had the ability to think straight!

This morning I woke up in the freezing cold and still more snow so the first thing that I did was to brush off the solar panels, or as far as I could reach anyway. As the snow continued to fall I had to do it a couple of times and although I was getting a charge off the first bank that I was keeping clear, the second bank had too much snow on it to register and so I was pretty much regretting the waste of energy when suddenly it hit me! So I rushed downstairs and sorted out the chimney sweeping brush, and then back upstairs and onto the roof.

It’s not very good and it’s difficult to wield but it’s better than nothing and it was just as well that I had a go because at about 16:00 that golden thing came out and hung around for half an hour or so – and we struggled up to 25 amp-hours of charge, the most I’ve had for a while.

I should have gone shopping today as it is Saturday but the snow put paid to that idea. There’s no point going out in this kind of weather if you can manage as you are. I was also supposed to go to a birthday party tonight and I was really looking forward to going, but there isn’t just the snow to contend with, the temperature had dropped to minus 6 while it was still daylight and it was still snowing! God knows what it will be like at midnight coming home. But it’s so cold that the kettles, that I filled from the water butt after smashing the ice, froze to the concrete floor and the tin of peas and carrots that I opened yesterday and put the rest in a container for tonight – they were frozen solid.

So today in between keeping the solar panels clear I carried on with the Stairway to Heaven. I’ve fitted two more uprights as you can see – this is where the turn in the stairs will be. I’ve started to fit the rails that carry the treads and if the weather is too bad to go to this Carol concert tomorrow I’ll be finishing them off and hunting down some scrap wood to use as the treads. It won’t be long now until it’s finished.

And once that’s done I’ll be fitting the stairs in to the ground floor. There’s two that I need to fit that I’ve already cut, and I have a cheap builders’ staircase that I’ll use for the rest. That shouldn’t take much longer either and my plan to have them in for Christmas may well come to pass.

Friday 18th December 2009 – I wondered why it was dark this morning …

… when the alarm woke me up. The skylights in the roof had about 3cms of snow all over them.

And so after breakfast I went for a wander around and a bit of a photography session. You can see how much snow fell during the night, and it was still chucking it down as I was a-wandering.

After my little perambulation I rang up Liz and spoke to her about the proposed group meal. We had a good chat for half an hour or so. They had had the snowplough down their lane at 10:00 and by 11:00 it had all snowed over again.

I was having charging issues in this weather so I shinned out of the side window with the yard brush up onto the roof and brushed the snow off the solar panels where I could reach. That generated something and I had to do it a couple of times during the day. I’m going to have to work out a remote way of doing that in due course. Heated trace wire seems to be one possibility.

I went to brush the snow off the panels that are on the roof of the Luton Transit and which power the barn but I couldn’t find the ladder – half of the old wooden green one. it was there last winter and I do remember lying it down but it seems to have disappeared. I wonder if I lent it to someone. I had to improvise a ladder to get up there and brush things down.

I started to fit the turn-round step in the Stairway to Heaven but I’ve hit upon a major design fault. Not that this is any surprise – I was wondering how it was that I have managed to avoid that fate so far. I haven’t allowed for the height of the extra beam that I fitted. It’s not a major issue and I can work round it by having several angled turn-round steps in the corner that will drop me nicely underneath it. It just means that I could have better-managed my staircase. Ahh well.

And at 14:00 precisely that strange golden thing appeared again – and loitered around for about 10 minutes before it started snowing again.

This afternoon Bill rang me up and invited me to his house for Boxing Day. He’ll be having some friends round. That was nice of him. He was telling me about the over-60s dinner that his village organised and to which he was invited. He said that never mind the hairdos, most of the women had had a good shave. It wasn’t the “blue-rinse brigade” that I used to deal with when I worked at Shearings but the “blue chin brigade”. I blame it on all of the hormones that they pump into the cattle round here.

Claude came round for a chat too and he was here a while. We heard the snow-plough arrive and dashed out just in time to see it disappearing back up the lane. It had managed to get within 50 yards of me before it pliddled off, leaving me still snowed-in. But then again it’s much closer than he got last year when I was left snowed-in for four days.

But all of that explains why I haven’t done too much today. I cut another vertical and cut a couple of lets into the beams to take it. And much to my surprise it fitted absolutely perfectly and went into tension without even being screwed in. Now I call that an achievement! If it goes light tomorrow I’ll screw it in. It will be nice to see what I am doing.

Meanwhile, it’s now 28 days since we had a day without any kind of precipitation at all. Today was enough snow for the equivalent of 5cms of rain. And apart from that one morning last week it’s now been 22 days since I’ve had a decent amount of solar energy and 6 days since we had any temperature above freezing point. It’s starting to get on my nerves.

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Thursday 17th December 2009 – "In the bleak midwinter frosty winds made moan ….

…. 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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Wednesday 16th December 2009 – The Stairway to Heaven …

… now has five steps in it! I started this morning to fit the second upright and much to my surprise and amazement it was in in about 15 minutes. It didn’t need much shaping at all.

That made me feel so much better than I was yesterday – even more so after I’d fitted the rails for the two extra steps, and once the treads were in then it was better still.

I’ve made a start on fitting one of the uprights for the final row – the one where the turn will be in the staircase – but once again I ran out of light. If I hadn’t missed my aim when employing Ashley (my rather large wooden mallet) to fasten one of the beams and I’d have hit the beam that I was aiming for, I might have had some electric light. Guaranteed for 40,000 hours, these LED lightbulbs, but I’m sure the guarantee must exclude being wallopped to smithereens by a wooden mallet.

And I suppose that had I heard the alarm at 08:00 this morning instead of sleeping through until 10:00 I might have fitted the new uprights long before it went dark.

Mind you, a strange thing happened today. Round about 13:30 this weird golden object appeared in the sky. It only stayed around for about 15 minutes and then it started snowing again. I wonder what it was. I have vague memories of seeing something similar but it was so long ago that I can’t remember what it was.

In other news, have you seen the latest headlines? NATO has gone cap-in-hand to the Russkies to beg them to lend some helicopters to use in Afghanistan to crush the Taliban.

Of course, back in the old days those of you with long memories will recall that NATO armed the Mujahadeen (which was what the Taliban was called in those days) to attack the Russians and drive them out of Afghanistan after the Russkies had invaded that country. And now NATO, having invaded Afghanistan in its turn, is begging the Russkies to come and help them fight against the Mujahadeen (or Taliban) that is armed with the weapons that NATO gave them all those years ago.

NATO’s humiliation must now be complete. Are there any further depths that the west can plumb in this disgraceful and obscene invasion?

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Tuesday 15th December 2009 – Today was one of those days …

… where nothing seemed to go right. it was freezing cold this morning and I was absolutely right about the weather – totally grey and overcast and only 4.5 amp-hours in total.

I don’t know why anyone pays any attention to the weather forecast around here – it’s so easy. All you need to do is to look out of the window. If you can’t see across the valley then it’s raining. If you can see across the valley then it’s going to rain.

So Terry came and the sink wasn’t any use for him but he did help me to move the plasterboard and I forgot the gas bottle. After that I finished cutting the lets in the verticals, in the pitch dark because it’s impossible to see anything in the gloom. After lunch I fitted one of the verticals and it took me hours. It’s not very-well done but I was freezing cold and fed up. I drilled right through the join and into the wall so I could fit an anchor bolt that would tighten everything together and hold it to the wall but the bolt stuck and wouldn’t go right in – and then I couldn’t get it out either. Trying to lever it out with a crowbar and I dropped the nut and I can’t find that now.

Then I fitted the battens and the insulation but by now (like 15:10) it was far too dark to properly fit the counter-battens. Dark at 15:10 – it’s depressing – so I did a bit of tidying up and then smashed my way through the ice in the water butt to get some water.

It was 6 degrees in my attic – which might not sound a lot but it was minus 5 outside and getting colder by the minute. And it’s still grey and miserable outside. We are stuck in this deep westerly depression which is a very rare phenomenon. It’s almost as deep as the depression I am stuck in. At least if it was an easterly depression we were stuck in there would be some sunlight.

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Monday 14th December – It’s gone flaming cold now

Yes, outside it is minus 4 and I shudder to think what it might have been if we didn’t have this thick cloud cover. Yes, another thick cloudy day which means that I’ve had no solar charge yet again. I wonder when the sun is going to come out. According to the weather forecast banner on my website we are promised a clear sunny day tomorrow but knowing the weather and the weather forecasting around here I’ll believe that when I see it. It also promises me minus 9 as well tomorrow and I’ll believe that – one day last January we had minus 15.

This morning I wasn’t in a hurry to wake up but once I was up and about I discovered that all of my water has frozen up. That’s the trouble with storing the rainwater above ground. It was a bit icy yesterday and I was going to defrost it after the football and fill all of the kettles but with the match being delayed it was too late when I got home. Luckily I have a couple of litres that I’ve filtered and that will keep me going.

And so I started cutting the lets on two more pillars but Claude came round for a natter instead. And then it was round to Liz and Terry’s to give them a hand followed by the Anglo French group in St Gervais. When I got back home, it was just 4.5 degrees up here in my room. But it’s amazing just how quickly the place warms up with a bit of heat.

And I’ll be going to bed soon. Terry is on his travels tomorrow morning and I have an old stone sink to give him. While he’s here he’s going to help me lift some plasterboard upstairs to the first floor and carry my gas bottle round to the side of the house. He reckons it’s going to be an early start. I don’t much like the sound of that.

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Sunday 13th December 2009 – the secret is out!

I now know why it is that Pionsat’s 3rd XI struggle in the 4th Division of the Puy-de-Dome league. Here they all are in the pre-match warm-up!

But seriously, I battled my way across the Combrailles through the heavy snow around St Pourcain to get to Effiat in time for the 13:00 kick-off. Pionsat’s players had beaten me to it, and there we were, kicking our heels. Effiat had changed the time of the kick-off to 15:00, but had omitted to inform Pionsat. And so we all had lunch while we were waiting.

Last night, leaving Pionsat’s ground, I bumped into Gregory who was just arriving. He plays up front for the 2nd XI and sometimes for the 1st XI and he’s a pretty useful player. But he wasn’t playing last night.
“I was working 2-10” he told me when I asked.
“Will you be playing tomorrow (that is, today) then?”
“No” he said, with an air of bewilderment as if no-one had ever asked him to play for the 3rd XI before when he was unavailable for the 1st or 2nd XI.

So at Effiat, who should be in the dressing room but Gregory who, having made enquiries and discovered that the 3rd XI were struggling to raise a team as usual, had graciously offered his services.

He didn’t break much sweat, it has to be admitted, but then again he didn’t need to. He scored the first two goals in the opening couple of minutes and then concentrated on spraying the ball around to the other players to give them a chance. After Pionsat had scored their 5th goal (remember, this is the team that does a lap of honour if they ever manage to win the toss) he decided that he had done enough and went off for a shower, leaving the rest of the team to it.

I’m hoping that this might set some sort of precedent and maybe encourage a few of the other 1st and 2nd teamers to help out the 3rd XI whenever they are available. They could certainly do with a helping hand every now and again. Pionsat’s 3rd XI scoring 5 goals and winning at a canter! Who’d have thought that?

And so it was back home though the doom and gloom and snow and ice and sub-zero temperatures (it’s minus 2 outside just now) and low batteries (I’ve had no charge at all for a few days now). I’ve got the fire on and I’m not moving now!

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Saturday 12th December 2009 – Never mind the …

… snows of winter covering our land,, I have the first snows of winter covering my water butts. Not very much, I agree, but snow just the same. And more is forecasted for tonight and tomorrow. I’m stocked up with wood and gas and food so I don’t care.

This morning was another morning where I only vaguely heard the alarm and I woke up properly at 09:21. Mind you I was having a very exciting dream – I’d killed two people and I was having everyone in a house sleeping on Ford Cortina rear seats while I was off to Chester to look for an ex-girlfriend. I tell you what – my dreams are much more exciting than real life.

Shopping today wasn’t very exciting though and LIDL didn’t have anything special, although I bumped into Robert the drummer and his wife. I remembered to go to the library though and ascertained everything that I needed to know about joining. They have a reasonable selection of books on the area and I reckon that I might spend my Saturday afternoons after shopping in the library making notes on things in the area so I can update my website.

Rhys and I were talking about this the other nigbt – there’s tons of stuff on the web about all kinds of things but firstly much of its authenticity is sometimes doubtful, and there’s a considerable volume of knowledge that hasn’t made it to the net. I regularly search for old and obsolete history and travel books to glean facts about places that I’ve visited so I can add things to my travel web pages. For some reason there doesn’t seem to be a big market in second-hand books of that nature in France.

Tonight I was at the footy. There were two matches, the 2nd XI against Biollet St Maurice and the 1st XI against Bromont Lamothe. As well as goals we had all sorts of other things that really have no place on a football field. Both Bromont and Pionsat’s 1st XI finished with 10 on the pitch – Pionsat’s 11th player being carried off and Bromont’s 11th player being ordered off and had there been an official referee for the Biollet game, Biollet would have been lucky to have finished with anyone on the pitch.

But I’ve been invited to attend the football club’s annual dinner, which is very nice of them and I appreciate the gesture. I can bring a friend too – I just wish that I had one 🙁

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Friday 11th December 2009 – I now have three stairs …

…into my attic – It’s becoming a veritable Stairway to Heaven, isn’t it?

You can see the additional step and its cantilever outriggers. And seeing as there was 1m92 headroom over the head of the stairs to the ground floor once I had fitted the step, I decided to extend it so that it now makes a handy shelf for storage.

The step itself is at a nice height to step off the step ladder There’s none of the mauling and messing around like I had to do on the ladder. So I’m totally puzzled as to how I managed to spill a load of coffee on the step when I have been safely manoeuvring a full mug of coffee up a ladder for the last month or so.

So having done that, I set out to measure up for the rest of the stairs. Now I don’t know if you can recall any ancient legal documents – before the days of computers – where amendments had to be made manually. And different coloured inks were used to amend the amendments and so on. Well on the pillar where I was making the measurements I have red blue and black ink and pencil markings. But now I’ve decided on where I want everything and if my visitors don’t mind steps of 29cms then it takes just 10 steps to get into my room with a footprint (minus the angle of the turn) of just 54.5 cms, which is pretty impressive!

So this afternoon I’ve been cutting pillars and beams and on Monday I’ll be installing the first two. Well, I won’t – Terry needs a hand and I owe him plenty of favours so on Monday afternoon I’ll be tootling off there. I’ve heard a rumour that Liz might be baking.

Im other news, I had a couple of shocks this morning. Firstly I do vaguely recall hearing the alarm go off at some point but it usually does this at 5-minute intervals throughout an hour starting at 08:00 with another alarm clock joining in at certain moments. It’s not at the first crack that I haul myself out of bed – I usually have to wait for a while to wake up so I didn’t pay much attention to the alarm at first. The next thing that I remember was that it was 9:24. Did I really sleep right through 2 alarms for a whole hour?

And there was this strange golden thing in the sky and the sky around it was all blue instead of the traditional grey. That was surprising. I was disappointed that my prediction last night was all wrong. But as the morning developed I realised that it was all a question of a sense of timing and by lunchtime we were all properly overcast.

Tomorrow is St Eloy shopping. I wonder if I’ll find anything exciting there. I forgot to check the special offers at LIDL

-4

Thursday 10th December 2009 – Now if I could cut joints as well …

…as this every time, I wouldn’t have to do it any more as I would have made so much money that I would be paying people to do them for me.

It’s a three-way joint as you can see and it’s come out perfectly. Even more impressive is the fact that I cut it by hand with not a power tool in sight. In fact I’m working entirely by hand and battery power at the moment. It’s not that I’m running out of battery charge on the solar panels but today was another miserable day for electricity generation with a low cloud hovering over here all day and there’s no point in wasting the current on electric saws when a hand saw, a mallet and chisel and a battery-powered drill can do everything that I need.

In fact I’ve not had a decent amount of solar energy since 26th November. What wouldn’t I give now for some of that current that I couldn’t accept in the summer? It’s clear skies and thousands of stars outside right now but of course it’s night-time. As soon as the sun rises, you just watch the clouds gather.

But back to the plot. About 5 minutes after I had fitted that joint, I took it out and replaced it with something else due to a slight change of plan. And that joint wasn’t anything like as good. Much more to my usual standard.

And I now have two stairs fitted anyway, thanks to a discovery of a large offcut from when I did the flooring in the barn. I’ve taken down the ladder and I’m now using a stepladder and the two stairs to get into here. It’s a climb though – about 3 feet off the top of the ladder and we were discussing this on Facebook, a few of us and I reckoned that I could put an intermediary step by way of a couple of cantilever outriggers.

And then it hit me! “Good!” – ed. As soon as I said “cantilever”, I worked out exactly how I am going to build my stairs and it’s so simple that I’m surprised that I haven’t thought of it before. And I can use up tons of the scrap wood that’s lying around here too. Getting my stairs in for Christmas might not be as far out as you might think. Yes, if the French can build a cantilever viaduct not 30kms from here and I’m already planning on building a flying staircase for the ground floor on the “suspension” principle, then there’s no reason why I can’t build a staircase on the cantilever principle up here.

I made a major discovery too. A few weeks ago I bought a job lot of screws from LIDL. They are good value and the boxes are very handy. And it just so happened that I needed to use some of them today. And blow me up if they aren’t torx drive – and the box came with a couple of torx bits inside too. And I tell you what – I’m well-impressed with how easily they screw in and out with not a hint of a slipping driver. I could be sold on this idea.

So tomorrow I’m going to fit the third step here and then start on the uprights that I need to fit so that I can crack on with the stairs. Things are looking up LOL.

In other news, this is the page that has been attracting hits to my site. The other day the hits went up from the 180s or so to 302 and judging by the page counters, it was this page that they were visiting. There’s no evidence that they came from a search engine or a link – it seemed to be all “direct hits” so someone has circulated the page around. I’m intrigued as to who it is and what it is that has caught their eye and whether there will be a follow-up.

We shall see.

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Wednesday 9th December 2009 – Have you ever had one of those days ….

…. where everything you do turns out really well, where it seems to last for ever and you don’t want it to stop?

Well, today was nothing like that.

I woke up to torrential rain again and even worse, it was pitch-black outside. We had a pathetic total of just over 5 amp-hours worth of power, off almost 1200 watts of panels. That gives you some indication of the weather. Back in the heady days of August I was generating 250 amp-hours per day on occasions. Wasn’t that a long time ago? I’m up to my knees in mud again and I’m wondering if this rain will ever stop. We’ve had 18 consecutive days of rain and more is forecast for tomorrow.

And the blasted baker left the lid off my bread bucket so when I went to get the bread at lunchtime it was a soggy mass and I had to dry it in the oven so I could eat it.

I didn’t take a pic today because quite frankly there isn’t much to see. I put the insulation down the stairwell (or at least the stairwell where the head of the stairs will be) and then sat down to work out how to fit the stairs. After much deliberation I’ve binned the idea of reusing the sides of the existing stairs. I’m not sure what the guy was drinking while he was cutting them but I wouldn’t mind a pint of it myself. The treads and risers aren’t equal, and they aren’t vertical and horizontal either. I’m going to fit the cheap builders’ staircase up to here and I’ll think again about the ground floor staircase – I might see if it’s possible to recut the sides of the existing stairs for that.

-5

Tuesday 8th December 2009 – I’ve put all four verticals …

… for the head of the stairs now, as you can see.

I’ve also taken out one of the original uprights so that the doorway upstairs is now totally resting on my two uprights.

You can see to the right of the photo a roll of this space-age insulation stuff. Tomorrow’s task is to line the stairwell with that stuff so that I can complete the head of the stairs on both levels.

I had a strange phone call today.
“Congratulations, Mr Hall. You have won a major prize.”
“Very good. You have my address. Post it to me”.
“Well, actually, you have to come to our meeting at Evaux to collect it”
“Not at all – you have my address. Just post it to me. I don’t understand why you are waiting.”
“We have to verify that you are retired and in receipt of a pension. That is your case, isn’t it?”
“That’s a bit forward of you. You don’t ask questions like that to someone you hardly know. When we’ve met each other a few times and we are about to get engaged then you can ask me these questions”
I can keep that up all night – but it’s sad, isn’t it? I actually look forward to the junk phone calls just so I can have someone to talk to.

In other news, 2 items have caught my eye today.

Firstly, Al-Qaida is being blamed for a bomb attack in Baghdad. That’s extremely exciting, for when Saddam Hussein was in power he refused to tolerate Al-Qaida and had expelled from Iraq anyone offering them any kind of support. It seems that the Anglo-American aggressor/invader/oppressor has allowed them back into the country.

The second bit of news is that the country that has supplied the most refugees to the EU is … err …. Iraq. 22% of all refugees in the EU last year were Iraqis. Now unless I have missed something obvious, I understood that one of the reasons for the Anglo-American aggressor/invader/oppressor invading Iraq was to promote a regime change to get rid of a tyrant/oppressor so that all of the Iraqis could live in peace and security. So now that Saddam has been gone for a few years and we have a western-style democracy, why is everyone fleeing the country? Shouldn’t they all be happy now with their Saddam-less democracy? Or is this something else that the Anglo-American aggressor/invader/oppressor has totally ballsed up?

And in other other news, I also keep statistics on visits to my website and yesterday I had over 100 more visitors that the usual daily average. I’ll have to wait til later to see what page it was that they were all visiting but it’s certainly exciting all of this.

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Monday 7th December 2009 – I’ve fitted one of my verticals

You can see it in the photo – dead centre of the image up against the wall. Only one vertical though.

I woke up this morning to hear the rain lashing down on the roof again just like the other day. And just like the other day, even though I’m working inside, it’s not very encouraging. I’m wondering when we might have a dry day.

So when I eventually got out of bed and had my breakfast and went up to the first floor where I’m working, it was so perishing dark that I couldn’t actually see anything.

That prompted me hurling out of the window all of the old pallets that were in the pile against the wall and which you may well have seen in other photos. Some were broken, but others survived the fall and so I extended the pallet path that I laid 2 years ago. What with the marsh that’s developing outside, it seemed like a good idea.

So that was the morning accounted for, and in the afternoon I cut and fitted the vertical. It takes hours to do them as they need to be millimetre-perfect and so that involves cutting the lets slightly undersize and then filing them out to fit.

Tonight at the Anglo-French group we had a couple of new arrivals joining in – a French woman and an Austrian woman. They are Buddhists and have come here to be close to the Buddhist monastery in the area. Those of you who remember my blog in its previous home will remember my visit there one Sunday afternoon. And Marianne, the local journalist who sometimes comes to the meetings – she liked my pic from last night and intends to use it to illustrate an article on the village. Not that there’s any dosh in it but if it’s in the paper the villagers will see it and they might be interested in having a copy for themselves. It’s worth a go.

The proprietors of the Hotel in Pionsat where we meet have announced that they are leaving imminently – where to, they don’t know. You need a special kind of mentality to run a place like that and you can’t do it if you have small children and want a family life. Someone is taking over so our continuity is assured. But not so at St Eloy. You may remember that we were locked out of our venue the other week. It seems that the tenants (they were only tenants, not owners) have fled, leaving behind something of a financial muddle. We’ll have to find somewhere else in St Eloy now. Antoine is on the case.

And tomorrow I’ll be carrying on with the verticals if I can trouble myself to climb out of bed. The weather forecast is “no change”.

-9

Sunday 6th December 2009 – Christmas is coming …

… and everywhere is starting to be decorated. This is the little village of Le Quartier not too far away from here and you can see that they are having a good go at the USA-style of house decoration.

They’ve a long way to go and a lot to learn compared with some of the houses I saw on Long Island in 1999/2000 and I’m not sure whether I ought to be pleased that they are making an attempt to brighten the place up or dismayed that they are selling out to the USA again.

But you would never guess that it’s so close to Christmas. It’s 8 degrees outside and raining. We haven’t had a dry day since the 20th November, over 2 weeks ago. It has snowed though, so I’m told. Claude mentioned it the other day and I was totally sceptical except that Terry and Liz have also mentioned it. But I’ve seen nothing at all.

I came through Le Quartier on my way back from the footy. There were 3 matches this weekend, the 1st XI away at Lapeyrouse, the 2nd XI away at Beauregard Vendon and the 3rd XI at home to Montfermy. And of the 9 points on offer they managed to get just 1 and to everyone’s surprise the team that got the point was the 3rd XI. The other 2 lost. What would have been the odds on the 3rd XI getting more points than the other two teams combined? Good for them!

Tomorrow I’m going to be fitting the verticals in the stairwell. That’s going to keep me out of mischief for a while.

-5

Saturday 5th December 2009 – I’m all nice and clean for a change.

90 minutes in the swimming baths at Neris today followed by a nice warm shower – did me the world of good and when I change the bedding in a few minutes it will be wonderful. I’m going to have a nice lie-in as well tomorrow morning and make the most of it.

Montlucon shopping this morning, and I spent a fortune. Mind you, much of that was stuff for Christmas so it’s not unexpected. But I didn’t get myself a present though. Strange as it may seem, I couldn’t think of anything that I wanted and there definitely isn’t really anything that I need. I did however find some interesting DVDs in NOZ, the cheapo rubbishy shop that sells all kinds of end-of-range stuff. Their music selection is at times pretty good. Most French people haven’t heard of many obscure British or American musicians – that’s how I managed to buy that Nice triple-album a couple of months ago. But today, in the music DVD selection they had a huge collection of DVDs of live concerts. Most were rubbish but there were concerts by Tom Petty, Steve Winwood and by Steppenwolf. So at €3:50 a time I’ll be having a megamusic session on Christmas Day.

I’ve got some better prices for my new tyres too – a saving of about €40 and that includes Michelin “Alpine” winter tyres as well. Even at … errrr …. €360 for three tyres I reckon I might go for this.

This evening I saw Pionsat’s 3rd XI draw 1-1 with Montfermy. And they will be kicking themselves for the 2 points dropped rather that the one point gained, for Montfermy were by far and away the worst side I have ever seen and Pionsat’s 3rd XI had some good players out this evening too. And for once the defence played an immaculate game with the central defenders being in position and not wandering away for the whole of the match. They should have demolished this side.

Anyway, an early night beckons. And so does my clean bedding.

-8

EPIC HALL

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