Tag Archives: crash out

Wednesday 23rd July 2014 – IT’S 02:40 …

… and I’m still awake. Serve me right for crashing out for an hour after I finished work earlier this evening. And that’s something of a surprise as I was in bed well before midnight too.

No rain or anything to wake me up so I slept right through and after breakfast I carried on with my journey around Lac St Jean and the Saguenay Fjord.

guttering down pipe rear of houseles guis virlet puy de dome franceOutside later, I finished off the guttering.

It was too much like hard work to set up the big electric SDS drill, and so I had a good go with the bigger Ryobi Plus One drill. I was quite impressed because once I put a new battery in it, the Ryobi did the job quite well. So that enabled me to fit the brackets for the downpipe and then fit the downpipe.

It’s all now glued into position and quite solid too as you can see.

kwikstage scaffolding rear of house les guis virlet puy de dome france
With having the scaffolding in place where I want it, I put in a higher row of planks so that I can reach up along the chevron on the outer edge and I put a couple of coats of wood preservative on there and also on the end of one of the roof beams. I’ll wallop some more on there tomorrow too.

I spent a delightful hour or so tidying up the concrete hardstanding, stacking everything neatly where it should be, so now there is plenty of room to move about there too without tripping over anything.

rotten chassis sankey trailer les guis virlet puy de dome franceNext, and as it happened, the last job for today was to look at the Sankey Trailer. I ripped out the flooring and ripped out the electric wiring so that I could have a good look at the chassis.

It’s not actually as bad as I thought it was. What I’ve been mistaking for rot on the chassis is about 10 layers of flaking paint. I reckon that if I attack it with the wire brush on the angle grinder and remove all of the loose paint and the loose rust, I can get down to the bare metal. I’ve a pile of dark brown metal paint that is suitable for painting over rust so a couple of coats of that should sort out the chassis and the inside of the trailer body. For the outside I have some yellow hammerite-type paint to match Caliburn.

For the flooring, there’s all of that that we fitted on a caravan chassis all those years ago – some heavy-duty 30mm planking. That should make a really good floor for that.


Once I’ve fixed that, I can go and collect some concrete from the quarry to finish off the job here.

And we finished the day in sunshine too. Even better, there’s a bright clear sky tonight with not a cloud in sight. Is summer coming back?

Saturday 19th July 2014 – WHAT A NICE AFTERNOON.

Not particularly sunny, but lovely and hot, so just for a change I went swimming at Neris-les-Bains. Not too crowded but the water was lovely and warm even with the sides of the pool open and I spent a very pleasant hour or so in there. And that gave me an opportunity to give the cement burns on my legs (which are still troubling me) a really good soaking.

Last night it was still too hot to sleep and it was 04:00 again when I went to bed. But about 01:00 we had a sudden hurricane that sprang up out of nowhere and a huge stream of wind blew right through the house.

I was up and about again at 08:00 all the same and after breakfast had a few hours on the laptop as well as a little session with that computer program. I’m determined to crack it, even though I’ve been tempted to delete the newer version that I’ve uploaded and go back to the previous one.

I did my shopping at Commentry – first time for ages, and while neither LIDL nor Intermarche came up with anything special, I bought all that I needed from Bricomarche to complete the guttering on Monday.

Back home from the swimmng baths I crashed out for an hour or so.

Tonight now that I’m nice and clean, I’m going to change the bedding and have a really good sleep in a nice clean bed for just a change. Tomorrow is Sunday and it’s a day off.

Saturday 12th July 2014 – I HAD A QUIET …

… day today. I was on my wanderings during the night although when I woke up, I couldn’t remember where I had been. And then after breakfast, I sat down and started on the next lot of radio programmes for Radio Anglais. However, my heart wasn’t in it and I didn’t stick it for long. I need to be much more resolute.

This afternoon I went to St Eloy to do the shopping and who should I bump into but Lieneke and Guus. They have apparently returned for the summer. We ended up having a good chat for quite a while.

Back here I crashed out for a while, then carried on reading Clay Blair and watched Austin Powers – International Man of Mystery

And that was that. And with Monday being a Bank Holiday, it’ll be like this for another two days as well.

Friday 11th July 2014 – THANKS TO TERRY …

kwikstage scaffolding erected rear les guis virlet puy de dome france… for helping me erect my scaffolding at the rear of the house this morning.

It was pouring down again at first and I was feeling that we were going to have another day like yesterday when I had the lowest July solar energy figure since I began keeping records in 2007 (just 17 amp-hours for those who are interested).

The field at the back is totally sodden and the scaffolding was sinking in in places but we’ve managed to underpin it. It’s not particularly stable but it’s the best I can do.

The plan is that starting next week I’ll be cementing in under the eaves, something that I have never managed to do since I did the roof in 2009. THat needs to be made good to keep out insects, animals and plants. The ivy needs ripping off the back of the house for a start.

I then need to fit some fascia boards to the end of the chevrons and give everything a really good going over with some wood treatment to keep out the weather. And when that’s done, fit the guttering to take the rain water to the underwater tank that I’ll be fitting and away from the base of the house. I’ll check the roof as well while I’m up there.

Finally, I’ll have to check the mortar to see if the ivy has pulled any out

You can see that I’ll have my work cut out.

I crashed out for an hour or two this afternoon, which was no surprise. I’d been to Mons during the night with the British Army in August 1914 and I do remember that we were being switched around from battlefront to battlefront by wading through filthy, dirty water up to our waists in these canals.

Later in the afternoon I carried on looking for one of these missing black jump leads. This ended up as a full-scale tidying up in the upstairs of the downhill lean-to and I discovered all kinds of exciting things. And also a metre or two of heavy black cable formerly of the starter of a car, and this will do for the 12 volt immersion heater.

I can finish that tomorrow.

Sunday 15th June 2014 – NOTHING MUCH HAPPENED …

… today.

I was awake at about 07:50 but if anyone really thinks that I was going to be out of bed at that time of morning on a Sunday they are thoroughly mistaken.

So at 09:20 when I crawled out of bed and had my breakfast, and that was really about it.

I made something of a drisory effort at tidying up in here, which didn’t last long, and then for the rest of the day I did little if anything. Somehow I wasn’t in the mood for the doing anything and I don’t know why. In fact I crashed out for a couple of hours in the afternoon.

All of the stuff I had planned to do, I ended up doing nothing and I was in bed shortly after 22:00.

I’ve really no idea what is happening right now.

Saturday 14th June 2014 – I WAS UP EARLY AGAIN …

… this morning and after a quick breakfastI was on my way to Montlucon. I wasn’t there long and I was back home by 13:45.

Most of the time I was at Brico Depot, firstly cashing in the pallet that we had loaded with breeze blocks the other day. A lap around inside where I bumped into Christophe and his wife fron FC Pionsat St Hilaire, and I bought all of the fittings for the guttering at the back of the house (for when the cattle have gone from the field behind the house).

as well as that, I bought a submersible water pump. They were on offer at €20:00 and with a 7-metre lift and just 250 watts consumption, it will drain out the pit if it fills with water and also do any amount of pumping of water around here.

Outside, I picked up 8 sacks of cement. I don’t want to run short of that with everything that I have to do around here. As well as that, I bought 45 of these concrete cubes that we use for building pillars. These cubes have no bottom and no top, and you fit them over the metal reinforement that I’ve been buying, and infill with concrete. There you have some ready-made concrete pillars that will support any roof that I want to fit.

I went to Auchan and LIDL afterwards and then came home. Back here, I crashed out for a couple of hours. I had another really late night again last night. I’m still having difficulty sleeping, but I’m off to bed in a moment to see what good an early night will do me.

Sunday 1st June 2014 – TWO EXTRAORDINARY THINGS …

… worthy of note happened through the night.

Firstly, despite there being no footy last night and me not having any coffee since mid-afternoon, it was well after 04:30 this morning when I went to bed. What time I actually went to sleep, I have no idea. It certainly wasn’t quickly.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I was up and preparing breakfast at 07:45. How do you explain that? I can’t even wake up at that time in the week when I’ve had a decent night’s sleep.

So I’ve no idea what has been going on but it’s certainly something extraordinary.

So having crashed out for an hour or so, I’ve been tidying up in here a little and sorted out the fresh food again. High time I did that too. And then I’ve been working on the computer again.

After all, it is Sunday and I’m entitled to have a day off. I’m back to work tomorrow.

Wednesday 28th May 2014 – I’VE BEEN DIGGING …

… today. But not, as you might be thinking, with a shovel or a spade.

Just for a change today we had a nice day and I was up with the cock (but enough of my personal habits). And a little later, Terry came round. With his van. And the big trailer. And with our mini-digger, because if you remember, we own a mini-digger between us.

While Terry was sorting himself out I was rescuing the very sad Sankey Trailer from out of the undergrowth and coupling ut up to Caliburn, and then we set to work.

A few years ago I had someone from the football club pay me w avisit with his digger and he dug out a couple of ruined houses so that I could make a car park. He hadn’t done it exactly as I had wanted but he had been and gone while I was at the shops and so I wasn’t going to stand in the way of anyone who can work at that speed.

takeuchi mini digger les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnyway, the upshot of all of this is that Terry brought the digger around and we carried on where the prevuous guy had left off.

It took much longer than I anticipated as firstly I wanted to save all of the big stones to build a nice stone wall, and secondly, we had to keep on taking Caliburn and the trailer up to the precipice and shovel the soil out by hand.

Terry left at about 16:30 and hopefully he’ll be back to help me carry on on Friday, and I had a play around with the digger as I had never used one before. And I had an enormous amount of fun and I can certainly see a pile of uses for this.

I was all hot and smelly afterwards and even though the water was only 32.4°C in the solar shower I had a shower as I certainly needed it.

I crashed out for a while afterwards and then had a long chat with Rosemary on the phone. She needed a little cheering up.

So tomorrow is a Bank Holiday and I’m having a Day of Rest.

But it was sad to see the state in which the Sankey Trailer finds itself. The floor is dropping out of it and the chassis is rotten. It’s not got long for this world.

Saturday 24th May 2014 – PHEW! THAT WAS CLOSE!

Pionsat are not totally safe from relegation but this evening’s result means that St Priest must win tomorrow by 13 clear goals if they are going to escape.

A desperate struggle on the field against the runaway champions this evening. In the opening 20 minutes, Lempdes missed two absolute sitters in from of goal and immediately afterwards, Pionsat stormed up the field and took the lead. A long clearance by Matthieu was misheaded across the defence by one of the central defenders. It fell on the feet of a fellow defender but Nico was by far the quickest, whippingit off the defender’s feet and smashing it in past the unprepared goalkeeper.

Lemdes pulled one back near to the end when Pionsat were caught stranded upfield when they lost possession, and in the closing seconds, had two goals disallowed for offside much to their dismay. Pionsat were dug in on the edge of their own penalty area for the last 10 minutes or so, and when the final whistle was blown, an audible sigh of relief could be heard all around the ground.

This all looked most unlikely three matches ago. Pionsat’s final 3 games were – team 2nd, away; team 3rd in the table, away; champions at home. You couldn’t have a final three games much tougher than this and yet we had a draw, a very unlikely win and then a draw – 5 points out of 9.

All of Pionsat’s goals in those matches have been goals of sheer opportunism and we have had some desperate last-ditch defending with balls being kicked upfield or out of play without any ceremony at all, with the team captain bellowing out orders to his team-mates.

This is just how football at this level should be played and the irony of it all is that if Pionsat had played like this for the rest of the season, they would have been challenging for promotion, never mind battling desperately against relegation.

Apart from that, I’ve spent the morning and some of the afternoon writing stuff for Radio Anglais, been to the shops in St Eloy where I bought a vine to plant at the front of the house, and then crashed out for an hour this afternoon.

And Thursday, so I’ve found out, is a Bank Holiday. I’m going to have an unexpected day off work.

Thursday 3rd April 2014 – JUST LIKE YESTERDAY …

… I crashed out twice today. And at roughly the same times too. Difference is though that it was only for a couple of minutes each time, and so that wasn’t quite so bad.

And I had an early night too, so I wasn’t surprised to wake uo to find that it was darker than usual. But it wasn’t through being awake early, or through snow on the roof lights. It was in fact raining and there was a thin coating of sand on them. This desert storm has reached over here now.

So after the usual procedureson the web site, I went out to work in the garden and, just like yesterday, there were no interruptions at all. I’ve finished the bed where the soft fruit will be going, and I’ve added a load of sand to about half of it. That’s all hoed and raked in. The soil is nice, dry and friable right now but when it rains, it’s just heavy clay. Sandy soil is good for soft fruit of course so the more I can get, the better.

I then started on the big cloche and tomy bitter disappointment, not one of my 20 or so strawberry plants survived the bitter winter 2012-13. I was wondering if I should buy some more when I saw them at the Auchan on Tuesday, and I wish that I had now.

So in the garden there is half of the big cloche to do, and then one more raised bed. I’m hoping that I can finish them tomorrow because that will mean that, starting on Monday, I can go onto the revised plan B of 2 hours in the house in the morning, then 2 hours in the garden after lunch and then finish off with 2 hours back in the house.

I’ve so much to do and I really ought to get cracking.

And another windy day today.

Wednesday 3rd April 2014 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I crashed out not once today but twice. Once at lunchtime and once at about 19:30 after I knocked off.

I’m clearly over-doing it, I reckon, and having late nights and disturbed sleep just recently isn’t helping.

I managed to wake up at some kind of realistic time however and after breakfast I had a productive morning on the website. By 12:00 (or thereabouts) I was back outside and I made a start on another raised bed.

After lunch (which finished rather later than planned, as you can imagine), I carried on with my raised bed and now that one is finished too. There’s a big raised bed, the last one that I installed, and that is destined for the soft fruit. I made a start on that and now that’s about one-third finished.

When that is done, there will be just one more raised bed and the two cloches (although at the moment I’ll only be clearing out the big one). Wouldn’t it be a pleasure if I could finish all of that? It depends of course on whatever interruptions I have and today, there were none at all, just for a change.

I’ve done some tidying up in the garden too, around the edges. The border between my land and the farmer’s field is a mess and so I cleared out a couple of metres of that. There are a couple of young trees growing there and so I trimmed them and wove the young branches around the barbed wire that forms the boundary. It’ll look so much nicer with tree branches and leaves all around it.

There’s a fruit tree too that’s giving me issues. If you remember back several incarnations of this blog, you’ll remember that I planted two dozen or so when I bought the place and for a while they were productive. But my absence for several years when I was ill led to most of them being lost.

One at least (and there may be more) is still there but as a sapling it was trampled down by a wild boar or something and it’s growing horizontally across the large raised bed. I’ve been trimming it back this last couple of years so that the growth will be concentrated in some branches that are growing vertically, and I had another go at that today. It’s looking much better.

We’ve also had tons of wind today. All three turbines going round like the clappers. Shame they can’t do this every day, isn’t it?

Tuesday 1st April 2014 – IT WAS A LITTLE BETTER …

… getting up this morning, which was just as well as I had a lot to do today. So I was sitting eating breakfast before the 08:00 alarm reminder went off. I can’t remember when (or if) that has ever happened before.

And at 08:55 I was at the bank at Pionsat ready to withdraw some cash, only to find that the Credit Agricole plays right along with this Poisson d’Avril lark by having expired my bank card yesterday. And, according to the guy behind the counter who has tken over since Madame de St Rémy retired, “we posted your enw one to you three weeks ago”. So now I’ll have to sift through this enormous mountain of post that accumulated while I was in the Pyrenees.

Off to do this furniture removal and either I’m becoming much less tolerant as I grow older or else people are just losing all sense of proportion and priorities, in that the place wasn’t even packed up – even down to last night’s leftover food still in the saucepan on the cooker.

Everything should have been packed up and the furniture dismantled … "disPERSONtled" – ed … a long while ago and we could then have slung it into the van and cleared off. As it was, we didn’t even have the first load (because we ended up having to do two trips) into Caliburn until long after 11:00.

On the way into Montlucon we had to make a diversion as the mother of the guy who was helping us had had a power failure and Yours Truly was asked to take a look. But I tell you what – I am never going to complain about the standard of my wiring ever again. The fuse box of this house had been assembled on a wooden frame and whoever assembled it had trapped a wire in the framework and then driven a screw right into it, missing the wooden support completely.

So we just dumped the stuff into the garage and went back for the second load, by which time we were having the hottest day of the year so far. There was tons of stuff left over, but none of it packed and so they can pack it themselves and move it in a car.

Then of course we had to take it all upstairs. And by that, I mean three and a half storeys without a lift. And no hot water here – I spent about an hour trying to make the gas water heater work, but with no luck.

We’d done about three quarters of the work but they decided to knock off for lunch (it was about 15:30 by this time) so I left them to it and went to Neris-les-Bains. Yes, an absolutely gorgeous day and so I sat in the park and read a book until 17:00 when the swimming baths opened. First time for ages, and I was feeling all hot and sticky and sweaty.

Feeling much better, I came back here and had a coffee and then crashed out. Finally I managed to make one of my legendary aubergine and kidney bean casseroles, and that will keep mein business for three or four days.

And now that I’m clean, I’m going to have clean bedding tonight. Definitely pushing the boat out here.

Tuesday 25th March 2014 – I WOKE UP THIS MORNING …

… as all of the good old Blues songs begin, but I woke up this morning to darkness.

Yes, we had another fall of snow during the night. However it didn’t last long as it’s been raining for most of the day – at times quite heavily. In fact we’ve had over 20mm of rain so far.

So as is usual now that I’m on summer hours, I worked on the web site until 12:00, and then I went outside to work. And despite everything that happened today, I’ve finished another raised bed.

The rain didn’t help. It was raining more-or-less steadily, with a few sunny spells, until about 18:15 when the heavens well-and-truly opened. It took me another 10 minutes, bu which time I was looking like a drowned rat, to finish the bed, and then I gave it all up and came in for an early finish. I would have been finished earlier too except that I … errr … fell asleep up here for half an hour after lunch.

french military aircraft turbo prop flying low les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut I had a couple of visits too. This missing Boeing 777 airliner from Malaysia – the French Government clearly thinks that I have it somewhere hidden about the premises because from about 13:15 until about 14:30 they had two huge transport aircraft flying low and circling around my property.

I’m certain that it isn’t anywhere round here, but they clearly seem to think so.

How bizarre.

Thursday 20th March 2014 – IT WAS 19:20 …

… when I knocked off work today. I know I’m on summer hours but –
1) I was rather carried away
2) it was still light enough to work outside at 19:20 this evening.

Mind you, it was my own fault. I’d crashed out for half an hour this afternoon.

Through the night though, I’d been busy again. I was back at work in Brussels and I can’t remember where I’d been but I returned with a car loaded with all kinds of things. I stopped at the petrol station in the rue de Luxembourg to fuel up when I received a message that I had to go to Luxembourg to pick up a director. And so off I set and arrived at a hotel there and I didn’t know which director I was to pick up and at which hotel he was staying. I hadn’t made enquiries at Brussels because I was so confident that it would be alright on the night.

That sounds about par for the course, doesn’t it?

So after breakfast (and I was up early for a change) I was on the website for a couple of hours. Summer Hours as I said.

I had some jobs to do at Pascal’s apartment this afternoon and so loaded up Caliburn and set off. On the way I called at LIDL as there was something that I wanted in the special offers. Of course it had gone but I still managed to spend €51:50 there. Lots of plants and things were on offer and I needed some seeds.

But we also had a pile of fun there too – a couple of us were watching an old woman trying to reverse her car into a parking space. No other car for miles around but after a while we lost interest and drifted away. She hadn’t managed to park it by then either.

Back here I had lunch eve though it was 16:00 and that was when I crashed out. But by 17:30 I was back outside and now I have a nice bed for the onions tomorrow. But I’m not sure when tomorrow – I have to meet someone else at Cécile’s house.

But I’ll have to get a move on. Incredible though it might seem after a day of 28.2°C, apparently snow is forecast next week. And I’ve just changed Caliburn’s tyres over too.

Friday 21st February 2014 – I WAS WATCHING …

Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince last night. And so consequently all through the night I was running around at Hogwarts.

Yes, three bad nights of sleep in succession – no surprise that I crashed out for a couple of hours when I returned home late this afternoon.

But as for Harry Potter And The Half-Blood Prince, that’s a perplexing film. It’s full of holes, more like a succession of scenes with no interlacing connection rather than being a continuous film.

Scenes start off at random in the middle of action, so you don’t know how the actors arrived at the situations and emotions that they are expressing.

I realise that you can’t cram 700 pages of novel into just 151 minutes of film, otherwise you’ll end up with something like One Eyed Jacks, where the original director’s cut ran to well over 5 hours, but nevertheless there was tons of stuff that was irrelevant that could have been left out, just as there was tons of stuff that was relevant that should have been included.

But two things came to mind during this film –

  1. If Professor Dumbledore were to put on the market the magic wand that he used to tidy up Professor Slughorn’s house, he would … errrr … clean up. I would give all that I had, and more, to own something like that where a simple flick of the wrist would finish the repairs here and have the place all spick and span.
  2. Ginny Weasley is ordinary, banal, boring even. Whyever didn’t Rowling develop a romance between Harry Potter and Luna? She has much more character and personality than poor Ginny and would have been an ideal foil for Harry to bounce his ideas around. She’s definitely my favourite character in the films and, ironically, when there was one of these apps on a social networking site to “answer 30 questions to find out which Rowling character you are”, I came up with Luna. No – I’m convinced – Rowling got it all wrong. The ideal partner for Harry Potter should have been Luna.

So once I had woken up and crawled rather unwillingly out of my stinking pit, I crawled even more unwillingly off to Marcillat-en-Combraille to record the rock programme for Radio Tartasse, and when Liz arrived we recorded the English-language information programmes.

From there, we went on to Liz and Terry’s fir an early lunch (and that car was still in the ditch after all this time) and then on to Gerzat and Radio Arverne for the other lot of programmes.

By this time I was about flaked out and so I didn’t even stop at Liz and Terry’s for a coffee on the way back. I managed a stop at the Intermarché to do my weekens shopping (save me going anywhere tomorrow) and that was about that.

But I need to find a proper sleep rhythm from somewhere.