Tag Archives: les guis

Friday 4th December 2009 – If you look closely at this pic …

…you will see not only the wall painted white (that I did last night) but a new vertical that I’ve fitted – where I’ve uprooted some of the floor.

Well, it isn’t exactly fitted but merely stuck in position for now.

This morning I did some tidying up and so on and had a look at the batteries in the barn. One of them is going a bit duff and although I haven’t identified which one it is yet, I’ve identified the bank that it’s in and isolated that.

I’ve also been playing “hunt the tools” and collected up a few that were hanging around.

Claude came for a chat too and was here for about an hour. As you know, he had his open heart surgery back in the summer and since then he’s been told that he needs to walk 4 miles each day. For the last couple of days he’s been in hospital having a check-up so I asked him if that was his 5000 mile service.

This afternoon I cut the lets into the new beam and then had a look at where I’ll be putting the bedroom wall. That’s important as the lower half of the “U” shape of the stairs to the attic will be fastened to the verticals that will support the new bedroom wall. So I measured up where the central pillar will be – the one that the bedroom and bathroom doors will pivot around, and that’s the one that you can see in the image. The bathroom door will be between the two new verticals and the bedroom door will be to the left of the newest vertical.

In other news, I wanted to mention something about catchy soundbites and cliches. They are quite good when used in unexpected and novel ways but quite often they become hackneyed and banal. In other cases they are used totally out of place and when they do, they become ridiculous. Just like the one used yesterday by Baroness Ashton, the EU’s new Foreign Affairs spokesman (that’s all she is – a spokesman. She won’t have any influence at all on policy).

There was a kamikaze attack on a gathering of students in Somalia and she described it as “a cowardly attack against civilians“. Now I don’t know about anyone else reading this blog, but I wouldn’t call a kamikaze attack “cowardly”. I certainly haven’t the courage to do it, and I doubt if Baroness Ashton has either. If she would volunteer to undertake one I would gladly withdraw my accusation, but in the absence of such an announcement, the only word that I can use to describe her statement is “pathetic”. If this is the best spokesman that the EU can come up with and if this is the finest example of her speeches, then I cringe for the future of the EU. How can anyone take seriously an organisation that employs someone to make such stupid statements?

I suppose she thinks that it’s really brave of someone to sit in a bunker 5000 miles away from the action and presses a button to launch a rocket that kills civilians, or flies at an altitude of 50,000 feet and presses a button that drops a bomb that kills civilians?

But on this subject I want to draw your attention to a paragraph from a book that I have recently been reading. It concerns a man who undertook to wear a greatcoat loaded with explosives and detonate it – and himself – in the middle of a meeting. The author describes him as a man of “high courage and self sacrifice”. Definitely not cowardly at all.

So who was the author and what was the book? Well, the author was, would you believe, a westerner. Now isn’t that a surprise? He is Anthony Cave Brown, a journalist and historian. And in his book Bodyguard of Lies he is actually describing an attempted suicide attack on Hitler.

So there you have it – a westerner attempting to kill someone we don’t like – “high courage and self-sacrifice” but someone with a brown skin killing people about whom we neither know nor care – “cowardly”

I don’t know if you remember the episode “General Hospital” in Blackadder Goes Forth when General Melchett talks about the leak of information from the hospital
“One of our spies (brave heroic fellow!) says that one of their spies (filthy rotten bounder!) ….“
and we all laughed at that because it was funny. But here we are 20 years later and it’s all becoming true to life. As I have said before and I’ll probably say again, the blatant hypocrisy of the western world is totally staggering. No wonder no-one in the vast majority of the world (the 80-odd percent who aren’t westerners) can’t take seriously anything that we do and doesn’t believe a word that we say.

And for Baroness Ashton as EU Foreign Affairs spokesman opening her account by saying something so stupid and ridiculous, and also so hypocritical, I really do despair for the future of the west. We don’t stand a chance.

-6

Thursday 3rd December 2009 – I put it in

position – the final beam, as you can see. And it took quite a while to do as well.

Firstly I had to position the hangers and screw them in. It’s not possible to cut lets into the transverse beam as there are other beams let into the other side and so the nails are in the way. And the hangers have to be millimetre-perfect so that the floor will be level.

Then the beam needs to be cut to size and that has to be millimetre-perfect as well.

Thirdly, once the beam has been cut to size it needs to be lowered into position and it’s quite a heavy beam so doing it on my own was complicated to say the least. I dropped it down to the ground floor twice and so I nailed some cantilever outriggers across the gap so I could slide it into position.

Once it was in, I could drill through it into the wall in order to mark where the anchor bolts need to go.

And then I had to drill out the holes in the beam to 12mm and then drill the walls for the anchor bolts

Next was to fit the anchor bolts into the beam with just a small amount of the anchor visible

And then roll the beam back into position

And then line up the protruding anchors with the holes in the wall

And then get the beam as close up to the wall as possible

And then screw the beam to the hangers so that it’s in position

And then whallop the anchors through the beam into the holes in the wall.

It’s not tightened up anywhere as yet though – that’s because I want to fit the verticals and it’s only when they are in and fastened up that I van tighten the beam fastenings – that way it will all go into tension.

That took most of the day as it happened, and I finished off by painting with white acrylic paint the part of the wall in the stairwell that doesn’t already have paint on it. I do that because with cement-rendered walls the cement flakes off and makes dust that gets everywhere. The acrylic paint binds it together.

And in other news, OUSA has made the headlines again with the latest proposals for OUSA Sutures – that nasty little stitch-up of a document that proposes that all the OUSA delegates to the Students’ Annual Conference can go socialising (read “piss-up”) at OUSA’s (read “British taxpayers'”) expense and leave the business of running the Disorganisation to the Executive Committee – some of whom received as many as 5 votes from a student body of 180,000.

OUSA Sutures is a controversial document and has ignited all kinds of debate – most of which recognises it for the crap that it is. But to become OUSA Policy it needs to receive 2/3rds of the votes at Conference. At the last Conference there were a grand total of 137 delegates so it comes as no surprise to anyone to learn that in January there will be a meeting to discuss OUSA Sutures and OUSA has set aside a budget of £9.000 for the meeting. And who is being invited to the meeting? Why, 96 delegates to Conference.

Now firstly, can anyone tell me what proportion 96 bears to 137?
And secondly, the closing date for delegates to Conference will not have passed by the time this “briefing” is to take place. So how do they know who will be the delegates to Conference? Well, there’s always a “hard core” of delegates who go every year and who have become part of the furniture. And of course, there are the delegates that the Executive Committee cam approve to fill vacant places.

And so these “delegates”, just over 2/3rds of the number likely to attend, will be invited to a “briefing” long before their names are officially announced as delegates for their branches and before the branch nominations are even closed. They will each have £95 of OUSA’s (read “British taxpayers'”) money spent on their “hospitality”.

All I can say is that if they don’t show their “gratitude” at OUSA’s Conference next April they will have Caligula and her Horse and Pol Pot’s Sibling around to kick their collective @r$e$

-7

Wednesday 2nd December 2009 – If you look very carefully …

… at today’s image you will see the horizontal beam that I fitted yesterday. That will give you some kind of indication as to how wide the stairs up to the first floor will be. They will be fitted between that beam and the wall in the background – although there will need to be an allowance for the width of some insulation and plasterboard.

You can also see that I’ve fitted an upright into position in the new beam. This is level with the door into my attic on the floor above, and is where the head of the stairs will be for the floor below. To the right of the upright is where the bathroom is to be fitted – you can see the window that will be incorporated into there.

Yes, I’ve fitted one upright. And that will be the only upright that I’ll be fitting for a while too. The uprights are called chevrons – 63mm x 75mm and they need to be at least 4m long. Although the height between floors is only about 2m90, the chevrons need to project some way below the level of the floor so that I can secure the head of the stairs to them. And search as I have done all of the afternoon, I cannot find anywhere my stock of 4m chevrons. I’ve found the 3m and 3.5m ones, but not a single 4m one and that’s a perishing nuisance. I’ll have to wait until I go to Brico Depot at the weekend.

Mind you, while I was searching for the chevrons I discovered my missing beam. It was in the barn in the stack with all of the other new, unused wood. What a silly place to put it! Who on earth put it there?

Tomorrow I’ll be fitting the beam against the wall (if I can find my anchor bolts) and cutting the lets into it to take the verticals (whenever it may be that I will find them). I’ll have to think of something else to do on Friday which is a shame – I was hoping to have all of the verticals in place for this weekend so I could make a start on the stairs on Monday.

But then again it isn’t as if I don’t have anything else to do round here, is it?

-3

Tuesday 1st December 2009 – I woke up this morning …

… to the sound of heavy rainstorm cannoning off the roof, the barn, the windows and just about everything else in the vicinity (this sounds like a rather good blues song, although I haven’t had the blues since I started taking the Prozac). That was at the usual time of 08:00 this morning.

Even though I’m working inside, it’s still not the kind of weather that you really want to wake up to so I turned over and went back to sleep.

At 09:10, the next time that I surfaced, it had stopped raining so I decided to raise myself from the dead. And this was the view from my window.

You’ve heard me talk about the hanging clouds that sometimes hover right over the mountain. Well, this is one and it was a good one. 7.5mm of rain we had, and badger all electricity (although not absolute zero like a few weeks ago).

On a different topic I do recall saying to my loved one that I would never let her down. But since I’ve moved into my attic, it’s just as well that I remember to let her down every morning as I seem to be attracting a stream of visitors coming to inspect my living quarters. Today, Liz came round after her French lesson to see what I was up to. She even brought some vegan ginger cake with her, left over from Saturday’s chantier. It’s nice to have visitors round even if it means that Randy Raquel has to be deflated every morning.

She’s the second one of that ilk that I have had. The first one – we were having a discussion about Uganda when I accidentally bit her. She … errr … broke wind and flew off out of the window. I went to the local edition of Ann Summers to get a replacement.
“Do you want a normal one or a Muslim one?”
“What’s the difference?” I asked.
“You don’t need a foot pump with the Muslim ones. They blow themselves up“

Today I fitted the beam in the floor. It took ages as you need to very carefully make the lets in the existing beams so that the new beam is a tight fit. It takes ages to drill out the lets, chisel them to slightly undersize and then file them to perfection. Then cut the beam to slightly oversize, file it down to perfection and then whallop it into the lets with a huge sledgehammer. Finally drill through the original beams into the new beams with a 3mm drill and then whack a pile of 5×200 nails in through the drill holes to hold everything in place.

And I know why the beams that I fitted in the attic floor were too long and too deep – the one that I fitted in the floor today is too shallow and not quite long enough. How on earth did I manage to do that? And I still can’t find the missing beam. How do you lose a beam that is 4m x 20cms x 6cms?

Tomorrow I’ll be cutting and fitting the verticals. I need four of those but I can only do two of them as I don’t know where the other two will be until I start to fit the stairs in.

And in other news, I had the pompiers round selling calendars. The one I bought is an organiser-type that gives you a space to write appointments in. It also gives the Saints’ Days, and I see that my birthday is the day of St Modeste. Now how appropriate is that? My overwhelming modesty had always let me down – if it wasn’t for that I would be absolutely perfect.

-7

Monday 30th November 2009 – And even more Fiat Lux

Yes, we now have lights on the first floor of the house. 2 x 1.2watt LEDs that illluminate the stairwell so that I can work in the dark.

And it works too – there I was, slogging away quite happily this evening until I suddenly noticed that it was 18:30., half an hour after knocking-off time.

Now that’s what I call “enthusiasm”, don’t you think?

But even with the lighting in the stairwell you can’t see the stairs. For the simple reason that they are no longer there. First job this morning was to take them out.

The treads and risers are pretty naff but the sides are fine and I’m planning to reuse those, although not to the same width. The risers are 17mm and the treads are 21mm, which means that for every 1m of height you need 1.26m of footprint. But what I’m planning to do is to invert the sides so that I have treads of 17mm and risers of 21mm, meaning that for every 1m of height I need 85mm of footprint. It’ll make the treads quite narrow but I can put a 3mm overhang to make 20mm and in any case it’s not as if the attic will be in daily use once I’ve completed the rest of the house.

But I’m going to have to get a move on and do the stairs, otherwise I shall have to take further steps to get into my room.

This afternoon I rewired the temporary wiring – it needed to be moved to another location now that I’ve removed the stairs. I can’t fit it permanently until I’ve done all of the room dividers on the first floor so it’ll be staying like this for a while. And that was when I put in the lights.

Tomorrow I’ll be putting in one of the beams (would you believe that I can only find one of the two that I bought?) and then fitting the uprights.

In other news, the trial of John Demjaniuk has made a start. And isn’t it a total farce? They’ve been hawking him around the world trying to find a crime to pin on him. He’s a Ukranian national and is alleged to have committed a crime in Poland. So how come the Germans are trying him? What is the claim to jurisdiction?

And the evidence is based on the testimony of “a now-dead Ukrainian”. This is going to be an exciting cross-examination as defence counsel and Demjaniuk all sit round a table, hold hands and try to get a glass to move around.

Not one single inmate of the camp is going to give evidence against him – all of the evidence is “circumstantial”. And what help has Demjaniuk been given to trace witnesses from 65 years ago to help his defence? And if they are all dead, will the prosecuting counsel and the plaintiffs all join hands around the table to try and contact them?

It’s a total embarrassment, this trial. Absolutely shameful. I don’t know how anyone in their right mind can drag such a case into court. It’s a desperate attempt to lynch a dying man who has already been found “not guilty” of one bunch of war crimes – and by the Zionists too! And they don’t give up lightly. Ask Adolf Eichmann (just get your family together, join hands around a table etc).

There ought to be an international outcry about bringing to a Court of Law a desperate case such as this. It reminds me of a western, the name of which I forget, that I once saw.
“We’ll make sure that we give the prisoner a fair trial. And then we’ll hang him from that tree over there“.

There are times when I’m ashamed to be a human being.

-8

Sunday 29th November 2009 – I should have gone …

… to Manzat today to see the 3rd XI play against the home side. In fact at 14:00 I got myself ready to go, and just before leaving I had a final glance at the itinerary, only to see that kick-off was at 13:00, not 15:00 as I had thought. Ahhh well.

But to make up for it, here’s a pic of the footy from last night when Pionsat gave Charensat a good spanking.

And so, due to the pouring rain that we were having, I stayed in today and worked on a pile of photos and a pile of dictated notes that had accumulated over the last couple of months, in the hope that I could finally get myself up to date.

And that was it, really. I didn’t do anything else. For once in a while it’s nice to have a lazy day and do nothing at all.

-7

Saturday 28th November 2009 – I had a nice surprise this evening.

Not quite as nice as the surprise Pierre had, but nice enough none-the-less.

There I was, quietly watching the football like I do, when Elodie (the young girl who works at Auchan and who persons the Pie Hut at the football ground) whispered in my little pointy ear “it’s Pierre (the footballer who works at Brico Depot)’s 21st birthday today and we’re having a surprise party for him after the game. Would you like to come?”

Now I don’t do social occasions as you know but firstly Elodie invited me and I think she’s cute. I have a little soft spot for her (her mother has a soft spot for me as well – in her case it’s the Goodwin Sands but I digress) and secondly it’s nice to be invited to close social arrangements in the village such as this. It’s not quite “come to my house and sleep with my daughter” but that will surely come. Give me another 50 years or so.

We were about 10 or 12 at Liz and Terry’s and did quite a bit of pointing although we didn’t go up to the top of the scaffolding – not with this howling gale that was blowing around. I spent most of the day pulling a primeval forest out of the cracks in the stonework.

We did tons of work – mostly in the morning. In the afternoon things went slower due to the extra weight that we were carrying. The food was gorgeous as usual.

And as suspected, no-one said anything to me at all about “witness X”. Isn’t that a surprise?

Talking of the football, I remember saying that Pionsat’s 2nd XI wouldn’t find it so easy in the 2nd Division as they did in the 3rd last season and the thrashing that they received on the opening day of the season went to reinforce that opinion. But tonight I have seen the worst team that I have seen for a while (anything in Division 4 excepted) and how Pionsat only scored 5 and how they let Charensat score 2 is a mystery that will stay with me for ever.

The 1st XI played hated local rivals St Gervais and drew 4-4 in a match that was filled with scandal, controversy, dubious tactics, dubious decisions and a sending-off for a headbutt. It was freezing cold all evening with this piercing wind
(“what did you say?” – ed)
(“piercing – what did you think I said?”)
but the action on the pitch warmed up the pretty large and voiciferous crowd, and of course a good time was had by all. Nothing like a bit of excitement and controversy to liven up a freezing cold Saturday evening.

-11

Friday 27th November 2009 – I’ve finished knocking down the wall today.

It took me longer than anticipated as I took my time doing it. It’s made of large hollow lightweight bricks and it occurred to me that with having to build retaining walls outside as Krys wants me to, a supply of large hollow lightweight bricks might come in handy.

I’ve salvaged about 50 of them and put them to one side.

This afternoon I’ve fitted the insulation to the stud walls at the head of the stairs – it’s made a difference to the sound travelling through the walls so it has undoubtedly made a difference to the thermal qualities. And just as well, too. The temperature has fallen dramatically and I was obliged to put the heater on for an hour tonight – the first time in two weeks.

I dunno what kind of weird sense of humour people have round here. If you look at the wall under the stairs you’ll see the wallpaper from about 100 years ago. This house is built of stone and then someone plastered over the stone – and then lined the plaster with stone-patterned wallpaper. Why didn’t they simply forego the plastering?

And not only that either. When I scraped off some of the wallpaper to see what it was like underneath, I came across a hammer and sickle insignia crudely carved into the plaster on the wall. I wonder what that’s all about? It’s something else that strikes me as totally weird in this place – we’ve discussed sacrificial chickens embedded in the concrete before now.

I’ve rescued all of my pointing tools and given them a good clean. Apparently we are all pointing at Liz and Terry’s chantier tomorrow. But I hope the weather is better than it has been for the last few days. Nothing but miserable grey skies and rain. The clothes I washed have been rinsed innumerable times by the heavens but the could really do with drying.

And we have two footy matches tomorrow night – the 1st XI against hated local rivals St Gervais d’Auvergne and the 2nd XI against hated local rivals Charensat. A large crowd is assured (if the weather is half-decent) so just you watch the hotel next door close its doors right on the final whistle. No wonder they can’t make any money.

-10

Thursday 26th November 2009 – "This is the song of a girl and goatherd….

…. lay oh dalayee oh da layeeeeeeooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh”
sang Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music”. And I should know. Having a stagestruck mother whose own mother (my grandmother) was a Zeigfield Folly on Broadway in the 1920s I had as a child to sit through every single musical that ever came out and I know the script and the lyrics of each one off by heart. And I don’t ever want to see another musical for as long as I live.

But Julie Andrews didn’t know the story about one particular goatherd who lived just down the road here in Teilhet. He had rented some land for his goats – land that had been “promised” to other people. And one night all his goats were killed. And another night his barn was burnt down. And then he received threatening letters.

A group of people around here felt that the police were dragging their heels and that it was the locals, having been “promised” the land, who were behind all of the shenanigans. This group organised all kinds of demonstrations aimed at confronting the police, trying to provoke some kind of retaliation by the authorities into the locals and their affairs – generally stirring up the community and the like. I was asked to join in the action too, but I stepped back and urged the others to think before they went too far. I usually like to hear both sides of the story before I leap into anything.

This didn’t go down too well at all with some of the others and when a most offensive petition aimed at the local community was drafted in the name of an organisation of which I happened to be a member, I withdrew my support. I received a barrage of e-mails the contents of which would have been out of place in the fo’c’sle of The Good Ship Venus. Accusing me of “being just as guilty as those who are behind the violence” was the least of the criticisms.

Meanwhile, about 100 miles away from here in a village called Tarnac, there is “The Tarnac affair”. Persons unknown placed some railway sleepers across the main TGV line in an attempt to derail a train. Luckily no major damage was done. A short while later a group of young persons in Tarnac was rounded up by the police in respect of this sabotage and were charged, not under “civil” legislation such as criminal damage and the like, but special “terrorism” legislation. It was claimed that this group of persons had contacts with other international groups aimed at disrupting civil society and that sort of thing.

One person whose evidence was instrumental in this case was the famous “witness X”, whose identity was kept secret to avoid “repercussions” due to the nature of his evidence.

And today, the identity of “witness X” has been announced. And who do you think that it is?

Yes, you’re right. None other than our local goatherd.

Now of course there is no evidence to suggest that this group of terrorists or any supporters thereof are behind the attacks on this guy’s farm and his goats (graphologists attached to the French Government say that the writing on the letters matches his own handwriting but he denies this) but it’s a story that is at least as plausible as that of the outraged locals undertaking the attacks. And you can see why the authorities have been thought to be dragging their feet in this affair – the ramifications of the goatherd’s involvement with the “terrorists” of the Tarnac affair stretch across all kinds of international boundaries and go way beyond an ordinary village feud.

Pretty soon, I’ll be seeing some of the people involved in this sorry affair. I’m not expecting an apology for the vilification and the ostracism to which I have been subjected over the past 12 months, but I’ll be intrigued to see how many of them come up to me and admit that I had a very valid point.

In other news, Terry came round today and we went and shovelled some sand into some sacks. 1.4 tonnes of it. We had some good luck too at the quarry, but in the interests of discretion (you never know who reads this blog) I can’t say anything about it.

Afterwards I did some washing, including my really comfy “Hawkshead” boots that a slug had made a home in and as I couldn’t settle down afterwards I went into St Eloy and did my shopping. I met Francois from the Anglo-French group in LIDL and we had a chat.

Yes, shopping today. That’s unusual. But I’m busy all day Saturday. Terry and Liz are having a chantier at their house and that might mean vegan chocolate cake.

-8

Wednesday 25th November 2009 – Now you see it …

… now you don’t. That could either refer to all of the mess in what will eventually be the bedroom, which has all been swept up and bagged for binning, or the wall between the stairway and the bedroom, half of which has been demolished.

That wall needs to be demolished and moved one roof-beam in towards the camera. And then with my patent narrow stairs I can fit a U-shaped stairway in.

The space that will be saved by having the stairs in a U-shape will be the bit by the window (at the foot of where the stairs are right now) and that’s where the shower room will be. I’m not sure if you can fit all of the OUSA Executive Committee in there, though.

I need to fit two floor beams in and that will be tomorrow afternoon’s job after I’ve demolished the rest of the wall.

Yes, I’ve gone berserk with a sledgehammer. And also a broom too.

And why not tomorrow morning? Well, Terry is coming round. He needs a hand to fetch some sand and as he has no tow-bar as yet on his new van to pull the trailer, we need to bag it up at the quarry.

Rhys and I were earlier talking about brassieres and the subject seemed to veer round to chastity belts. It reminded me of the time just before Nerina and I were married and we had to go to see the priest.
“Are you chaste?” he asked Nerina
“Quite often” I replied. “And she always lets me catch her“.

And in other news, Day 2 of this public enquiry is going down a storm. Apart from the Government’s case having fallen away to nothing already (and there’s another 9 months to go!), we have a plainted “(Iraq) had shown itself willing to use weapons of mass destruction on its own people and its neighbours and was flouting a range of UN disarmament resolutions.”. We know this of course from yesterday. It was our best friends the Septics who sold the weapons of mass destruction to Iraq and provided the intelligence to enable Iraq to use the weapons to the best effect. And it was also a whole series of British and American companies, in some cases aided and abetted by the British Government, who were encouraging Iraq to flout the resolutions.

But if you want to talk about a country that is using weapons of mass destruction on its own people and flouting a whole range of UN resolutions, where is the criticism of the Zionists and the crimes they are committing against the Palestinians, many of whom are Jews and some of whom – shock, horror – are CHRISTIANS?

And while we are on the subject of the Zionists, there’s this huge outcry about the fact than Iran may one day sometime have a nuclear bomb. Well, so what? The Zionists have plenty and no-one says anything about that. So if they have them, why can’t Iran have them to balance out the power? Keen students of british history will know that all through the 18th and 19th Century it was British foreign policy to keep the peace by having a balance of power.

During the period that the Soviet Union was “confronting” (which it wasn’t – it was strictly abiding by the terms of the Yalta Agreement) the west, the wars involving European powers were few and far between. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the USA and the UK have been dragging the world through the mud.

Vive la Soviet Union! say I.

-8

Tuesday 24th November 2009 – I lit a fire in my brassiere this evening.

I started off by putting samples of all of the construction material that I had been using in the attic. And I’ll tell you – the effect is frightening. The plasterboard took the longest to burn but eventually it did. Everything else was gone in minutes.

No wonder there are so many conflagrations in domestic property. There won’t be much left of my place if it sets alight.

But the tidying up is progressing, and it’s looking quite impressive downstairs. Another day or so and it’ll be done. The pallets that formed the old floor in the attic, they will have to be chucked out of the window but I can’t move the broken slates yet. They are destined to be used for the footpaths between the raised beds in the new vegetable garden once make a start on that later this winter.

And once the tidying up is completed it will immediately become untidy again as I demolish the wall between the bedroom and the stairway. All the rubble will be used for making the steps outside up into the house.

Claude came round today for a chat and bought me some news. Someone has had a really good stroke of luck – an exceptional one in fact. It’s bad news for me as it happens but I suppose that if I stopped being selfish and looked at it from other people’s points of view I should really be pleased at their exceptional fortune.

I can’t say any more about it right now as there needs to be something of a proper announcement at the right time by the right people in the right places.

In other news, the public enquiry into the War to Steal Iraq’s Oil has got under way. Many people wonder why I call it that, but don’t take my word for it – take that of Australia’s Defence Minister Brendan Nelson.

But back to the plot. I was particularly impressed with the phrase “that Saddam had a “continuing intention” to acquire weapons of mass destruction, having used them in the past”. We all know by now that Saddam Hussein had Bacillus Anthracis, Clostridium Botulinum, Clostridium Perfringens, E coli, Histoplasma Capsulatum and Brucella Melitensis, and that he used them on Iranian soldiers during the Iran-Iraq war. And how do we know this? Because the USA sold them to him and then gave him the satellite photos of Iranian troop movements so that he knew where to aim the chemical weapons.

The other bit that drew my specific attention was that “the sanctions policy in place against Iraq since 1991 …was steadily breaking down”. Here’s one reason why it was breaking down. And here’s another one. And there are plenty more where those came from. No wonder the wheels fell off the sanctions policy when Western companies put greed before ethics and legality.

Another Western company implicated in the breach of sanctions was Matrix-Churchill. They were one of the companies, by the way, that were named and shamed by Michael Moore as having supplied chemical weapons to Iraq. And would their “breach of sanctions” have anything to do with Saddam’s “continuing intention to acquire weapons of mass destruction”? During the company’s trial in a British court for its alleged breach of sanctions, the directors of the company claimed that their breaches of sanctions had been guided by the British Intelligence (there’s an oxymoron) Services and the British Ministry of Defence.

This startling revelation so clearly shocked the Court that the British Minister for Trade, Alan Clark was summoned to give evidence and under oath he was obliged to admit that he had been “economical with the truth” in an earlier statement denying all knowledge of the affair. Of course, the trial collapsed and the directors were awarded compensation.

This entire Iraq affair stinks to high heaven.

-5

Monday 23rd November 2009 – I made myself a brazier today…

… out of an old 25-litre chemicals drum.

Now a brazier is something that you use for burning stuff, not something that a woman puts her boobs in, Rhys. And I have plenty of stuff for burning.

Long-term readers of my outpourings will recall that I already have a brazier – the legendary galvanised steel dustbin with which I am very impressed. But it’s full of ashes and overflowing with other stuff and all of that is extremely damp with the hurricane that is still blowing outside. And the stuff for burning is piling up so I’ll use this, burn stuff in small amounts and then empty the ashes regularly.

Today I’ve started the megtidyup inside the house on the floor below here, getting ready to resume work. I have a brick wall to demolish so I need to make the space to drop it. Then I have to take the stairs out. I was going to make some stairs completely from scratch but it occurs to me that I can use the sides from the one Im taking out, and just narrow the treads and the risers.

In other news, the commune is organising a discussion evening in a week or so’s time. The subject?
“Cremation and Funeral Customs in the Auvergne“.
In a commune of just 270 people where there is an average age of 103 I bet that will go down a storm. Last time they did it, they went on a guided tour of the local crematorium. The superintendant of the crem. got talking to one of the visitors.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“I’m 104” was the reply.
“Well, it’s hardly worth your while going home again, is it?”

They are also organising a visit to an opera at Vichy – you can see what exciting lives we have here. But I’m afraid I shan’t be going. I’m sure I can find plenty of things much more exciting to do than going to an opera – such as visiting the dentists or emptying the beichstuhl. I’m a big fan of Kenneth Williams, who on one occasion was talkiing about the opera with a friend.
“You must admit that Wagner has some really magical moments” said the friend.
“Indeed” replied Kenneth. “But he has some dreadful half-hours“.

But Sir Edward Appleton summed up operas succinctly as far as I am concerned. “I don’t mind whatever language an opera is sung in – as long as it’s sung in a language I don’t understand“.

And the temperature has plummeted. It struggled to 11 degrees outside today and it’s only 14.2 in here right now. I’ll be putting the heater on tomorrow if it doesn’t warm up again.

-11

Sunday 22nd November 2009 – Habemus Papam.

Coming back from Commentry yesterday I could see a huge cloud of smoke in the distance up in the hills in the general direction of where I live. And as I got closer to home the pillar of smoke got more and more intense.

I finally tracked down the smoke – it’s the Abbey at Bellaigues just across the valley from me. There was so much smoke coming out of their chimney that I had to check on the radio to see if the Pope had died or something.

But have a quick look at the church on the right-hand edge of the photo. Half the roof is tiled, the other half is rusty corrugated sheet. And on a building of historical importance too. And there are people who complain about my regard for Building Regulations and the like!

A couple of the buoldings in the shot are worthy of note. There is one where the monks go to deal with their filthy habits and underneath the toliets is a room where they bottle their own water.

Regular readers know that I once tried the monastic life but I had to abandon it due to the monotonous diet. Only two monks were allowed to work in the kitchens – the chip monk and the fish friar.

Today I was going to have my huge bonfire and bake my spuds outside. And it looked so nice out there too early on (if 10:24 can be called “early” – I don’t have a clue what it was like before that, for obvious reasons. After all, it is Sunday). Anyway I did a load of work up here and just as I was going outside I noticed the weather. We were having a hurricane, the big wind turbine was going round like the clappers and it was pouring down with torrential rain.

It’s the first day today since the 16th that the temperature hasn’t got up to around 20 degrees. It reached only 14.4 degrees outside today, still unseasonably warm, but it got up to over 18 degrees in here. It’s currently 16.8 degrees and I’m quite comfortable in here. It’s been 10 days since I had the heating on and it’s been interesting to see the temperature in here steadily rise since I moved in.

I’ll be interested to see what happens when the temperature plummets outside. In early January we had minus 15. I bet it won’t be 16.8 degrees in here then!

-12

Saturday 21st November 2009 – I’m currently lying down in a darkened room.

I’ve just seen a hastily-assembled scratch Pionsat XI win 6-1 in a cup match. When I arrived there they had just 10 players and then another two turned up just before the kick-off. Michael, the 2nd XI goalkeeper who had turned up to watch the match was pressed into service as an outfield player and about 10 minutes after kick-off Jerome, the 3rd XI left-back rushed into the ground, into the dressing room and rushed out again in a substitute’s outfit.

So a mixture of players from the 1st, 2nd and 3rd XI took on a big hefty physical side and thoroughly thrashed them. It’s a long time since I’ve seen them do that.

This morning I had something of a lie in – I heard the alarm but slept though the repeats and dreamt about me owning a horse and riding it around the Anglo-Welsh border and looking for a place to stable it while I boarded the steam train at Llanfair Caereinion to travel to Worcester. I’ve had a few memorable dreams recently so my sleep rhythms must be improving.

7 or 8 years ago I was one of the guinea pigs in a research programme concerning dreams. We were taught how to dream and then we had to condition ourselves to wake up as we came out of a dream in order to dictate it onto a dictaphone to be transcribed later. It was a fascinating project and looking back on my dreams (I have a huge file of dreams) I can see various patterns that emerged.

The theory behind this project was that someone was convinced that we only have 7 or 8 long-running dreams and that when we dream we dream “episodes” of one of the long-running dreams. And I can see the point that he was making when I examined them.

In Commentry I had a good wander around the shops but didn’t buy anything other than the regular purchases. And afterwards I went for a swim. I was there for an hour and felt so much better afterwards but the warm shower was the nicest part of it.

Now that I am properly clean I’m going to change the bedding tonight and have some clean stuff. I’m looking forward to that.

-6

Friday 20th November 2009 – On my drive down to Liz and Terry’s yesterday …

… I stopped to take my traditional photograph of the Gorge of the Sioule bathed in cloud. Each time I go that way in the morning I always take a pic as the effects of the cloud are always different.

Yesterday we had an island – the peak of one of the hills in the gorge that was just peeking out above the level of the cloud. It looked like something that Roger Dean would have drawn for the cover of a “Yes” album.

After breakfast I telephoned this radio guy as requested.
“I’m sorry, he’s not here“
“Well, I’ll leave my number so he can call me back later“
“Actually he’s out all day“
“Never mind – he can call me on Monday“
“He has meetings all day Monday and Tuesday. So it won’t be before Wednesday“.
So much for urgency.

The weather is still unseasonably hot – the last four days have all been round the 20-degree mark. So I burnt a pile of rubbish in my galvanised steel dustbin, with which I am very impressed. But much of the paper is still wet and damp so it needs more time to dry out. It if keeps fine by Sunday I’ll have another fire and bake some spuds while I’m doing it. After all, there’s no footy on Sunday.

I’ve carried on with the tidying up too.

And earlier this evening I was sitting quietly in my room when there was a terrific crash from outside in the stairwell. I had 5 or 6 boxes of screws all neatly stacked and for no apparent reason they all fell down the stairs. There are thousands of screws everywhere now.

I must have a ghost, I suppose. My house in Crewe is haunted and the local vicar told me that he would come round and exorcise it. I asked him why. As far as I was concerned the ghost was one of the family and had just as much, if not even more right to be there.

And Lee Pottymouth lives in a flat that is haunted by two ghosts, and he reckons that they are homosexual ghosts. “They don’t half put the willies up me” he said.

-7

EPIC HALL

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