Tag Archives: les guis

Monday 19th October 2009 – No photo today, folks.

I was too busy.

I started off this morning with the door to the room. Now you may remember that I carefully measured the door, worked out exactly how large the door opening needed to be, and I constructed it perfectly. And badger me if the door, the contrary item that it is, hasn’t grown 1cm in height and 2cms in width since I measured it and constructed the opening!

Luckily the circular saw rose to the task and dealt with the bottom and just as I was getting ready to do the side, Dave stuck his head around the door. So we spent the rest of the morning discussing the plumbing arrangements for the house. He reckons he can get something sorted out for me and he’ll teach me how to do plumbing next spring when he’s over again.

That reminds me – listening to 2 advertising executives talking about a colleague
“I taught him all he knows”
“All he knows?”
“Yes, all he knows. Not all I know – just all HE knows”

In the afternoon Dave helped me get my bed up into the attic and then we discussed the old office desk I have in the barn. I used it as a workbench but seeing as I made a new workbench last year it’s been redundant. So why don’t we get it into the attic?

Famous last words, those. I don’t know if anyone remembers Bernard Cribbins and “Right Said Fred“? That’s how we were up all the stairs. But it dismantles much more than you might think when you look closely at it, especially when you have it stuck halfway up a ladder and you can neither take it up nor down. So after much exertion and a great deal of bad language I now have a desk up there.

In February he’s thinking of going down to Southern Spain for some sun. I saw a photo of Gibraltar harbour the other day and I must admit that it did look quite enticing, especially with Africa looming just across the straits. I might be tempted to tag along if I can find some dosh.

And talking of voyages, Danielle was talking at the Anglo-French group tonight about going to the USA when she retires, but she doesn’t want to go alone. Perhaps I ought to look into this kind of thing as some kind of alternative career – professional holidaymaker-cum-companion-cum-guide-cum-bodyguard
“That’s a lot of …..”
“You said that the other day!”

But I dunno about an alternative career, whether I might have time for one, for following on to my posting last night I have been asked by the local correspondent for the local rag if I might accompany her to the Potato Fair (we don’t half have some fun events round here) at La Cellette on Sunday. Now that’s an invitation I find very hard to turn down, and for more reasons than just one!

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Sunday 18th October 2009 – In another major departure …

… from my usual schedule, I have been working on a Sunday morning.

Well, sort-of morning, because it was somewhat late when I heaved myself out of my stinking pit. And after breakfast, there was a little bit of morning left so I decided I would tile the back wall behind the concrete base I laid yesterday.

You can see that tiling is yet another one of the things that I’m no good at and it doesn’t help not having a wall that’s perfectly upright and straight either. But then again, it’s done and a blind man would be pleased to see it. And it’ll probably look better when it’s been grouted. But that’s not going to be for a while. At least all of the wood that will be stacked up in here to burn when the stove is connected won’t damage the wallpaper and the tiles will be easy to clean.

There’s a story behind these tiles too. When I was living with Laurence and her daughter Roxanne, Roxanne’s class at school decided that they would make some mosaics out of broken tiles and the teacher asked all of the parents to send their kids to school with some broken tiles. I didn’t have any in those days so I rang up a tile fitter I knew to see if he had any.
“Come round and I’ll give you some” he said.

So I went round and he loaded up my car with about half a tonne of tiles. Some were broken but many were undamaged and far too good to send to school so I brought them down here. And as my room is going to be light blue, I had a good rummage through the pile of tiles and found a load of light blue ones.

And here you are.

15:30 when I knocked off for lunch and then this afternoon I’ve been doing my coursework. I have to get back into this studying thing again.

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Saturday 17th October 2009 – In a major departure …

… from my usual habits, I did some work this morning. I built a framework on the floor, lined it with a plastic sheet, and then concreted it. This will be a slab that will be tiled and the woodstove will be placed on it. Once I take away the framework, the slab will be held in place by the laminate floor that I’ll be fitting.

I’ve had to make the slab with a lot of stones so that it will knit closely together – after all, it’s only 2.5cms thick – but I made it too wet. There is nowhere for the water to drain away of course, with it being in a plastic sheet, so the water has floated to the surface and pockmarked it in places. But it’s not a problem as I’ll fill the pocks with tiling cement in due course.
fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire riom >After the shopping we had the footy tonight. And GRRRRRRRRR again to Pionsat. The match against Le Quartier was cancelled so I had a wasted drive down there and back again. I drove down again for the match at 20:30, only to find that it had kicked off at 20:00. As I got out of Caliburn, Riom broke down the field and scored, and as I walked into the ground, Pionsat went up the other end and they scored. I had also missed a penalty, but Riom didn’t miss it, and they ran out winners 2-1.

In other news – do you remember my footy photo from last weekend? It seems that the local newspaper, La Montagne, has published it. That’s a few of my photos the newspaper has used now. No money, of course (and I could do with some right now) but at least some of my work is getting an airing and they wouldn’t use them unless they thought something positive of them. And who knows where it might lead?

And tomorrow I’ll be tiling the back wall behind the slab. That’s where I’ll be stacking the wood so tiles will enable it just to be wiped down to clean. That’s a better idea than wallpaper. And that’s a novel idea too – working on a Sunday.

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Thursday 15th October 2009 – Today’s photo is rather dark.

But there’s a reason for that – and I blame my own popularity. In fact I’ve never been so popular than I seem to be just recently.

I took the dolly round to Bill’s this morning and stopped for a coffee, where I was entertained by the Hound of the Baskervilles.

After that, I finished off the rest of the tongue and grooving as you can see in the pic, if you shine a torch onto it.

This afternoon, in between the phone calls, I started on the beading. I’ve done the corners of the 2 windows in the ceiling and I’ve started on the beading round the edges of the t&g. But it’s not going half as far as I reckoned it would and I’ve nowhere near enough.

And as the battery in the chopsaw went flat, I started the electric wiring at the stairwell end of the room, and just as I was getting into the throes of it, Bill and his neighbour appeared – they had brought back the dolly. So they had the guided tour too. I’ve had more visitors this last few weeks than I’ve had this last few years. Because I forgot to say – while I was round at Bill’s, Terry came round here.

What with all of that, it was dark by the time they went and so I went to take the photo. But firstly, no memory card in the camera – so back downstairs for the card. And secondly, flat batteries in the camera – so back downstairs to get some fully-charged batteries. Hence it was dark by the time I’d got my pick.

Last night it was -2.5 degrees and the water had started to freeze. In the heat exchanger it was -7 degrees. Winter is early this year. I reckon that tomorrow I’ll make a start installing the woodstove upstairs and get it running in.

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Wednesday 14th October 2009 – This should keep Krys and Rhys happy

What I did today was firstly to make the framework for the top of the doorframe into the cupboard and then to make the door (which you can’t see in this image).

And after that. I roofed the cupboard (and that wasn’t as easy as it might have been either).

Next job was to finish the rear half of the ceiling. This involved trimming lengthways quite a few pieces of T&G but I’ve sussed how to do this now. You may remember me talking about standards (battens of wood 25mm x 25mm cut to a specific length), and how I have a 600mm standard (as a gauge for sheets of insulation) and a 1195mm standard as a gauge for sheets of plasterboard). I now have a 2000mm standard (2000mm being the length of a piece of t&g) and I’ve knocked a row of nails into it that protrude about 3mm out the other side. My circular saw has a bed of 50mm so the cut is 25mm inside the edge of the bed (if you see what I mean). So when I’m measuring up the width of a piece of t&g that I need to cut, I overstimate the measurement by 25mm, press the standard into the wood at the overestimated widths so that the protruding nails hold it to the piece of t&g, and then run the bed of the circular saw along the piece of t&g while being guided up against the standard.

Works every time!

So after much vicissitudes and a major rerouting of the wiring, I finished the rear half of the ceiling.

After lunch I set about doing the front half of the ceiling, but I never got anywhere. The phone went non-stop – firstly Bill wanting to borrow the towing dolly (I have to run that round to him tomorrow morning so that’s put paid to the early start), and then someone wanting to talk to me about fitting some solar panels to a new house in Montlucon (I have to go and look at the job on Monday afternoon so that’s that put paid to any work on Monday afternoon but I’m not complaining) and I can’t remember what the other call was.

After that, I had a visitor. Someone is rebuilding a house and wants to have solar panels on it so he talked to someone who talked to someone else etc etc and eventually my name crept into the frame. So he came round for a chat.

He was here for ages and it was dark by the time he went so that was the entire afternoon spoken for. But again, I can’t complain. I could do with earning some money.

And tonight, I finally succumbed and I had the heater on. The temperature outside has dropped to 2.5 degrees and winter draws on. After all, you know what happened to the three brass monkeys.

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Tuesday 13th October 2009 – There’s some disappointing news for Krys tonight.

I don’t have a photo of today’s work in the attic. That’s because you can’t really see what I’ve been doing.

In fact I’ve been doing some of the finicky work up there. I put on the plasterboard cladding around the door pillar (I forgot that last night) and then cladded all the exposed ends of plasterboard with plywood. I know that you are really supposed to put plasterboard across all the ends and then join them together with this “L” profile strip, but Terry and I talked about this last night and he mentioned that four-letter word “skim”.

Now my plastering technique is awful so skimming anything is out of the question, but wood is quite nice and I can do that.

After that I built the window inset for the hole in the wall that I made yesterday and then cut the perspex to fit. And it looks quite nice too.

Once I’d finished that I boxed in the window at the end of the room near where the woodstove is going to be installed. And talking of the woodstove, Liz and I unpacked it this afternoon (Liz came round to visit and to borrow a spare telephone as hers has stopped working for some reason). The stove is ever so dinky and even though I chopped up the wood into small 30cm (12 inch) lengths, I can see me having to cut it up smaller.

And the stove needs to be run in, too. You have to light a small paper fire and gradually increase the heat – gradually as in something like 20 days. It’s quite a task.

But I’ll be needing the heat very soon. The temperature outside dropped to 4.4 degrees last night and in the heat exchanger it dropped to 1 degree. Winter is here. In fact I nearly had the heater on in here tonight but I put a fleece on instead. I’m going to have to sort my nightie out if the temperature drops any lower.

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Monday 12th October 2009 – Cheat Cheat Cheat Cheat

Read all about it here. Fiddling your expenses is one thing, as many British Members of Parliament have found just recently. But having to pay back over £12,000 – that must be something of a record. And Gordon Clown, having made members of his own party stand down over 4 or 5 grand – what do you think might happen to him? Watch out for a “Hypocrite Of The Year” award nomination in a couple of months time.

In other news, my attic is advancing, and I now have the plasterboarding on over the timber framework that is the head of the stairs.

You can see what I’m going to do with the plastic that I bought. That corner is where my desk is going to be, and there is a good view out of the window in the side wall over to the range of hills on the skyline 4 or 5 kms away. If I put a solid wall there I won’t get the view and it seems a shame to waste it, so a little window is called for so I can look outside when I’m working.

You can also see the little cupboard that I’ve made. All the odds and ends will be put in the boxes I bought at IKEA and will be stacked in there.

But it’s all going so perishingly slowly and I just don’t understand it. I’m working constantly and don’t notice the time. And when I do glance at the clock thinking that it’s about 12:30 and there’s still 90 minutes to lunch, it’s in actual fact 14:30. I just don’t understand it. So I’ve no idea when I’m going to be finished and I’ve given up planning.

And just in case you are wondering, but I’m sure you are not, the number of “extra” members of the Anglo-French Conversation Group, those who crawled out of the woodwork on Friday to appear on the televised version, who appeared at the “regular” untelevised version tonight, was … errrrrr … ZERO.

But there again, you guessed that already, didn’t you? Or is it just me who is the only cynic around here?

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Sunday 11th October 2009 – It was another beautiful afternoon…

… and I had a nice drive down to Cebazat, between Riom and Clermont Ferrand, for the footy. Finding the town was one thing – finding the ground was something else entirely. I ended up at what can only be described as a stadium watching a wimmin’s footy match while the locals asked around as to where the men might be playing. In the end I was directed to a public park on the edge of the town where there wasn’t even a pie hut Shock! Horror!

It was a good game and Pionsat drew 2-2, which was a good result seeing as how injuries have decimated the side and they lost 2 more players during the game.

The match kicked off at 15:00 so I could even have gone to see the 2nd XI, who kicked off at 13:00 just down the road at Sayat. But with no alarm clock and waking up at …errr… 11:22, there wasn’t much hope of that.

The drive out was really nice. I didn’t switch the sat-nav on until I got to Pionsat so it took me via Manzat, St Hypocrite and that way, which is a beautiful run. I meant to stop and take some piccies on the way back but it brought me back up the N144 which is nothing like as exciting.

In other news, Rhys and I are well-known for our differences of opinion on the American political scene and we have long since agreed to differ. But in more shock! horror! news, we are in fact inaccord over one thing. And that is “what the hell has Obama done to merit the Nobel Peace Prize?”

Rhys thinks that a well-filled plain brown envelope changed hands, whereas I think that it was because he wasn’t the Bushbaby and someone wanted to rub the Bushbaby’s nose in the political dirt. But the Peace Prize is usually awarred to someone who makes a major breakthrough in some kind of inherent national or international conflict.

But giving it to someone who is just about to up the ante in Afghanistan and is considering sending in more troops to fight the indigenous inhabitants – it’s just insulting and offensive. The Nobel Committee should be ashamed of itself.

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Saturday 10th October 2009 – You would be amazed ….

… at the things you find lurking up side streets. Another one of my passions is old vehicles and so when I saw this beastie lurking up a side street in Montlucon today I just had to go for a nosey.

At first, from a distance, I thought it was a Russian GAZ lorry, a copy of the Studebakers and Chevrolets that the Americans supplied to the Russians under lend-lease during World War II but from close-up I don’t think it is. There’s no maker’s name on it anywhere that I could see so I could only be guessing as to what it might be. Although it looks vaguely 1940s-ish that’s deceptive too as Magirus Deutz were turning out lorries of this style as late as the early 1970s.

All the visible accessories (headlights – that kind of thing) were “made in France” so I’ve no idea. It’s a 4×4 anyway and solidly built.

So in Montlucon I picked up my furniture and almost everything I needed for the attic. I forgot the air vents though – little plastic grilles about 2″ in diameter to cover up the airholes that I need to make. But I also made an excellent purchase – an “end of series” composter that was going for €10:00. Why I need a new composter is because of a change to the beichstuhl arrangements. I shan’t go into the gory details but in a bid to do away with the chemical contraption I am putting into effect an arrangement that involves a plant pot and some biodegradable bin liners. I’m sure you can work it out for yourself.

Talking of biodegradable bin liners, I discovered a new bio shop in Montlucon – just down the road from Brico Depot. Not as big as Amaranth but I drive past it every week so it’s worth a visit. Their biodegradable bin liners cost €5.51 for 25 – a major improvement on Auchan’s €6:00 for 15.

At the footy tonight Pionsat lost 3-2 in a hotly-contested match. But I dunno what Damian put in his tea tonight but he played a blinder in goal tonight and made a series of brilliant saves. We were all well-impressed with his performance. With a bit of luck he would have kept out the goals too – he managed to get a hand to all of them.

And Liz has a problem with her telephone and she asked me to ring France Telecom to report the fault.
“You have to say the magic words, Liz“
“I’m baking tomorrow!”

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Friday 9th October 2009 – Well I never!

Well, alright, maybe I did just a few times.

But we had this impromptu Anglo-French conversation group meeting for the benefit of Dutch television and despite the fact that it was all done at such short notice, we managed to have 20 attendees.

Now I can’t think of any meeting apart from the inaugural one back in June last year when we had 20 people. And some people there tonight we hadn’t seen in ages and others we hadn’t seen at all. Such is the lure of the silver screen and the opportunity of being behind it instead of in front of it. The acid test though will come on Monday evening at one of our habitul reunions. If we manage to get half of the “extra” people to come there then I promise you that I will eat more humble pie.

And talking of being stage-struck, I was gob-struck. I know that it’s very rare that I miss out on a publiclty opportunity but a couple of people who appeared at this meeting brought with them a pile of publicity leaflets for the businesses that they are running. One woman owns a hot-air balloon and there was certainly enough hot air at this meeting to have got her balloon off the ground with no trouble at all.

Back in the attic I’ve finished the tongue and grooving as much as I can and I’ve framed the windows in the roof. I can’t do any more until I’ve fixed the next lot of plasterboard, which is Monday’s job.

Tomorrow is shopping day which involves picking up my furniture and just a few bits and pieces from Brico Depot. And that will be that because I won’t be doing any more for a while. When the attic is done I’ll be vegetating for a couple of weeks.

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Thursday 8th October 2009 – It rained today.

“So what?” I hear you say.
Well, the fact that apart from some trace amounts of rain that fell on 4 days recently, the last tine that there was any measurable rain was on … errr …. 20th September. And how long ago was that?

But never mind, because we more than made up for it today with 20mm of rainfall, most of which fell in late morning. And going from having run out of rainwater over the last two weeks, I now have more than I know what to do with. I might even have a wash!

Meanwhile, back in the attic, I’m still tongue-and-grooving. I didn’t do as much as I wanted to because even though I worked relentlessly until gone 19:00 (when the light went) I had some rewiring to do and I also had to track down some nails as I’m running quite short of them.

Tomorrow should see me finished as far as I can, and then I need to cut the bare plasterboard for the partition walls and do this electrical wire. Once that’s done I can finish it off completely.

And in other news, my furniture has arrived at Conforama. I can pick that up on Saturday.

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Wednesday 7th October 2009 – I’ve made a start …

… on the last row of tongue and groove as you can see. I finished off the row under the eaves this morning – I did it all at once as my back managed to hold out pretty much. And this afternoon I started on the scaffolding, which is much easier for working.

I’ve got to the first window now and I’ve built a framework around it. It needs to be tongued and grooved in the plane that you can see, but it also needs to be tongued and grooved “upwards” to enclose the different layers of the roof. It’s out of there that the roof breathes so when I’ve done it I have to drill some holes and put air grilles over then.

I was once again kept pretty busy on the phone too. Working it out, this last 24 hours I have –
i) translated an e-mail from English to French late last night (how anyone thinks that they can get any kind of coherence out of me after 19:00 is a mystery to me)
ii) helped out this morning a little with the arrangements for Friday night
iii) liaised between a garage and a client over some repairs to a car
iv) liaised between a client and the local mairie.

Last night I was talking to my friend Alexi on a messenger program that I use.We were both bemoaning the lack of night school opportunities over here on the mainland. Back in the UK I used to go to as many as I could and so did she. And that got me thinking about all of the people who have moved over here from the UK either full-time or for holiday purposes and who haven’t learned any French at all. I just dunno why, especially with all of the night school classes that the UK has.

But that’s not the point of this blog entry – people do as they please and how they feel comfortable.

But nevertheless, many people who read this blog have connections to the Open University and have engaged in the heavyweight debating conferences that exist there. I spent many a pleasant evening scrabbling through reference books and the like to back up points that I was making, and so did many others. That was probably the most rewarding part of our entire study.

But there was one competitor … er …. contributor who most people will recall and I shan’t mention any names. And while we were quoting data and statistics gathered from all of the far-flung corners of the world-wide web and the like, this contributor would come out with the most utter … er …. well, nonsense. And when we were asked to name our sources and quoted things like “The CIA International Yearbook” and “The Auschwitz On-Line Museum” and the like, this contributor would say that “well, I overheard someone talking about this in the Post Office this morning”.

And one of that person’s favourite hobby-horses was to go on and on and on ad infinitum about the flood of foreigners in the UK who can’t be bothered to learn English and have to take interpreters with them to the local council and the like (like I have to do quite often for the English living here but of course you wouldn’t expect people like her to understand that). And the bunch of mindless morons that loitered in the wings would come out in total agreement and sympathy. And now have a look at what I’ve been doing all day, apart from tongue-and-grooving. Yes, sometimes you really can’t understand how it is that the total irony of the situation goes way over the heads of most British people.

But when you break it down to the barest facts, the difference is that “we” are white and “they” are brown. And that somehow makes it all right.

Another favourite hobby-horse of this person is how certain sexually-transmitted diseases come from the (brown-skinned) peoples of North Africa because of their (alleged) social habits involving camels (Open University debates could be quite exciting places to be) but in this case the contributor definitely got it wrong. And how! In fact, the story originates from the days of the French Foreign Legion when a new Legionnaire signed up at the fort in the middle of the Sahara.
“What do you do for female company around here?” he asked
“Ohh, the men take it in turns to borrow the camel. In fact it’s your turn in three weeks time“
So three weeks later, when it’s his turn to borrow the camel he goes into the stable, removes certain items of his clothing and sets about the camel. And halfway through doing what it is that he’s doing he notices all of the other legionnaires standing around watching him.
“What do you think about this then?” he asks proudly.
“Well actually, all of the other men, when they borrow the camel they ride it into town to look for a woman“

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Tuesday 6th October 2009 – Just by way of a change …

… here’s a photo of the other side of the roof in the attic. You can see that I’m now advancing with the tongue-and-groove down that side too.

But it’s killing me, working in that confined space under the eaves. And working in that direction I’m having to work left-handed and upside-down so my back has gone and so have my knees.

I’m going to have another hour or so under there first thing tomorrow and then get on the scaffolding to do the upper half to give my knees and back a rest, and keep on alternating. About 2 or so more days of t&g-ing, and then I can make a start on the poncing.

Louise, whom some of you might remember from this blog in its previous incarnation, has now caught up with us (so hello again to you) and so has Dave – but he won’t be on line for a week or so as he’s now over here again. We had a good lengthy chat tonight on the phone and he’s going to be giving me a hand with the plumbing in the spring. And talking of the phone I had a lengthy chat this morning with Bill from the Anglo-French group.

In other news, Amazon is having a sale of classic rock CDs. Exciting news, you might think, but it’s all kinds of Pelvis Risley stuff and that sort of thing. Not so exciting. But one album I noticed on sale was “The Eagles Greatest Hits2 – surely a candidate for the title of the world’s smallest CD.

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Monday 5th October – I bet that you are all fed up …

… of seeing pictures of my blasted attic and this flaming roof. But not half as fed up as I am with doing the perishing thing. It’s never going to be finished at this rate.

About another two hours on this side of the roof tomorrow and then I can crack on with the other side. And for that, as well as having to cut around the central beams, I have to make the framework for round the windows.

Mind you, although it took me ages to get going this morning by late afternoon I was well into a rhythm and it was a shame to stop, but I had to go to the Anglo-French group.

I was working with Marianne the journalist tonight and it turns out that she is a reader at the Departmental Archives at Clermont Ferrand. She goes there every Wednesday and she’s promised to take me there one of these days and show me round. She’ll even help me get a readers’ ticket.

But talking of the Anglo-French group, yours truly might be making a dramatic return to the silver screen. My last TV appearance was in late December 1999 when I was interviewed (in Flemish, by Flemish TV) at Brussels (Zaventam) Airport for a TV programme about people travelling to celebrate the millennium. I was in fact off to New York.

rior to that I hosted (again on Flemish TV a programme about my favourite places in my local commune, which at the time was Schaerbeek. It’s one of the poorer communes in Brussels but it does have some magnificent and undiscovered corners. When I first went to live there I spent every weekend walking around getting to know the place.

My first TV appearance was just as memorable. August Bank Holiday 1974 – the Windsor Free Rock Festival and a TV news crew scanning the field looking for “typical rock fans” and Andrew Jenkins and I staggering into shot, each with a Watneys Party 7 can under each arm. Of course, my parents would happen to be looking at the news just then, wouldn’t they?

But back to the plot. A Dutch television producer wants to film the Combrailles and the efforts that are being made to welcome foreigners to the area. It seems that our little group has attracted their attention and they want to film us. These days we are about 12 or so regulars who come week after week after week more or less. Liz is sending out a mail to all of the subscribers to tell them of the filming. I’ll be interested to see how many of them turn out for the camera. Nantwich Parish Church usually has a congegration of about 15 for the evening service but when “Songs of Praise” was filmed there in the late 1960s you couldn’t get into the church for all of the dramatically-born-again-Christians who crawled out of the woodwork and into the church.

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Sunday 4th October 2009 – Chomp chomp chomp

The noise you can hear is me eating humble pie (not Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton) . Pionsat weren’t playing last night – I was looking at the wrong week in the agenda.
There was a Cup match this afternoon instead and it involved a drive down to Pontaumur, where Pionsat were humbled a couple of weeks ago, 8-1. And they put in a much-improved performance this week, only losing 5-0.

And what a match it was too! Famous not for the performance of the teams but the performance of probably the most eccentric referee I have ever seen. “I warned you about that in the first half” he yelled at a player who had only been on the pitch for half an hour. And when he awarded Pontaumur a (hotly disputed but in my opinion quite rightly so) penalty, he booked the … errr…Pontaumur goalkeeper.

But highlight of the game was the phrase that he uttered to one of the Pionsat players – a phrase that you will only ever hear once in a lifetime and only then if you are lucky so it pays to be in the right place at the right time –
“Turn round number 14, so I can see the number on your back!”
At this point, and for the rest of the match, the bewilderment was total.

After that, I went round to Simon’s to pick up my wood-burning stove. And it’s such a dinky little thing too but if it does its job I won’t be needing any more than that.

In other news, I’m now a student of Oxford University. I didn’t think I could keep out of education for long and I’ve enrolled in this course. Never mind the status of the University offering the course, have you seen the price? A 10-point course with the Open University costs £155 if you are a British resident, but a whopping great obscene and offensive £420 if you live in mainland Europe. £180 for 10 points at Oxford is a bargain.

There are many former OU students living in Mainland Europe. Many of them have given up their studies simply because of the spiralling fees that the OU has imposed upon them. A paper from the OU that I saw in February 2007 planning to use European students as cash cows certainly came home to roost as students deserted by the bus load.

And that has given me an idea for the practical part of this course. Raping looting and pillaging was always going to be on the agenda but what I’m now going to do is to round up a bunch of disenchanted European OU students, dress them up as Vikings, grab hold of an old longship and sail to Milton Keynes and ransack the Open University campus. I shall set Mike D. a special task – he’s the one who will be sent to carry off Turdi de Hatred and sell her in the slave market down at the Gare du Midi in Brussels on Sunday morning. He might get a couple of centimes for her if he’s lucky.

And in other other news, that well-known and legendary artist-cum-rapper Tracey Eminem has announced that she is to quit the UK in a protest against high taxation. Her admirable stand has been backed by the entire nation who has rushed round to her house to help her pack her bags. It reminds me of the time back in the 1970s when it was announced that Dolly Parton had a skin rash on her breasts and was looking for a volunteer to rub the cream in. Of course, being the altruist that I am, I immedately volunteered for the post and went round to see her doctor.
“Very good, Mr Hall” he announced. “Take this jar of cream and go to the United Nations Building in New York”
“I thought she lived in Nashville, Tennessee” I said
“So she does” he replied. “But the United Nations Building in New York is where the queue ends“

-4

EPIC HALL

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