Tag Archives: les guis

Friday 22nd May 2015 – I HAD A REALLY …

… good night’s sleep last night, just for a change.

Admittedly I went to bed late and I was up early with the alarm, but in between time I didn’t feel a thing.

After breakfast I finished off the notes for the rock music programmes, and also made up a sound file for my “studio guests”, something that I had forgotten to do.

Once I’d done that, I started on the rest of the radio programmes and had a good go at that, and that’s all that I’ve done today. I’ve only been outside to take the stats.

Tomorrow I’ll finish this off and my plan for the afternoon is to watch a football match. I want to see how this idea of running the laptop through the TV screen works for a streamed footy match.

In other news, you’ll remember the farce that was last season at Bangor City where the team, the best-supported in the WPL, struggled against relegation for most of the season.

The club has published its retained list of players from this season just ended, and they have announced 14 of the players who failed so spectacularly will be staying with the club. This means a place for about 5 or 6 new players, and that’s nowhere near enough to resolve the difficulties.

So it looks as if next seaso will be more of the same. What kind of joke is this?

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Thursday 22nd May 2015 – OUCH!

Yes, just picked Caliburn up from the Ford garage in Montlucon. He’s had his service but anything needed for the Controle Technique has not been done because, according to the garage, there’s “so much that needs to be done” and they’ve given me the kind of written estimate that has noughts all across the page.

And for a start, four of the things that they mention don’t need doing at all and I know that for definite. And as for Caliburn being rusted right through underneath, I’ve never seen so much rubbish in all my life. There’s a small spot on the nearside sill, but that’s not gone through at all and the rest of it is just stone-chip damage, and I did the worst (such as it was) the other day as I’m sure that you remember.

And there’s a lump out of the passenger door that certainly wasn’t there when I left him.

Consequently I’m going to take him for the controle technique “as is”, get a failure slip and then go to chat to someone else. I shall certainly eat Humble Pie if it is as bad as the Ford Garage suggests, and even if it is, I shan’t be paying anything like what the Ford garage wants.

But it will be a cold day in Hell before I ever go to the Ford garage in Montlucon again.

So that’s them off the list. And the Ford garage at Riom came off the list ages ago, and the one at Brussels came off the list after the dismal attempt at fixing the brakes last year as you remember.

There isn’t anyone left now.

Liz kindly took me into Montlucon this afternoon and we had several coffees and a chat, and then after I had rescued Caliburn I went off to do my shopping in the Auchan and in Brico Depot where I bought my bathroom sink and taps.

This morning though, with the new improved workstation, I mixed and engineered the live concert for the next month, and its come out quite well. Just two joints that aren’t quite right and having studied the waveforms, I can say that that’s a fault of the original mixing and there’s not much I can do about that.

As for the rest of it, it either merges in or overlaps perfectly and that was what I was hoping to do. You certainly can’t hear the joins there.

So tomorrow I’ll do the text for the rock programmes, and then start on the rest.

And last night’s temperature? A mere 2°C

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Wednesday 20th May 2015 – I’VE SOLVED …

… the question of the damaged computer screen on the old laptop – and I’ve solved it in spades too.

This morning I made a start on the radio programmes and in particular the rock programmes for the next edition of the Radio Anglais programmes that we will be doing.

Using a variety of sources (the SD card out of Caliburn, the music stored on a couple of mobile phones and the music on the memory stick in the Canadian travel bag) I’ve recovered more than enough music to have a good go at a few radio programmes to keep me going.

I’ve done the “miscellaneous” programme, but there’s an add-on missing from the program that I use for making up the live concerts and I’ve no idea where that might be.

But needing to use Audacity led me to require a full screen, and that started me thinking, which is always dangerous.

collection of input output sockets AKAI DVD player France may 2015Ages ago, Terry gave me a cable with an HDMI plug on one end and a USB plug on the other. And both the laptop and the 12-volt DVD player with its impressive 18-inch screen have the aforementioned.

But no matter which way round I plugged the cable in, it wouldn’t carry the signal from the laptop to the screen. Even jury-rigging an ad-hoc USB cable didn’t work either.

However, when I was at Montlucon this afternoon, I purchased the correct cable and – wha-hey! Not only do I have a most-impressive computer screen, I have the most astonishing stereo sound coming out of the speakers of the DVD player.

This is an exciting discovery and I’ll be actively pursuing this avenue in the future.

I took Caliburn into the Ford main agents for his annual service, but here’s a thing. They don’t have a rolling road there so they can’t balance out the brakes. That surely must be a first.

I had to walk into town afterwards and it’s been quite a while since I’ve done that journey.

canal du berry montlucon allier France may 2015My route took me past the site of the old Canal du Berry. Montlucon used to have a huge steel industry and in the days before the arrival, everything came in and out by canal.

This last 5 years or so, they’ve built over the bed of the canal and as I keep on saying, I woder how long it will be before they regret doing that.

medieval centre montlucon allier France may 2015Montlucon is a old Medieval walled city, although you might not think so if you have only ever see the outskirts of the place.

Liz was working until 18:30 and so that gave me plenty of opportunity to go for a wander around and see what was going on, as well as grabbing something to eat

medieval centre montlucon allier France may 2015This is believed to be one of the oldest buildings in the town, dating from the 14th Century, and it certainly looks it too.

There are several other old buildings in the immediate vicinity, noe of which is as old as this but well-worth a look all the same.

medieval centre montlucon allier France may 2015This though is my favourite building in Montlucon, but what lets it down is its immediate surroudings. Everything has been “redeveloped” with modern concrete slab construction.

It’s not clear whether it was the Mayor or the RAF that was responsible for the demolition in the immediate vicinity, but it’s far enough away from any major centre of any military importance to have been the RAF.

modern montlucon allier France may 2015At least when they rebuilt the city, they had the good sense to leave a large open space all the way from the railway station to the chateau so that there’s this most impressive view, and the fountain sets it all off nicely.

But I really cannot think what must have gone through the minds of the mayor and the town council to have rebuilt thiese dreadful concrete monstrosities.

memorial to SNCF railway employees died in World War II montlucon allier France may 2015Talking of the railway station, there has been some “talk” about the lack of resolution of the French in resisting the German invaders during World War II.

This part of France was only occupied for two years, and this is a memorial to the railway employees of the Montlucon railway depot who lost their lives due to “war-related incidents” during the war.

I’m not sure how many people worked at the depot, but there are 28 names on the list, all of them civilians. It doesn’t say how each of the people died, but I bet that it wasn’t peacefully in bed.

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Tuesday 19th May 2015 – SO HERE I AM …

… sitting at home with a laptop with a failed hard drive that doesn’t work.

And am I downhearted? No!!!!

Because I have another laptop with half a screen and half a keyboard to keep me going. And this just shows the beauty of a little program like Note Tab, where you can create your own library of regularly-used text and click on the library entry with the mouse to insert it in the text that you are writing.

So once you have set up your own alphabet library, using copy-paste from work that you have done before, you can type all kinds of lengthy documents using just a mouse (and if your mouse packs up, you can plug in an external one).

As for the cracked screen, then an old external screen from a desktop machine works fine, although by manoeuvring your work around to good bits of the screen, even that is not essential. And that’s how I’m working even as we speak

So you see, we’re still here and still churning out the rubbish. It’ll take more than a mere damaged computer to put a stop to me.

What did however put a stop to me was the phone, so at least I know that that is now working again. Terry is stuck for a cement mixer and seeing as how the one that I have is his old one, he wanted to know if he could borrow it. Well, I’m not likely to be using it for quite a while yet, so he came round to pick it up and we had quite a chat.

Then I went back and cracked on with the work.

And until about midnight, that’s exactly what I did too. All of the blog is now up-to-date and tomorrow, once I’ve taken Caliburn for his annual check-up, I’ll start on the radio programmes.

Shame that I lost them in my hard-drive crash, but there you go.

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Monday 18th May 2015 – AS YOU MIGHT EXPECT …

… we had something of a slow start this morning. After my long drive of yesterday and my bad night’s sleep thanks to the Swiss Highway Patrol, I was in no mood for an early start.

Nevertheless, I did heave myself out of my stinking pit at something like a reasonable hour and after breakfast I set to work.

And the result of today’s efforts is, quite frankly, in the words of the old poem three-fifths of five-eights of … errr … badger all.

Anyone reading this rubbish will recall that the laptop that packed up on my voyage is my second Acer Aspire. The first one has a broken screen and a smashed keyboard where something fell on it (but despite that, this is what I’m using regardless, with “cut-and-paste” for the missing letters and manoeuvring the workspace around the screen, which shows you just how resilient they are, not to mention the five hours battery life) so the idea was quite simple – two identical machines so just swap the hard drives over.

After about two hours, during which time I realised that despite the outer casing being identical, they are far from identical inside and not even the batteries will swap over. Moving the disks produces the error message “No bootable device detected” even though the disks are both being picked up by the BIOS.

Acer’s technical help was interesting too. On their live chat system, I had a brief discussion with a “technician” who then copy-pasted a huge long screed about “you need to send your machine in for repair. Please send us £50-odd to open a file for you, and then we will send you instructions”.

So much for that.

The ultimate solution to the problem is a new machine. And there was an Acer Aspire – a more up-to-date version of mine – for £219 which by the time I’ve added the £50 for the file, the cost of a new hard drive, the labour for the installation and the postage and packing is mere peanuts.

So that is that. Meanwhile, any tips for hacking the information out of the old failed drive would be much appreciated.

On that note I went down to the Intermarche in Pionsat to buy some food seeing as how there is nothing here to eat. But badger that for a moment – here’s something exciting.

old citroen 2CV intermarche pionsat puy de dome France may 2015You can tell by the louvred bonnet that this is one of the earliest Citroen 2CV’s, and the deckchair interior goes to prove it too.

And while I was having a good look around, the owner came out. None other than Marianne’s friend Francois Legay, who has quite an interesting collection of old vehicles.

This Citroen is a 1952 model and is about 98% original. The seat material, the cooling fan and one or two other bits and bobs have been replaced, mainly due to the difficulty of resourcing the original parts.

There’s a 375cc engine in there, air-cooled of course, and flat-out, downhill with a following wind the car might just manage 70kph.

So that cheered me up somewhat, and I went off quite happily to do my shopping.

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Sunday 17th May 2015 – WELL, WASN’T THAT EXPENSIVE?

There I was, deep in the arms of Morpheusin the small hours in my little rest area at the side of a Swiss Autoroute when there was a banging on the door and a cry of “Kontrole!”

Yes, the Swiss police are not noted for their sense of humour but then they do have a job to do, I suppose, and I duly presented my papers.

While they were being checked, I had a lengthy chat with one of the other officers about this and that, and then it came down to the crunch “where’s your vignette?”

If you use a Swiss autoroute you have to buy a special sticker to give you the necessary entitlement, and in all my years of travelling I’ve never ever bothered with it. But sooner or later I was bound to be picked up, and sleeping in a rest area on the autoroute made it an odds-on certainty.

No complaints from me about it, although it stopped me going back to sleep again. And while I was lying there in half a daze, it occurred to me that I’d carried on a conversation for about 15 minutes in German without even pausing for breath. Things are looking up!

overnight stop rest area autoroute switzerland may 2015Next morning in the bright sunshine, a took a photo of the rest area just to prove that I had been here, and then I made myself a coffee. Nothing else though, because I realised that I had forgotten to buy anything for breakfast

I was definitely having a bad morning.

The irony of all of this is that just about 15 minutes later, The Lady Who Lives In The Sat-Nav directed me off the autoroute and into the Jura mountains for a leisurely drive home, most of which was completely uneventful except for at the boulangerie where some woman moaned like hell because I had the nerve to complain that she had blocked me in on the car park. Silly four-legged animal well-known for giving a high-quality dairy drink!

My road back took me via Macon and that gave me an idea. I telephoned my friend Jean-Marc who lives up in the hills at the back of the town to see if he was in for visitors, and to give him an opportunity to flee the country before I arrived.

We first met when we were both 16 – Crewe was twinned with Macon and we exchanged families during one summer. I went to live there and he went to live in Crewe. And we met up again last year under the most bizarre circumstances, as long-term readers of this rubbish will well-recall.

We had a long chat and discussed old times for quite a while, and drank a couple of cups of coffee, for which I was very grateful.

And then I had a completely uneventful drive back home, arriving at about 20:05.

And as Barry Hay once famously said during a live Golden Earring concert on Scheveningen Beach back in 199(3?) – “let me tell you one thing, man, it’s always good to be back home!”

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Wednesday 6th May 2015 – DOESN’T CALIBURN LOOK SMART …

caliburn new number plate roady nemours france… with his new front number plate?

Here we were, going up the autoroute to wards Paris yesterday late afternoon in a howling gale and I stopped to make what is called a “comfort break”. Going back to Caliburn afterwards, I noticed that the white refelective part of his number plate was detaching itself from the background.

Cheap number plates, I suppose, and here I was off to Germany for two weeks. If it all comes apart in Germany I’ll be sunk, and the controle technique as soon as I return, I could do with having this fixed instanter.

Back on the autoroute again and we drove around the town of Nemours. And there on the Trading Estate I could just about make out one of these car accessory places. 18:55 it was, 5 minutes to chucking-out time, but nevertheless when I arrived they were still there. The plate cost an arm and a leg as you might expect, but they also had a fitting service for a couple of Euros. Anyway, there wasn’t much option. It’s cheaper than a fine and I’m going to have to have the number plate anyway for the controle technique. May as well do it now as later.

I’m not sure whether you can see it in the photo but I now have my dash cam installed. I had that running for the journey. It’s cheap, as you can tell by the price and by the quality of materials, and the instructions, written in basic Chinglish, are, shall we say, “unhelpful”. However, it does what it says it does, and quite good enough for what I want, although I’m going to have to stop talking to myself when I’m driving.

I was on the road by 15:00, having spent the morning tidying the house and doing a little cleaning, and I arrived here at about 23:45 after several stops. One of which was at Melun, where I discovered a new takeaway where they did me proud.

On the way up, though, I started to make a list of things that I have forgotten, including the cooking stove and the portable beichstuhl.

It’s going to be one of THOSE journeys, isn’t it?

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Tuesday 5th May 2015 – HAVING CURSED ORANGE TELECOM …

… with what can best be described as “an expletive-ridden rant” on Saturday, it’s only fair that I report on my visit this morning to the main Orange Telecom shop in the centre of Montlucon. And apart from not being open unti 10:00, I do have to say that the personnel in the shop could not have been more helpful. It was a stark contrast to Saturday, and had I had today’s treatment then, I would have been delighted.

So now, after having been to Montlucon and back, reconfigured the new Livebox and made a couple of phone calls, I now have a proper working home telephone, a proper working mobile phone (and one of the guys in Orange helped me configure it so that I could access the internet) and my e-mail and website back up. So it’s all systems go here in Pooh Corner.

As for the website, I finally managed to speak to someone at the Danish Domain Registration Service, and they were so horrified about my two-hour hold yesterday that they extended my domain renewal by 12 months free of charge. So all’s well that ends well there too.

So having done that, I propped Caliburn up on axle stands, removed the spare wheel (and checked it over) and then made a start on rustproofing the underneath.

rustproofing underneath caliburn ford transit les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs you can see, what I have done so far has come out quite well.

The wire brush on the angle grinder was far too savage so in the end I cleaned it off by hand, and the rustproofing paint went on quite easily, giving a lovely finish. I let in dry for a couple of hours and then put the spare wheel back and dropped Caliburn back off the axle stands.

I’ll be doing the rest of the floor bit by bit (there’s nothing cluttering the rest of the underside) and then going round to give it all a second coat. Once that’s been done and it’s all stabilised, I can underseal it all and that will keep it good for another 8 years.


When that had been done, I checked over Caliburn to make sure that there was enough oil, water and so on and then gave the back a really good clear-out.

french air force place low flying over les guis virlet puy de dome franceWhile I was starting to load up Caliburn, I had spectators. The French Air Force came for a look around to see what I was up to. They’ve come round to check up on me a few times

But in Caliburn there’s now about half of the stuff that I need to take with me, and I’ll do all of the rest tomorrow before I go. It shouldn’t take too long, I hope, and then I can clear off.

I’m taking the horizontal axis wind turbine with me too. I’s never had a decent run out yet, and I reckon that parked up on the side of the autoroutes, or by the side of a big lake, it ought to do something, and this would seem to be a good time to try it.

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Monday 4th May 2015 – HAPPY STAR WARS DAY

And it’s another day when I’ve been heavily sidetracked and not done anything like what I intended to do.

A late night last night, and I was on my travels too. A Mercedes 25-seater bus, a 407-type of thing, came down the lane and when he reached the junction he didn’t know which way to go, so he travelled straight on, right through my hedge (which I don’t actually have of course).

Naturally, I was furious, and buttonholed the driver, and his response was “it’s okay. I’ll buy you a srink and it will be fine”. I told him that I expected much more than a drink for the damage that he had caused, but he ran away.

After breakfast, I did all of the paperwork for Orange Telecom and then went into Pionsat to post it off. On the way back, I gave Caliburn a really good wash and soak. And I can see that I’m going to have to give his bodywork some attention in the near future.

From there, I could carry on with cleaning and grouting the beichstuhl, and once I’d done that, I started to fit the top. And that took a huge amount of work – much more than you might think. It needed considerable modification.

Cecile hadn’t been able to contact the telephone company about my line, but at lunchtime I noticed that Liz was on line, so she gallantly took up the cudgel. And with Liz and I exchanging messages on here and Liz passing them on to the technician on the phone, we finally worked out that the problem was in the Livebox, That’s no surprise as it’s quite flaky and nothing like as good as the previous one.

However, about 10 minutes after the call ended, the Livebox gave a peculiar squeak and Lo and Behold, the phone line came back.

That was the queue to catch up on a few outstanding phone calls and having been kept hanging on the line by a Danish computer company for no less than TWO HOURS, I called it a day.

So tomorrow, I’ll have to change my plans and go to Montlucon for this blasted Livebox. I wasn’t anticipating having to waste my time doing that.

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Sunday 3rd May 2015 – TODAY WAS ANOTHER DAY …

… where I’ve hardly set foot outside the door. In fact, the only time that I went out (apart from doing the stats) was to rescue my coffee mug from Caliburn.

And as it was Sunday, I had the alarms switched off and so I slept through until 09:50 – and quite right too. It’s what Sundays are for;

I was on my travels last night and I had one of those rare (for me, at least, but not apparently so rare for other people who were on this study that we did) occasions where I wasn’t a participant but a spectator. All the events took place in the USA, in quite a wealthy area in a huge modern house inhabited by a banker. He and another banker were busy trying to undermine the bank of a rival company and I was watching them try to use all kinds of disreputable tactics, including implicating the children of this third banker, to achieve their aims.

The interesting thing about this was the viewpoint from which I was observing the events. At times, I was in the room with everyone, and ay other times I was high up in the sky with a kind of drone’s-eye view. And the view from this viewpoint included a splendid school of a circus school and in particular the school for the flying trapeze and my view from here was being continually interrupted by trapeze artists flying through my field of view.

Apart from that, I’ve been working on the radio programmes for Radio Anglais. I finished off the rock music programmes and then did the additional notes for the next five weeks of Radio Arverne radio programmes.

As well as that, I did some research into where I’ll be going in Germany next week

And that’s my lot really. And quite right too. I’m entitled to a day of rest. Tomorrow, it’s back to work.

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Saturday 2nd May 2015 – I WON’T HAVE MUCH …

… of my mind yet at this rate, the amount that I have been giving out to other people just recently. And today was the day that capped it all and they will remember me in the Orange telecom boutique in Montlucon for quite a long time.

For in there today, I have had customer service of the kind that makes Belgium look impressive.

It all started when I arrived at the place and there were two assistants on duty (on a Saturday morning!), of which one of them sat there all morning just tapping numbers into a telephone, making no attempt whatever to deal with the huge crowd of people in there.

I’ve never seen anything like this at all.

I had to wait there for a good hour before I was finally seen, and we started off as we meant to go on when the assistant refused to take back the television decoder that I have mysteriously been sent.
“You can do that at the other shop” she said.
“So why not here?”
“Because you do it at the other shop”.
Quite.

And then we finally had to deal with the issue of the contract for the new service. Despite my asking for hard copy stuff because I don’t have a printer, Orange still managed to send it to me by e-mail. So I needed them to print it out.

She could manage that fine, and so I suggested that I can fill in the papers then and there and that would be fine, but …

Ohhhhh Noooooo –
“you did this by internet”
“yes I did”
“so you need to post this off”
“why?”
“Because you sis it on line”
“But this is an Orange shop?”
“yes”
“So why can’t i just do it and hand it in here?”
“Because you did it on line”.

It was at that point that I exploded and, as I said, they won’t forget me in a hurry in there. It’s a long time since I’ve reacted like that. And even though it won’t solve anything, I felt so much better afterwards.

And I haven’t finished yet, by any means.

Apart from that, I’ve done the rounds of the usual shops in Montlucon and bought a pile of DVDs and also some new cotton bedding in the sale at Auchan – some nice dark brown cotton pillow cases and a quilt cover and a light brown cotton sheet.

I’ve bought the stuff in Brico Depot that I need to finish off the beichstuhl and the lights in the bedroom, and probably a few other things besides. There was a nice wooden toilet seat that will fit nicely on the beichstuhl too. But not the worktop – I’ve seen something that might provide a solution for this.

It was also a day for meeting people too. I had a coffee with Liz and Terry, whom I had met at the Orange boutique, and then bumped into Pascal, Marianne’s son, at leClerc. In the Auchan it was the turn of Michel, who used to be associated with the football club at Pionsat and he told me few things that answered several but by no means all) of what has been going on at the football club.

But no football this weekend, so tomorrow I might even have a blast at the radio programmes.

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Friday 1st May 2015 – IT’S THE FETE DE TRAVAIL …

… here in France today, and so everyone celebrates the Festival of Work by not working.

I’m included in that too – I had a day off and spent the morning in bed, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was on my travels too – running a taxi company with one of my old drivers and with a yound lad who was a chauffeur with us in the EU. We were quite busy and the older driver had a long-distance job to do, so when someone asked me to send a car to meet the bus traveling from Chester to Newcastle-under-Lime, I was worried about whether he would be back in time to do the job, but as it happened, the younger driver was free at the right moment so he made the pick-up.

And meanwhile, I was living with Marianne in an apartment somewhere – a bit salubrious and run-down, and I remember changing my bedroom to one that was much smaller and painted yellow. As the alarm clock was showing the wrong time, I was busy resetting it, and Marianne, who saw me do it, asked me if I was planning to leave.

After breakfast, I had something of a rest and relax, and then went round to Cecile’s. There were a few jobs that needed to be done there, so I attended that.

I’ve had some paperwork to do as well. I’m going into Montlucon tomorrow and I need a few papers signing so I want to make sure that I have all that I need.

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30th April 2015 – NOT ONLY DID I …

… finish the plasterboarding around where the beichstuhl will be, I have made further great progress today.

First though, I had a rummage around in the barn looking for plasterboard. I can see me being short of decent plasterboard for the shower room if I’m not careful, and around the beichstuhl will be a good place to use a few offcuts.

So once that had been done, I attacked the major task that needed to be done, and one which I am never happy when I have to do it.

tiling beichstuhl shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceWallpapering is a job that I detest, as you know, but one that I am never happy tackling, much as I enjoy it, because I’m rubbish at it, is tiling.

However, supposing that it all sticks to shere it’s supposed to, it hasn’t come out too badly. Thats mainly because I managed to make the consistency of the paste just about right, but also to the Rawlplug electric tile-cutter that I bought for peanuts from a car boot sale years ago. It’s cheap and basic, and the design could be improved in a million ways, but it cuts tiles a thousand times better and a thousand tiles quicker that I could ever do and it was well worth every penny that I paid for it.

I had fun cutting the hole for the breather pipe, but luckily it’s near the edge of a tile so I cheated with a deft little technique with the tile cutter

Now I know that I have said on a million occasions that I hate white, so why the white tiles? The answer is that when I lived with Laurence and her daughter Roxanne, and Roxanne’s school was making mosaics, a friend of a friend gave me “some” waste tiles – “some” being enough to fill a Ford Escort estate. And there were plenty in there that were certainly serviceable, so I put them on one side for jobs such as this.

So that’s a nice job to finish off the week, as it’s Bank Holiday and so a day off tomorrow. No alarm, and no working either. I could do with a few more days like that.

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29th April 2015 – TODAY IS ANOTHER DAY …

… when I smell all coconutty.It was a much better day today and the temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load for the excess solar energy reached 64°C. Consequently, when I knocked off at 18:30 this evening, I put some hot water in a bucket, cooled it down with some cold water, and then had one of my patent “jug showers” in the corner of the verandah. And wasn’t that lovely?

So today, I’ve varnished all of the woodwork that I cut yesterday. So far it’s had two coats on either side but tomorrow morning it will have the third coat on the outer side.

That is, apart from the pine board that will be the front of the beichstuhl. That’s had three coats ion the other side, and nothing on the inside, and for the simple reason that I’m going to tile all of the inside of the beichstuhl. If I’m having the fittings for the composting toilet in there, it needs to have a wipe-down surface and varnished pine boards don’t work.

I’m even going to tile the floor in there too – something that I said that I wouldn’t do, but cleaning has to be the thing with a composting toilet. Consequently, I spent about half an hour going through all of the odds and ends of tiles to find enough for the job.

I’ve started to refit the plasterboard too, which of course I’ll need to do if I’m going to do the tiling.

In other news, I’ve made advances with the electrical system here. Having had a test-bed in the barn with the old internet Livebox running on 12-volt DC non-stop for 10 days, I’ve set up the new one in here and that’s now running on 12-volt DC instead of the mains and an adapter. It took ages to set up, but the situation was greatly eased when I remembered to switch on the Livebox.

But this is yet more progress around the house.

And on my travels during the night, I was joined by someone else with whom I wouldn’t aprticularly care to pss any real time. I was in my car and explaining to the aforementioned about MP3s in car radios with either memory sticks or SD cards – an invention which hadn’t, apparently, penetrated into the depths of darkest Crewe.

But all of these unwelcome people turning up in my nocturnal voyages. Whatever is this all about?

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Tuesday 28th April 2015 – I STARTED BACK …

… to work again today. And I felt a little better, especially as the weather wwas better. Mind you, during the night the temperature outside had dropped to 2.5°C and so I’m back in a jumper.

I’ve finished off cutting and shaping the shelf that will be the top of the beichstuhl – the composting toilet. The lids have been cut out and the “porthole” cut into the larger lid.

I’ve had to put quite a large amount of reinforcement under the lids as the pine isn’t as strong as I would like it to be. Having saved the offcuts from the heavy floorboards that I used as the under-layer in the shower room, I had a good supply of decent reinforcement too.

The hinges were not a success though. This is due mainly to the thin-ness of the pine shelving. Discreet, hidden shelving is not really possible and so I’m going to have to go for intrusive tee-hinges, which is something of a let-down.

However, a couple of things that I wish is that –
1) I wish that I would stop cutting bits off the top of my old Workmate every time I wield the circular saw.
2) whenever I cut myself with a tool, I wouldn’t bleed all over the clean pine shelving.

For tea, I made a courgette and lentil curry – enough for four days. And it took longer than planned because I had to dismantle the cooker. It seems that there was something growing in one of the jets. It’s amazing at just how much better the gas is burning now. It must have been blocking itself up for a couple of years.

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