Tag Archives: high winds

Wednesday 3rd April 2014 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-2

Saturday 29th March 2014 – JUST HOW UNLUCKY CAN YOU BE?

Jerome Brunet has the ball about 15 yards out and whacks the ball goalwards with everything that he has got. It hits the knee of a defender, cannons right out of the area and back all the way over the halfway line to where a lone Beauregard l’Eveque forward is standing. And he has the simplest of tasks with a one-on-one with Michael, while everyone in the stadium looks on, open-mouthed.

Back in the early 70s I once saw Albert Kinsey, playing for Crewe Alexandra, hit the bar with such force that the rebound cleared the halfway line before it bounced, but I’ve never seen anything like this.

So FC Pionsat St Hilaire lost again, 5-3 this time, to this goal and two of the most controversial offside decisions that I have ever seen, each one of which resulted in a Beauregard goal. And Pionsat should have had this team dead and buried. Hit the bar, hit the post twice, kicked off the line three times, and in the dying minutes they had 6 consecutive corners to add to the 25 that they had had during the rest of the match. But to lose a game in this fashion leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.

Add to that the fact that Michael bravely took his place in goal after his bad injury two weeks ago, but lasted just 45 minutes. Young Frédéric took ovee for the second half and looked the part, but he let two goals in and you really can’t do much about that. Everyone was doing his best today.

But it does have to be said – that breakaway goal, no matter how unlucky, wouldn’t have been scored had Pionsat’s defence been concentrating. Those two offsides – how many times do I have to spell it out – you don’t hang around with your hand up waiting for the referee’s whistle, no matter how clear-cut it might be. You play the ball and let the whistle take care of itself.

The fourth goal – the defence being out of place when the team loses possession and the midfield slowly ambling back instead of having any sense of urgency at all. Consequently the defence is caught short-handed.

And the fifth goal – Pionsat messing about in defence again – failing to clear the ball upfield or out for a throw-in but showing off on the edge of the penalty area and losing possession.

It’s all simple schoolboy errors, this is, and it’s been the same ever since I’ve been following the club, and probably before as well. The problem is that there is no leadership out there in the team – no-one who can take command.

So apart from that, having had a day off yesterday, I worked today. Until 12;00 I was working on the laptop – not on the website but writing the notes for the rock music programmes that we do on Radio Anglais.

Later, I went out and dug over another raised bed. This is the one where the shuttering has collapsed and so I used those red bricks that I was telling you about. However it hasn’t worked – that isn’t going to be very successful unfortunately as the bricks are too low and so I can’t dig them in properly. In fact it looks something of a mess. I shall need to think again.

I did manage a bit of work on the website once I had finished the raised bed. It is Saturday after all and there’s no point in killing myself by starting on another one.

And we had another day of high winds. More wind energy today than we have had in the last three or four weeks combined. I wish that it was like this every day.

-4

Thursday 13th February 2014 – IT TOOK ME MOST OF THE BLASTED DAY …

… to fit one tread of the stairs.

But then again there are several good reasons for that.

Firstly, it’s one of the larger stair treads and is on an angle. Furthermore, access is difficult and the tongue needed to be cut off the first piece and then sanded down to give it a professional appearance. I’m not going for half-measures here. And not only that, it needed to be cut in 7 different ways, with the use of a floating T-square and other geometric instruments.

The result wasn’t perfect, but where it missed, it would be covered over by plasterboard so it didn’t make much difference.

Next I cut the second piece, and that was an excellent job but … hang on … the levels are out. And it’s from the same plank of wood. But the tongue is off-centre and so I must have cut the second piece upside-down.

And so I recut a second piece and made sure that it was the right way up before I shaped it. And then took it upstairs and … hang on … the levels are still out. Dammit dammit dammit! It’s the first piece that I’ve cut upside down after all of the work that went into it and the time that it took!

And so I recut a first piece and learning from the errors of the first attempt, this one ended up pretty near perfect and it’s ever so impressive, even if by now it was lunchtime.

After lunch I cut the third piece, which was another good measure, and then for the fourth and final piece I had an offcut from the bathroom that was the correct basic length before shaping.

And having done that, this was when I realised that despite the wood of the bathroom being exactly the same as the rest of the wood, the tongue was too long. That therefore had to be cut down and filed.

Once all of that had been done, the whole tread needed to be properly aligned, screwed to a batten to keep it all in position, lifted off, taken to the workbench for trimming with the circular saw.

It was at this point that the battery in the circular saw went flat.

Once the battery was recharged and the tread trimmed off, I could put it back in position and nail it down, finally removing the batten.

So now you can see why it took most of the day to do all of that.

With 40 minutes left, I measured up and cut the first piece for the upper stair on the reverse angle. That involved nine cuts with all kinds of geometric equipment and also a hand-drawn angle as I couldn’t fit the floating T-square into the gap. And to the surprise of not only Yours Truly but everyone else reading these pages, that ended up millimetre-perfect. And the correct way up too. I just had to trim a little off so that I could swing it round the corner and into position, but the plasterboard will cover that gap.

So what’s going to hold me up tomorrow then?

In other news – we had one of those days where we had everything – except the Plague of Locusts. Wind gusting up to 67km/h, torrential rain, hailstorms. You name it, we had it. It’s like Passendaele 1917 outside here right now – most unpleasant.

And tonight, just as I was about to start eating my tea, Trixie phoned for a chat. I ended up with cold pasta and aubergine casserole, but as I have said so often before … "and you’ll say it so often again" – ed … what’s a little inconvenience when it comes to your friends? I value my friends higher than my stomach. But it’s amazing how often it happens, isn’t it?

-2

Monday 3rd February 2014 – IT’S A GOOD JOB …

… we weren’t playing today because when the alarm woke me this morning, all I could hear was the howling wind outside. This morning was amazing, with another shed-load of wind and my clothes, the ones that I washed three weeks ago, they are finally dry.

And I also had the best night’s sleep for absolutely ages, especially as how I crashed out at 22:30 before I’d even put yesterday’s blog on line.

And the dream too. I was with a lady of my acquaintance and we were in Nantwich, going around all of the places that we knew in our adolescence and looking at how they had changed. The “Rifleman” pub, for example, all boarded up and overgrown with weeds and the like. But the little pub over the road, in a converted terraced house, that was still open and we went in there for a drink as my companion wanted to use “the facilities” and she had issues about using them without being a customer. I did explain that we could pay 5p in a public convenience and that would work out far better than buying a round in a pub but she was unmoved.

We noticed after that, that it was 18:00 and we had to be in Chester later that evening. It was a long walk of 20-odd miles (I did in fact walk it on several occasions through the night when my then-girlfriend Liz was at college there in the 1970s and I didn’t have a car) and I had to push my friend in a wheelchair. I therefore made a contingency plan by having her look at bed-and-breakfasts and guesthouses at Tarporley, at the halfway point, although I wasn’t convinced that we would be there by 21:00 either.

As I have said before … "and you’ll say again" – ed … if only my real life was half as exciting as my dreams.

So after breakfast, we had a little pause for an hour or so while I made up a charging cable. As you know, with the issues about Caliburn’s battery, I don’t actually have a way of charging up a van battery from the solar panels, which is probably the silliest thing imaginable seeing as how I have about 1500 watts-worth of solar panels all told. I therefore made up a lead of 6mm cable with a North American plug on one end and a pair of crocodile clips on the other. Once I’d made that, I put Caliburn’s old battery on charge and I’ll keep doing that every 15 days or so depending on the weather. If I can keep it reasonably well topped up, it’ll do for emergencies.

Once that was out of the way, I attacked the plasterboarding in the stairwell on the wall that is on the outside of my little room here. And by the time that I knocked off, that was all finished, even down to putting a couple more battens on the wall to support the plasterboard where there will be a join. We are indeed making progress.

But the weather was really gorgeous today too. Beautiful blue skies all day and a total of 145 amps of surplus solar energy in the water tank that took the temperature up to 56°C. The absence of winter is rather worrying.

-1

Wednesday 1st January 2014 – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

It didn’t start off as being too happy though. The mango-flavoured artisanal lemonade clearly had an effect on me because I was up and down like a jack-in-the-box through the night.

Of course, you really wanted to know that, didn’t you?

I eventually raised myself from the undead at about 09:30 and had a leisurely, prolonged breakfast drinking coffee, watching DVDs, and listening to the high winds that we are having again.

Later, I caught up with something that I’ve been meaning to do for quite a while.I copied most of my music onto the copmuter ages ago and a few years ago when I bought my SD-card hi-fi I copied it onto SD cards to play it up here. And I bought a car radio with an SD-card socket, so that I could play it in Caliburn too.

I’ve been buying quite a bit of music recently too as you know, but I’ve never updated the SD cards, and so, as I had a pile of 2GB SD cards hanging around here doing not very much at all, I’ve copied as much of my music as possible. I would have done all of the rest too but I’ve run out of 2GB cards. If I can’t find any more anywhere, I’ll have to do the rest on some 1GB cards that I might have somewhere.

I’ve also been working on the website. I’ve let the Lesguis site run down a little so this afternoon I did the 2009 page and the 2010 page.

Maybe, if I don’t feel like working tomorrow, I’ll do the 2011, 2012 and 2013 pages and that will be bang up-to-date.

So Happy New Year again. I wish you all for 2014 exactly the same as you wished everyone else for 2013.

-5

Tuesday 31st December 2013 – THE MOST ASTONISHING THING …

… happened today- so much so that it’s well-worth recording.

I have never ever talked about, much less photographed, the ground floor of this house. And for good reason too. When I bought the place back in 1998 I quickly dumped in there a pile of rubbish and since then the rubbish has been accumulating. Add to that a huge piles of damaged tiles, a couple of large piles of rubble from demolished walls and excavated floors, several bags of cement and plaster, and whatever else you can think of, then it really is a total disgrace.

On top of that, anything that doesn’t have a home anywhere else has been stuck in there to such an extent that moving around in there can definitely be a hazard to one’s health. I did once hear a story about someone who hoarded old newspapers and was crushed to death when a pile collapsed on top of her. Well, believe me, it’s not too far away from that on the ground floor.

Anyway, having said that, I was untangling a pile of cables from the equipment of the “Tower of Power” so that I can put that upstairs in the lean-to when, you’ve guessed it, I had an avalanche.

So that was that. I spent a delightful four hours this morning in the living room sorting out all kinds of stuff. New stuff into the lean-to, old good stuff ditto, plumbing fittings into the water room etc etc. That was followed by a couple of bags of paper waste into the old damaged water butt which will now be a paper receptacle, and a couple of bags of genuine rubbish into the back of Caliburn.

It doesn’t look like much of an improvement, for there’s 15 years’ worth of rubbish in there and I will need more than four hours to move all of that, but you would be surprised at the difference that it has made and now I can boldly go where no man has gone before since at least 1999. If that’s not progress then nothing is.

Another thing was that I had a bad night’s sleep. I was still wide awake at 03:00 and I was back awake again long before 07:30 when the alarm went off. Either there’s a lot of people talking about me, or else it’s my guilty conscience again.

And while it didn’t rain today, it was overcast and miserable with only the occasional glimpses of sun. We had high winds too – not like the high winds of the other day but high winds nevertheless.

After all of my exertions I knocked off for lunch at about 15:00 – late, I know, but I was on a roll – and then crashed out for a while and when I get my hands on the bank clerk from Pionsat ho woke me up with the telephone, he’ll be looking for a new set of teeth too. I was well away.

Tea was roast potatoes, broccoli, carrots, boiled potatoes, leeks, seitan slices, onion and garlic gravy with sprouts done to perfection, all cooked on the wood stove, followed by vegan Christmas Cake and “artisanal” mango-flavoured lemonade.

What more can any man desire (apart from Kate Bush and Jenny Agutter to share it with me)?

So now I’m off work for the next couple of days. And then, who knows? I might even carry on with the tidying up.

-8

Tuesday 24th December 2013 – TOTALLY ASTONISHING!

Yes, I should say so. The wind here has been such today that I’ve had more wind energy in the last 24 hours than I’ve had in the preceding 12 months. According to the anenometer on the barn, we had gusts of up to 52mph. I was in the barn as a little of this was going on, a quick glance at the wattmeter attached to the ageing 400-watt Air 403 that I bought from Southwest Wind Power in Flagstaff, Arizona in 2002 was showing that at that particular moment I was receiving 280.3 watts of power and I have never before seen anything even approaching that amount of power.

And even as I type, I can hear the hollow tube of the turbine mount whining away, which means that the wind turbine is still churning it out. All in all I’m overwhelmed with this and I do wish that I could have this amount of wind every day.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the shelving unit is finished – or, at least, it’s finished as far as it will be for the next few days and I’ll add the doors and siding in due course.

It took me about 4 hours to finish it off and to screw it down, and the hardest job was to set it all in tension. It’s not just a floppy old wobbly shelf unit but something quite structural.

The shelving planks are a little warped but firstly, it’s cheap concrete shuttering that I buy at Brico Depot. Rough and ready, very solid, very thick, and very cheap. And secondly, of course, it’ll straighten itself out when it has some weight on it. I don’t mind it being like this at all – it’s not as if it’s for the inside of the house, of course.

When I finished it, I started to load it up, but called a halt for lunch – rather later than usual but I was enjoying myself.

After lunch and a brief siesta (I really don’t know what’s up with me these days) I went round to Liz and Terry’s with their Christmas presents, and they very kindly fed me and also loaded me up with a pile of goodies too, more of which tomorrow.

And now I’m back here. All of the alarms are switched off and I don’t intend to be doing anything for the foreseeable future. After the year that I’ve just had, I deserve a really long break.

+10

-7

Saturday 21st December 2013 – TO THOSE OF YOU …

… who believe in these things, a very happy Solstice to you. For those of us who are concerned with the supply of solar energy, then the days will start to lengthen tomorrow and personally, I can’t wait for that.

But last night anyway, not being able to sleep until 04:30 or thereabouts (shouldn’t have had all that coffee yesterday), it was pretty hard to be awake when the alarm went off at 07:30 and it wasn’t until about 09:20 that I crawled out of my comfortable bed.

The trouble with this sort of thing is that one doesn’t feel up to doing much when one is awake and after breakfast and cleaning out the fire, I was a little “distant” for a while. But then the shops were calling and I headed off to St Eloy. I bought nothing special except the fresh vegetables – Christmas isn’t the same without sprouts, broccoli and leeks to go with my seitan slices and roast potatoes, that’s for sure.

I didn’t do too much this afternoon either – I remember making a coffee when I returned home and then the next thing that I remember was that it was 18:15, so I made myself one of these home-made potato and onion pies for tea for the next few days, and that was that.

Outside right now, we’re having a howling gale. there has been plenty of wind just recently and I’m glad that I have my wind turbines.

-1

Monday 16th December 2013 – WE’VE BEEN RADIOING…

… today. It’s that tile of the month isn’t it? Well, actually it isn’t – we’re a week early but I’m badgered if I’m going to go out and work any time between Thursday night this week and January 2nd 2014.

So after an exciting dream and an early morning, I was at the Radio Tartasse studio in Marcillat to record the rock programmes for next month and then Liz and I did the January “Radio Anglais” recordings. No events – the Tourist Board isn’t pulling its weight – and so we waffled on about places to visit – to such an extent that we didn’t even have time to talk about the technical issues.

after lunch of bread and lentil soup we went to Gerzat for the Radio Arverne sessions, and heard the good news that we will be moving into a purpose-built studio in the autumn. not before time too as the Arverne equipment is definitely creaking.

Back to Liz’s and coffee and mince pies and then on the way back here I went via Cécile’s to pick up the last load of washing. The stuff that I hung outside this morning was already dry, and the load that I rescued this evening, that went on the line as soon as I returned home as we are having another warm, windy night.

This weather is just topsy-turvy but I’m not complaining. After the bitterly long cold winter we had last year, we need an Indian summer right now.

-3

Sunday 15th December 2013 – YOU MAY NOT BELIEVE THIS …

… but outside here right now I have a washing line strung up outside and a pile of washing hanging from it.

Today has been another delightful day for weather and a strong wind has been blowing for most of the day. We were radio rehearsing today at Liz’s and I had to go round to Cécile’s on the way to pick up a box of stuff. And as there was a bag full of dirty washing in Caliburn, I took advantage of Cécile’s washing maching (I hope that you don’t mind, Cécile) and bunged it all in.

On the way back I picked it up and back here, with the temperature at about 8°C and this strong warm wind blowing, I hung it up outside to dry. It will be interesting to see what it’s like tomorrow morning.

With it being Sunday, it’s a day of rest of course, and so I had a lie-in until all of 09:30. After breakfast I did some tidying up in here, watched a film, did some more radio programmes and organised the computer a little better. But it’s in here that the most improvement was made. Little by little, if I can keep it up, I’ll have this place looking ship-shape and Bristol-fashion one day.

Round at Liz’s we had a very lovely meal of vegan lasagne and garlic bread followed by mince pies, and then did the radio programmes. But only for Radio Arverne though as Radio Tartasse hasn’t sent us any info for this month. We’ll have to work that out as we go along.

Liz also very kindly let me use the shower and so now I’m nice and clean, my clothes are nice and clean, and as I washed my bedding today I can put the other set on and I’ll be in clean bedding for tonight. Ahhh the luxury! It’s amazing just how much pleasure there is in the simple things of life.

And there’s no heat on up here tonight. It’s 16°C without any help from anyone.

-6

Monday 2nd December 2013 – SO FOLLOWING MY DAY OF REST …

… yesterday, it was on with the motley.

I managed something of an early start too, which took me by surprise, and I’d finished digging the holes for the remaining side of the woodshed before I’d even woken up.

It took ages (so it was just as well that I started early) to position the uprights where I wanted them to be and for them to be perfectly vertical on all four aspects, but now they are in place and properly cemented in. It looks rather weird, my woodshed, but then it’s supposed to practical, not aesthetic.

This afternoon, I cut all of the horizontals. The top two overhang by about 1.250 metres, reaching the wall of the barn. The reason for this is that I need to park the cement mixer somewhere out of the weather as the tarpaulin that is covering it keeps on blowing off. This little overhang will be just perfect for that, and keep the cement mixer out of mischief until the summer.

We had the reappearance of that strange golden object in the sky later in the evening, but that wasn’t the most astonishing part about the weather today. I suspect (and I’ll check later) that records might have tumbled as far as wind energy goes today. It’s gusted quite strongly and the three wind turbines here have been turning around constantly. It was nice to see that, that’s for sure, even if the wind situation here is rather less than I was hoping.

-3

Monday 2nd September 2013 – AT FIRST, I WROTE …

… “Monday 2nd December” for the title of today’s posting. Not an error, as you might think, but a Freudian slip because it is winter here today. Black skies, lashing down of rain, hurricane force winds (trees uprooted and all that kind of thing in Montreal) – so much so that it wasn’t until 16:30 or thereabouts that I took to the road, all heaters in the Dodge blazing away.

It wasn’t like that at first though. Dawn came early to my little spec on the bluff above the Riviere Ste Anne and it looked as if it might be a lovely day – and I know that the dawn came early because I sa it, having somehow managed to park in the middle of a moquito nest and having been bitten to pieces during the night. I didn’t even cook a meal for fear of disturbing them.

Anyway, as the morning drew on, the day clouded over and as I was fuelling uo the Dodge, the heavens opened and that was that. I found a convenient motorway service area and parked up. With a coffee and an internet connection, I attacked a pile of paperwork and read a book.

By about 16:30 the weather improved a little in the sense that it stopped raining and we just had occasional showers. I hit the road and went off to the village of Deschambault.

This was an important stage on the Chemin du Roy and although the village has altered considerably over the last 275 years, it is said that much of the traces of the original 1734 road are still said to be there if you know where to look.

Judging by the alignment of the church and the presbytery, and the site of the old fort that Champlain had built against the Iroquois (you can see part of the wall as the boundary wall of the cemetery) I reckon that this might be a good-enough bet.

It continues along the headland from here to the new road, but about 400 metres behind me is a sudden stop. Coastal erosion, particularly along the clay cliffs, was always a serious problem and one of the main reasons for some serious alignment of the road.

Another place on the route is a town called Portneuf, about 10kms further along. Someone shored up a river bank and this led to dramatic changes in the action of the river and created a fine port for the goélettes, the little ships that plied up and down the St Lawrence, of which you can see long-since abandoned here. Gradually, the port was expanded until there is now a quay that stretches more than one kilometre into the St Lawrence, and even the biggest ships can tie up here, although not that they ever do these days.

The quay is actually situated right at the apex of one of the sharpest meanders in the whole of the river and there are some delightful optical illusions with a long-range telephoto lens as you capture photos of ships such as the Canadian Shipping Line’s Atlantic Erie fighting the current and the meander and having to make a hard-over turn to port to round the headland without colliding with the quay.

And look at the waves – you can see what I mean about the howling wind and the storm that we were having.

Dusk came pretty quickly after this, which was no surprise, and so finding myself back on Highway 40 I retraced my steps to the Motorway Service Area to batten down the hatches for tonight. I’m not going to be doing anything else.

-2

Friday 19th October 2012 – THE HURRICANE …

… finally calmed down during late afternoon.

But not before several really impressive records were set. We didn’t quite manage the maximum wind-speed – the 66.7mph gust from May is safe for another while yet- but everything else was historic.

So much so that the Air 403 wind turbine on the roof of the barn generated more electricity today that in the rest of the 15 months that it’s been there.

The Rutland WG901 on the house surpassed the previous record and showed me the magic result on the timer
“Time since I took the last reading – 25 hours and 16 minutes”
“Wind time since last reading – “25 hours and 16 seconds”.

As well as that, the temperature here in the attic is now back up to the 20s – and I should think so too. I was freezing the other night.

So anyway, after the usual messing around on the computer I went outside to rectify the damage.

I picked up the kindling bins and the kindling and reorganised them (I don’t know why I bothered though – they blew over again) and picked up all of the stuff that had been propped against the end of the barn (and that blew back down twice more)

Major work though was with the Air 403 wind turbine fastened to the fence.

The screws have given way under the fierce battering that they took from the wind and the whole affair was blowing around like crazy. Screws clearly don’t work.

As I didn’t have any bolts long enough, you can see the benefits of having lengths of stud iron (or threaded rod as it’s called these days) lying around. I cut a few lengths of that and made up some bolts, and now it’s all properly bolted together and I hope that that won’t move again.

With no bread and still no boulangère I went into Pionsat to find out why she doesn’t love me any more, and I soon found out, much to my dismay.

The boulangerie is closed.

According to the notice on the door, it’s closed “until further notice” following an accident on the premises involving the oven. That’s upset my plans and no mistake. I shall have to think again about this.

Back home I finished off emptying the back half of the hard-standing. I need to buy some weedkiller to deal with the weeds on there, and on Monday I’ll start digging out the soil that has collapsed.

This is going to be a very long job.

-2

Thursday 18th October 2012 – IT’S BEEN BLOWING …

… a right old gale here today.

I’m having a world-record day for wind, that’s for sure. Even the wind turbine that is anchored to a plank and stuck up on a fence has recorded about 5 minutes of wind time, and that’s astonishing.

As for the others, the one on the barn has had over 17 hours and the one on the house has had over 21 hours.

And with the wind gusting to over 45mph the amount of energy created is phenomenal.

So much so that in the depths of darkest night I’ve actually seen the ammeters run backwards for the first time ever during the hours of darkness. 13.1 volts on the battery bank in the barn is unheard-of at 22:00.

Mind you, its playing havoc with everything else.

The bins with kindling in have blown over twice. I picked them up the first time but there’s no point in doing that again because they’ll just come down again.

It’s not raining, and not likely to either with this wind, and so they aren’t risking anything. Mind you my money is on a torrential rainstorm as soon as the winds drop.

I did mention yesterday that the weather is turning earlier than normal this year. I recall these windy conditions usually occurring in mid-November – in fact trying to watch a football match at St Avit back in 2008 one Sunday afternoon.

Yes, winter is definitely starting earlier this year.

I’ve also emptied half of the hard-standing now – I just need to clean out where the banks have collapsed and then I can do the next part of the job.

As for the bank itself, I’ve decided that I’ll go half-high with breeze blocks and then lay wire netting over the other half, pour cement over it so that it forms a kind-of ferro-cement and then lay stones over the top.

It should look quite pretty, but I’ve no idea how it will work out.

-2

Wednesday 17th October 2012 – I WAS LOOKING ….

…. through the stats for the past few years (the records that I have here go back to 2007) and one thing that I noticed is that this recent deterioration in the weather is occurring about 4 weeks earlier than in the previous years.

I hope that it’s not a forewarning because it won’t be very nice if it is.

Yes, last night was absolutely taters – temperature in my room dropped to 15.5°C. Hard to believe that this time last year it was still well into the 20s.

Anyway, a howling wind (good news for the wind turbines) brought the temperature up a few degrees.

This morning, after recording a few stats, I cracked on with my web site. At the moment I’m on my way to see St Andrews, the Scottish Protestant Church in Québec.

And when I finished that I went outside and emptied Caliburn of all of the pylons and the grillage that I had bought the other day.

After lunch I carried on moving stuff off the hard-standing – something that is going to take me years.

One of the difficulties I’m having is actually finding room to put stuff. But all of the old chevrons have been moved (back to where I moved them from 2 years ago) and I’ve also uprooted tons of nettles and entire root systems.

And tomorrow it will be more of the same, I reckon.

Totally frightening, what was growing in the hard-standing.

But there is an added complication in that part of the bank of the side of the hard-standing has collapsed, so I’ll need to dig that all out and then to secure it all somehow, otherwise it will just keep on slipping down and that will be a nuisance, to say the least

This tidying up of all of the nuts and screws and nails and so on is progressing apace. And it’s amazing what I’ve been finding.

It’s also turning out to be quite profitable – so far £0:15 and a token for the spin dryer in the laundry.

Spend, spend, spend, hey?

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EPIC HALL

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