Tag Archives: anglo french group

Monday 12th March 2012 – WHAT AN EXCITING DAY!

The first exciting thing that happened was me lying wide awake in bed for ages thinking that I may as well get up – and finding when I did so that it was all of 07:45 – a good half-hour before the alarm goes off.

And not only that – with having had the fire on up here last night to cook a pizza, it was 16.6°C in here too, and it actually felt warm as well.

So having had breakfast and another load of coffee I did a pile of stuff on the computer. And then it was off outside to survey the house and barn – something that, quite surprisingly, I have never done.

It was not only glorious sunshine but a really strong wind and once more the wind energy today exceeded the cumulative total since I installed the power meter. And all of that was totally exciting as well.

Knocking off at 18:30 I discovered that the water in the dump load was heated to over 68.5°C and that’s a record this year. I had a gorgeous hot wash and shave with the water at that temperature and that made me feel so much better

At the Anglo-French group tonight we had two new attendees, Isobel from the Comcom at Marcillat en Combraille and her friend. We all had a really good night down there in St Gervais d’Auvergne.

And on the way home, the stars are the brightest that I have seen for a while. There are thousands of them out there, and Jupiter and Venus are wonderful. I can’t see Uranus from here though.

Back here, the water in the dump load was still 61°C and so I rounded the evening off by doing the washing-up with it, saving the gas supply for tonight.

So you can see what I mean about “exciting”, can’t you.

But in really depressing news, it’s three years tonight that Liz left us all. Time travels so fast these days but it can’t dim the lights.

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Monday 5th March 2012 – I WAS RIGHT …

… yesterday about the snow.

At about 15:30 this afternoon the heavens opened and for a couple of minutes we had a snowstorm.

Not totally unexpected either, because between about 14:00 and 15:00 the temperature dropped from 8.3°C to 4.1°C – quite a dramatic fall in temperature in such a short space of time – and it carried on dropping too.

Having spent much of the morning doing computer things, I went out to move these tree stumps that are in the way of where I want to put the compost bins. But rather than spending all of the time moving the stumps, I spent much of that time taking the handle out of an old abandoned spade to put in the garden fork.

That’s another tool handle broken – I’ve lost count of how many just recently. I’ve no idea what’s causing them all to pack in.

However, when I was at Bricomarche the other day I noticed a pile of tool handles. I shall have to go and mortgage my life away.

“But why did it take so long to change a tool handle?” I hear you say.

Probably because the handle in the spade was well stuck in and in the end it was a job for the angle grinder to cut away the neck of the spade. As for the fork, that involved drilling out the broken bit of handle and that wasn’t as easy as it might have been either.

But now the big tree stump is out, and so are a couple of smaller ones. I didn’t have time to remove the rest so that’s a job for tomorrow, always assuming that I can see them through the snow that is forecast to fall tonight

Another thing I did was to plant the lettuce. Did I mention that I bought a dozen baby lettuce plants on Saturday? A dozen cost €2:95 and the price for 6 – also €2:95. So seeing as a dozen lettuce all ready at the same time would overwhelm me, I planted 6 and gave 6 to Liz at the Anglo-French group this evening.

What I will be doing is buying a few small lettuce plants every few weeks and running them throughout the year.

A big mistake that I made last year was that I left the final lettuce out in the open and the frost got to them even though they were stiull going. I’ve therefore planted this lot of lettuce in the cloche with the strawberry plants and put the glass (really two old caravan windows) over them to keep the bad weather out.

And the lettuce from September onwards will also go into the cloche to see how long they will keep in there under cover

I also bought a few packs of seeds from ALDI and LIDL – €0.29 and €0.49 a packet depending on size. Not many varieties but enough to keep me going. I imagine that temperatures of -16°C have done for the seeds in store from last year.

I also need to think about seed potatoes, onion sets, garlic and shallots. It’s getting to be about that time.

All in all, things are starting to become busy around here. I need to put my skates on.

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Monday 13th February 2012 – I HAD MY FIRST …

… culinary disaster tonight – almost inevitable that there would be one sooner or later.

Returning home after the Anglo-French group meeting (hardly a group meeting, there was just me, myself and I there) it was a wicked 6.4°C in my little room. That called for some desperate measures.

I’d finished off the beans and chips last night and so that meant pizza this evening. And I soon had a roaring blaze going – one that had the room up to 18°C in under an hour.

Unfortunately it was rather too roaring and it burnt the base of the pizza and of the garlic bread. I’ve never ever had that before – it just goes to show you what you can do when you really try. Especially as the rice pudding was cooked to perfection, and that’s a first as well

But this morning, in the cold and damp overcast weather I had another marathon woodcutting session in the lean-to. I’m cutting up the wood that is in there. It’s perfectly dry and been that way for years hence I can burn it up here straight away without having to leave it standing for a year or so.

That explains the roaring inferno that I had this evening.

Apart from that, I’ve been working on the ceiling of the bedroom again. It’s taking ages to do, but it won’t half look nice when it’s finished.

Tonight it didn’t go cold again. It just stayed hovering around the -3°C mark.

And at 18:00 the heavens opened and we had about a ton and a half of snow dropped on us.

It’s still snowing now in fact. Haven’t times changed?

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Monday 14th November 2011 – WELL, THAT’S FINALLY THAT!

Yes, I’ve finished the wall today.

And about time too if you ask me. Mind you it’s just as well because the weather is going to change on Wednesday so we are told, and we can expect rain. So at least that gives 36 hours or so for the chalk to set and to harden before the rain gets to it.

Of course with the rain it means that it isn’t going to freeze any time soon, and that’s good news too as it gives even more time to cure before anything serious can attack it.

It seems that I’ve finished just in time

Mind you, it was awkward up the ladder doing this last bit and it’s made me realise just what a good idea it was to buy this scaffolding. A very good move, that.

There was some mortar left over too and so for that I did some work on the inside of the rear wall. And that was interesting too because I was still out there at 18:30 with a torch working on that – not like me, considering that we are on winter hours.

It was pretty tiring up there too and I didn’t really feel like going to the Anglo-French Group meeting but I managed to tear myself off the sofa and go down to St Gervais d’Auvergne.

Tomorrow I’ll be putting up the wind turbine – not something that I’m looking forward to doing on my own but it won’t get done on its own no matter how long I stare at it. And when it’s done, I can move the scaffolding out of the lean-to and put it at the side, ready to start on the roofing of it.

Isn’t this all progress?

Monday 7th November 2011 – WHAT A DEPRESSING …

… miserable day this has been!

I woke up to a hanging cloud stuck on the mountain this morning. It was enough to make me turn over and go back to sleep.

And so when I did finally heave myself out of the stinking pit it was still there. And it’s been there all day and not moved an inch. And it’s still there even now.

There’s been no solar energy in the barn, and about 4 amp-hours here in the house. Winter is definitely here.

The batteries have gone flat on the anemometer on the house, and so that was the cue for me to get up on the roof and take it down.

I then made a framework bracket out of aluminium and put the new one up on the side of the house. Not that I needed to bother because the wind that we have received here today can be measured in minutes. A far cry from the 20 hours of wind the other day.

After lunch, despite the grey damp conditions I carried on pointing the side of the house. It’ll take ages to dry of course in this weather but at least it won’t be freezing and so it will have the time to dry out. It’s important that it’s properly dry before the frost gets to it.

I did quite a lot, looking at it when I finished, and another two good days might see it finished if I am lucky and the weather holds out.

At the Anglo-French group tonight, I had a good chat to Bill. It seems that this house repair stuff is getting to be contagious as this week he’s restarted work on his house.

Good for him!

Although it did remind me of the story about the small boy at school who was asked to write a sentence containing the word “contagious”. And so he wrote “our neighbour went out to mow the lawn yesterday and my dad says that it will take the contagious to finish it”.

I’ll get my coat

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Monday 17th October 2011 – THERE’S A LOT …

… to be said for being up at 08:00 in the morning at the first tinkling of the alarm clock. It means that by the time you have breakfasted and done your 3 hours on the laptop, there’s still two hours before lunch.

And it’s just as well because it took me a while to empty Caliburn ready for this furniture removal, and then there was still some time to do another little job that I’m thinking of.

You might recall that the 12-volt immersion heater has stopped working and had something of a meltdown. I had a good look at it and what has happened was that the heater element has folded downwards and shorted out against the metal sides. This has

produced a short-circuit that has melted all of the plastic causing the wires to short out (and why the fuse didn’t blow is a mystery to me)
the arc that was created has burnt a hole in the bottom of the drum.

Despite the catastrophe (and it could have been 10 times worse if the insulation had caught fire) I was still impressed with the heat that must have been generated from just 500 watts and my surplus energy.

But at least now I know why the heater elements are fitted vertically and not horizontally – it stops them shorting out like this. The issue with that though is that you need running water into the tank to make sure that when you drain the tank it refills instantly so that the element is never exposed to the air.

That won’t work for me because of course I don’t have running water. My solution would be to go for a non-conductive material like plastic, it I would find a plastic tank that would take water up to 70°C.

Anyway, the result of this is that I have no dump load for my surplus energy and so I had a cunning plan.

>When I was in Canada last year I found some black sockets formy 12-volt circuit and I bought a dozen with the idea that they would be so different in appearance to the usual white ones that it would evidently have some significance.

I cut out the wire from the dump load controller and put the black socket into the line. You can see it at the top right of this photo.

As winter approaches and the solar energy begins to die down, I’ve unplugged the fridge from the main circuit because I no longer have the charge to run it 24 hours. That will have to wait for next Spring.

What I’ve done is to move the fridge into where the water heater was and plugged it into the black socket. That way, from now on it will only switch on when there is surplus energy which isn’t too bad in winter. When there isn’t enough sun to run the fridge it will be cold enough to do without it anyway

It’s only 75 watts instead of 500 that the water heater gave out but nevertheless it’s better than nothing and it’s something useful to do with the surplus current.

What I also intend to do in the long run for the coming winter is when I wire in the big Studer inverter that I have, I’ll use the 600-watt one wired into the dump load circuit and couple up a small 400-watt oil heater that I have. I’ll put that in my room up here and it’ll take the chill off the place in the winter whenever we have plenty of sun.

This furniture removal this afternoon – well, I won’t say too much about it except that I was there at 14:00 as planned and Caliburn was all loaded before 14:30. For the 90km drive, we finally arrived at the house at … errr … 17:40 and it wasn’t until 18:10 that we got back under way.

So never mind the plans that I had about doing the washing and so on – we were lucky to make the Anglo-French meeting tonight in time. Still, what can you do in circumstances like this?

And so tomorrow I’m hoping to be back up the wall again. It might be finished this week – you never know.

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Sunday 16th October 2011 – IT’S A MYSTERY TO ME …

… how it is that Pionsat can play so dismally against mid-table opposition in their own division in the league and yet totally demolish a team two divisions higher up when they play in the cup.

Today it was the turn of Nord Combraille to come to Pionsat for a cup match and with the Miners being two divisions higher up, we were expecting something of a struggle.

But not so. Pionsat were all over a poor Nord Combraille side and demolished them completely, winning 3-1 at something of a canter.

You can read the match report here if you like.

The thing that is probably even more bizarre is that once again in a cup match, Thomas takes the opposition by the scruff of the neck and while his display isn’t quite as scintillating as two weeks ago (but then not by all that much either), it was streets ahead of his performance for the 2nd XI (4 divisions below Nord Combraille) last week when it took me almost an hour to realise that he was on the pitch.

And we had a gorgeous day for it as well. Here I was complaining the other day about the weather and yet for the last two days we’ve had proper summer days, the kind that you would be pleased to see in August. This weather is certainly bizarre.

Tomorrow I’m furniture removing and then going to the Anglo-French group. But I can’t wait to carry on with the house here. I’m getting all keen and enthusiastic and that’s not like me at all these days, is it?

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Monday 10th October 2011 – AFTER ANOTHER …

… late night last night I wasn’t in too much hurry to raise myself this morning, even though for once I heard all of the various alarms.

Mind you, I wish I had hauled myself out earlier because summer has come back, and with a vengeance too. Nice, bright and blue even though the sun is rather watery.

And we are promised this weather until at least Sunday, although I’ve heard all of that before.

I spent the morning working on the football match reports from the weekend. I’ve done the 3rd XI and the 2nd XI reports, and I’m halfway through the 1st XI report. I’m hoping that I can finish that tomorrow and then turn my attention to the Radio Anglais site and bring that up to date.

After lunch, I made a start on pointing the outside wall of the lean-to at the corner where it’s pretty unstable. And I’m not sure that I like what I see there. It’s been pointed once but with cement. The cement has not adhered to the stones but to the old mortar in between. And as the water has infiltrated behind it, due to the absence of roof, the cement has worked loose and fallen out, taking the mortar with it.

And that’s the root of the problem here. What I’ve been having to do is to gently pry out the cement, rake out the loose mortar, fill the gaps with stones and then use lime mortar to point between the gaps.

I now have it stable – well, after a fashion.

What I have done is to put a breeze block in at the upper corner and then I infilled behind it. That will give me something solid and level to start with, which is the most important thing to do.

I can build up from there tomorrow and see how far I can get. But it’s all a mess and the only real solution is to knock it all down and start again, and I’m not doing that.

At the Anglo-French group tonight, Christiane came along – the first time for ages that we have seen her and that was quite nice. Things are picking up.

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Monday 3rd October 2011 – WELL, IT’S BACK …

… to the daily grind now. Or, at least, it should have been, except that at instead of the early night that I had promised myself,I was still wide awake at 05:00. Sleep issues again – it must be my guilty conscience.

Obviously, 08:15 never happened and it was about 10:50 when I heaved myself out of my stinking pit ready to face the world.

This morning I spent writing up my notes for the match yesterday. I’m amazed about how much I wrote and it’s probably going to take me all week to do the web page for it. But I need to exert myself and not let things drag around like I have been doing.

This afternoon I moved a few things around on the car park and managed to get at the immersion heaters under the tarpaulin. There’s a newish 50-litre tank there that Bill gave me because it has a leak in it somewhere so I’ve connected it all up to all kinds of pipes so that I can fill it with water and then close it off. I’ll leave it like that for a day or so to see if I can see where it’s leaking from. Then I can fix the leak, fit a 12-volt element in it and then use it in the lean-to as the new dump load.

>A pleasant surprise at the Anglo-French Group tonight where we had two new members. Peter brought his ladyfriend along to take part, and Nan turned up, seeing as she has now moved to la Cellette. we had a really good time as well and we were all quite animated. It’s nice to see that kind of thing happening.

But that’s it basically and I really am going to be going to bed in a minute. These late nights are catching up on me and I need to be up early tomorrow.

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Monday 15th August 2011 – I’M HAVING AN EARLY NIGHT

And quite right too!

I pretty tired because I’d been working quite hard all day. I’d had my usual morning on the computer and in the afternoon I was up the ladder pointing the stonework.

You can see how much I did as well, and that ladder is quite high. It’s a long way up and down, especially when you keep dropping the screwdriver that you are using as a mortar rake.

But at least I am making a good deal of progress up there. You never know – I might even finish it this year if I’m lucky.

Bill and I had a really good chat at our meeting of the Anglo-French Group tonight and then I came back home to do some work on the internet.

I managed about an hour or so, and then I lost the connection, and that was that. I was wondering whether to stay up and wait for it to come back, but badger that for a game of soldiers. I called it a day instead and took advantage of what Providence had sent me.

See you all tomorrow.

Monday 1st August 2011 – Actually I’m quite astonished …

… by the people who read this rubbish, and how helpful they are. Having published yesterday about my missing morning, the farmer who owns the field next door came roaring to the rescue this morning on his tractor – at 07:11 exactly as it happens. And I didn’t even know that he read my blog!

And so after crawling out of my bed at a reasonably-indecent time, I spent a few hours on my website. I’m now finalising the pages on Halifax ready to publish them. I’ll let you know when they are on line and you can read them, and you’ll see why it is my favourite city in North America.

But before that – you might remember me saying that I have made a few alterations to the media corner in the attic where I live. Well, here you can see it in all its glory and I have to say that it does look quite impressive, as does the huge pile of wood and paper ready for winter.

And that’s not going to be all that far away you know. At least the wood is keeping dry in here. It’ll burn a treat when we need it.

After I finished on the website, I went outside and spent the morning working on the guttering. You may remember that I had several issues with the guttering – on the house there was a piece missing and there was another piece that had collapsed under the weight of the snow in the winter. On the barn, a piece melted in the heat from the fire earlier this year, and part of the rest of the guttering had sagged.

Anyway, I’d fixed it all before lunch. There’s a few new brackets and a couple of the old ones have been bent further round – let’s see if that stops the water cascading over the top. I also replaced the melted bit but apart from the fact that I can’t find the left-hand gutter end that was attached to it, I can’t find any other either – which is bizarre because I have three right-hand ones. How did I manage that?

The guttering on the house is fixed now as well and the missing piece added. I’ll post a pic here tomorrow so that you can see it, for I forgot to take one earlier.

After lunch, seeing as it was a glorious day, I did a load of washing. Temperature in the 12-volt immersion heater, heated by the surplus electric energy, reached 62.5°C and so it was a nice hot wash. And while that was doing, I did some tidying up and then I had a nice solar shower, seeing as the water in there was 38.5°C. So clean clothes, clean bedding, and clean me tonight. What luxury!

After the Anglo-French meeting I bumped into Simon. He was trying to fit a 700-litre diesel tank into the back of his van to take to the tip tomorrow and so I went to help him. But to cut a long story short, it’s now in the back of Caliburn ready for me to use as a biodiesel tank for when I set up my refinery. Thanks, Simon. And apart from that, Bill and I had the guided tour of his new abode.

Tomorrow if the weather stays nice, I’ll be doing another load of washing and that should bring it up to date. And now I have some heavy duty sacks, I’ll be doing what I ought to have done a year ago – namely emptying the Sankey trailer.

And while I was up a ladder hanging on grimly with one hand “lucky grimly” – ed, using a cordless drill and balancing a few lengths of guttering, I seem somehow to have pulled a muscle in my right forearm and it hurts like hell.

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Monday 11th July 2011 – I really don’t know …

… what happened to today.

For a change I was awake reasonably early and after breakfast I had my nose pressed firmly to the keyboard here by 10:00. I’ve been working this morning on a bit about Canadian Railways and so I was pretty much engrossed, and what with one thing and another it was about 13:20 when I stopped.

I nipped outside after that to carry on with my solar panel frame. First task was to sort out all of the fittings that I bought in the UK. But hereby hangs a tail – half of them are missing – including the important bits for my framework. Sudsequent enquiries reveal that there were two boxes of stuff for me at Benchdollar, but they only gave me one of them. GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Next task was to cut the scaffolding poles to the right length. And could I find my angle grinder? Could I elephants. In the end I found the old one, rewired that and used it (having to use two drills and a screwdriver to change the disk). And of course, after all of that, as soon as I had finished, I found the proper one as you might expect.

That took me to, would you believe, 16:30, and time to get ready for the Pionsat Patrimoine meeting. Here, I have never known so many people gifted with the capacity for fitting the smallest amount of thought into the largest amount of words. Everyone was jostling for position and you could here the egoes banging together. Absolutely everything became a conflict – it was awful and I was glad to get away. It surely can’t go on like this. It was worse than a meeting of the Open University Students Association

We went off to St Gervais d’Auvergne and the Anglo-French Group afterwards. Terry is talking about adding a dumper to the fleet and I’m thinking seriously about a cherry picker. We’ll have a famous pool of equipment at the end of it all.

Tomorrow, I’m off hunting a Roman spring, so I won’t be finishing this flaming framework either.

Saturday 9th July 2011 – There’a an old French saying …

… to the effect that “il faut etre vu pour etre connu” – which roughly translated means that “you have to be seen in order that people will recognise you” and this is what I keep telling people. You need to get out and about and visit all kinds of events possible and make sure that people recognise you, so that you stick in their memories.

I take it to extremes of course – I drive a yellow-and-black van and all the clothes that I wear are yellow and black – corporate clothing. And it works too. Some people came up to me in LIDL today – “you’re Eric, aren’t you? From the Anglo-French group. We recognised your van on the car park”. And of course, being colour-coded, they knew whose van it was. Works every time.

But with the idea of being out and about, and going to all of the events possible, some times you come up trumps as well.

Francois, the local environmental activist from Barrot at Le Quartier, was having another one of his events and he’s asked me to go along. I like Francois very much and his friends are quite friendly too and interested in what I’m doing, and so I went along with pleasure.

But I never expected the French television chain TF3 to have a camera and a reporter there

.

Luckily Caliburn is sign-written and so I parked him in a strategic place. But I’ve learnt something of a little lesson here ahd what I’m now going to do is have a banner made – one that I can keep in the back of Caliburn together with a few bits and pieces of samples just in case anything like this happens again. You live and learn.

And so it just goes to show – you need to be prepared for all eventualities and have everything to hand. You never know who you are going to meet when you are out. Nothing like this would ever happen if you stayed indoors brooding and sulking.

And I wasn’t the only one who goes in search of publicity and seeking a presence in front of the television cameras.

Strawberry Moose was pleased to see the television people too and took the opportunity to have his views aired on television. Appearing in public before his fans and making new friends has always been top of his priorities

Interestingly, one of the guys at this meeting was talking about building his own wind turbine. Even more interestingly, this American company I was talking to yesterday sells all of the complicated machinery that you need that you can’t manufacture yourself when you are building your own wind turbine.

I have a feeling that I might well be on to something here.

Monday 4th July 2011 – What’s happening?

Yes indeed. I forgot to check the stats on my website last night and so I did that this evening. And to my surprise, Sunday (which is usually a quiet day) I had three times the usual average number of visitors. And today so far, I’ve had 50% more than usual. Clearly something is up.

That was more than I was this morning. Another late start again and then a couple of hours on the computer as usual – I’m touring Halifax at night at the moment.

And when the battery went flat, I went to work on my magnum opus for the Anglo-French group – as it’s Independence Day over there, I made a quiz of 30 questions for the group, and that took longer than I anticipated – it didn’t leave me with much time in the garden but I managed to do some weeding, move some more of the fallen tree and plant some lettuce that I’d bought at the weekend.

Another beautiful day and so a nice solar shower at 40°:C and then off to this demonstration about the closure of one of the classes at Pionsat’s Elementary School. Only about 50 or so people turned up, which was a huge disappointment.

What was even more surprising was that the manager of “La Montagne” turned up – but without his camera. And so Yours Truly became an officially-accredited Press Photographer for the evening. No sense in having a trumpet and not blowing it, and if you have friends in the Press you should be taking advantage of the opportunities that they pass your way.

Another surprise at the Anglo-French Group was that Pete turned up – and we haven’t seen him for ages. That was nice. It seems that there are all kinds of changes going on in his life right now and he needs a little company..

Tomorrow I have to go to Montlucon – Marianne needs some stuff for her house and needs a van to transport it. And I suppose that I owe her a favour for the evening’s work that she found for me.

One good turn, etc etc.

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Friday 24th June 2011 – Dunno what’s the matter …

… with me just recently.

I can’t seem to get to sleep at all these days. It’s almost 05:00 and I’m still wide-awake, and it was 05:00 last night when I retired. But this morning I was up at 10:30 and it was just as well because at 11:00 Terry rang me up. He’d had a few issues with the digger and needed a hand.

And so off I toddled and Terry and I spent most of the day sorting it out. It’s quite a learning curve, this machine, that’s for sure.

Afterwards I went off to the opening of this art exhibition in Marcillat en Combraille where I met Marianne Contet again. Danielle from the Anglo-French group was also there and so were plenty of other people whom I knew.

There were dozens of other people too milling around at this exhibition – it seemed to be quite a popular event, especially as there were drinks and a buffet laid on.

There’s a donjon – a medieval tower – in the centre of Marcillat en Combraille and it’s recently undergone a refurbishment programme.

I managed to blag my way in and went up to the top to have a good look around. There are some beautiful views from the top, including this one of the centre of the town. And there’s a good view of Caliburn too, parked over the road in front of the florist’s.

So I went back down to the exhibition and joined in once more with the socialising, but it’s really not my scene at all.

However, it’s just as well that I did because while I was down there, someone asked me “are you OK for tomorrow still?”. It seems that there is a meeting of English-speaking people in the Marcillat en Combraille area and I’m supposed to be speaking at it, but I had completely forgotten all about it.

So that’s another thing to fit into my schedule that it already bursting at the seams.

As well as that, it seems that the commune here (Virlet) has a vacant date in its social calendar and could I give a talk on the Trans-Labrador Highway? The date concerned is February 24th which, as astute readers will know, is my birthday and so how can I turn it down?

Back here I’ve been working on the computer again but now at 05:00 I’m going to be doing my best to sleep. I have a hectic day tomorrow.

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EPIC HALL

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