Tag Archives: barn

Monday 9th December 2013 – HERE’S SOMETHING THAT I BET THAT YOU DIDN’T

Yes, not many people know this, but it seems that the mother of singer Neil Young lives in Crewe – on the Badger Avenue council estate in fact. There I was, driving around Crewe in my taxi last night and Neil Young hopped in and asked to be taken down there to see his mother, who lives in one of the small two-bedroomed houses in the crummy part of the estate round by Foulkes Avenue.

Mrs Young was quite pleasant and we had a very good chat, and I ended up going back home to pick up my bass for a jam session with Neil.

Yes, I was having so much fun with all of this that I was really sorry to wake up. If only I could live out even half of whatever goes on in my dreams I really would live the most exciting life, that’s for sure.

It was warm here today too when I woke up – 15.9°C. That is something to do with the fact that I had the room stinking hot last night to cook my pizza. I’ve found the secret of getting this oven to cook – I have to start it up and get it really hot as quickly as possible.

Anyway, after breakfast I carried on in the glorious weather loading up the new woodshed, and I was at it until it went dark. it’s almost all done now – to such an extent that I had to stop and hunt down another pile of pallets to build up the rest of the sides. Half of them are on and the other half will be on first thing tomorrow, which means that I can take the final dozen or so barrow-loads over to the new woodshed.

Once that has been done, I can dismantle to woodsheds that are by the house, and then put up the scaffolding at the front of the house to redo the guttering and fix the wiring under the eves.

-5

Thursday 21st November 2013 – FIRST TASK THIS MORNING …

… was to shovel a pile of snow off the solar panels. I was right about it being more persistent last night.

Second task was to move Caliburn. As you know, here I’m down the bottom of a slight hollow at the end of a dirt track and traction is not what it might be. If we have much more of this snow then I won’t be able to go anywhere, and I do have places to go and people to see.

That having been done, I can concentrate on breakfast, even if it was a mere 12.5°C up here in my garret. It was much colder outside, of course, and so I didn’t really fancy the idea too much, but the work doesn’t get done by itself.

So I attacked the lean-to again and cut up another pile of wood. Then, with dexterious use of a brush and shovel I cleaned quite a large extra of space. I then set to to tidy up all of the new wood – shelving, IKEA furniture and the like, and that left quite a nice little hole for the shelving unit. But herein lies a problem, to wit the shelves that I was planning on using were 4cms too high.

Not to be too put off by all of this, I emptied the little shelf unit in the wash room and put that in the lean-to and started to fill that up. I want to put all of the gardening stuff in there and so I went on my travels around the various parts of the barn, and I find that I have filled the shelf unit and there’s nothing like all of it in there.

Clearly this is going to call for some more reorganisation. What I shall probably end up doing is what I should have done first rather than last, and that is to build a custon set of shelving like I have done just about everywhere else that I’ve been working.

It really is a crazy notion to do it half-and-half like this. I can see me making another trip to the sawmill next week, assuming that the snow is going to stop.

-7

Wednesday 20th November 2013 – THE SNOW DIDN’T LAST LONG …

… this morning. It was mostly all gone by 10:00 and we were back in the dreary marshland again. It’s like to good old days, with mud up to my ears.

This morning I carried on in the barn and finally reached the far wall. That’s an achievement – there’s stuff there that I haven’t seen for probably 15 years, and when I get around to it, there will be a lot of stuff going down to the dechetterie.

After lunch, it was the turn of Rosemary to ring up for a chat. She has a courtesy car at the moment as hers is in at the garage, and she couldn’t work out how to put it into reverse. Having sorted that out, we had a good 20 minute natter on the phone.

A then had a couple of hours in the lean-to. I found a shelf unit when I was tidying in the barn, and it will just go nicely in the lean-to by the door, but I need to make some space of course. The best way to do that is to chop a pile of wood and while that didn’t seem to make any room at all in the lean-to, it certainly filled up the woodshed. I suppose that i’ll have to keep on chopping. But if I can get the shelf unit into there I can put all of the gardening stuff there so it’s out of the way where it should be.

This evening I made another aubergine and kidney been casserole without the kidney beans because i forgot them, and it’s snowing again outside. And the snow looks much more determined than it did yesterday evening, that’s for sure.

-9

Tuesday 19th November 2013 – YEEUUUCCCHHH

It’s been one of “those” days again. When the alarm went off, it was dark outside, which it shouldn’t be at 07:30 in the morning. And as it wasn’t getting any lighter, I finally crawled out of my stinking pit to see what was going on and, sure enough, we had another hanging cloud. This one was right over the house, the barn and everywhere and you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face outside.

What a start to the day.

Consequently I was in no hurry to start work this morning which was just as well for at 10:00 I had a phone call from Marianne. One or two things with which she has been dealing seem to have gone tits-up in rather a spectacular fashion and so I told her I’d pop round for a coffee and a chat. That solved my problem about working anyway.

After a lengthy chat and a couple of coffees I came back here and started on the barn again. I’ve had a real go at that and a couple more bin-bags of rubbish, as well as a hibernating dormouse, were put outside ready to go to the tip. And as the day advanced, I ended up clearing quite a reasonable amount of floor space and that is good news for when I need to empty Caliburn. I might even have space to put the stuff now. And if the weather keeps on being thoroughly miserable, I might do even more good. You never know.

And the chances of that happening are very good, as it happens. For when I stuck my head outside just now, it was snowing. First snow of the winter.

Ahhh well …

-8

Monday 18th November 2013 – IT’S MONDAY AGAIN …

… and so it was “back to work”. But not straight away as I had a few important things to do first.

It seems that my bank is at it again. The credit card expired at the end of September as you know, and I finally received the replacement. That meant that I had to contact everyone to update the card details. But I’ve now received another one, with a new number, a new expiry date and a new security cide. I’ve now had to ring everyone again to update everything that I updated just a week or 10 days ago.

I finally did manage to go outside today to work, braving the rain that has restarted. I’ve spent all of the time outside clearing the nettles and weeds that have sprung up in front of the barn where I had my very first potager. It’s astonishing how quickly and how thickly it’s overgrown. It wasn’t looking too bad at all in the early Spring and I never expected it to become as bad as it did over a period of just 8 months.

You can see how good the soil is, though. I suppose that that is some consolation.

Anyway, I’ve made some progress, but not enough. There’s tons to do and I need it to be gone so that I can build my woodshed there. Once I’ve done that, I can crack on with other things that are holding me back.

After it went dark, I spent half an hour in the barn carrying on with my project of tidying up, not that I’m making much progess. But I’ve been thinking, which is of course a very dangerous occupation. It’s about high time that I sorted out the electrical system in the barn. I’m moving the batteries and the control panel down to where “bank two” is – at the southern end of the barn next to the walls to which the solar panels are fastened.

And so I ought to make a start on building the control panel and fitting the wiring. Maybe I’ll sit down tomorrow and draw up a few plans.

And pizza tonight followed by left-over apple crumble and custard from yesterday. What a way to end the day.

-4

Thursday 14th November 2013 – THIS BLASTED RAIN …

… is getting on my nerves. It’s rained non-stop for all of the day and that has put the dampers on everything.

It didn’t help that I had a bad night’s sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night with a severe attack of cramp in both legs and that took ages to pass. A short while afterwards it was the raging toothache that kept me awake for hours. I wasn’t therefore in the best of moods.

After breakfast I did some more tidying up in here – there wasn’t much point in going outside until the rain eased off – and another couple of loads of things have been moved downstairs. However I did manage to get into the barn to continue to sort things out in there, and I’m having a puzzled moment or two, because i’ve mislaid one of my tool boxes – not the big red Snap-on toolbox but a smaller red one in which I keep the duplicate tools. I can’t think where that might be for now – I hope that I haven’t left it at Cécile’s.

I’ve also moved a few more things out of Caliburn, such as the suitcases, the clean washing and the food. That means that there’s some room inside there now. But I had a light bulb go on suddenly in my head. I liberated an old soft suitcase from Marianne’s ages ago and I couldn’t think of why I did so, and so yesterday I put it in the dustbin (not like me, I know, but …). Now I remember, though. I’ve acquired (also from Marianne’s) an old quilt and some cushions and I’m going to keep them in Caliburn whenever I’m on my travels, seeing as these days I can’t keep awake as long as I used to be able to. I already keep a towel, my swimming cozzy and some shower stuff in the van. To keep all of that together and not rolling about all over the place, a suitcase may well come in handy.

I didn’t get into the garden though – there wasn’t much point with all of the rain, and while you can’t see much improvement in the barn, I know that I can because I remember what it used to look like.

-6

Wednesday 13th November 2013 – IT WAS EVEN HARDER THIS MORNING …

… to get out of bed. Probably going to bed at03:45 might have something to do with that though. Crawling out of bed at 08:00 was definitely an issue.

After breakfast, I went as promised and attacked the barn – the bit where I keep the Ebro. I had almost everything out of the front of the barn and I’ve thrown away two huge sacks of rubbbish. Furthermore, I can actually move around in there now without stepping on things, and isn’t that progress?

It wasn’t without its rewards either. I found an Euro on the floor in there, so spend!Spend! Spend!

The boulandgère came round today too, having forgotten me yesterday. It was Sophie, the woman who lived for a while in the USSR and we always have a little chat whenever she comes round.

After lunch (and a little siesta) I went and attacked the pathways, and now I’ve made it all the way down to the compost bin, which was my ultimate destination. Now, you can walk all the way down there without losing yourself in the vegetation and it’s a great improvement. It didn’t take as long as I was thinking that it might either, and so I’ve started on weeding the first raised bed. I want to have all of those done before the end of the year.

I’ve had a fire in here tonight too and so I cooked tea up here in the oven. It’s nice to recover some of my old familiar habits. I’ve missed being away from here.

-8

Wednesday 10th October 2012 – AND SO AFTER …

… a really early night I was awoken at 05:00 by a torrential rainstorm.

Ahh well – I just can’t win.

Anyway we had more of the same this morning, but even so, I had a little job to do outside.

There are two banks of solar panels on the barn – one that keeps the good batteries in charge, powered by the solar panels on the end wall of the barn, and the other one which powers everything in there, powered by the solar panels on the roof of the Luton Transit.

That second bank uses some second-hand batteries that I bought in 2004 and which have done sterling service, but recently they have been sliding away into oblivion – not that I’m surprised. I don’t have a clue how old they are

I’ve bought some huge batteries for the house, and the plan is to move the ones currently in the house to replace those that are packing up.

Anyway, what with one thing and another I’m a long way from that point yet, and the batteries in the barn have now finally given up the ghost – they were showing 6.53 volts this morning.

However, there’s another lot of batteries around here – a job lot that I bought for peanuts in 2008 and which never seemed to do what they were supposed to do, and so I wrote them off.

But having a ferret around with a voltmeter, there were three that were still showing 10 volts, which, considering that they have had no charge at all since 2009, is pretty good going, I reckon.

Anyway, while 10 volts isn’t much to write home about, it’s far, far better than 6.53 volts so I changed the batteries over and I now have those three working the barn.

With the charge that they had received during the afternoon, I noticed tonight at 22:00 that the batteries were registering 10.55 volts. I’ll be curious to see what they drop down to in the early morning (the power meter has a “minimum volts” recorder).

I’ll be even more interested to see what they will be at tomorrow night after a full day’s charge.

Later on, I carried on clearing the hardstanding and doing a few running repairs on stuff that was on there and needing attention.

That went on until about 18:00 when we had the downpour to end all downpours (altogether, 10mm fell today) and so I decamped to the barn where, under the light of the LED strip lights, that function impressively well at 10.55 volts, I did some tidying up, just for a change.

Having tripped over something on the floor in the verandah this evening and dropped a load of rice everywhere, I’ve decided that tomorrow I’ll strip out the verandah.

Tons of stuff in there that I don’t need, and seeing as I’ll be on my travels on Friday I can sling it all in Caliburn tomorrow and drop it off at the dechetterie while I’m out.

-2

Tuesday 9th October 2012 – I’M TRYING …

… to think what I did today.

And it took me a while to do that. Thinking is not my strong point, especially at this time of night.

One thing that I have done is to put my back out. I had to move 8 batteries today – 200 amp-hour ones and each one weighing 60kgs. They are in boxes so I couldn’t get at the handles, and lifting them off the ground into the wheelbarrow was not a good idea.

An even worse idea was taking them out of the wheelbarrow and stacking them in the barn., but I’m glad that I did fix the wheelbarrow the other day otherwise I would have been in real difficulties.

This morning was exciting though. Someone has ordered a pile of photos from me.

A few years ago, knowing that a famous football ground in North Wales was going to be demolished, I wandered around there photographing everything that there was to photograph.

And sure enough, as I expected, someone has decided to write a book about the history of the ground and has seen my photos on the internet. Consequently, I spent all morning editing and enhancing the images.

This afternoon, apart from moving the batteries, I moved a few other things too, but a torrential rainstorm, as predicted, put a stop to that.

Anyway, that gave me the opportunity to finish painting the walls of the cupboard on the 1st floor and that’s now looking quite good.

Fitting the flooring should take about an hour or so, and then I need to make the shelves. That will be a big boost to everything around here when that is finished.

-3

Friday 5th October 2012 – TALK ABOUT EARLY!

Yes, I had knocked off work today by 16:45!

But there was a reason for that.

On my official sky-watching scale, today would be described as “glorious”. So much so that when a small cloud floated by at about 15:30 I stood and watched it.

The batteries were fully-charged by midday and by 16:45 I had hot water at 64°C. All of this can only mean one thing, and so I unleashed the tabletop washing machine.

Loads of washing here as it’s been a few weeks since I last did some, and so that was that. Off we went

Of course, washing means clean sheets, quilt cover and pillowcases.

As for me, I’m still smoking from being too close to the fire that I lit in my brassière the other day. But not to worry – 5 litres of water at 64°C into the solar shower to push that temperature up, and I had a gorgeous and most unexpected shower, followed by clean clothes and the like.

That’ll all go nicely with the clean bedding.

While the washing machine was still going, I went and had another look at these LED strip lights.

The batteries that I had been burning were up to 12.55 volts (of course they didn’t stay like that) and when I switched on the strip light that I had fitted the other day, well, I wasn’t disappointed in the least.

Quite the reverse in fact.

So much so that I disconnected the 12-volt fluorescent strip light over the work bench in the barn and installed a pair of these, together with the appropriate switch. These are impressive, these strip lights, and I’m going to buy more of these wherever I can find them

This morning though I was feeling inspired for the first time for ages and had a good session on the web site. But I was interrupted for half an hour as Terry needed to go to the quarry and wanted a hand.

With being nice and clean, I won’t go to Commentry and the swimming baths tomorrow – i’ll just go for a quick flash around St Eloy-les-Mines. It really was a nice, unexpectedly good day today and I’m glad that I took full advantage.

-1

Tuesday 2nd October 2012 – I HAD A GOOD …

… and profitable day out in Montlucon today.

Not the least of the reasons being that a chance visit to the LIDL came up trumps with another 5 packets of these LED light strips. That’s all that I shall be needing anyway for the foreseeable future.

So having picked up Rosemary’s window at Lapeyre we went off to Brico Depot. I bought a tarpaulin to go on the ground where I’m clearing, and I also priced up a whole pile of other stuff that I need for this concreting that I’ll be doing (yes, I have another Cunning Plan).

No suitable wood for shuttering though  – I’ll have to have some cut at a sawmill.

Grand Frais, the Fresh food place came up trumps with everything that I need for my pickling, except the malt vinegar for the shallots, but then again at NOZ they were selling white vinegar flavoured with tarragon and that will do just as nicely.

So after dropping off Rosemary’s window and helping her with her shutters I came back here and did a little tidying up in the barn.

I found the other missing sledgehammer and a few other gardening tools, and I also worked out why the desk light in the barn, over the battery bank, isn’t working. Seems that the wire has become disconnected and its probably been like that for years too.

So when I finished that I took off the flourescent light and fitted one of these LED strip lights in place.

At first I was disappointed but then I realised that I had disconnected the good batteries and I was trying to burn some old ones, and I had a reading of just 7.8 volts.

With 12 volts it should be pretty impressive I reckon, but that’s for another day.

-3

Thursday 27th September 2012 – TODAY WAS A DAY …

… of finding things.

We started off, quite dramatically, by finding the missing mobile phone.

The good news is that the SIM card might actually still work.

The bad news is that the phone won’t, which is hardly surprising seeing as it’s been outside in the rain for the last 6 weeks and I found it in a puddle right where a load of water would regularly drop on it.

What’s surprising about this is that it was just outside the barn door, right where I walk at least twice every day without fail, and how I haven’t seen it before today is a total mystery.

Even more surprising is that if I heard it “bleep” 5 weeks ago up here in the attic – which I’m sure that I did – then there’s nothing wrong with my hearing, I’ll say.

Back in 2006 my dear departed friend Liz gave me an old Nokia ‘phone. It never worked properly and despite buying a couple of new batteries, the battery life worked out to be about 18 hours on stand-by.

For that reason I never really used it, and went to all kinds of lengths to replace it.

However I did lose count of the number of times it’s been pressed into service in an emergency and as I found it in Caliburn the other day when I was a-hunting the dictaphone, it’s now currently back in service.

At least until the new phone arrives.

I wanted an unblocked Samsung (so I just have one set of leads) tri-band (to use in North America) with bluetooth (for the hands-free kit in Caliburn), camera (so I don’t have to keep carrying the Nikon on odd little trips out) and memory slot (so I can use it as a walkman).

But I quickly abandoned that idea. The prices are unbelievable.

In the end I settled for another Nokia – a factory-refurbished 6230 for just £22 seeing as there are no chargers with it – and I have all of that anyway.

So in the mood for finding things, I then found the missing timer switch off the tabletop washing machine – just as I was fitting the machine with a plug with a built-in switch, of course.

The plug off there I fitted on the chop-saw that I bought ages ago and that works a treat too.

I also uncovered three battery chargers – two of them being the 7-Day Shop ones that I use for charging up AA and AAA batteries. And not just the chargers either – a further mega-search turned up some power cables for them.

So they are now fitted with North American 110-volt plugs – I use them for my 12-volt DC domestic circuit because they can handle high amperage and they are sufficiently different not to be confused with 230 volt stuff – and they are ready for action.

The third battery charger that I found is also for AA and AAA batteries, and why this is so interesting is that it has screw-holes on the back so that you can fix it to the wall.

This is quite an ancient machine too and I was pleased to see because I have a cunning plan for it. It was that I intended to screw it into the back of Caliburn and wire it into the ignition system so that there will always be some batteries on charge there.

No power cable, though.

But seeing as I was in the mood I turned out the barn and actually managed to find it, which astonished me.

While I had the ignition system dismantled, I took the opportunity of dismantling the power lead for the coolbox that I installed in Caliburn. I threw away the cigarette lighter plug (I hate those) and wired that directly into the ignition circuit.

And so we’ll have cold drinks wherever we go too.

I also unearthed a pile of connectors that I’d been looking for for ages, and a few other exciting bits and pieces as well. And I did a few other things, but I can’t rightly remember now what they were.

But I shan’t know myself at this rate, will I?

On the subject of finding things, by the way, I know that this might not be relevant but Heather came round this afternoon.

She has just come back from the UK and had brought me my order of porridge oats as well as some Rich Tea biscuits for Rosemary.

It’s the first time that Heather has been round, so she had to call at the doctor’s on the way for the Yellow Fever and Plague vaccinations before she arrived.

But at least I can now make some more muesli.

-2

Wednesday 26th September 2012 – IT WAS ANOTHER …

… day today where I heard the alarm go off properly but the accompanying cloudburst made me turn back over and … errr … wait for a while before arising.

So after the usual while on the computer I went outside and started work.

And in another major change to my usual lifestyle, I was still out there at 20:00.

First plan was to fit the new handles that I had bought the other day to the gardening tools that were lying around. The rake and the binette worked fine but this sledgehammer handle won’t work at all.

But anyway, using the newly-repaired tools, I hacked my way through a huge pile of undergrowth, ripped up piles of nettle and bramble roots, and laid a big tarpaulin on the floor.

Onto this tarpaulin I collected up all of the scaffolding that I’ve been using and laid it out on there. That was followed by all of the leftover plastic slates, and then I cleaned out all of the wood and the breeze blocks from where I had been working.

That gave me some more room to move around there and I could then hack out another pile of brambles.

There’s probably only about 30m² of land to clear back there and I reckoned that it wouldn’t take long, but I’m being rather optimistic about that. It’s going to take a while.

But it needs to be done because the next phase is to clear all of the stuff from where I park Caliburn and it’s there that I want to put it.

That took me up to about 19:00 and there was still a little job that I needed to do. The charge controller for one of the banks in the barn packed up ages ago and so I’ve been wiring the panels directly to the solar bank – not that there’s enough energy produced over there to worry the batteries too much.

But I need to measure the energy that’s going in, and so I disconnected the remote ammeter off the other bank and wired that to it.

Not so easy as it’s pretty cramped in there so I hope that it’ll work okay.

Still, we’ll find out tomorrow, won’t we?

-2

Saturday 30th June 2012 – IT’S POURING DOWN …

… with rain outside.

The first time we’ve had a really decent downpour for a few days, and you can see how much I’ve become embedded into the local agricultural way of life with my potager – looking forward to the rainstorm.

This morning I slept through the alarms for a change. I was having a nice dream about a former friend and his family and it’s a long time since I’ve had a really pleaant dream.

But anyway after breakfast I did some more work on the laptop and then went out shopping.

I’ve bought a few new toys too. LIDL was selling Brother PC label-makers a while ago and I was tempted at €20 but I didn’t bite. Anyway, they were reduced to €10 today and so I grabbed one.

I also met Rosemary and we went to Cheze where they were selling 510-litre water butts for an incredible €32. Rosemary wanted one, and I’ve decided to buy two of them.

What I shall be doing with mine is that when I take the scaffolding down after I’ve finished the wall of the lean-to, I am going to put up some guttering to catch the water off the lean-to roof and sink a large tank into the ground to catch it all.

But meanwhile I can link these two together and use them as settling tanks with the take-off for the subterranean tank about half-way up the side. That will still leave 250 litres of water at the bottom of each tank.

If I put a tap at the bottom of the first tank, then I can use the water in there (which will be pretty dirty) for watering the vegetable plots. That will help empty the dirt out of the tank.

But I’m getting more and more fed-up of Brico Depot.

We went for the guttering for Rosemary’s barn yesterday but what they had on offer was all badly-damaged rubbish sold by surly staff.

At Bricomarche in Commentry she paid a little more but got everything she wanted and in pristine condition too.

There was some stuff that I wanted too but Brico Depot don’t sell it. They suggested a work-around, but that would cost a fortune.

However, Cheze had exactly what I needed. They also had an inner tube for my wheelbarrow, that has saved me a fortune on a new wheel.

Tomorrow I’m off out with Marianne. She did tell me where we are going but I have forgotten. I suppose that I will find out soon enough.

-3

Friday 29th June 2012 – IT AIN’T ‘ARF ‘OT, MUM!

Well, maybe not quite this evening, but last night it was 31°C up here in my attic and that is going beyond ridiculous.

In fact, things reached such a pitch that I almost went and slept in Caliburn. I’m sure that it would have been cooler in there.

But by 09:00 I was up and about, and by 09:30 I was working.

I was doing some work on a few web pages and then one thing led to another, and pretty soon you begin to find out just how many other things there are.

So much so that I’ve ended up doing a slight redesign of my web pages and I wish that I knew enough to do more.

I really must learn how to do embedded menus and so on. My web design techniques seem to have stuck in a time warp.

I’ve also been dealing with the European Paper Mountain today and a load of that was filed away. There’s still about 20 times that much that needs to be dealt with but every little helps.

Rosemary and I went to Montlucon this afternoon and had a rummage around the shops.

I didn’t buy any wood because the wood at Brico Depot is appalling so I’ll have to go to the sawmill for that like I should have done in the first place. But I have the stirrups, some of the plumbing bits, the corrugated plastic sheets, the hinges, the strengthenign rod and all of the concrete post rings – 20 of them in fact.

Rosemary was disappointed too with Brico Depot. She had wanted some zinc guttering for her barn but the stuff that they had was all bent, knocked about and not fit for use.

In the end, on the way back we went to Bricomarché in Commentry. It was dearer there but it was in perfect condition. You pay for what you get.

I bet that you are all dying to know what I’ll be doing with them – I know that Krys is. But you’ll have to wait until I buy the wood and start to build it – I won’t be giving a clue away.

Aren’t I a meanie? 

-3