Tag Archives: Bill Dudgeon

Saturday 15th September 2012 – I FOUND SOMETHING SPECTACULAR …

… in LIDL at St Eloy-les-Mines this afternoon.

Rummaging around, like you do … “like YOU do” – ed … I noticed several twin-packs of LED light strips. About a foot long, they consist of about 12 tiny LEDs and consume just 1 watt of electricity.

They are 12-volt and come complete with tiny mains transformer and little movement-detector.

I’ve been looking for something to use as strip lights in the kitchen whenever it might be that I start it, and also for the bathroom over the sink and the bedroom over the dressing table.

You can buy 12-volt flourescents and indeed I have a few here that I was planning to use, but they take about 7 watts and they are big, bulky things.

So I duly bought a pack and brought it home. And after cutting a few wires and so on, I gave it a try.

And blimey!

for just 1 watt, that’s incredibly bright. Now I have to go and help Rosemary on Monday morning so I’m going via LIDL at St Eloy-les-Mines and I’ll buy the rest of the stock of those lights.

That’s another problem solved. Good old LIDL, hey?

There was also a sale on at Cheze – everything in the shop 20% off today. Now I have a few decent tools lying around here that don’t have handles, like a rake, a sledgehammer and a binette – that kind of thing, and so I popped in there today.

So that’s something else organised.

I also bumped into Bill and so we went for a coffee and a natter.

This morning I sorted out the radio programmes for the rock shows that I do for Radio Anglais. I’m now up to November, with records selected and scripts typed and so that will keep me out of mischief for a while.

And then I headed for town.

Back home after the shops, I went through the SD cards and copied their contents onto DVD – something that I’ve been meaning to do for quite a while.

And I’m supposed to take it easy at the weekend.

Phew!  

-3

Sunday 19th August 2012 – THERE WAS SO MUCH …

… that I wanted to do today but I ended up doing nothing at all this afternoon;

And I mean nothing except spending most of my time sitting with a damp tea towel on my head.

The reason for that was that the temperature today reached an astonishing – unheard-of 44.7°C outside, and that must be a world record by anyone’s standards. In my attic it reached almost 36°C and that is unsupportable.

I ended up sitting on a chair downstairs amid the rubble. at least it was a cool, balmy 33°C down there. But this really is ridiculous and it can’t keep on going like this.

Mind you, I understand now why they have four-hour siestas in mid-afternoon in Spain, and why many people from around the equator are said to be indolent.

Well, I certainly was indolent today and if it carries on like this, then tomorrow I’ll be even more indolent. No-one can work in conditions like these.

pot d'acceuil village fete le quartier puy de dome franceThis morning though Marianne and I were out for the pot d’acceuil at Le Quartier.

It’s the turn today of that village to have the pleasure of our company on this series of rotating exhibitions.

We had the jazz band – the fanfare – from Pionsat playing the music today and Lieneke was there with her flute. They played outside too but their sort of instruments are not the sort that blow away in the wind like poor old Rick’s cello did in Bussières.

pot d'acceuil village fete le quartier puy de dome franceThere was quite a large crowd there too this morning, sheltering in the shade ‘neath the spreading chestnut tree, or whatever kind of trees they might be, out of the sun.

It was nice to see so many too, and that makes a change from some of the more recent pots d’acceuil.

However, chatting to some of the visitors, it appears that some had turned up by accident – just passing through and seeing the crowds.

it looks as if the mayor of his committee had not let everyone know that the do was on today. None of my friends from Le Quartier (Bill, François, to name just two) had made it to the occasion and I was looking forward to seeing them.

Now, here’s something of note.

I haven’t had a coffee at all today. 29°C in my attic when I woke up and that’s definitely NOT coffee weather.

And that’s quite a change for me, isn’t it?

-5

Monday 6th August 2012 – I HAVEN’T POSTED …

collapsed lean to repairing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome france… a photo of my wall for quite some time, and so this is where I currently am.

You’ll notice that all of the breeze blocks have gone, except for the ones reinforcing the corner (and I’m not taking those out at any price) and I’ve also put in the base of the second window.

As for the rest, you can see that the outside stonework is proceeding apace, as is the interior stonework.

The infill, which consists of those very lightweight hollow bricks smashed into smaller pieces and mixed with a very lightweight concrete mix (I found some more gravel) is also up to the level that it should be.

Another couple of days on this and the stonework will be done. I’ll then have to turn my attention to fitting the guttering and then doing the pointing.

I’ll be glad when it’s finished because it really is driving me up the wall, but it needs to be done.

And what else? There was the working on the website of course this morning, and this evening down at the pub with Arno, Bill and Marianne.

That was it, really.

-1

Thursday 2nd August 2012 – I DIDN’T TAKE …

… a photo of the work that I did on the wall today. There’s a good reason for this, and I’m as malade as a perroquet as they might say around here.

I put a lot of work into what I was doing too. I removed all of the breeze blocks that I don’t want in the wall, hung the window framework, and then built up a fair few rows of stones both inside and outside, filling the space in between with lightweight concrete.

It was all looking quite impressive too and so you can imagine just how totally depressed I was when with just a few minutes to go before I planned to knock off, I dropped a rather large stone right onto the wall and knocked off about 2 rows of what I had built so far today.

One very unhappy bunny, especially as I was out working until 19:30.

Had I knocked off at 19:00 – the usual time for finishing when I’m on summer hours,, none of this would have happened.

Anyway, apart from that, I had the usual couple of hours on the internet, and a chat with Rosemary on the phone.

Later on, I even had a visit from Bill and the Hound of the Baskervilles. I seem to be in demand again.

Anyway tomorrow I’ll have another go on the wall and try not to knock anything off it again.

With all of this cement that I’m mixing, I’m starting to notice a lack of water in the water butts now. A storm is forecast for Saturday night – I hope so!

-2

Friday 20th July 2012 – WHAT A SHAMBLES!

And, just for a change, I’m not talking about anything to do with the Open University Students Association.

At 10:00 I needed to be at Radio Tartasse in Marcillat-en-Combraille to record the rock music programme and thanks to a 07:30 start this morning I had everything ready and so I was there on time.

15 minutes it takes to record the programmes – I set up all the music at home and copy them onto a memory stick – but it was blasted flaming well 11:50 before I managed to leave.

It seems that someone has been messing around with the computer there and there’s a file running in a kind of algorithm that is stopping the sound card working correctly.

They had the manager and two technicians trying to fix it and in the end Yours Truly was so fed up that he imposed himself in the office and managed to free off the sound card by disabling the background program via the Task Manager so that we could make a start.

Then, they managed to lose the program that we had recorded and so after they gave up, I searched all of the hard drives for it and it wasn’t there at all, so we went to re-record it, with much GRRRRRRing.

And then the program wouldn’t open as “an instance of this program is already running” – seems that the Manager had entered a file name but had forgotten to save it and had then minimised the window.

No wonder it took so flaming long.

At lunchtime I took Bill to Montaigut-en-Combraille – he had bought a new bed and needed it transporting home and that was not as straightforward as it might have been either, for reasons that I shan’t go into.

But to cut a long story short, it was 15:00 when I finally stopped for lunch and I was dismayed.

lean to repairing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo having been driven up the wall all this morning it was only natural that I was back on the scaffolding this afternoon.

If you compare this photo with one of the ones from earlier this week you can see how much progress I’ve been making.

But the real proof of progress is the fact that you’ll notice the new-looking breeze block in the wall by the bottom-right of the photo – when I started to repair the lean-to, that breeze block was the first stone that I had to lay.

Everything from and including that breeze block is what I’ve had to put it.

Anyway, after a few hours on that, it was 18:50 when I finished a load of cement and so I called it a day on the wall.

That gave me 10 minutes to sow a row of endives ready for the winter. You can see how organised I’m becoming these days, can’t you?

So back up here to warm up and dry off because today we were back in winter – cold and wet.

Summer has been and gone, and that was your lot.

-1

Thursday 12th July 2012 – I’M OFF …

… to bed in a minute – at a ridiculously-early (well, for me, anyway) time too.

And for two good reasons too.

  1. I have to be up early as you know. Terry and I are off to Montlucon to see what we can find in Brico Depot
  2. I’m thoroughly exhausted and I’ve already crashed out once this evening.

Just for a change I was up and about before the alarms went off and while I was having a leisurely breakfast Rosemary rang up. “It looks as if it might be a comfortable morning so I’ll come round now if you like”.

Well, I need all the help I can get in the garden and one volunteer is better than 10 pressed men so I had to steam-clean the kitchen, tidy up in here, empty the composting toilet, all that kind of thing, at a rapid rate of knots.

And then a car pulled up. It was not Rosemary but Bill who had come for a chat. His van has just failed its Controle Technique, but not with anything serious and so we needed to devise a cunning plan to fix it.

Just then Rosemary appeared and so Bill wandered off while Rosemary and I attacked the garden.

Stopping for lunch for an hour or so was the only break that we had, but by the end of the day several of the beds are all weeded out, some (but by no means all) of the leeks are replanted, and then we attacked some of the jungle that was in the way.

After Rosemary went home, I carried on for an hour or so and that was my lot I’m afraid. I was finished off. Nevertheless, substantial progress was made today in the garden.

I’ve also made a smart discovery too.

I’m using a Xantrex C60 charge controller wired in backwards to act as a dump load controller. Normally, a charge controller senses the voltage levels in the batteries. When the solar panels and wind turbines have fully charged the batteries, the charge controller then cuts off the charge.

With certain charge controllers, you can fiddle about with them so that instead of switching off, they switch on. And then instead of having them wired as
INPUT ENERGY —> CHARGE CONTROLLERS —> BATTERIES
you can wire them
INPUT ENERGY —> BATTERIES —> CHARGE CONTROLLER —> DUMP LOAD (although I still keep my input charge controllers as a safety measure.

My dump load is a home-made 12-volt immersion heater – a huge 500-watt heater element suspended in 25 litres of water, and this is how I heat my water in summer.

The Xantrex controllers have a facility to have a data panel wired in so that you can see the amount of current passing through and I just happen to have a spare data panel that I dismantled from the charge controller that stopped working the other week.

I wasn’t sure if it would work on the one that I’m using as a dump load controller, what with it being wired in backwards and so on, but I gave it a go and in fact it does, which is really exciting news.

I’ve had 22.2 amp-hour worth of excess charge heating my water today. That’s quite impressive considering that the weather has been cloudy for all of the day. I wonder what it will show in a bright sunny glorious day.

But we aren’t ever going to have one of those ever again.  

-2

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 – I didn’t do a tap …

… of work on the house today. Just recently, as you know, I’ve been in great demand. If it’s not Rosemarie after my services, it’s Marianne. But today it was Bill who rang up. I can’t think what I have done to be so popular. It isn’t like me.

Anyway, Bill had to go to St Etienne or thereabouts this afternoon to pick up a dog. It’s a long way and he wasn’t sure of the route and so he asked me if I would go with him. And it was a long way too – 6 or 7 hours all told there and back (it was actually half-an-hour beyond St Etienne) in the glorious sunshine. Still, a nice drive out for a change.

This morning though, I was on the website again, except for 10 minutes when I was having a blazing row with someone from the electricity company. She wanted to check the pylon but she couldn’t approach it because there are too many brambles and nettles and so on in the way. She had a right old go at me about it and I patiently said nothing until she finished, when I told her that the land out here is actually the property of the commune, not me, and I would be grateful if she would moderate her language when she spoke to me, remove herself from my presence, and go to see the mayor and use the same offensive terms to him. It really was quite an animated discussion and she won’t be back here in a hurry when I’m around.

Apart from that, I’ve been dealing with the European Paper Mountain this evening and making enormous progress. I won’t know myself at this rate.

-2

Tuesday 24th April 2012 – Miserable, wet, grey and depressing…

… but that’s enough about me. Let’s talk about the weather.

And that’s also miserable, wet, grey and depressing.

But the exciting thing is that I’m sitting at a desk looking out of my hotel window and I can see the planes taking off from the runway at Paris Charles de Gaulle airport. And in 8 hours time I’ll be there too.

sncf multiple unit train riom puy de dome franceThe train journey was exciting and I’ll do this again.

The one from Riom to Lyon was a multiple-unit thing that rattled and clanked its way along.

No coffee unfortunately but at least the seats were comfortable and there was plenty of room.

At Lyon you leave the train, go downstairs where there’s a waiting area and a coffee machine. When your train is called you go back upstairs and there you are. Simple as that.

lyon part dieu double decker tgv franceThe TGV was a double-decker thing and athough we had a 20-minute wait for a late connection we went like stink as expected.

The lateness didn’t matter one single iota. I walked straight out of the airport onto the hotel shuttle (once every half-hour) that was already outside.

So if we had been on time I would have had to wait outside the airport for 20 minutes.

Downside of the TGV is that coffee on the double-deckers is a long walk away and luggage space is VERY MUCH at a premium. Upside is that my train was going to Lille Europe and there was a TGV coming from Brussels on the opposite platform.

Doesn’t that open up exciting possibilities for my British and Belgian friends? Both of them!

Anyway, here I am. And there I’ll be in a bit. And, as I said to Bill as he dropped me off at Riom railway station,
“Thank you Bill for bringing me here”.
“You’ll be an inspector, have no fear”

-2

Monday 23rd April 2012 – I’m blogging early tonight

And for two reasons too. Firstly, seeing as how this is my last night here for a while, I’m going to have an early one. And secondly, I had tea early. And that was because I was round at Bill’s for a while setting him up as he is going to be doing the communication for the Anglo-Français Group while I’m not here, and by the time I was back from Bill’s it wasn’t worth coming up here to relax for half an hour.

Tea was nice as well – I used up all of the leftovers. So it was two large spuds, an onion, some garlic, some mixed veg and some mushrooms. And while the spuds were boiling, the rest was frying and then it was all fried together and covered with mixed gravy and spices. and I’ll eat that again.

While I’m away, Liz says that she will keep an eye on the garden once or twice in exchange for the thinnings, and so I thought that I had better do a map of the garden so that she will know where everything is, now that it’s all finished.

There’s just one empty bed and that’s for the leeks that are hopefully growing in a seed tray. Mind you, the leeks that I planted in the open soil have taken, and they are coming up now.

In fact some of the stuff is doing really well while the rest is taking its time, although I seem to remember that this is what always happens.

Anyway, I sowed some more carrots, parsnips, sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower, spinach and beetroot, and that will be my lot. When I come back, I’ll just have to see what didn’t take and plant some of that. And the chicory in the new potato bed and that will be it apart from weeding.

I raked and hoed the two cloches today and in the small one I planted (in their pots) all of the shrubs and bushes, so that they will be ready for when I come back.

Apart from that I’ve been doing stuff off my list today. As well as the water heater the dump load will be powering 250 watts of light – 5×50 watt bulbs. This is useful because I have the potential to charge up about 700 watts on the dump load circuit and there’s already a 500-watt water heater element there. So the lights will help to complete the load. and 5 bulbs means that if one blows, then it won’t be too much of a problem. Light bulbs and water heater elements are good because the will take a graduated load – it’s not all “on and off” like, say, an electrical appliance might be and so which would not be satisfactory for this.

I’m nothing like ready really – I can’t find the spare camera battery or the charger that I take on voyages with me, and lots of other stuff. But it’s too late now. I have my tickets, passport, money, camera, dictaphone and Moose, and when I’ve recorded my rock music programme tomorrow I shall go with what I’ve got and that will be that.

-3

Tuesday 20th March 2012 – I WAS BUSY TODAY

First thing, after breakfast, was to check all of this paperwork that I’ve been doing, and then take a few pieces down to the mairie to sign or countersign.

Back here then, I then had to photocopy everything, or scan it for reference.

Bill rang me up too – he was having computer issues and needed help sorting that out and so I told him that when I had done my errands I would go round to help.

Off to Pionsat, and first stop was the bank, to pay an outstanding bill. And talking of bills, there was Bill in front of me. He managed to make the woman at the cash desk crash her computer and so we all had an agonising wait while she tried to fix it.

So having sorted that problem, it was off to the Post Office. They have a guaranteed 2-day delivery service, which is what I need, but of course none of the special envelopes that you need to do it. She can order one, but it won’t get here until the morning.

At my insistence, she rang the St Gervais office. They had one in and the parcel lorry was there and so St Gervais sent it down in the lorry.

The postal clerk put my papers into it, and handed it to the parcels driver to send it on its way. At least I hope that she did – it’s what she told me that she would do and she better had as well, for I am working to a strict time limit here.

Down to the boulangerie. There was no delivery this morning and so I needed to buy the bread.

But woe is me – the boulangerie closes for lunch between … errr … 13:00 and 15:00. This meant a trip to the Intermarché for some bread, so I picked up a loaf and wandered over to the till.

A woman with a full-to-overloaded trolley saw me coming and … quickly put her purchases onto the conveyor belt. Aren’t some people nice?

At Bill’s I managed to fix his computer for him and then we had a good chat for ages – all about old cars, buses and the like. It always helps to pass the time of day.

But it was cold today and so I lit the fire up here this evening. So much so that I lit the fire for the first time in 10 days. And taking advantage, I cooked baked potatoes and baked beans for tea.

Tomorrow I’ll do some gardening, I reckon. That is, unless the weather is really bad.

It’s clear skies and stars outside just now but this is the Auvergne and things can change in the blinking of an eye.

-1

Wednesday 14th March 2012 – WHAT A SHOWER!

Even though it is soon to be the annual conference of an … errrrr … organisation (said he, using the term loosely) that featured quite heavily in these pages at one time or another, it is not to that which I am referring.

Neither am I referring to my visitors either.

And I use the term in the plural because I had more than one today.

First off at 09:00 this morning, the phone rang and it was Désirée, the local estate agent.

And 09:00 too, you might be thinking, but to everyone’s surprise, including Yours Truly’s, I’d been up for hours. And I mean hours as well. I’d been trying to speak to Désirée for a while and at last she was free and so she came round here for a chat.

Amongst the things about which we chatted, and probably the most important, was the building that I own in Montaigut. Long-term readers of these pages will know that I own something like a derelict warehouse there and I use it to keep some cars, namely the Traction, the 2000E and the Mark V Cortina estate.

Above it though is a large space that was formerly six large rooms on two levels, but the dividers, both horizontally and vertically, are long gone. I need to do something about this place and converting the upstairs into two apartments is what I have in mind.

And so I had a good pick of Désirée’s brains – after all, she’s the professional.

Another visitor was Bill, who came round with a radio-cassette player out of an old car. There was a tape stuck in it and being an electronic unit you can’t get the tape out without power.

At least, most people can’t get the tape out but with the aid of three long fine-pointed screwdrivers and a pair of fine long-nosed pliers, I can manage to do it.

All these years of a misspent youth, that’s what I put it all down to.

2012 first GARDEN FIRE BONFIRE les guis virlet puy de dome franceIn between the visits I finally managed to light the fire, the first of the year. And that is busy (even as we speak) disposing of much of the waste wood and the weeds that I have been pulling up this last couple of weeks.

You’ll notice though that it isn’t on the site of where the greenhouse will be. There was far too much stuff to burn, and the trees were overhanging far too much.

But I’ve left some over there – I’ll burn that off tomorrow and that should kill off many of the weeds on the site of where the greenhouse will be.

But back to the shower thing. At 18:00 I noticed that the water in the solar water heater was at 31°C today, and that the water in the dump load was off the scale again. So 5 litres of that water into the solar water heater gave me 38.5°C and I had my first home-grown shower of the year.

Just for a change I actually feel properly clean.

And I was right about the wind as well.

0

Saturday 7th January 2012 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… my money again.

And it’s not as if I have too much to spend either, but there you go.

In Carrefour in St Eloy les Mines I spent a mere €12 or so, most of which went on a jar of coffee seeing as I seem to be rather down on that at the moment, and won’t that be a catastrophe if I run out?

In LIDL I spent €25 or something – with nothing much to show for it except some wire brushes for the angle grinder. I’ll always pick up a few packs of those when I see them.

But there I met a couple of people whom I knew – some friends of Bill’s whom I had met at one of his soirées, and Jasper and his mum (who have featured previously in these pages) were also there.

But then  went to Cheze – the hardware shop where the Intermarché used to be when I first came here.

The bread box was trashed in the hurricane so I need to make something new, and Cheze was the likeliest place to find some bits. I didn’t find what I wanted but I still spent €52 in there.

Yes, it was sale time there and even more importantly, a clearance sale. There was a big bucket of hardware like door knobs, adjustible feet, special bolts and so on, at 50 centimes a pack. I had tons of stuff out of there.

There was also a LED spotlight with a dusk-dawn sensor, powered by a solar panel, reduced to €8:00. That will make a handy work light or torch for when I’m down the garden late at night.

low wattage chop saw cheze st eloy les mines puy de dome francePride of place though went to this beautiful machine – a chop saw.

I’ve been after a low-powered one of those for ages and I’ve hunted high and low but without success. But here at Cheze were three or four end-of-range chop saws, quite small and all rated at 1200 watts, all for the price of €34 each.

At that price I just had to have one, especially as there’s a 1200-watt inverter winging its way to me in the post even as we speak. After all the time I spend chopping wood by hand, and how easy it was doing the tongue-and-grooving back at Expo when I had the battery-powered one.

The width of the blade and the instability of the machines means that they aren’t ideal for precision work, but where precision cutting isn’t 100% essential, this wil ldo just fine, so I hope that it does what it says that it will do.

BUt I didn’t stay out long. It’s rained non-stop today, all grey and drizzly and depressing. I took advantage of the morning by writing the additional text for the radio programmes we shall be recording at the end of the month, and I’ve watched the odd film or two.

Tomorrow I’m going to start my presentation for the Trans-Labrador Highway.

I have to do that on Feb 24th, so no time like the present to get going.

-1

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.

anemometer kwikstage scaffolding pointing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe 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

-1

Friday 21st October 2011 – TODAY WAS ….

… a quiet day or at least it should have been. But Terry and Rob came round to fix Lieneke’s barn and no-one can sleep through the kind of racket that those two are capable of producing.

But what about last night,hey? Temperature plummeted to -1.9°C. A minus temperature – winter is flaming well here, right enough. I’m even contemplating lighting a fire shortly if we don’t have an improvement

However, never mind that for a moment – three hours and more on the computer and my visit to Trois Rivieres is well-advanced.

Trois-Rivieres is on the north bank of the St Lawrence between Montreal and Quebec. It’s the oldest industrial site in North America and the newsprint capital of the world. In fact all of my visits to the area have been overwhelmed by the smell of wet paper from the pulp mills so I’ve always kept well clear. 

This year though I found myself in the town and my opinions of the place rapidly changed. The town seeps history from almost every pore and I’ve completely changed my opinion about the place.

This afternoon though I had to wait for Terry to move his van before I could get out to the post office and post that parcel. And I fell through the floor when I found out the price. I bet that it’s cheaper to fly to Canada and deliver it by hand. It makes excess baggage charges look a bargain

To the bank after that to sort out a few financial details, and then to Bill’s to fix his computer again.

This evening it’s POETS day of course and so I finished early – spending half an hour or so sorting some papers that date back to 2004. And there’s so many of them that it’s going to take a while.

Tomorrow it’s shopping and as I have so much to do it’s going to be a St Eloy les Mines quick half hour-type of shopping. And the washing is building up here and so I might visit the local launderette and sort it out.

>But I’m not really looking forward to tomorrow. I’ve finished all of my stock of Canadian vegan cheese slices and that is a catastrophe.

-2

Saturday 15th October 2011 – WE SAW …

… the geese yesterday but this morning there was a horde of some other kind of bird assembling ready to fly off for the winter, and this is sad. In fact it’s more than sad – it’s depressing. Autumn is coming to a close already.

No idea what kind of bird they might have been. I know that I’m a keen birdwatcher, but that’s not concerned with any kind of bird that you might see flying about in the air over my property.

And so this morning after my 4 hours sleep (I was still up at 05:39) I was up and breakfasted and then I attacked Canada 2011.

lean to repairing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut not before I had taken a shot of the work that I’ve been doing. You’ll see how much I’ve built up over the last couple of days, and you’ll also notice that the beam is in position where it should be.

When I restart work next week I’ll be building up the stonework so that it meets and infills the woodwork. And tipping cement and lightweight concrete into all of the gaps, that will hold everything nicely into position.

It’s all good stuff, make no mistake about this, and it’s coming along nicely.

In St Eloy les Mines I bumped into Bill and we went for a coffee and a chat to put the world to rights.

But in LIDL I also encountered a woman who was discussing things with her 4 year-old son “Do try to control yourself, Jasper”
Help! We are being invaded by Hooray Henries.

Back here my return was serenaded by the sounds of flute being played in welcome. Yes, it IS that time of the year and Lieneke and the others have turned up. And how well Lieneke looks. She’s dropped about 20 kilos over the last year and it really suits her. She’s probably losing years as the rest of us are adding them on. 

And no footy again tonight either. whatever am I going to do until tomorrow?

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