Tag Archives: gardening

Thursday 5th June 2014 – WHAT A SHOCK!

Yes, there I was in the middle of the night at Dorval ready to pick up mu hire car when the company told me that it no longer had any Dodge Grand Caravans. The last one had been sold in the middle of the week, and there was now no longer ay car to offer me. Consequently they offered me a refund but that was no use whatever to me. I wanted a car and I would never have one over the counter at the ame price that I could book one in advance on the internet.

I was all of a clammy sweat when the alarm went off.

Rob turned up at about 08:45 (I’d alrzady been out working for 20 minutes) and Terry turned up at 09:00. By 09:30 we were sitting there waiting for the cement mixer which, true to form, didn’t turn up until 11:15.

It wasn’t anything like easy to come down here in reverse in his lorry but he managed it and 20 minutes later he had gone, minus 5 cubic metres of concrete.

ready mixed concrete car park les guis virlet puy de dome franceTerry and Rob had left by 13:00 by which time we had done all we could. We were about half a dozen shovelfuls of concrete short.

Nevertheless we had the first row of breeze blocks of the retaining wall in poqition, the first row of concrete pillars and all of the reinforcing pylons in position.

This was a work and a half though and I’m pleased that I had two good friends to help me do all of this.

Hottest day of the year too (the water in the dump load was boiling) and I had a solar shower – I needed it too, especially after spending a couple of hours in the garden planting my aubergines and weeding the onions.

Now I’m having an early night as I’m having an early start tomorrow.

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Friday 23rd May 2014 – IT’S BEEN GETTING ON FOR 25 YEARS …

… since I cooked any sausages, but guess what I was frying tonight for tea?

And not just any ordinary sausages either but some vegan ones too.

I completely forgot that last year when Rosemary went to the UK she came back with about 20 packets of dehydrated vegan food from a British mainstream supermarket. Some I gave to Cecile but I completely forgot about the rest until I was talking to Rosemary once more this afternoon.

That got me thinking and I had to scratch round in the house until I found them. It wasn’t easy and it took a while but here we are. First packet that I put my hand on was the dried sausage mix (add 250ml of water and roll into shape) and there we were.

Surprisingly, they weren’t too bad either – much better than I was expecting, and there’s more for tomorrow night too. And I now know where that packet of dehydrated falafel mix that I had last weekend came from – I’m just curious as to why it wasn’t with the rest.

So after the usual morning’s performance I was outside doing a few odd jobs and so forth before starting on the bean frames. And I made one before lunch , sowed a pile of seeds into two rows and screwed the bean frame into position.

During lunch, the heavens opened and that was effextively that. In four hours we had 13mm of rain. I went out and did some tidying up in the barn and in the lean-to, sorting out some space and also finding some more wood for my bean frames. I did manage to make another frame and sow some more rows of beans during the odd break in the weather.

But this weather is getting me down. Every day this week it’s started off nicely and then degenerated into this depressing, miseerable weather that we’ve been having. It’s almost the end of May too and the weather forecast for all next week is the same – risque de pluie – a very good probability of rain.

It’s high time we had some summer.

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Thursday 22nd May 2014 – I’VE BEEN OUTSIDE …

… in the garden again today.

Despite another late night, I was up at the usual time this morning and it was once more difficult to concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing. I must do something about this and learn to discipline myself better, especially as I can no longer afford that woman in Soho …

Outside though, first job was to empty the beichstuhl. And it needed doing too. That’s all in the compost now, quietly festering away, and there’s a nice, clean beichstuhl ready for the morning. That will be a delight.

Afterwards I went in search of scrap wood. I needed some old laths, of which there are plenty around – it’s just a case of finding them and that took me hours as well.

During the lunch break, the weather broke and we had another torrential rainstorm. After my butty, I ended up in the lean-to doing a little tidying up and then did some concreting in the living room. Years ago I dug out a hole in the floor so as to take the batteries that I use. Once I’d done that, all nicely made-to-measure, they discontinued the model that I’ve bee using and so I have some larger ones. And so I need a larger battery box, hence the concreting.

The rain eventually stopped and so I went back outside. And with the old laths that I had gathered and some fencing that I had bought, I made two bean frames. They are now planted in the garden and all of the peas have been sown, as well as the very first double-row of beans.

I’ll be making some more bean frames tomorrow and sowing another load of beans. They seem to do fine in my garden so I need to encourage them.

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Wednesday 21st May 2014 – I HAD A BETTER …

… night’s sleep last night. Going to bed before midnight always helps and I wish that I had done so tonight instead of typing this perishing blog at 02:15 because I can’t sleep.

Even with having been out and about on my travels during the night, I woke up all bright-eyed and bushy tailed and after breakfast set about the web site. i’m on the last lap now, out on the icebreaker smashing our way through the pack-ice in the Gulf of St Lawrence in mid-May 2012.

After that, I attacked the mega-cloche and gave it a good weeding. You’ve absolutely no idea how much rubbish has grown in there in the last 3 or 4 weeks, but it’s all out now. Once it was ready, I planted the tomato plants that I had bought from the supermarket at the weekend.

After lunch, I weeded around one of the pea and bean beds, the one that already has a few peas in. Some of them have germinated (but many others haven’t) so I filled in the gaps with some pea seeds that I’ve had in a damp paper towel since Monday.

There were plenty left over too so I repaired another pea and bean frame and sowed another two rows, one either side. With any luck, they’ll grow and tangle themselves in the netting and keep on going upwards. I need to make a few more frames for peas and a pile more for the beans, and I’ll look into that tomorrow..

We had an incredibly windy day – gusting up to almost 50kph throughout. And it’s one of those days where the bigger wind turbine produced more than the smaller wind turbine. As I’ve said before, it’s a fallacy to think that you receive more charge from a more powerful wind turbine. The more powerful the motor, the bigger the magnet there is inside it so the more force that you need to overcome the resistance. That’s why in low-speed situations (and nowhere is any much lower then here) the 70-watt turbine almost always produces more than the 400-watt one.

Except today, of course.

And I was a little too optimistic about that battery that I installed the other day. One of the cells has boiled up today and distorted. So now it’s on 5 cells only until I can get round to sorting some more out.

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Tuesday 20th May 2014 – YAWN

Yes, I had a bad night last night. I was editing sound clips and the like when I happened to glance at the time – 03:45.

It ws about 04:00 when I finally went to bed and i had a very disturbed night, but I still managed to wake up and be out of bed before the cacophony of alarms finished at 08:00.

However it ruined my day quite considerably. I couldn’t concentrate on my website work and in the end rang up Rosemary for a chat.

Outside, I dug over the two potato beds, fitted the new raised bed and then planted all of my potatoes.

I checked over the seeds in the small greenhouse and I’ve planted some more lettuce and leeks. Nothing much survived my two weeks away. I then watered all of the plants (that’s why we’ve had a torrential rainstorm tonight) and soaked everything in the greenhouse.

Only a short blog as I’m shattered and now I’m off to bed. See you in the morning.

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Tuesday 29th April 2014 – I WAS UP …

… before all of the alarms had finished going off today. That’s keenness for you and it shows just what an early night can do for you.

It was a gorgeous day too at that time of morning. But it didn’t last. As I was working on the website again it started to rain and that’s what it’s been doing on and off all day.

after the website I went out to plant the raspberries and strawberries that Liz gave me yesterday. That meant hoeing the bed right through from one end to the next and then adding a pile of sand to lighten the soil.

Once I’d raked and hoed all of that well in, I could plant everything, and now they are in. And to take me up to lunch time, I hoed the onion and shallot beds.

I was in no rush after lunch as we were having a rainstorm. But once it died down a little I popped out and put the secon coat of wood treatment on the raised bed that I made the other day.

I’ve also been working on Caliburn. The back is all cleaned out nicely now and I’ve rebuilt a bed for the back. I’ve been using the old hammock-type of attachment that was a fifth bed in an old caravan that I broke for spares ages ago. But that gave up the ghost a while ago.

But then I had a brainwave. When I was living in a caravan I cut down a bed to fit in an odd corner and I’d forgotten all about it since I scrapped that caravan too. I resurrected it, cut it to fit the rear of Caliburn, fastened it all together with some angle brackets and aluminium strips riveted in position, and then made a cradle out of the old hammock supports.

It works a treat too, and I’ll be very comfortable on that bed, for I’m going away next week for 10 days or so, I reckon.

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Monday 28th April 2014 – WE’VE BEEN RADIOING …

… today.

First off was to record the rock music shows that I do, which means that I needed to be in Marcillat by 09:30 this morning. Liz came to join me at 10:00 to record a month’s work of the Radio Anglais information programmes.

We went round to Liz’s for lunch – some of the left-over aubergine and spaghetti casserole from Saturday, and went down to Gerzat to record the Radio Anglais sessions for Radio Arverne.

While we were in Gerzat we had to track down a parcel that had not been delivered. We tracked down the depot where it was kept, and they tracked down the parcel. It seems that the address on the parcel was incorrect, hence the non-delivery, so we’ll let them off this time.

But it was nice and sunny down there and what was so ironic was that we could see the thick black clouds over the Combrailles from there.
“I bet that those clouds are right over our houses” said Liz, and she was right too. Torrential rain up here.

The parcel was the towbar for Terry’s new Jeep and so once he had checked it over and was satisfied, he said “have you got half an hour?”. So while Liz was sorting out some surplus strawberry and raspberry plants for my soft fruits bed in exchange for me having driven her in search of this parcel, Terry and I fitted the towbar.

Liz cooked a tea for us, which was always very welcome, and then I came home.

And now I have more gardening to do for tomorrow.

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Friday 25th April 2014 – NEW TOY!

kubota b 1220D diesel tractor les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou may remember the other week that while I was out shopping one Saturday I spent a huge pile of money – more than I’ve ever spent on any previous shopping trip?

Well, here’s the reason why – delivered this afternoon.

It’s a Kubota B1220d mini-tractor, diesel-engined, 4-wheel drive with tri-point lift and power take-off


Anyone who has followed this rubbish for any length of time will have seen me spending three days with a hand-winch moving an old van 20 yards, or seen me shifting a couple of tons of rubble two buckets at a time, or shifting a trailer-load of sand in a wheelbarrow, or dragging logs one by one up from my forest.

Well, the fact is that I’m fed up of doing all of that and I’m not getting any younger. And on my birthday the other week I had a small insurance policy come to maturity.

kubota b 1220D diesel tractor les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnyway, to cut a long story short … "hooray!" – ed … when I was in St Eloy the other week, the local DiY place was just taking deliver of four of these for sale with the price slashed something like 40%, as they are old stock and a new model is coming out.

Not only that, the French government’s “cash for clunkers” programme also covers agricultural machinery and if I traded in an old auto-tractive machine, I’d get another €1,000 off. As it happened, I had an old, rusting, rotten auto-tractive field lawnmower that’s done nothing at all since I brought it here in 2002 and never will do either.

And so I thought “what the hell!”


What I need for it now is a flat-plate mower, a tri-point blade, a chain harrow and a small trailer. I already have an electric winch and that’ll do me for now. I can think of loads of other things, but all of that in due course.

So here I am now, totally broke, but ask me if I care. I’m as impressed with this as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin. It means that I won’t get to go on Trixi’s week in Corfu in May, which is a huge disappointment as I was really looking forward to seeing her again, but that can’t be helped.

So after the usual morning’s activities were dealt with, I went outside at midday. With not being sure of what to do, I had a look at the little greenhouse and it now seems that I have a cucumber, piles of lettuce, three leeks, some broccoli, some chives and some basil. It seems that things are very slowly coming to life.

And the … errr … 37mm of rain that we had in 12 hours late yesterday has caused a huge pile of weeds to spring up. I need to look at them.

Where I cleared off the space for the new raised bed the other day, I noticed that I had covered it over with sheets of corrugated iron. That had prevented anything from growing in there, which was the aim, but also loads of stuff had fallen on there over the last three or four years and was well on the way to making a nice compost.

I cleaned all of that off – there was 4 barrow-loads of it – and all of that has gone into the compost bin, which has filled that.

So this afternoon, after playing with the Kubota, I dug over where the raised bed will be and then made the framework. I’ve put some wood-preservative on that to see if that will slow up the decaying process any, and I’ll do a second coat over the weekend. That can then be laid down at the beginning of next week.

That took me up to 19:20.

Yes, I’ve been very busy today but it’s all been productive.

And I’m really pleased that I bit the bullet and bought the Kubota.

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Thursday 24th April 2014 – 19.5MM …

… of rainfall we have had between 20:00 and 21:30 – and there’s much more forecast; No issues about watering the plants then, that’s for sure.

I was up before the alarm again this morning and after breakfast that gave me almost 3.5 hours on the website. I like being on summr hours!

First job outside was to sow the beetroot and spinach seeds that I had left to soak. That meant doing a little bit of hoeing of course. And then I finished off the solar shower. That is exactly how I want it now, but there are some kind of pressure issues that need to be resolved. We’ll have to see how it goes.

After lunch I did a little measuring up for my next trick, but while I was doing that, my eye was caught by some blossom down in the jungle that is the bottom of my garden.

Of the 20 or so fruit trees that I planted in 1999 and 2000, one is still there, but it seems that there’s another one too. Way down the slope a little, and this is what the blossom is.

It’s surrounded by a pile of these scrub trees and is getting no light at all and so I resolved to deal with this issue.

By the tile I had knocked off I reckon that I had cut down over 20 trees (one or two of them were significant too) and the tree concerned is now clear of oerhanging trees. That will bring more light to the tree, and also more light to the rest of the garden, includind the vegetable beds.

Not only that, I managed to make my way out the other side too into clear space for the first time for 11 years and that really is something to celebrate.

And then tonight we have the rain …

I’m not sure what to do tomorrow.

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Wednesday 24th April 2014 – I’VE SPENT MOST OF THE …

… day in the garden today. And a long day it was too as I was awake and out of bed before the alarm clock went off – such are the benefits of an early night.

So after the customary few hours on the web site I went outside, and the first job was to sow some Witloof chicory seeds. Well – perhaps it wasn’t. First job was to hoe the raised bed in which they will be planted, put some potash in there and then hoe a few other raised beds while I was at it, and THEN sow the witloof chicory.

After that, I repaired a couple of bean frames, fixed them to a raised bed, and then sowed a pile of peas. We’ll see what happens to them.

After lunch I really got stuck in.

I sowed another row of parsnips and carrots, and put some beetroot and spinach seeds in to soak. I then went through the seed list and the little plastic greenhouse to see what there was, and now I’ve added some more

  • broccoli
  • aubergines
  • tomatoes
  • cayenne peppers
  • gherkins
  • peppers
  • cucumbers

Finally I gave everything a really good watering, but I needn’t have bothered as we have just had a torrential rainstorm.

Tomorrow i’ll sow the spinach and beetroot, and then I have other things to do.

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Tuesday 22nd April 2014 – SO WHAT’S HAPPENING …

fire pionsat 22 april 2014 puy de dome france … over there tben? There’s quite a fire burning for some reason or other and I wonder what’s going on.

I couldn’t hear the pompiers or any amulance or anything and so I don’t know how urgent that might be, but it certainly looks most unwelcome.

However, it’s not likely to burn for very long because we’ve had something of a torrential downpour this evening. There’s been the odd shower or two and we had a thunderstorm pass over at about 15:00 but it really meant business this evening.

Still, the first real rain for a couple of weeks and so we can’t complain too much.

The rain is my fault too, for I’ve been out gardening today. And I noticed that the three surviving strawberry plants have flowers now. But that’s by the way.

First job was to plant the Brussels Sprouts that I bought on Saturday. So I gave that bed a good hoeing over first, and carried on to weed a few more as well while I was at it. Then I planted the sprouts, followed by the 12 lettuce that I bought. 6 of them went in between the sprouts, and the other 6 went in between the cabbage that I planted the other week.

After lunch I sowed the new potatoes, and then I turned my attention to the seeds. Seems that I have some lettuce coming up, and there’s signs of life in the leeks too. But still nothing much coming up anywhere else.

Now though, I have some sprouts, cabbage and cauliflower seeds sown, as well as some organo and basli seeds. Tomorrow, though, i’ll need to push on.

At 17:45 I came to a halt as I had to go round to Cécile’s to show some househunters around – that was what I was on my way back from doing when I noticed the fire.

I made another mega-curry tonight. This one is a mushroom and green pepper one, and that will keep me going for a few days too.

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Saturday 19th April 2014 – I’VE JUST SEEN …

… one of the best football matches for ages. No football at Pionsat tonight so I went to Marcillat en Combraille who were playing Mercy-Chapeau. An excellent game that finished 3-3 but Mercy can consider themselves robbed of a victory. 2 of AS Marcillat’s goal came from free kicks, one of which I wouldn’t have awarded and the second I would have awarded, but in the other direction.

And I have at last seen a player in the Allier who I would pick for FC Pionsat St Hilaire. Mercy-Chapeau’s n°5, playing at the heart of the defence, was big, quick, intelligent and commaanding and if Pionsat could find a player like him, they wouldn’t have anything like the issues that they are having now.

Apart from that, after breakfast I tidied up in here. Not much, it has to be said, but just a little but at least the table is clean and tidy and I’ve vacuumed the floor round by where I sit. Not with the new vacuum cleaner – I’ve yet to try that out – but with the 12-volt cylinder vacuum cleaner that I found again the other day.

In St Eloy les Mines, I did the shopping and at Carrefour they had 12 lettuce for €2:60 and the brasica was reduced to €3:95 for 10 so I bought some sprouts to go with the cabbage I planted a few weeks ago. They will be in the garden on Tuesday when I restart work.

I noticed today as well that the lettuce seed that I sowed in a tray – there’s signs of life in there as of this afternoon. That looks quite optimistic as I was beginning to think that I’ve been wasting my time with the gardening effort this year. Only the courgettes (and then only some of those) seemed to have done anything.

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Friday 11th April 2014 – LOAD OF BANKERS

I had to go to the bank twice today. And what really annoyed me was that I had a really good start to the day too.

I slept soundly for a change, and there was something about a menage a trois going on through the night. Mind you, I had been watching Percy so that might explain some of it.

But for once, up before the alarm and I’d even spilt my breakfast, remae it, made a coffee and brought everything up here, before the alarm went off.

So I was at the door of the bank as it opened, and “sorry, the informatique isn’t working”. And it’s market day in Pionsat too. So I GRRRRd and grumbled at them and, being reassured that it would be up and running by the end of the morning, I was persuaded to come back later.

While I was working on the web site, the boulanger came past and I gave her some of my surplus mint and thyme (still plenty left, folks).

At 14:00 I went down to the bank again. And guess what? Quite right. The informatique is STILL not working. And so I made a fuss, and the manager saw me, and he did everything by hand. And it’s important that he did as I need to regroup my cash as I have a major expense to make tomorrow, more of which anon.

They also found my missing bank card too, which cheered me up quite a bit.

I spent the afternoon clearing yet more wood and I can now actually see the ground where I want to put this new raised bed. This is progress, not just for the raised bed but for the woodpile too. That’s looking extremely healthy now.

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Wednesday 9th April 2014 – IT’S BEEN A WOODY DAY TODAY.

Yes, I’ve been dealing with some timber issues.

But first, I was up even before the final alarm sounded. I’d made breakfast and coffee and was back up here with my food by the time it went off.

I was on the web pages at 08:45 too and that has to be something of a record and I did two full pages before finishing at 12:00 and then it was off outside. And first thing that I noticed was that two more courgette plants are rearing their pretty little heads.

Now, if you remember the story of the raised bed that will contain the soft fruit, that was hacked out a few years ago of what was the jungle. But with all of the old weeds dying off and the new ones not quite established, it was possible to clear quite a large area around it, and so I attacked that today.

Surrounding the bed are lots of those horrible ground elder trees that sprout up like forests in just a year or two. I’ve hacked down about a dozen of those and they are stacked out to dry for a couple of years. One day, I’ll pull up the roots too.

Now, the sunlight streams onto the soft fruit bed almost all the day, which is what should happen.

There was an apple tree that had been flattened and was growing horizontally. I had a couple of tree stakes and so I’ve now staked that tree upright in the vertical – and it’s blooming now.

When I cleared the ground for the bed, I stacked some of these ground elder trees and od course they are now bone-dry. I ended up with two barrow-loads of small kindling that will do me for much of next winter and there’s still plenty to go at. I need to clear some space though in order to have a decent garden fire.

Final job was to water all of the plants in the garden. A hot day today, so they needed it.

And I can see that I’ll have to start some weeding soon.

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Tuesday 8th April 2014 – WHAT A WAY TO START THE DAY

Downstairs nice and early for a change, and … no gas. It must have run out just as I finished cooking last night and I didn’t notice.

Good job I’d bought that cylinder the other week. First job this morning was to couple that up so that I could have a coffee.

After the website, second job was to empty the beichstuhl. Such delightful jobs I have here. And just to prove that it never rains but it pours, the shredder packed up. And why a shredder? The answer is that you need something to absorb liquids in a composting toilet and the best thing ever designed for that is old telephone directory pages. Works like a charm when it’s shredded and I wonder what I’m going to do now.

les guis virlet puy de dome franceNext thing was to check the state of affairs with the plants that I sowed the other week. I told you yesterday that a courgette plant was raising its pretty little head. So here’s a photo of it and its brother too, because we now have two courgette plants springing to life.

Still nothing doing in the carrots, parsnips and radish bed, but before lunch I sowed another row each, together with the beetroot seeds that I had soaking overnight

Talking of soaking overnight, I put pile of pea seeds in damp paper in a plastic bag. They’ll be okay in there for a while to help them germinate.


plastic greenhouse shelf unit seed traysles guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter lunch I carried on sowing and theres another pile of seeds now in the little plastic greenhouse helf thingy that I bought the other day.

It does occur to me that you haven’t seen it yet and so here it is in all its glory. You can see the bushes that I bought a couple of weeks ago, and all of the seeds that I’ve sown. In the plastic bag are the peas.

So what did I sow today?

  • Gherkins
  • Tomatoes
  • Sweet corn – but I’m not going to be optimistic about that. I found a packet with an expiry date of 2009 so if I was going to throw them away, I might as well throw them in the soil and see what happens

Thee was also quite a mixture of seeds floating around in the bottom of the box in which I keep the seed packets. Seeing as there’s an empty bed that won’t be used for a while, they all went in there and we’ll see.


herb bins les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter all of that I started tidying up outside, seeing as there was still some time to go. You can now see the herb bins in their pristine glory before they are all overwhelmed again.

It doesn’t look much like I’ve done any tidying up, but there’s a lot to do as you might expect. I can see the difference, but I doubt if anyone else could.

I’ve also cleaned the old “Westwood” ride-on mower. An ex-friend of mine found this for me and I never ever had it running because there are some bits missing. It’s sat here and not mooved wince 2002. Anyway, some time next week, it’s going. Someone is coming to pick it up. And you won’t believe the story behind this – you’ll just have to wait.

But whatever did happen to Paul? He was the best friend I ever had and he would do anything for me any time without question, something for which I was eternally grateful (and it goes without saying that I returned the compliment). But then he had his accident and he was put on medication, and that changed him considerably.

Finally, they changed his medication for another and I just couldn’t cope at all with the new personality. We were in Birmingham once, trying to make out which way to turn when a car (not unsurprisingly) blew its horn. He was straight out of the car going to thump the other driver and it was at that moment that I realised that I couldn’t keep this up.

I have enough problems dealing with my own issues without thinking about dealing with anyone else’s.

What a shame.

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