Tag Archives: heatwave

Thursday 25th May 2017 – PHEW!

Or, rather … phwoarrr, what a scorcher!

There I was, outside sitting on the wall overlooking the harbour eating my butties and I was driven in … by the heat! I’d planned to spend most of the afternoon out there too and I’d taken a good book with me – but it was clearly impossible and after a while I fled to the comfort and safety of my apartment. 1-metre thick stone walls don’t let in much heat, so hear I am hoping that they don’t let in much cold in the winter either.

According to the thermometer that I have here, it only reached 26.5°C outside, but it felt 10°C higher than that. And it reached 24°C in here too, and that’s with all of the windows open too.

I had another dismal night last night and I’ve no idea why that should be. But yet again I was awake long before the alarm went off.

After a relax, I headed off to track down a baguette and didn’t have to go farther than the depot de pain at the newsagents. He was in quite a garrulous mood as usual and we had a lengthy chat, and I managed to avoid bumping into any neighbours on the way.

It’s a Bank Holiday and so in accordance with usual procedures I had a day off work. Well, not quite, as I did a little (only a little) tidying up here and there with bits and pieces. And as you know, I took my butties outside for lunch.

My intention was to go back out later in the afternoon and take advantage of the good weather, but just as I was gathering up my book, Rosemary rang me. It’s always nice to talk to friends of course, and we had a really good chat for about an hour and a half, by which time it was tea-time.

Tea was kidney beans and peanuts and olives in a tomato, vegetable and onion sauce (courtesy of Yours Truly) with plenty of garlic. And there’s enough left over for another three days. But there will be an interruption on Sunday when I shall be experimenting with the new oven (if I remember to pick it up tomorrow). And that reminds me – an oven means “oven chips” of course, and so that means at some time I’ll have to buy some more vegan sausages.

Mustn’t forget.

And speaking of the phone, I’ve had the phone – the land line, that is – just two weeks now, and already I’ve received the mammoth total of three phone calls. One was a wrong number and the other two were these “you have won a major prize – please telephone (some massive overpriced premium line) for further details”.

It’s nice to know that I’m wanted. Although I shudder to think what for.

0

Friday 17th July 2015 – WE ARE NOT ALONE!

deer in field les guis virlet puy de dome franceI had a visitor this evening, and peering through the gloom I managed to take a photo of it.

A nice deer has come out this evening looking for food, or perhaps looking for Strawberry Moose – after all, it is that time of year and he does need to get back into practice seeing as how he’ll be off to Canada in about three or four weeks time.

I really don’t understand why anyone would want to kill anything as beautiful and graceful as this.

I was awake once more before the alarm clock, mainly due to the heat, and after breakfast I had another really good session on my wen pages. The trouble is though that the more I do, the more there is to do and rather than catching up, I’m falling even further behind.

I was driven out of the attic by the heat too, and I ended up wedged in a corner in the bedroom with the fan blowing full-on at me. Even then, it was almost impossible to keep cool.

After lunch I turned the house upside-down looking for some more tongue-and-grooving but that was completely unsuccessful. There is now no alternative but to go to Montlucon tomorrow and buy some more.

What i did do was to sort out the plasterboarding in the shower room ready for tiling and ready for finishing off the ceiling, and then to attend to some more outstanding bits of wiring. And that was where I reached at knocking-off time.

I finished off today by having a good shower – more to cool me down than to actually clean me off. And that’s me set up for the weekend now.

All ready for Montlucon, in fact.

-1

Sunday 5th July 2015 – WHY CAN’T THE DAWN CHORUS …

… have a day off too? Here I was on a Sunday morning aiming for a lie-in and they all start up at about 06:30. Mind you, they did have something to start up about because we were having a rainstorm – the first rain for about 10 days.

It didn’t last long, though, but long enough to disrupt my plans to have a really good lie-in, and I was up and about by 08:20.

And I’d been on my travels too during the night. I was with a lady of the female sex but I can’t remember now who it was. Anyway, it concerned “Ye-ye”. And if you want to know who “ye-ye” might be, ask any Belgian child. In these days of recomposed families, it’s quite often the case that a child’s grandmother (“mé-mé”) would have a husband or partner who would not be the child’s grandfather (pé-pé). So he would be “ye-ye”. And in this case, “ye-ye” was living with the children of his wife but was having a rough time there. Consequently I made the suggestion “why doesn’t he come to live with us?” and much to my surprise, the lady of the female sex agreed (I never ever thought she would and I was only half-hearted in my suggestion) and so I had to crack on and decorate the spare room.

Meanwhile, back here, after breakfast I checked over the radio programme that we will be recording tomorrow for Radio Tartasse, and then I did some work on the Radio Arverne stuff. The programme for the week 4th to 10th … errrr … November. Yes, I’m forging ahead.

But I couldn’t keep it up. The heat overwhelmed me round about 11:00 and even the fan couldn’t cool the place down enough. In the end I took the fan and the laptop and went down to the bedroom where there was a much-more-moderate 29°C and I stayed down there till supper time. I had a bit of a doze for a while and then just – I was going to say “chilled out” but that was far from the truth given the weather. There wasn’t much point in doing anything else.

So tomorrow we’re recording a round of radio programmes – the August shows for Radio Tartasse. Liz is off for a couple of weeks and won’t be back until after the first date of broadcasting. For that reason we need to do it this week.

With me being off to Canada mid-August, we’ll have to record the September and October programmes at the beginning of August. And this is the reason why I’m trying to push ahead.

And tomorrow afternoon, I’ll be fitting the two missing shelves in the bathroom and then carrying on with the ceiling.

0

Friday 3rd July 2015 – THIS MUST BE SOME KIND OF A RECORD

Today’s temperature outside reached a massive 39.4°C and that can’t be far short of a record. No wonder I had a hard time starting work today.

This morning I wasn’t as bright and breezy as yesterday, even though I had the Dawn Chorus again giving me a helping hand. After breakfast I mooched around for a little and then plucked up the courage to attack the radio programmes.The second lot for Radio Arverne are now half-completed and should be done by Sunday, and I have to check over the rock programmes for Radio Tartasse because they are being recorded on Monday.

When I finally managed to attack the bathroom, it was really slow progress. I’ve only done the first three rows of the ceiling, but then again each one had to be cut and shaped by hand so it isn’t surprising. In fact, because of the way that I’ve done everything, there’s going to be a lot of the ceiling that’s going to have to be cut and shaped by hand.

I’ve also had to fit a supporting strut in the ceiling. There’s going to be a flying shelf in the bathroom and the brackets to hang it from the ceiling have to be fitted, and that’s why I needed the supporting strut.

Apart from that, I had to unload Caliburn ready for my trip to Montlucon tomorrow and you’ve no idea how much I didn’t want to do that in the heat that we were having. But at least the water in the solar shower was 39.0°C so that I could have a really good soak.

Now here’s a thing.

Apparently in the UK, there’s been a minute’s silence in memory of those who were killed in Tunisia. Now – can you remember if we ever had a minute’s silence in memory of anyone who was killed by an IRA terrorist?

This is an old Nazi trick and the Nazis used it to perfection. Whenever an “atrocity” was committed by a hated enemy, they would have these ceremonial minutes’ silence, parade funerals, eulogies and all that kind of thing. They whip up the emotions and subsequently the hatred, and then the Government can go ahead and invade another country to “revenge these dreadful deaths” and the public will be so whipped up by hatred that they can’t see what’s going on. And when you see the outpourings of the Tory Government, that echo the comments that the Nazis made about a death in Danzig or the Sudetenland, you realise just how much the Tories have learned from the Nazis and how much of it they have put into practice.

When it came to whipping up hatred against the Irish Republic or the Vatican over the deaths and other atrocities committed by the IRA, the Government was strangely silent. But when it comes to doing it against brown-skinned people, all of the gloves are off. This tells you all that you need to know about the British Government’s racist policies.

And don’t forget that it was the West that declared war on Islam, with the bushbaby’s “crusade” speech. And just who is so naive to believe that when you declare war on someone and start to fight them, they are not going to fight back?

You couldn’t make that up could you? It just shows you the depths to which the intellectual capacity of the Western world has sunk.

0

Tuesday 30th June 2015 – THAT WAS A WASTED DAY

One of the hottest days that I have ever encountered. 36°C outside, 31°C in the attic (with the fan going full-blast on the maximum position) and even 28.4°C on the landing downstairs with the front door and all of the windows open.

In other words, it’s impossible to work. Instead, I’ve stayed up here sitting right in front of the fan. This morning, I did another radio rock show, just to show that I am still making some kind of progress at something, but this afternoon it was impossible to do anything.

And it was just as well, for my promised circular saw never turned up. Instead, I had an e-mail from Amazon to say that Amazon “…n’a pas été en mesure de vous le livrer en votre absence. Un avis de passage a dû vous être laissé, comprenant les coordonnées de La Poste afin d’organiser une nouvelle livraison”.
In other words, because I wasn’t in, my delivery couldn’t be made and there will be a notice somewhere telling me how to organise a new delivery.

And here I am, never moved from my chair all day, and no-one has been and no-one has left any notice of their visit. I dunno who the couriers are (because there is no notice from them) but whoever they are, it’s quite frankly dishonest.

Anyway, Amazon has had an earful from me this evening and they are going to try to redeliver it tomorrow. I shan’t be holding my breath.

Apart from that, not a lot has happened. I’ve done very little but, seriously, it’s not the day to be doing anuthing at all.

And it’s going to be even worse for the next few days. I’ll have to do something about all of this. A wet towel around the next might be a start.

0

Wednesday 11th December 2013 – THIS HEATWAVE …

… is still continuing. It’s been five days since I’ve seen a cloud and for the last 3 days I’ve had almost 100 amps of surplus electrical energy – unheard-of in December, and I’ve about 63°C of hot water in the dump load.

There was 15°C of water in the solar water tank too – imagine that in December too. I was almost ready for a solar shower this afternoon, although 15°C is not really what I would be comfortable with.

Today I did indeed demolish the old wood sheds and now there’s space to move around in front of the house. But where the wood had been piled up against the stone wall, there’s not a trace of weeds or moss and that has got me thinking, which I know is dangerous. I’m not here tomorrow but if the weather holds out for Friday, I might mix up some lime mortar and point the wall. Strike while the iron is hot, as it were.

I didn’t put up the scaffolding though. Instead, I emptied Caliburn and finally put away everything that I had brought back from Marianne’s old apartment in Brussels. Loads of stuff has made it up here, especially the bits that will improve my standard of living up here in the attic.

There was also a big bag of biscuits and so on that Rosemary broght back from the UK in the Spring and which I had put in Caliburn, dropped off in Brussels and then promptly forgot about.

Tomorrow I’m taxiing, which might come as something of a surprise to long-term readers of this rubbish. I’m taking a passenger to Limoges Airport.hea

-6

Thursday 25th July 2013 – PHWOOARRRR – WHAT A SCORCHER

Yes, for some reason that I haven’t yet understood, it was flaming scorching here today.

It didn’t seem very much like it in the sense that it was a bright sunny day, but nevertheless, it wasn’t half hot, mum.

So much so, that despite being up and about long before the alarm went off at 07:30, I didn’t accomplish anything like as much as I was hoping to do today.

In fact at about 16:00 I had to go and crash out for an hour or two. Consequently you won’t notice too much of a difference here in the apartment.

Still, tomorrow I’m off to see the notaire for 10:30 and when I do come back, I’ll have to get cracking and dump half of this lot in the bin;

But one thing is for sure – the first lot of donations on Freecycle might be going at the weekend.

I have an amateur for all of the video and audio cassettes that are littering the place. Next up will be the creche and all of the other Christmas gear.

-6

Sunday 2nd October 2011 – AT LAST ….

football fc pionsat st hilaire L'Union Sportive Saint-Georges-les-Ancizes puy de dome france.. we managed to get some football in today. My withdrawal symptoms are over.

It’s League Cup week – round three as it happens – and this is why matches have been few and far between this weekend.

Pionsat has made it through the first two rounds without my help and today they were up against it – in the shape of Les Ancizes who play three divisions higher up the pyramid and who included two players who played in CFA2 (the 4th level of the French pyramid) last season.

football fc pionsat st hilaire L'Union Sportive Saint-Georges-les-Ancizes puy de dome france>And what didn’t help matters was that they gave away three silly goals of the type that I have spent the last three seasons trying to get them out of – a lazy defence that won’t talk to each other, won’t track back as soon as they lose possession and no-one who will really dominate the bak line.

They also conceded a fourth goal that was quite a good effort, and not only that, Les Ancizes hit the woodwork twice when I’m sure that it would have been easier to score.

football fc pionsat st hilaire L'Union Sportive Saint-Georges-les-Ancizes puy de dome france With Cedric working hard up front supported by Nico they huffed and puffed but they never threatened to blow Les Ancizes’ house down, but then Thomas came on as a substitute for Jojo, who was clearly not having the best of games.

I first saw Thomas play three seasons ago as a new kid on the block and how promising did he look in those days. But the last two seasons he never seemed to fulfill what he showed back in those days.

football fc pionsat st hilaire L'Union Sportive Saint-Georges-les-Ancizes puy de dome franceToday, though, he came on clearly with a point to prove and from that moment onwwards the match changed in character. Cedric and Nico scored a goal between them and Thomas ran riot down the inside right position and scored two magnificent goals to pull FC Pionsat St Hilaire up to within touching distance.
Pick of the pair from Thomas has to be this brilliant diving header, and that would not have been out of place on the telly in any league you might care to name.

Highlight though was definitely Pionsat’s equaliser. The two players that had been playing higher up the pyramid spent much of the time showing off on the ball and it was odds-on that it was going to end in tears.

football fc pionsat st hilaire L'Union Sportive Saint-Georges-les-Ancizes puy de dome franceOne of them had already had a narrow excape when he tried to dribble around Cedric on the edge of the penalty area and although he eventually managed to keep the ball, his pass out rebounded off a Pionsat player and could have gone anywhere.

But his colleague was not so lucky. His effort with just 10 seconds to go rebounded off the referee of all people and fell to Cedric totally unmarked in front of an empty net and Cedric doesn’t miss those. Thank you very much.

football fc pionsat st hilaire L'Union Sportive Saint-Georges-les-Ancizes puy de dome franceAnd so we had penalties – and cool heads at Pionsat saw them through by 5 penalties to 4 and an extremely lucky victory that it was too.

It’s not often that Lady Luck smiles on Pionsat but she did today and the team can bask in their success here for the rest of the week.

It was also probably the hottest October day I have ever known. Absolutely beautiful. We are having most unseason-like weather just now and I expect that we will end up paying for this in a couple of weeks time. 

-3

Sunday 21st August 2011 – Well I was right …

… about the heatwave. It burned me out of bed this morning at 09:45. And on a Sunday too! Whatever next?

But I put my early rising to good use by cracking on with a new series of radio programmes. I managed to find some information on the Auvergne Regional Parliament at Clermont Ferrand, and so I spent all morning doing that.

After lunch I worked on the Radio Anglais blog and brought it up to date as far as I can – there are a couple of programmes missing and I shall have to find them if I can.

Once I finished that, I changed the habits of a lifetime and did some work. It started off as grovelling around looking for some battery terminals and ended up as something of a sort-out. I’ve found quite a bit of stuff that I had mislaid and eventually I did discover some terminals. Tomorrow evening I can make up some kind of connection system for a secondary battery.

In the solar water heater the temperature reached 45°C and I had to wait until about 19:30 until the water had cooled down enough for a shower, if 14°C can be called cool.

I’ve also tried my hand at jam-making with some blackberries off the brambles. But I dunno whether I’ve put too much sugar in it but it seems to have transformed itself into toffee. Ahh well – I’ll just have to practise more.

-2

Saturday 20th August 2011 – So having found my camera …

… I can post photos again.

pointing fieldstone wall lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis is not Thursday night’s photo but Friday night’s, where you can see how high I am up the wall here. As you know, I was hoping to finish it all before I go away but what with one thing and another I had to revise my target to just half of the all.

And so there’s not much more to do up there now and I’m hoping that at least that part of the wall will be finished long before next weekend.

Mind you, it would have been nice to have it done before I go to Canada.

This morning the heat drove me out of bed fairly early and so I’ve been tidying again. I’m not sure how it is that I can make this place so untidy so quickly.

At lunchtime I went to Commentry but didn’t buy anything worthwhile except some new AA and AAA batteries to take with me to Canada. But I did hear on the news that here in the Puy-de-Dome we are on “Red Alert” for la canicule – the heatwave. And that’s not surprising.

In the pool at Neris les Bains, everyone else must have heard about la canicule because there were more people in the water there than there were in the water after the sinking of the Titanic. You could hardly move. But in something of a surprise, the lifeguard came over to talk to me about solar panels. Either he had seen Caliburn, of else the advertising on the side of my holdall. I always take that down to the pool and leave it with the advertising facing the people in the water. I can’t emphasise enough – the three steps to a successful business are “advertising”, “advertising” and “advertising”.

The water in the solar shower was 45°C when I returned home. The 12-volt immersion heater was at 57°C and so even though it was late, I did another load of washing. I reckon that one more load of washing just before I go away and that will be me organised.

But it ain’t ‘arf ‘ot, mum.

-2