Tag Archives: heavy snow

Saturday 31st January 2015 – NOW HERE’S ANOTHER THING.

Something else that’s totally unheard-of too. At about 16:00 today I went downstairs and spent an hour working on my walls in the landing!

Mind you, what was astonishing about this was the weather. When I awoke this morning (early yet again) it was snowing – and quite heavily too. And it kept that up for most of the day.

After breakfast I wrote yet another series of radio programmes, in my quest to keep well in front of targets, and then, in other astonishing news, I started to empty the attic. A lot of the foodstuffs – those in glass continers – went outside onto one of the shelves and that made much more space on my table in here. And the shelf – the smaller of the two – isn’t even half-full.

I’ll find some more cardboard to put on the upper shelf tomorrow and move all of the cookery stuff, saucepans and the like, out there. At this rate, i’ll be able to move around in here.

Whatever next?

Well, next was 16:00 and, quite dramatically, the sky cleared and the sun came out. Never one to miss an opportunity, and not knowing when the next time will be that we will have decent weather as the weather forecast for the next few days is dire, I nipped downstairs, switched on the inverter, found the power sander and attacked the filler that I had put on the landing walls last night.

15 minutes had that all smoothed off and, in for a penny, in for a Pound, I filled in where the filler was low.

That’s now drying off and thennext time that we have half an hour of sun, even if it’s tomorrow, I’ll sand it off. I’m already two days behind where I want to be with this bedroom and I can’t afford to lose any more time. Wallpapering the landing on Monday, painting on Wednesday, that’s the next plan. And in between, I’ll empty out the bedroom ready for a work-in.

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Saturday 24th January 2015 – I HAD A NICE …

… morning out today.

I was up early this morning despite havig had a late night and having been on my travels again. I was driving up to Southern Scotland with Rosemary and had taken the road via Derby (the old A6) which had led to some kind of deviation around the Matlock area. We ended up at Carlisle in a motel but the room that we had been given also doubled as a rest room for the staff and I was continually being disturbed by staff members coming in for a smoke and so on. In the meantime there were a couple of boys with fishing nets and jam jars and wearing helmets, diving into pools of the most disgusting and dirty water, looking for what, I don’t have any idea.

By 09:00 I was at Cécile’s to show a couple of people around Cécile’s house and on the way back I called at the Intermarché and ended up having lengthy chats with various people, including Marianne.

I went round to the Mairie afterwards. It’s census time again and I’ve been away from the house for just one day, and guess which day it was that they called? I now have to declare myself at the Mairie but of courseit was closed this morning so I resolved to go back this afternoon.

No chance of that, though. We had the heaviest snow of the winter this afternoon and everywhere is a white-out. I’ll have to go there another time.

I spent this afternoon working on the text for the radio programme and that’s almost finished. An hour tomorrow and it will be done.

Apart from having a lengthy chat with Cecile this evening, that’s my lot today. It’s not been the weather for doing much else.

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Monday 8th December 2014 – WE WERE RADIOING TODAY

Just in Gerzat for Radio Arverne though.

I was round at Liz’s at midday, having stopped off at the Intermarche at Pionsat in order to buy some stuff for our little party. For lunch, there was the rest of yesterday’s nut roast which of course is even better on the following day when the spices have had more time to soak in. Then we set off for Gerzat.

We first recorded the four traditional programmes. That means that we are now up to mid-February and we don’t have to go back there until the end of January. After that, we did our hour-long Christmas Special, and I shan’t tell you much about it – you’ll have to hear it for yourselves. All that I will say is that we didn’t use half of the material that I had prepared.

After the radio we went to the Carrefour at Menetrol for a coffee and then we did some shopping. Amongst the other things that I bought, I bought a big basket full of assorted nuts – that’s me getting all organised for Christmas isn’t it? Can’t do without my nuts.

I fuelled up too – diesel at Menetrol is €1:14 per litre and it’s been ages since I’ve seen it at that price – probably 7 or 8 years. Hard to thing that I’ve been paying €1:34 and more earlier this year.

On the wat back we encountered – not a wild boar this time, but heavy snow. it was chucking it down all around Les Ancizes but it miraculously stopped by the time I reached Terry and Liz’s. And I didn’t hang around there for I wasn’t sure if the snow would catch me up. I came home instead and made a pizza. I had no intention of going out again.

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Sunday 23rd March 2014 – IT’S HARD TO BELIEVE …

… that last Sunday at Menetrol, at half-time during the footy, we were all lounging around on the grass sunbathing. If I had been to the football today, we would have spent half-time shovelling the snow off the pitch and building snowmen … "snowPERSONS" – ed.

Coming back from Liz at Terry’s tonight, it was snowing like crazy and the road between St Gervais and Gouttières, and over the Font Nanaud, was becoming difficult. Yes, I changed Caliburn’s snow tyres for his summer tyres the other day, didn’t I?

So with an early(ish) night last night I was wide awake, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 09:20 and so even with it being Sunday, I had an early breakfast. But the morning was so depressing – rain, hail, sleet, and probably plagues of locusts and the like too. Pionsat were playing the Chimps at Villosanges but
1) kick-off was at 13:00
2) the weather was positively atrocious
3) it’s a 90-km round trip
4) I wouldn’t be back til after 16:00, I was expected at Liz’s at 17:30 and I still had wome work to do on the radio stuff.
For those reasons I stayed behind and carried on working.

But the weather really is dreadful and (apparently) it’s going to be like this for all of next week. And we have a lot of travelling to do with the radio programmes tomorrow.

BRRRRRR!

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Tuesday 4th March 2014 – THIS MORNING TOOK ME BY SURPRISE

caliburn heavy snow hotel gaspa ordino andorraAs you can see by looking at poor Caliburn, we’ve had a right pasting of snow this morning. It was certainly impressive!

But then again I had an interesting night. A couple of Security guards were accompanying some notable person and how they communicated with each other was by coded flashes of a torch. They thought that it was quite novel but I took the trouble to explain to them that we had been doing that for years – even down to having different lenses (clear, green, red) and even Conan Doyle in the Sherlock Holmes adventures had been doing it. (The Speckled Band as it happens).


gondola ski lift La Massana andorraSo that was enough excitement for the morning. I headed off into the town of La Massana at the bottom of the hill.

There’s a huge ski slope up in the mountains and the lifts start from right in the town. A gondola or two went a-clattering over my head and so I resolved for a closer inspection.


Seems that these days Yours Truly is entitled to a Senior Citizens’ discount but even so, €7:50 was still a lot of money to spend. But anyway, as Martin Luther once said – “hier stehe ich – ich kann nicht anders”.
upper ski slopes la massana andorraI was tempted to hire some skis and other kit for a little go but I’m glad that I didn’t because of course it’s Carnaval and school holidays. The slopes were absolutely teeming with kids.

It was freezing cold too and the wind was perishing so after a cup of coffee and a wander around, I came back down again and continued my walk around the town.

houses for sale andorra adverts in russianBut you can see where much of the money in Andorra is coming from these days. Some of the Estate Agents have their adverts written in Russian for their nouveau-riche visitors. And as for the prices, well you and I can forget it. Think of a number, double it, and then add some more on top;

It wasn’t just the house prices in Russian either. We had menus in Russian, notices in Russian, signs in Russian, all that kind of thing. In 25 years the Russians have gone from being oppressed Communists to the worst kind of Capitalists. That’s what a western lifestyle does for you.

hatch for exclusive use of bombers andorraThe country is, however, very welcoming and even terrorists are made to feel at home and given every assistance possible.

Almost every commercial building has a little place where a terrorist can leave his bomb … “are you sure about this?” – ed … no sending it by post or sticking it in a waste paper bin here.

Good old Andorra!

hotel gaspa ondina andorraSo after a really good wander around and some falafel with hummus, I went back to my hotel.

That’s it up there – the Hotel Gaspa. And such a nice, warm, friendly place it is too that I’ve decided to stay on here for an extra day. I don’t want to be going far by road in this weather, and at least I’m comfortable here.

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Friday 22nd November 2013 – WELL, WE HAD THE SNOW…

… and more than enough of it too. In fact, I don’t think that it stopped all day.

First job was of course to clear off the solar panels just in case the sun decided to show itself (which it didn’t, of course) and then after breakfast I had a play with the printer that I inherited from Marianne. I finally managed to get it to work but of course it ran out of ink almost immediately – par for the course I reckon.

I went round early to Liz’s seeing as the weather was bad, and I was helped on my way by the Parisian who brushed the snow off a few branches to let me pass. He was smiling and we had a little chat too – dunno what’s come over him, being sociable. I hope that he keeps it up – it’s so much nicer around here when everyone gets on with everyone else.

We had a quick lunch at Liz’s and then it was off to Gerzat to record the December Radio Anglais programmes, as the snow was falling quicker and quicker and the roads were becoming worse and worse.

On the way back, we made an executive decision and went to the Carrefour at Riom to do our shopping. We drive right past it and it would save both of us an unnecessary trip out on Saturday – not advisable if the weather gets any worse.

On the way back, the roads were more and more difficult and so I forewent my usual evening coffee. I dropped off Liz and her shopping, and made my way home – via the Intermarché at Pionsat because I remembered a couple more things that I had forgotten.

I made it home safely, which is more than two other vehicles did – slid sideways into ditches. And one of them was a 4×4 and that doesn’t surprise me because people who own them think that they can do anything and drive just as fast as they did before. That’s nonsense because these modern 4x4s are not built like an old “Series” leaf-sprung Land-Rover and when people hear stories of 4x4s being friven flat-out in all kinds of adverse weather conditions, they don’t realise that “flat-out” in an old “Series” leaf-sprung Land-Rover was 40mph.

So now I’m back here, battened into the attic with the fire going full-blast. I have everything that I need so i’m not moving until Monday afternoon.

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Tuesday 12th February 2013 – I was dead right …

… about the weather.

This morning was horribly grey and overcast with a hanging cloud. And it didn’t get any better than that either. Talking to Terry a few hours later, he said that it was snowing round by his place, and sure enough in the late afternoon it started chucking it down here too.

With regard to Bill’s affairs, it was too cold to go round there and so we stayed at Marianne’s and went through a huge pile of paperwork and did the accounts to date. After that I went with Pascal round to Bill’s and we moved some more furniture out.

This afternoon was yet another afternoon without working in the bathroom and this is becoming a tale of lost opportunities. Terry wanted to go to Brico Depot and wanted me to go with him. It was only fair and I’m not complaining as after all, a huge pile of stuff was for me but none of this is getting my bathroom done and for the last few weeks I’ve been continually sidetracked by one thing or another and it’s beginning to get on my nerves. What made it worse was that I was building up a list of things that I needed to buy next time I was there, and it went clean out of my head.

This evening I was at St Maurice. There’s a series of walks around France taking place every weekend and in 2 months time they will be walking around there, so they had a meeting of potential volunteers. I went along to find out what was happening.

 Back here, it was oven chips and baked beans for tea, and now I’m off to bed. Tomorrow we’ll have more hanging clouds and snowstorms. And who is going to come along tomorrow to put me off working in the blasted bathroom?

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Monday 10th December 2012 – And there I was …

… lying in bed going through in my mind the things that I should (and shouldn’t) have done during the day, and it was then that I remembered that I hadn’t written up the blog for today. Mind you, it was about 03:00 (I had a late night) and I wasn’t going to get up and do it at that time. Hence the reason that you’ve all had to wait for it.

It had been a comparatively busy day too for round here. An early start saw me bash on with the Christmas special and I made huge strides in putting down what I need to say. In the best traditions of the Open University, I just write stuff down as it occurs to me, and then go through and edit it later. Ohhh, the joys of “cut and paste”.

A break at lunchtime though because Terry came round to pick up his orders from the UK. Piles of stuff there was too. We agreed that, seeing as he knows all of the best contacts, he’ll order on my behalf the new winter tyres for Caliburn off the internet. Caliburn won’t know himself, what with all of these new tyres just now. He’s certainly having a good Christmas, even if no-one else is.

At the Anglo-French group, at first there was just me. Terry came in later and explained that he had had to fight a major blizzard round by St Gervais d’Auvergne, which explained why no-one from that neck of the woods appeared. Jex told me that Marianne was in hospital (she hadn’t been looking too well last time I saw her) and so that explained that. I’ll have to get on to her and see how she is.

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Sunday 28th October 2012 – BRRRRR!!!!!!!

puy de dome franceIt’s absolutely freezing outside. And I mean that too. Minus 1.6°C outside when I took the stats just now.

And it’s been cold all day as you can tell by just looking at this photo of the Puy-de-Dome that I took from my usual haunt – the birdwatching site at the back of St Gervais d’Auvergne.

Winter has arrived, early as we predicted exclusively on these pages just 10 days ago, and we are still in October too.

puy de sancy puy de dome franceAnd just look over there at the Puy de Sancy and the Mont Dore. It’s more like Mont Blac over there right now. And those heavy clouds are threatening more punishment

And the snow isn’t just scattered over the high ground either. There’s piles of it in the middle distance too.

When that lot was unleashed last night, we were still on SUMMER time would you believe. The weather has gone totally crazy.

So this morning with the extra hour in bed, I was up and about at 09:20 and after breakfast and the usual paperwork, I spent a couple of hours doing some housework, cleaning and dusting and the like.

It’s certainly been such a long time since I’ve done any, and I can actually see some floor now.

This afternoon I went out to Terjat to watch AS Terjat play Neris les Bains’s 2nd XI.

An Allier Division 1 match, theoretically the same level at which FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI play, but there wasn’t a single player out there whom I would chose for my team. The quality really is quite poor in the Allier.

Neris-les-Bains are quite high up in the league and AS Terjat are mid-table, yet you wouldn’t have thought so from watching this match.

The first half with AS Terjat kicking into a howling wind, the match was played mostly in the Terjat half, but Neris-les-Bains were to all intents and purposes clueless in attack.

In the second half, playing with the wind, AS Terjat scored 2 goals in quick succession and as the wind dropped, Neris-les-Bains scored late in the game, due to a defensive howler in the AS Terjat penalty area.

fter that I went to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse our Radio Anglais programmes for the coming week. Liz made a lovely tea and I had a nice warm shower for which I was grateful.

Back here though it’s freezing and I was sorely tempted to light the fire up here. November 17th was the first fire in 2010 – November 27th was the first in 2011,but the first fire in October is just crazy.

If it’s as cold as this tomorrow and I’m in all evening it will definitely be lit.

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Saturday 27th October 2012 – WHO WAS IT …

1st snow winter 2012 les guis virlet puy de dome france… who laughed when I said the other day that winter was on its way here and that it would be snowing before much longer?

Well, there you are. This was what greeted me this morning.

It’s the first snow of the year and it’s still October and we’re still on summer time here here.

I was up nice and early with every intention of going to Montlucon as I told you yesterday. But the main reason for going was to go finish off the day with a swim in the pool at Neris-les-Bains;

But if anyone thinks that I am getting into a swimming pool anywhere in weather like this, they are mistaken.

Instead, I stayed in this morning and did some more paperwork.

This afternoon the weather changed slightly and we had an hour or two of glorious weather – hardly a cloud in the sky – and so I nipped into St Eloy-les-Mines.

In this weather you have to go and do the shopping when you can, so there I was, doing a quicka dash around LIDL and Carrefour, spending a grand total of €18 on the weekly food shopping bill

The other day coming back from Nan’s, I noticed that Caliburn seemed to have his brake lights stuck on.

An investigation revealed that it was the driver’s side bulb showing both filaments at night, so I went to have a closer look.

I took out the light units and saw that the nearside lights worked as they should. On the offside though, a close examination of the bulb revealed that the bulb’s shaft had fractured.

As a result, the two internal wires were twisting and the current for the rear light was passing through the touching wires, lighting up the brake light as well.

Pressing the brakes, the current for the brake light was simply running to earth down the fractured shaft of the bulb.

Anyway, a new bulb has resolved that problem and we now have rear lights and brake lights like we are supposed to. My first guess of an earthing fault wasn’t so far out.

This afternoon I watched some footy on the computer and then prepared myself to go to Marcillat en Combraille to watch the footy. It’s cup weekend in the Puy-de-Dome and as you know, FC Pionsat St Hilaire were eliminated a couple of weeks ago by Clermont Foot Auvergne.

But to cut a long story short … “hooray” – ed … there was an inch of snow on the ground and it was falling thick and fast.

That put an end to the plans for going out, and I shan’t be moving now until it warms up again.

See you in April.

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Monday 5th March 2012 – I WAS RIGHT …

… yesterday about the snow.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-1

Tuesday 14th February 2012 – IT WAS A PLEASURE …

… to wake up this morning with a temperature of 13.5°C up here in the room. It’s been a while since I’ve had a temperature like that.

Mind you, what wasn’t a pleasure was being woken up by a phone call at some ungodly hour of the morning. However, it did concern work so I can’t complain too much I suppose, even if it did get me off on the wrong foot.

heavy snow 2012 LES GUIS VIRLET puy de dome franceAfter all of that, I went to beat the bounds of the property. As you know, we had a right caning of snow through the night and I wanted to see what the weather had done to the place.

The answer is, as you might expect, that I’m properly snowed in and I shan’t be going anywhere for a bit. Luckily I had the foresight to leave Caliburn up at he top of the bank

As an aside, you can see the Sankey trailer and the Minerva, and also the old orange central heating tank that Simon gave me to use to store biofuels in.

And while I was checking up on the house, I had a brainwave, And it’s so simple that I’ve no idea why I never thought of it before – and I’m kicking myself for having suffered like this these last couple of weeks.

And so I dashed off for a rummage in the barn.

In the apartment in Brussels I had a small white kitchen table with two drop leaves and I remember bringing it down here. That had to be around somewhere and eventually I found all of the pieces.

I brought it up into the attic and assembled it in the room, and laid all of the kitchen stuff on it. It’s now making quite a useful kitchen worktop up here and I wished that I had remembered it earlier.

This afternoon I didn’t manage to do very much as I had a whole series of phone calls one after the other, and so it was pretty much a wasted day. Still, there will be other days.

Tea was baked potatoes and spicy beans, cooked in the oven. This was an excellent buy, this new woodstove.

But the temperature outside just now is astonishing – minus 1.6°C. That’s over 10°C improvement from last night. If that kind of temperature transforms itself into a decent daytime temperature, I might even have some water tomorrow.

And not before time either – I’m now reduced to melting buckets of snow.

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Monday 13th February 2012 – I HAD MY FIRST …

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

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

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

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

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

That explains the roaring inferno that I had this evening.

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

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

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

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

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Monday 30th January 2012 – I FORGOT …

… what I was intending to to today.

It’s sad, isn’t it, when that happens.

But probably the … errr … late start this morning might have had something to do with it.

And when I noticed that the sun was actually shining, I had a run round and cleared the solar panels of snow, to give them a head start.

So woodcutting came next, and I spent quite some time dealing with two huge tree trunks that filled a good deal of the woodshed and will keep me going for three months, I reckon.

And when I talked the other day, about all of the wood that I had on hand on the ground floor of the lean-to, which is almost full of the stuff. All of that has been in there for years (and I do mean years) so seeing as I’m short of wood in my little room, I cut up a pile of that and brought it up here. It’s bone dry of course and so it burns quite well.

But that led me on to sorting out some of the wood in there and I made a little more space. And what with finding the box of hooks, I screwed some of them into the beams and started to hang gardening tools and the like from them.

Even the brushcutter has a hook of its own now.

This afternoon I started to move the wood around on the car park by the end of the barn. I’m making more space there now and I reckon I can start to think about how I’m going to build the shed to keep the motorbikes and the cement mixer

I’ve also done a little experiment.

I bought a handful of 12-volt work lights – the type that look like the halogen security lights that you hang from a building. What I did is to try it with a LED cluster light rather than a 50-watt halogen. And while it’s nothing like as bright, of course, it’s effective and I shall be using that for working purposes in future.

Finally I carried on with the wiring in the lean-to. I’ve found the pull light switches so I’ll be installing that tomorrow.

I had to cut a hole in the floor of the upstairs part of the lean-to to pass a cable through. Off to the barn I went to find a holesaw. I happened to glance at the sky and thought to myself “that looks like it might snow”. So I went into the barn, found the 33mm holesaw, and walked out right into a blizzard.

Yes, we’re back in the snow again.

I’ll be up to my knees in the stuff tomorrow morning.

-3

Saturday 28th January 2012 – IT JUST GOES TO SHOW …

HEAVY SNOW FALL 2012 les guis virlet puy de dome france… that those people in football clamouring for a winter break mid-season quite simply don’t have a clue about whatever it is that they are trying to say.

Here we are in the Puy-de-Dôme, having had our 6-week winter break in the mildest winter in the area since records began, and the football season restarts this evening.

And today we have had the heaviest snowfall of the winter and so all the matches are postponed.

So much for the winter break

But not that I am complaining too much. I spent the morning and some of the afternoon working on my presentation of The Trans-Labrador Highway for the local village social evening in a month’s time. and I’ve managed to reach the outskirts of Goose Bay – i.e. well over halfway.

It’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow anyone any good.

But at about 13:30 the snow stopped and we had a little thaw. That was the cue for me to race off to St Eloy and so some shopping.

And I was back by 15:00 with the usual stuff, but also two Harry Potter films, the director’s cut versions, for €9:99 the pair. I’ll have to see what Herry Potter is up to – so far I’ve managed to avoid those films (except for one that I caught a glimpse of – in French – with Marianne over Christmas).

This afternoon I’ve turned my room around again. I’ve done a lot more sorting out, repositioned the furniture and by the time you read this I will have the bed back where it used to be. Only this time, with a proper array of chests of drawers behind it for the clothes.

What inspired this was the fact that the new large set that I bought in IKEA in the spring, and the medium sized set that I acquired at a brocante 18 months ago fit together nicely and are exactly the right size to fill one of the alcoves.

But I’m surprised at all of the bedding and stuff that I seem to have acquired since I emptied out Expo. I can see me having a really good sorting out one of these days.

I’ve left Caliburn on the road at the top of the lane in case the weather continues to turn nasty. From there I can drive him out.

Because tomorrow afternoon, Terjat, who I saw last Sunday in a basement Allier 3rd Division clash, are at home again. If I can move around, I’ll go for a nosey to see if they really are as bad as they looked last week.

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