EPIC HALL

Thursday 12th January 2012 – WHAT A GORGEOUS DAY …

… it was today!

Well, up until about 16:00 anyway.

A heavy frost overnight followed by a glorious alpine blue sky and so much charge in the batteries that I ran the electric heater up here for an hour or so this afternoon.

I never managed that last winter.

First thing that I did, seeing as how the nice weather was, was to dash outside and take a photo of where I finished in the dark last night.

It’s a highly significant photograph as it shows the first row of recycled plastic slates that I put on there. It’s significant because regular readers of this rubbish will recall all of the vicissitudes that we have had over the last 10 years to reach this point.

This is the climax of the work that I’ve been doing for the last 6 months or so since I was wondering what to do with that left-over bucket of cement in the mixer when we were doing Lieneke’s roof in the summer.

But returning to our moutons, as they say around here, up on the roof I managed another 7 rows today – that means that I’m about a third of the way up.

But it’ll be slow going from here onwards. It gets harder the higher up you go, as the actress once famously said to the bishop.

Up to now I could manage by leaning on the scaffolding. As of tomorrow I have to do it off a couple of ladders and that’s not easy. But nevertheless, it’s all looking good on the roof.

And so it was until about 16:00, when the temperature plummeted and we had a hanging cloud. It looks like winter has finally arrived and we shall have to see what the weather holds for us now. The weather is going to be deciding where I’m working and what I’m going.

In other news, the 1200-watt digital inverter that I ordered a few weeks ago – that’s finally arrived. I’ve not had time to play with it but I’m quite looking forward to the possibility.

That’s something else I’ll be doing when the weather changes for the worse.

Thursday 10th November 2011 – I DIDN’T …

… get so much done today.

And that’s despite having an early start as well.

But in the night when I had to get up to go for a gypsy’s, I saw a mouse appearing from a hole in the insulation in the ceiling. It saw me and darted back inside, and I heard the tell-tale scamper of tiny feet up into the roof.

And so this morning I spent an hour or so cutting up the off-cuts of tongue and grooving and making a wall across the insulation and shoring it up. And so far, it’s been All Quiet on the Western Front. We shall see. But mice are persistent creatures and if there’s a way in they will find it.

And it wasn’t All Quiet on the Eastern Front either.

I didn’t get much done on the wall because I spent much of the afternoon watching two herds of wild boar battle for possession of Lieneke’s field. The noise was spectacular to say the least. “Deafening” is another good word to describe it.

I didn’t have the Nikon D5000 with me up on the scaffolding (I’d probably get a pile of dust in it or drop it or something) and although I was tempted to go down and fetch it, discretion was the better part of valour. All of that aggression about 20 yards from me and if I had been observed I might possibly have become involved in it, and I’m not half as well-armed or well-equipped as a wild boar.

And they are quite noisy bar stewards as well.

Tomorrow I’m going to be pointing for as long as the sand holds out, and then I’ll make a start on the wind turbine.

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.

Thursday 20th October 2011 – I THOUGHT …

… that you might like to see like to see a photo of inside the lean-to now that the wall is finished for now. As I have said before,I’m quite impressed with it.

The part that I have built up is the part that has been pointed. The unpointed part is what remained after it fell down, and that will be pointed in early course. It depends how the weather holds out after I finish the house wall (yes, that’s the next task).

In fact, it occurs to me that the best way to judge how much work that I’ve done on the wall is to look at this photo to see what it looked like last year before I started in earnest.

So this morning I started on the web site again but not for long as Terry came round. He’d been working at Lieneke’s. It’s nice to see good friends and have a good chat about this and that, for a change.

This afternoon, I packed up an export order of bits and pieces – yes folks, my first export order. How about that? We are making progress all the time, which is very nice to see, and very welcome too. and once that was dealt with, seeing as how the weather wasn’t so good, I’ve started breaking the concrete food trough in the ground floor of the lean-to, as that’s where the wall that will support the steps will be.

Mind you, the steps won’t be there for long as I have a cunning plan about that.

But the concrete is tough there – it’s reinforced and armour-plated by the looks of things. I’ve broken the shafts on two sledgehammers, flattened two batteries on the SDS drill, and chipped about a hatful off with the pick-axe. I’m on the lookout for some dynamite now.

As for the frog that I told you about the other night, well thanks to Krys (and how nice it is to see you again), the frog now has steps in and out of the plant trough. He’ll probably fall in somewhere else now.

And the temperature? 1.8°C at the moment. Winter is acumen in. Lhude sing Rudolph

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.

But 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?

Tuesday 4th October 2011 – I’VE BEEN DOING …

… real work today.

I’ve been working on the back wall – the one adjacent to the farmer’s field – of the downhill-side lean-to this afternoon.

As you know, some of it fell down ages ago and last summer when Terry and I were doing the work at Lieneke’s, I used the leftover cement and concrete in the cement mixer to start to build it up again.

Today though, I built up the remainder of the rear half of the wall and now that’s more-or-less finished.

Not without some issues though – not the least of which was trying to find the outer demi-chevron, that had fallen off the wall sometime while I was in Canada. That eventually came to light in a pile of brambles in the farmer’s field.

I’ve even pointed part of the inner side of the wall to use up all of the mortar that was left. That means that tomorrow afternoon I can make a start on the front half of the wall and that’s not going to be easy because there is quite a bit of that missing. That’s going to need quite a bit of work to put that right.

This morning,I was up at some kind of respectable hour which was just as well as Liz and I were a-radioing at Marcillat for Radio Tartasse. We’re still doing “autoentrepreneurs” with them but we shall be moving on shortly to talk about other things.

I’ve also almost-finished my match report for the footy on Sunday and I hope that I’ll have that on-line tomorrow.

As an aside, we had storm clouds gathering today over here – first clouds I’ve seen for ages. It almost rained as well and that would have been a surprise – I can’t remember the last time it rained here. What an Indian summer!

Friday 12th August 2011 – What a lovely tea …

… I had tonight. And not only cooked with my own fair hands but grown with them too, for everything that you see came from out of my garden. I used my own herbs as well, but as for onions and garlic, I used shop-bought stuff because I had them and they need using. There’s no reason not to use my own though.

But it’s all exciting, isn’t it? Starting on the harvest of crops out of my garden. But I’m having a struggle to find them as the weeds have gone berserk I wish I had time to do the weeding.

This afternoon anyway, after another morning session on the computer, I restarted at last on the pointing of the end wall, and I’ll post you all a photograph tomorrow when the cement has dried so that you can see where I’ve got to.

Regular readers may recall that I started this at the beginning of last summer but doing my barn roof and then Lieneke’s roof, followed by my trip to Labrador put an end to my progress. And with having to empty the apartment in Brussels and make it ready for sale (which included clearing out the barn and the lean-to so that I can store everything in there), that took up most of the summer so far.

I want to get one side of the wall finished before I go back to Canada because when I come back, I want to put the wind turbine up there. Seeing how the anemometer is doing up there – about 3 times the wind down at ground level, I might even have enough wind to get the turbine to work.

And so I need to get a wiggle on.

Monday 18th July 2011 – AND SO I’VE BEEN AND GORN …

… and now I’m back after my mega-voyage of this weekend.

Yesterday evening was, as you know, quite an exciting dash through the wilds of rural Burgundy, but this morning it was a totally different story.

There were hay lorries, tractors, all kinds of things on the roads. No wonder I like to travel at night. And the final straw was near Moulins where they had part of the N7 closed for resurfacing – it took an hour to travel 6 kms, such is the traffic on the N7.

Bback home here though, I encountered all of the storms and the rain. I’m not unloading Caliburn in this weather.

And the solar panels on the end of the barn, those that I fitted before I went? They are producing about 20% more than those on the roof of the Luton Transit. I was hoping for more but never mind – it’ll do.

I was however back home in time to attend Lieneke’s party, where I spent most of my time chatting to Tyas, Simon and Desiree. It’s been a while since I’ve seen them.

And as you might expect, it all caught up with me later so I came home and crashed out. No surprise here.

And do you know what? I have to go back and do exactly the same thing next weekend too!

Saturday 16th April 2011 – One thing you have always wondered …

… is “what happens to the shop-soiled and damaged goods that LIDL can’t sell?” I can answer that for here in France – it all goes to “Les Bonnes Affaires” in Commentry. One of my favourite “end of series” shops – it’s had a major makeover and a huge pile of the junk that’s been in there for years has all gone. It’s now packed full of LIDL special offers in damaged, damp or torn packages.

The lady who runs it doesnt have a clue about pricing. Some of the stuff is 3 times as dear as it was when LIDL sold it. But other stuff is for nothing, like the battery-operated LED motion detectors at €2:99 and the 12 Volt LED lights with MR16 fittings (the ones that I use here) at just €2:00 each – I cleaned out the stock of them, I can tell you.

It was a really profitable half hour in there, I can tell you.

So this morning I did some tidying up in here and threw away a load of stuff that I no longer need. And then moved the Sankey trailer and dumped it in the lane (and now watch someone want to come past for the first time in a hundred years) before going off to Commentry for the shopping. Apart from the usual, I bought 6 tomato plants for €2.30 and 3 aubergine plants for €1:90. I hope that I will have better luck with the aubergines and tomatoes than I have had previously. And the LIDL in Commentry has been enlarged – and about time too – it was far too small.

Swimming at Neris was next on the agenda. The water was lovely and a good warm shower finished that off nicely. Back home I gave Lieneke some of my mint cuttings (anyone else want any? I’ve a load) and at 20:00 went to watch Marcillat’s 2nd XI play, seeing as there was no footy at Pionsat this evening.

Franck, the Pionsat team coach, was playing central defence but he couldn’t save them from a right spannering – 6-0 thay went down and they were lucky to get nil as well. They really are awful. Within the opening 30 minutes Marcillat had had to use one of their substitutes and he was booked twice and back in the dressing room. An astonishing performance.

But there’s footy tomorrow afternoon at Pionsat – the 1st XI are playing St Bonnet. Pionsat beat them 4-0 down there and they really do need to run up a cricket score tomorrow to keep their promotion hopes alive. We shall see.

Friday 15th April 2011 – I’m going to bed in a minute.

Yes, I dunno what’s the matter with me just recently – I can’t seem to last the pace any more.

And it isn’t as if I’ve done anything particular either. This morning I spent a couple of hours writing up my notes on Newfoundland, and then spent a while photocopying some documents that I need, and making the odd telephone or two.

Then apart from that I’ve been tidying up. The front of the house has been weeded in some kind of fashion and then I put down some plastic sheeting and put some pallets on top, and there I have my dustbins – all 4 of them. I’ve also cleared a pile of stones from in front of the house too – the big ones to the rockpile and the smaller ones to the paths between the new raised beds, and it’s in place of the stones that I put the pallets and the garden furniture that was up on top on the old potager. I’ve also rearranged the herb beds and the trees that I’ve been keeping in buckets until I can clear the orchard.

This evening I was invited to the annual general meeting of the Virlet Cultural and Historical Society and it seems that I’ve been talked into doing a presentation of my trip to Labrador sometime at the end of the year.

Lieneke is back again too and so I went round for a chat. She’s taken me by surprise as I had put the Sankey trailer across the door of her barn not expecting her to be here until the beginning of May as usual. I’ll have to shift that tomorrow.

And that’s been my day. Hardly tiring, is it? So I don’t know what’s up with me right now.

And in other news, I have gherkins and cucumber rearing their ugly heads in the cloche, and potatoes in the early potato bed.

Things are slowly coming to life here.

I wish that I was.

Monday 13th September 2010 – We’ve been seeing stars tonight

With our regular haunt being closed for redecoration we took ourselves off to the birdwatching centre at the back of St Gervais d’Auvergne. Marianne brought her telescope and we looked at the stars, and the rest of us each bought something to eat so that we could all have a picnic.

There were about a dozen of us all told, including some new people which is always very nice to see, and we had a very friendly and pleasant time.

Mind you, at least one of us is in league with the devil and I don’t know who – but from a morning that was all grey and dreary the day slowly opened out and by the time evening arrived the clouds had all but gone and we were treated to a most magnificent sunset.

We were out there until quite late and once the skies darkened over, we were able to see some really impressive stars and planets. But it’s a shame that we didn’t really know what we were looking at.

This morning I was surprisingly free from aches and pains and awake even before the alarm clock. Regular exercise must be doing me good. Simon came round for a chat and then he went to work at Lieneke’s, and I had this other radio station on line – it seems that they want to use us for their broadcasts. Things are looking up.

This morning also saw me do my paperwork from Sunday – they are certainly getting their money’s worth out of me.

But next weekend is cup weekend and so I’ll be having a weekend off.

Friday 10th September 2010 – I found a hotel with free wi-fi …

… a Première Classe on the edge of the city near the motorway, but when I returned from this meeting on Friday night, I … errrr … crashed out! Mind you it had been a long day. I had to get up early to open up Lieneke’s for Simon – but he never showed up. Mind you I took advantage by catching up with some more web stuff. I’m really pressing on with that

And after lunch I went to Bill’s and fixed his computer as much as I could , but I couldn’t do it all as we need some new drivers and then after that I went to Clermont Ferrand for this meeting. And as luck should have it I fell into Auchan just as they were having a huge €1:00 sale – and there was also a printer for Liz and Terry too.

The meeting was the Annual General Meeting of the referees of the Puy de Dome where they discuss problems that have arisen during the past season and new proceedings for the forthcoming season. It was quite interesting, but not half as interesting as the “attitudes” of a few of the people in charge of the meeting. I wouldn’t have called them particularly friendly – not in the least.

I picked up something to eat on the way back and after that I crashed right out.

i’m clearly working far too hard these days.

Friday 27th August 2010 – It’s been an exciting day today.

This afternoon I had a good wander around the vegetable plot checking up on things as it’s been a while since I’ve had a really good look, what with one thing and another.

One of the things that I did was to check in the smaller cloche where I have the strawberries and the one surviving cucumber plant. That has just been growing and growing with plenty of flowers but nothing much else, however today I noticed for the first time that the cucumbers are set.

There’s just three of them at the moment, still quite tiny but it’s nice to see some kind of progress in there. If the way that the courgettes have burst into life is anything to go by, within a week they should be monsters.

After that I went and checked on the tomatoes in the mega-cloche. They are just growing and growing with tons of flowers and fruit and so I took an executive decision and topped them all. No point in growing stuff that is never going to ripen and letting perish the fruit that is already there. Topping them will hopefully concentrate all of the energy into the fruit and they may even ripen.

There’s a stray tomato plant in the greenhouse so I went to check on that. And fighting my way in past the gherkin plants I noticed that they are finally starting to do stuff.

And that’s about time too. Thousands of flowers and not the least sign of a fruit, and all of a sudden a few of those have burst into life.

Now what do you do with a gherkin? If I could get malt vinegar over here I might be tempted to pickle them but I can’t so I’ll have to think of something else. All suggestions are welcome

I followed that up by pulling the veg for tea. I had a veggie-burger lined up and so I pulled up some carrots and spuds, and picked some beans, spinach, sage and rosemary. Add a garlic clove and an onion to that lot and it really was a nice tea. Quite enjoyable. And I sowed the last of my parsnip seeds in where I’d removed the carrots. I’ve no idea what they might do but they won’t do anything in the packet.

The rest of the afternoon I’ve been sawing wood. I need to move the wood to erect the dividing wall in the lean-to where the composting toilet is. I keep on moving this wood around and nothing ever happens to it so I’ve decided to remove it by cutting up for burning, no matter how long it takes (and it will take a while). Winter’s not far away, you know.

This morning though I spent until midday working on my website. It’s almost up-to-date – I reckon another week will see the monthly pages done up to August 2010, and about time too. Nevertheless I was interrupted by a buzzing coming from across the yard – the water boiler that Smon gave me sprung into action at about 10:00. The weather today was terrible (it’s still pouring down now) and there wasn’t enough current to really fire it up, but it ran for a total of 3.5 hours. And more of this anon.

Once I’d knocked off computing at midday I went with Caliburn round to Lieneke’s and tidied up there. It seems that Terry and Simon have finished.

I rescued the breeze blocks, the sand and cement, a huge pile of buckets my tarpaulin and ladder and a host of other stuff, heaved it all into the Sankey trailer and brought it round here.

I reversed it down the lane (hard to think that 20 years ago I did that for a living) and parked it next to Terry’s tractor where it can live for a while.

And it’s amazing how much room there is on there. I still reckon that the money I spent on having that done was money well spent. There’s room for another couple of cars on there I reckon if I tidy up a little bit better.

But the exciting bits involved the water heating.

Of course the day that I get everything ready for blast-off is the day when the weather turns miserable. The immersion heater in the house ran for a grand total of two minutes. But it was trying its best to fire up as the charge in the batteries bounced along the critical voltage. It was quite a windy day so I reckon that if there had been a wind turbine on the roof it would have worked a treat. I’m going to have to sort out this wind turbine.

As for the water boiler, even though the solar energy levels were pretty miserable it fired up in early morning once the batteries in the barn were fully-charged and ran for a total of about 3.5 hours. And the water, all 2.5 litres of it, was boiling away merrily to itself. So much so that with it being POETS Day ….
“POETS Day?” … ed
“Yes, that’s right. P155 Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday!”
… today I had a lovely hot wash and shave out of that boiler at 17:30 when I knocked off. And had it been less windy, I would have gone for the hybrid shower – the solar water (that struggled to reach 30°C) diluted by the 2.5 litres out of the boiler. Now THAT would have warmed it up.

I topped up the water with cold water once I’d emptied it, and it carried on warming itself for a short while until the sun went down and the solar charge stopped. And when I went to do the washing up after tea at 22:00 it was not very far short of being hot enough to do the washing up. A couple of minutes on the gas ring sorted that out.

All in all, I reckon that this is major progress and I’m really pleased with all of this. This place is slowly starting to take shape one way or another. I just want a nice sunny day now so that I can see what the immersion heater will do. But with all this rain that’s going on right now that isn’t going to be for a while.

Tuesday 24th August 2010 – Just look at the size of this!

Never mind the Winter of our Discount Tents, this is the Summer of the Monster Courgettes. This one has burst into life from being a cigar-shaped nonentity, is just a few days. Now it’s 44cms. I’ve got a luvverly bunch of coconuts indeed.

It’s so big that I only cooked half of it tonight, and with the spinach (out of the garden), carrots (ditto), beans (ditto) and chili (ditto) together with sone onions, lentils and garlic I made a huge mega-curry and there is enough to last for three days.

As well as the other half-courgette of course, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with that.

The pan was full to overflowing but as most of the courgette is nothing but water it soon simmers down to a reasonably size. And it was absolutely delicious.

Mind you, I’ll be eating courgettes until they come out of my ears. It’s the one thing that seems to do well here.

It was raining when I woke up and so after I let Terry and Simon into Lieneke’s house I carried on here – but not outside. The composting toilet will have to wait.

What I did instead was to carry on working in the bedroom – the first time for about three months I reckon. And I now have the back wall finished as well as one of the sides of the fitted wardrobe that I’m building. That’s what is going down the far side just there.

I can’t do the other side of the wardrobe as it’s out of there that the electric wiring is coming and I need to work out how I’m going to fit it. But it’s nice to see progress all the same.

The weather brightened up this afternoon and so I reckoned on a shower, but the temperature has plummeted. 19°C it was outside, and the water temp was only 31°C. But not to worry – I tipped a kettle-full of boiling water into the solar tank. That took the temperature up to … errr ….45°C so a half-kettle of cold water took it back down to 42°C and that was my shower sorted. Delicious! Mind you, won’t have to boil up water much longer as Simon gave me the boiler out of his van. It’s only 2.5 litres by the way but it will go nicely in the garage running off the excess charge over there. I’ve made a note of the maker and I’m going to see if they can do me a 50-litre one. That would be progress.

But the temperature is still falling, and with a clear sky, full moon and no clouds at all, it seems that the weather has turned (already!) and autumn is just around the corner. That’s depressing.