Tag Archives: mini digger

Friday 23rd March 2012 – WE HAD A …

… change of plan today as well

I got to Liz and Terry’s at lunchtime and after a quick butty Terry and I hit the road to Ambert to see this dumper.

But we didn’t go any further than Les Ancizes.

We started to talk about the pros and cons of having a dumper as opposed to a large powered barrow. While a dumper can carry much more soil around, when you consider what a mini-digger can excavate, then rapidly filling a dumper to capacity isn’t going to be much of an issue.

There are several other things that might be an issue, namely

trying to manoeuvre a dumper around the kind of tight spaces that you might expect to encounter on building projects around here – the very reason why we went for a mini-digger and not a JCB in the first place
if you are going out to a site you will need to make two trips, namely one to move the digger and a second to fetch the dumper. With a powered barrow, the barrow will go into the back of the van and so you only make one trip

With a few other discussions along these lines, we decided that maybe a dumper wasn’t quite what we wanted and so we did a U turn and went back.

Browsing around the internet for powered barrows we became distracted and it seems that I have spent some more money that I can’t really afford.

The old in-car DVD player that I use to watch DVDs in here is slowly giving up the ghost. The battery failed ages ago and now it’s being very selective about what DVDs it plays.

But there on the internet on sale was an AKAI 12-volt TV with build-in DVD player (the new generation DVDs as well), Freeview TV box, 15-inch screen and loads of other bells and whistles and all for … gulp … £214.

And with all of that, it draws less that 20 watts.

i spend a lot of time watching DVDs and I reckon that I ought to have something decent to watch them on without straining my eyes on a tiny 7-inch screen.

Not only that, I didn’t buy myself a birthday present last month.

Once we’d done the internet bit we went outside (it was a gorgeous day) and did bits and pieces in Liz’s garden, and I swapped the tyres over on her car from winter tyres to summer tyres (just you watch the snowstorm now).

Well, it was better than me singing for my supper, and the tea was beautiful as usual.

This morning though, I did some work on my web pages for the journey to Canada last autumn. First time since 6th of January.

I’ve loads of other things to do as you know, but I wanted to do something on these pages as a gesture of recommencement.

Tomorrow I have to write four or five radio programmes. That will keep me out of mischief.

-2

Friday 24th June 2011 – Dunno what’s the matter …

… with me just recently.

I can’t seem to get to sleep at all these days. It’s almost 05:00 and I’m still wide-awake, and it was 05:00 last night when I retired. But this morning I was up at 10:30 and it was just as well because at 11:00 Terry rang me up. He’d had a few issues with the digger and needed a hand.

And so off I toddled and Terry and I spent most of the day sorting it out. It’s quite a learning curve, this machine, that’s for sure.

Afterwards I went off to the opening of this art exhibition in Marcillat en Combraille where I met Marianne Contet again. Danielle from the Anglo-French group was also there and so were plenty of other people whom I knew.

There were dozens of other people too milling around at this exhibition – it seemed to be quite a popular event, especially as there were drinks and a buffet laid on.

There’s a donjon – a medieval tower – in the centre of Marcillat en Combraille and it’s recently undergone a refurbishment programme.

I managed to blag my way in and went up to the top to have a good look around. There are some beautiful views from the top, including this one of the centre of the town. And there’s a good view of Caliburn too, parked over the road in front of the florist’s.

So I went back down to the exhibition and joined in once more with the socialising, but it’s really not my scene at all.

However, it’s just as well that I did because while I was down there, someone asked me “are you OK for tomorrow still?”. It seems that there is a meeting of English-speaking people in the Marcillat en Combraille area and I’m supposed to be speaking at it, but I had completely forgotten all about it.

So that’s another thing to fit into my schedule that it already bursting at the seams.

As well as that, it seems that the commune here (Virlet) has a vacant date in its social calendar and could I give a talk on the Trans-Labrador Highway? The date concerned is February 24th which, as astute readers will know, is my birthday and so how can I turn it down?

Back here I’ve been working on the computer again but now at 05:00 I’m going to be doing my best to sleep. I have a hectic day tomorrow.

-4

Saturday 18th June 2011 – YOU MAY REMEMBER …

… that I had a working day of 32 hours and 30 minutes yesterday bringing my Brian James Trailer and this Takeuchi mini-digger back from the UK, and it was late when I finally made it home. It goes without saying therefor that Saturday morning didn’t exist and it was 13:00 when I finally woke up. And it will be no surprise to anyone that I have done … errr … almost badger all today.

But I did manage to find the time – and the energy – this afternoon emptying Caliburn and then reloading him with everything that I need for this exhibition that I’m doing tomorrow round at Francois’ place at Barrot.

Meanwhile, here at home we seem to have had something of a disaster. I can’t find anything in the garden as plants and weeds have overgrown everything, and a tree has fallen down and flattened half my crops. That’s not good news at all.

And in other sad news, I learnt today that Caroline’s cat Bigsy has crossed the Rainbow Bridge. Bigsy was 17 and yet had been in excellent health up until quite recently. But she had rapidly deteriorated this last few weeks and when I saw her the other day she was really poorly and it was only a matter of time. But at least she went in her own time and her own place, amongst friends.

Friday 17th June 2011 – THAT WAS A LONG …

… day!

I was reading a posting about a teacher friend of mine who had done an 8-hour day on a Saturday and how she was annoyed. My working day starting yesterday was 32 hours and 32 minutes, which is more than a teacher works in a week.

It was about 20:45 when I reached Liz and Terry’s this evening, and my day was far from over.

Caliburn, Strawberry Moose, the Brian James Trailer and the Takeuchi mini-digger crawled off the train at Calais as dawn was breaking, and without hanging about, we hit the road straight away.

copulatum expensium, as we Pompeiians say. I’m going the shortest, most direct route home and if I’m going to be fleeced on the péage, that’s rather a shame. Towing a trailer, I have to pay the same as an artic.

“Keep away from Paris” was the obvious plan. I’m right on the limit of what I can tow with this outfit and I don’t want any police interaction or any confrontation with crazy urban motorists.

There’s a motorway from Calais via St Quentin and Reims as far as the far side of Troyes, and then over the Burgundy mountains to the motorway at Nevers, with only the centre of Auxerre to worry about.

And that’s the way that I took – a nice leisurely saunter where I sometimes even reached the trailer-towing 90kph speed limit.

The motorway exit at Troyes is … errr … complicated, with a series of roundabouts where the camber is all wrong for the unbalanced rig that I’m driving. We had a couple of interesting moments.

And I almost came a cropper at the Intermarché on the edge of town – I’d forgotten about the height barrier and the jib of the digger. But I could enter the car park via the petrol station. I had a very late lunch and fuelled up Caliburn – he’s been quite thirsty, and no surprise!

The mountains were certainly exciting, as anyone who has driven between Auxerre and Nevers will tell you, and I was relieved to hit the motorway again. With no policemen bothering me, I could drift on slowly through the early evening down to Sauret-Beserve.

And was I glad to be back? I’d worked hard over the 20 or so days that I’d been away and covered a lot of ground.

Now I’m ready for a rest.

-1

Thursday 16th June 2011 – THIS IS GOING TO BE A LONG …

… day today.

There I was, sitting in the library reading my book, almost close to lunchtime, and my phone rang. Sure enough, the money has been received and I can no go and rescue the mini-digger.

So just like Janet in Tam Lin, off to Kettering Screwfix went I, as fast as go could me, for my final order or stuff.

Round the corner to Daventry and Brian James Trailers for my new trailer. And here I was in luck. I should have picked it up a week ago but it wasn’t ready. But here I am, with a trailer and a free gift of two heavy duty ratchet straps.

I”ll need those for holding the digger onto the trailer – in fact I’d just bought a couple at Screwfix but the more the merrier and these are certainly good stuff – better than anything I’ve ever had.

Stuck to 90 kph with the trailer now, so I wasn’t as quick to Droitwich as I might have been. Terry had ordered a huge ladder from the ladder company here so I heaved that on the roof rack. There was space.

Of course, it was Birmingham and the M6/M5 interchange in the rush hour, wasn’t it? The last thing that I wanted. But it couldn’t be helped. “Hier stehe ich – ich kann nicht anders” as Martin Luther was once famously heard to say.

It was 20:10 when I arrived at Accrington via Bacup, and by 20:30 I was on the road again.

But it wasn’t easy, to say the least.

The trailer is a lightweight car transporter so it only has two aluminium channels for the car wheels, and the track is far too wide for the digger.

We improvised with a heavy-duty scaffolding plank but the weight was far too offset to the outside.

While driving round right-hand bends was a dream, driving round left-hand bends was interesting to say the least, with the left-hand trailer wheels lifting.

It was a slow drive. But at least Terry’s big ladder was safe.

We then had to find my booking reference to amend the booking to add on the trailer but I couldn’t find that either. After 15 minutes of fruitless searching on Keele Services and a phone call to Liz, I realised that I would never make it if I didn’t get a wiggle on.

I abandoned that idea at that point, best foot forward, and trust in the Lord. We’ll confront the issue when it arises

After an exciting drive down the M6,M1,M25 and M20, being fleeced something rotten at the Dartford Crossing, I made it Folkestone with just 10 minutes to spare.

They noticed the trailer of course (they would have been blind not to) and so that set me back another £78 – not to mention the fuel that Caliburn was consuming and the blasted Dartford Crossing.

I curled up in a corner of Caliburn’s cab. it’s late, I’m tired and I’ve not done half the trip yet.

Wednesday 15th June 2011 – I HAD A POLICE …

… errr … interaction this evening.

There I was, clambering into the back of Caliburn this evening to find something, and a police car pulled up alongside me.

One of Cambridge’s finest rolled down the window – “is this your vehicle?”
“As a matter of fact it is” I replied.
So he rolled up his window and drove away.

How did he know that I was telling the truth? And what would he have done if I had said that it wasn’t?

But never mind the police interaction – I’ve also had some bad news.

The guy with the digger in Baacup phoned. The money hasn’t appeared in his bank account yet. Obviously I can’t go to pick up the digger so I shall have to hang round here for a while longer.

Not that it worries me – I’m deeply engrossed in The War in the Air and I wouldn’t care if I had to stay here for another 5 years until I finish reading it – as long as it keeps warm.

No use going to the Services on the M10 this evening if they are closed. I went to the big Tesco’s just outside the town and here I got into trouble.

I’ve … errr … misplaced my portable hard drive (that’s possibly where all of the missing photos went to) and the hard drive on the laptop is pretty full. And there’s nothing that I can delete off it quite yet.

Tesco’s has a good electrical and electronic section but it’s upstairs – and that’s all chained off. But no-one was watching so I hopped over the chains.

Nevertheless, I was accosted by the manager on the way down and he had quite a moan at me. But by then it was too late and a new portable hard drive was in my sweaty little mitt. So now I’m fixed up.

And I hope that this blasted money is there tomorrow morning. My trip back is tomorrow night (well, Friday early morning) and I want to be on it. I don’t really want to loiter around here any longer than I have to.

I’ll be stuck here for the weekend if I don’t pick my trailer up.

Sunday 12th June 2011 – WE’VE DONE IT NOW!

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that Terry and I have been hunting for the last couple of years for a decent mini-digger. We’ve made all kinds of enquiries but the end result always was that we could never find anything that we wanted.

In the end we decided that we would have to pay more than we wanted and buy something newer, but that never worked either.

That is, until today.

I went to Bacup to see a digger, a 2007 Takeuchi and while it was dearer than we were ever expecting to pay, in the end we’ve bitten the bullet and gone for it, faute de mieux – in the absence of anything better.

The cash will be transferred over on Monday and I’m picking it up on Wednesday night after I collect my new trailer.

Did I tell you about that?

And so last night after dropping off Caroline I had a pleasant drive around the back of Manchester, Rawtenstall, Rossendale and all of that.

I found a nice quiet lay-by in the pitch-dark somewhere up on the moors between Burnley and Bacup and settled down for a nice, quiet sleep.

And a nice quiet sleep it was too. I didn’t feel a thing.

Pretty windswept it was too up on this hilltop, as I was to discover when I finally awoke.

And that’s hardly surprising, given the glorious view. That was Burnley down there in the valley on the previous photo and on this photo, there’s a wind farm for you to admire.

So a nice drive on into Bacup where I met this digger guy, who took me to see it in Accrington where it was digging out someone’s footings.

Once I’d recovered from the shock of committing myself to spending all of this money, I went to Preston – or rather, the Tickled Trout in Salmesbury – to see Sandra.

We had a really good chat about one thing and another and It’s nice to learn that in OUSA – the Open University Students Association – things are carrying on just as I left them.

Chaos, panic, disorder – it’s all still going on.

This evening I’m on the M1 at Tibshelf Services. I’m moving off in a minute to find somewhere to bed down for the night as I need to be in Ilkeston early in the morning.

-1

Saturday 11th June 2011 – HIS NIBS IS AT IT AGAIN!

Here you can see him dipping into his Auntie Caroline’s cod and chips.

To pass the evening, I went to see Caroline again.

We ended up going out to the chippy (not half as good as a traditional Belgian fritkot), I have to admit, and that was where His Nibs joined in the (af)fray.

But Caroline’s cat Bigsy is very poorly and she might not pull through. I wanted to make sure that I saw her and gave her a stroke.

So after many vicissitudes, not the least of which was parking up for the night in a zone where there was no mobile phone signal (something that only I can do), I finally made contact with whatsername and, sure enough, my wallet was there.

That was just as well as I would shudder to have to think what I would have had to do had it not been there.

She was making breakfast for the family (it was quite early) I was also invited to eat there and that really put an end to my journey to Ilkeston and Vehicle Wiring Products, as they would have been closed by the time I would have arrived.

Instead I went to DK Motorcycles in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

As well as selling road-going machines the company also imports classic motorcycles from the USA. They arrive in all states of repair and I always like to go along if I can to see what’s arrived.

They had a few mint Hondas, including a couple of rare 1970s 350-fours as well as a pile of other stuff as well that was fit for renovation, including a 95%-complete Honda 160.

As an aside, I passed my motorcycle test on a Honda 160 belonging to my mate Ray Stigter.

Many of the machines that arrive there are only suitable to be broken up for spares and I always go to chat to the guys there because many of you might not know that I own probably one of the rarest of all Japanese motocycles – a CB92 “Benly” from 1961.

It’s basically complete and after we assembled it we even had it running after a fashion, but that was back in 1974 and that is a long time ago.

It desperately needs an overhaul but spares for it are impossible to find now – hence the regular visits to DK Motorcycles.

They might one day have one in that is only fit for dismantling but to date the guys in there freely admit that this is one motorcycle that they have never ever seen and don’t ever reckon that they will do either.

One regular feature of this blog in its previous incarnation was something to do with poorly-sited solar panels.

But we gave that up when we were overwhelmed with them. Some of these solar panel salesmen have no shame of course.

We’ve seen some dreadful ones on our travels in the past but this must be pretty near the bottom of the pile.

It’s all about the salesman’s income and nothing whatever to do with the reputation of the product that he’s selling

Lunch was at Waitrose in Sandbach and then I went to B&Q in Crewe to see if they had the doors that I need for my house. My house is dark and gloomy due to the small windows and if I’m putting partition walls in, this will cut the light down further.

What I need is some dirt-cheap glass-panelled doors and finding them in France is impossible. However B&Q does a nice cheap line in exactly what I want.

The door that I fitted into the attic came from there and you can see what a good job it does as well – hence a requirement for another half-dozen to match.

B&Q came up trumps in more ways than one.

they had enough in stock.
they had some that were only 650mm instead of 750mm and that’s what I need for the bathroom and the office.
with my trade card I had almost £100 off the retail price – £240 for 6 instead of about £335 or so.

When you think about it … “you are always thinking about it” – ed … that’s just 20 weeks of rental on my mailbox paid off in one swell foop.

You can see why it’s important to have a UK address if I am buying stuff over here.

Now Caroline and I are having a coffee on Sandbach Services. In a short while I’ll be dropping her off at home and making my way in the general direction of Bacup.

I have to go to see a digger there tomorrow morning.

-3

Friday 10th June 2011 – I FINALLY MADE …

… it down this afternoon to see this boss of The One That Got Away who had been hankering after seeing me.

And the reason for my visit was quickly unveiled.

It seems that his company has won a contract to supply and fit out a new village hall on the Staffordshire Moorlands, and it all has to be off-grid.

Off-grid is not something in which they have any expertise and so it seems that I’ve been drafted in on this project as well.

I’m not sure what the payment might be, but “panels at cost” is a good inducement for me to become involved in it, if nothing else.

We then spent until some ridiculous time this morning catching up on all the old times that we knew when she worked for me as a kid back in the 1980s, and discussed everything that has happened to us since we last met quite a long time ago.

It was lovely to see her again after all of this time and I was sorry to leave.

Terry rang me up as well during the day. He wants me to go to look at a digger in Accrington or Bacup or somewhere like that tomorrow, and then I need to be in Ilkeston as well to pick up some stuff from Vehicle Wiring Products.

But I’m not going anywhere until I’m reunited with my wallet, which I hope is still at whatsername’s. If it isn’t I am going to be having more than just a few problems.

-8

Wednesday 25th May 2011 – I’ve finished …

… the latest version of my water collection system. I’m not sure if this is the fifth or sixth go at doing it either, but it seems to be working. I hope that it stays the course as well.

The issue was that with having the sump where it was before, there wasn’t enough head to drain the water through the sand and puzzolane filter (the left-hand container) and so it was backing up into the settling tank (the long grey pipe). And so what I have done is to put a right-angle in where the sump was, and to move the sump round into the horizontal plane. That gives me much more head as you can see and the slope is much more respectable. The sump in its new position is much more twisted and I don’t think that it will work as well as the vertical sump and hotizontal take-off of the previous version, but the height of the head is everything and so it will have to do. It was either that or cut down the legs of the stand for the water butts, but if I were to do that I couldn’t fit a bucket underneath.

I was woken up this morning by the telephone man ringing me to ask where my house was situated so that he could repair my internet connection. Strange, that, seeing as I rang them yesterday to cancel the appointment as the internet was working. Shortly afterwards, someone else rang, despite knowing full well that I don’t want phone calls before 10:00am. This is a job for repeating the message by beating it into the skull of the offender in morse code with a baseball bat.

The rest of the morning was taken up with the web site of course and then trying to sort out a digger. The fun we’ve been having with diggers is, as you know, unbelievable. I’m sure that there’s some kind of major scam going on here.

The back of Caliburn is now empty and tomorrow afternoon I can fit the false floor and recover all of my voyaging stuff ready for the UK. And I finished off the evening with a beautiful warm solar shower. That was lovely.

And if tomorrow is as nice as today I’ll do a load of washing as well.

-3

Wednesday 2nd June 2010 – The quarry opens …

… at 13:30 after the lunch break and at 13:40 the lorry turned up. It took him a good 15 minutes to negotiate the tight angles and corners around here, but once he was in position, he promptly deposited 15 tonnes of gravel.

The lorry then went away and half an hour later it was back with another 15 tonnes which was likewise promptly unloaded.

There is a downside of all of this, and that was that he left with a cheque for €628. Hasn’t that torn a huge hole in my budget for this year?

And if that wasn’t enough, at 16:30 Sebastien and Bernard turned up despite their bereavement and immediately set to work.

They were only here for an hour or so before they were all finished, so it didn’t take too long. Mind you, they did tell me that they were here all Saturday afternoon digging out and moving about 30 trailers worth of rubbish and so on, depositing it in the waste land up the lane, and they did an hour of spreading and tamping down with the digger.

It’s cost me another €200 for the labour and machinery for everything that they did, which might sound like a lot to some people (but certainly not to me) but when you think about it, at a minimum wage of €8:50 per hour, €200 represents about 24 or 25 man hours of labour alone. And would this ever have been done by a man working 25 hours with just a shovel?

Anyway, they’ve left behind them about 80 square metres of hardstanding. And you have to admit that this looks pretty good too. This was much better than I was ever expecting.

But we’ve hit a problem in that we might have uncovered a hidden spring. Water is bubbling up and of you look closely in the middle of the image there’s a large damp patch. After they went I spent about an hour sinking rocks into it to bind together the sand and gravel and also to allow the water to bubble to the surface if that’s what is happening. It’s best to get it to come out in one place rather than undermining the hardstanding, and then I can simply lay a trench and pipe it away.

However I reckon that the weather might have something to do with it. You know about all the rain we’ve had recently and we had another 24mm today. There’s water everywhere.

Jean and Elizabeth and their friends popped round today as well to see how I’m getting on. Elizabeth is impressed with the garden and Jean is impressed with the work inside. It’s been a long time since they came here.

Tomorrow I’m going to take it easy. It was hard work shovelling that stuff today.

-2

Monday 31st May 2010 – First of the year

Lunch today consisted of the usual salad butty only today it featured home-grown lettuce and home-grown radish as well as all of the other ingredients.

I’ve been using home-grown garlic and home-grown herbs for a while but today was the first time that I had pulled something important out of my new vegetable patches for food purposes. I’m well-impressed by how well they seem to have grown and while the taste at the moment is a little insipid it will improve over time.

In fact the lettuce would have definitely done with another fortnight in the ground but things are getting rather tight in the lettuce bed and it needs some thinning out, so pulling up a usable lettuce to eat was probably as good a way as any of making a space for everything else.

But in the greenhouse the tomato plants that have been dormant for ages have now started to go berserk. Rather too late now to expect anything profitable but never mind. It also seems like there might be some pepper plants coming up now that I have bought some, and another pea plant is now emerging from underneath the soil. That makes a grand total of two.

I went round and had another look at the digger today. This is what it looks like, in case you have forgotten, and it’s huge!

I bet it made short work of the rubbish.

I’m eager to see it back in action shovelling the stones into place but there seems to be some kind of difficulty about that and I don’t understand why.

I have to have the stones delivered by a lorry as I need over 30 tonnes of the stuff and 15 trips with the Sankey down to the quarry at Montaigut is a little too much. I have the number of someone with a tipper but they can’t give me a precise date for coming to deliver the stuff. And I need to know a precise date as I need to have the digger driver here to shovel the stuff and spread it out.

I can’t believe that it’s so complicated. Arranging a one-hour spec for a lorry to deliver two loads of stones seems the simplest thing in the world to me. But at least it gave me time to pull up all of the roots and brambles and thistles that were lying around in the way. And I also met the farmer who has taken over the field next door from the late Farmer Parrett. We had a nice friendly chat too.

In other news, the Zionists intercepted this aid convoy and stopped it delivering the supplies to the Palestinians by the simple expedient of murdering the aid workers. It’s high time someone put a stop to this behaviour and if the west is refusing to intervene then you can’t blame Hamas and the rest of the Arab world for having a go.

-4

Saturday 29th May 2010 – Errrr….

… quite!

Returning home this evening after the chantier I had a tremendous surprise

Those of you with long memories will recall that back in the winter 2008-9 I cleared a plot of land of old trees, weeds, brmables and the like ready to make a parking place for Caliburn and the trailer etc etc. But there were all kinds of rubbish stones and the like to move. And endless searches for diggers was fruitless. Eventually Bernard from the footy club told me of one and we made contact but since the guy’s visit here last week I’ve been waiting for him to get back to me.

Anyway, when I returned home I found that he had been and gone, having dug out absolutely everything and a few more things besides.

It’s not exactly how I wanted it but habitual readers of this blog will have noticed that I have a tendency to vacillate. So, recognising my own failings more than anything else, I’m glad that he came to do it while I wasn’t here because it avoided me getting myself all confused and mixed up and he could get on with the job without me bothering him.

Better still, he’s left the digger here and he’s told me to go ahead and get the stones delivered as soon as possible – and then he’ll come back and do the laying. He’s also brought the football club’s heavy roller for compacting the stones and that has saved a whole pile of work.

So this time next week at the latest I’ll have a proper hardstanding to park some of my vehicles and I’m so impressed. I shudder to think of the cost of it all but it’s one of those things that I need to do, and the sooner the better if you ask me.

This is the most exciting thing that has happened to me since I’ve been here.

At the chantier there weren’t so many of us as in the past. It seems that the numbers of participants are falling off. But of course it isn’t quantity that counts, it’s quality and those who were here know each other very well and are quite good friends so that all helps considerably.

Some of the participants were involved in gardening and others such as Nan, Francois and myself, carried on with making this wooden toilet and shower block that we started last year. we had quite a production line going with Francois measuring and cutting and Nan and I fixing and nailing.

We had the work done in no time, including a pause for lunch and chat.

Towards the end of the afternoon we covered up the garden that the others had dug over. A length of breathable bio-membrane covered in woodchips Jean and I fetched the chips with the car and trailer and shovelled them onto the membrane and the others spread them out And just as we finished we had a downpour

It’s nice to work in the company of convivial and pleasant people, and it appears that I might have visitors on Wednesday afternoon

In other news, Dennis Hopper has died. This is desperate news for me and for many of my friends as he and Peter Fonda were our role models as teenagers and they inspired a whole generation of people such as ourselves. I’m going to watch Easy Rider again just now but it won’t ever be the same again.

-4

Sunday 16th May 2010 – Football isn’t everyone’s cup of tea …

… and as we were all staggering off towards the pie hut at half-time today during the match at St Maurice pres Pionsat I couldn’t resist taking this pic of a Biollet St Maurice supporter overcome by emotion due to the hectic pace of the game.

But the young lady fast asleep by the touchline and the blue sky will give you some idea of the weather today. Summer seems to be back – and about time too.

Mind you, I can’t blame the girl for falling asleep because it was one of THOSE games this afternoon. The heat was clearly getting to everyone and so it was played at something of a leisurely pace and in the end, finished as a 0-0 draw.

Pionsat were the better side though and did have one or two chances to take the lead during the match, but I do have to admit I’ve seen many more exciting games than this one. At least, is was a pleasant day out.

I woke up at 09:57 to the sun streaming in through my windows here. It looked beautiful and I couldn’t resist thinking to myself that it was so nice that someone was bound to spoil it. And right on cue the phone rang. Bernard, the football club chairman, wanted to tell me that his son (he who has the digger) wanted to talk to me and could he come round.

So I hauled myself out of bed to wait for him. I asked Bernard a while back if he knew of someone with a digger who can dig out where I want to park Caliburn and he recommended his son. But he was stuck on a chantier in all of this bad weather. It now seems that they’ve been able to work and it may well be that by Friday they’ll be finished. So he came to see the job and reckons he’ll ring me on Friday or Saturday to tell me when he can start.

I told him about Simon’s job and he’s keen to do that too. And by the purest coincidence it seems that where Simon is living is the old workshop of Bernard’s uncle and Bernard was born in the house just next to Simon’s.

This world is getting far too small for me.

-1

Friday 14th May 2010 – Tomorrow, if I remember,

I’ll post a photo of a whole pile of wooden windows. They are about 6 feet tall and about 18 inches wide – something like that, and there’s probably a dozen of them. They were in Simon’s house when he bought them and he ripped them out for double glazing and asked if anyone would like to take them away.

As you know, in my drive for self-sufficiency I’m growing my own food (assuming that this perishing weather relents and we have some decent late-spring weather) and a greenhouse is an essential. I have the cheap little LIDL plastic one and someone gave me a complete aluminium greenhouse but minus all the glass. However a big pile of wooden windows fitted into a frame like an American balloon house (and how I built my verandah) and stood on breeze blocks and that’s an admirable greenhouse, especially as I can make it to measure.

And see – I did remember the photo!

My day of rest following yesterday’s exertions was broken in the afternoon as Terry decided to try his hand at driving his van. We went round to the Lady from Luxembourg who is looking for a handyman and I introduced them to each other. She was impressed with the size of Terry’s equipment and has signed him on, which is good news for Terry. He’s registered himself with the French authorities as a handyman and so now he needs some clients.

Once that was out of the way we went to Mazan to see Simon. He’s looking for a digger to dig the hole for his septic tank and I know a man (Bernard, the President of the Pionsat football club) who just happens to have one. Simon was out though, but his windows were in and he did say that I could have them, and there were two of us with Terry’s big van (which was empty). And so the rest is history.

Shopping at St Eloy les Mines was boring – there was nothing of note – and that was my day today.

Tomorrow the removal has been put back until 10:00. It seems that I’m not the only one who doesn’t recognise the existence of 09:00 on a weekend morning.

-1

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality

Tag Archives: mini digger

Friday 23rd March 2012 – WE HAD A …

Friday 24th June 2011 – Dunno what’s the matter …

Saturday 18th June 2011 – YOU MAY REMEMBER …

Friday 17th June 2011 – THAT WAS A LONG …

Thursday 16th June 2011 – THIS IS GOING TO BE A LONG …

Wednesday 15th June 2011 – I HAD A POLICE …

Sunday 12th June 2011 – WE’VE DONE IT NOW!

Saturday 11th June 2011 – HIS NIBS IS AT IT AGAIN!

Friday 10th June 2011 – I FINALLY MADE …

Wednesday 25th May 2011 – I’ve finished …

Wednesday 2nd June 2010 – The quarry opens …

Monday 31st May 2010 – First of the year

Saturday 29th May 2010 – Errrr….

Sunday 16th May 2010 – Football isn’t everyone’s cup of tea …

Friday 14th May 2010 – Tomorrow, if I remember,

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