Tag Archives: oven chips

Thursday 25th May 2017 – PHEW!

Or, rather … phwoarrr, what a scorcher!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mustn’t forget.

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

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

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Wednesday 22nd February 2017 – I NEARLY HAD SOMETHING …

… exciting to report today.

There I was, gazing out of the window at he rear of the hostel this afternoon and I noticed a couple of people at the door of the big derelict church at the back here. This seemed like the ideal opportunity to gatecrash yet another official visit – I’ve always wanted to set foot inside there.

And so I nipped off down there hot-foot, or chaud-pied as they say in Wallonie or warme-voet as they say around here, to blag my way into the church.

Instead, there I found these three women trying to work the lock of the door, without very much success at all. In the end, although they agreed that I could join the party, they couldn’t undo the door and in the end gave it up as a bad job and walked away.

So much for that.

I had another bad night again last night. Ages to drop off and waking up a few times during the night, and being definiteively awake by 06:30. So much for that. And I couldn’t eat my breakfast either – most of it ended up in the waste bin, along with all of my food from the fridge yesterday I imagine.

After a brief relax (that spread into a good couple of hours) I wandered off down to the Carrefour by the football ground to but the food that ended up being thrown away (and about which you’ll hear me moaning for the next six months, I imagine). I also treated myself to more ice-cream sorbet and seeing as the pineapple slices are now back to full price, I ended up with a big tin of peach halves instead, just to make a difference.

Lunch was next on the agenda, and then I set to work. I installed the 3-in-1 printer that I had brought with me from home, having first downloaded the drivers and the accessory files from the internet. And once I’d done all of that (which wasn’t simple either) I started off to scan all of my receipts.

That wasn’t a five-minute job either, and it’s really quite ironic. Many years ago I had one of the very first Hewlett-Packard flatbed scanners and the user interface was so easy to use. And not only that, it remembered all of the settings too. This is a modern Hewlett-Packard 3-in-1 printer, an HP deskjet 2180 that I liberated from Marianne and not only is it unbelievably complicated to use, it doesn’t memorise the settings in a batch process so each document has to have its settings set individually, which is the most ridiculous thing that I’ve ever encountered.

But if you think that that is complicated, you ain’t seen nuffink yet because although it’s definitely progress that I can now submit all of my claims on-line, it’s such a time-consuming process. It takes ages just to prepare one form of 5 claims, and I have about 50 or so to do. I’m going to be here for ever.

Tea was vegan burger, beans and oven chips followed by peach halves and vegan lemon sorbet. Now I’m going to have an early night ready for my marathon paperwork session tomorrow.

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Tuesday 21st February 2017 – WE DIDN’T HAVE TO …

… clean out the fridge today. When I returned from my day out this afternoon, I found that the fridge had already been cleaned out. Nice and clean and pretty and disinfected – and empty! Next task is to find out where my food has gone, although I do have my suspicions, and I’m not going scavenging in the rubbish bins to find it.

Nevertheless, I sent an irate mail to the hostel manager. being without breakfast on a couple of occasions is one thing – having my lettuce, garlic, olives, a container or two of other stuff and a bag of vegan cheese, that’s going too far.

Last night was another one of these crazy nights where I had difficulty sleeping. Some people having a party in the street outside didn’t help matters much either. But I went off on my travels too, although now I don’t have a clue where I was or what I was doing.

At breakfast I was alone, which suits me fine of course, and then after a little relaxation for half an hour or so, I hit the streets.

Caliburn and I headed out for the motorway (it’s nice to be behind the wheel of Caliburn once more) and headed through the traffic jams – which took us ages – to Brussels and the Woluwe Shopping Centre. Plenty of parking there and there’s the Roodebeek Metro station.

Bad news at the Roodebeek. They have changed all of the public transport fare structure in Brussels. I might have mentioned something about this the other day, but the 10-trip tickets have been replaced by a chip card. The ticket office was closed at the station when I arrived so I had to take a single ticket 5 stops up the line to the Merode Metro.

I had a lengthy chat with the people at my Health Insurance Provider. They didn’t give me too much hope about things, and the help for setting up of the on-line claiming system could have been better. But I’ll have a play around with this tomorrow and see where it takes me.

One of the people that I saw told me about the Association for retired people. She said that they might be able to help me too so I went round there. But they didn’t give me too much help either. I’m a little pace or two further forward I suppose, but not too much.

One the way between offices, I happened to go past the building where a former girl-friend of mine 20-odd years lived. I stuck my head in the door and the concierge was cleaning the foyer of the building. She told me, much to my surprise, that my friend was still living there. So I left a note in her post box. Whether she contacts me or not I don’t really know, but I have two chances, don’t I?

For lunch, I went to IKEA and had a salad, followed by a fruit salad. There has to be a walk around the shop of course and I didn’t buy anything exciting. Just a few storage boxes and some perfumed candles. Mind you, I saw some more stuff that I would like to have in my living accommodation, so I shall be having a good thing.

Back here in the pouring rain and I had a crash out for half an hour.

Tea was chips, beans and sausages followed by soya dessert. Now I’m having an early night – tomorrow I have some scanning to do.

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Monday 20th February 2017 – I’M BACK …

… in the bad sleep rhythm again unfortunately. Last night was one of those like I was havong a few nights ago, tossing, turning, waking up, unable to go back to sleep.

MInd you, I was asleep enought to go on my travels. To Tibet, I told myself, but it was actually Nepal where I was – with no Chinese soldiers about. I was crossing the country and in the centre was some guy who was restoring these three-wheeled motorcycle things that had a motorcycle front and a flatbed at the back for the carriage of goods. They had all kinds of weird vehicles there and I was really keen to buy something unusual to take home, so I had quite a chat with this guy. But I was in a hurry to be on my way so I continued on my trip. Later that evening I was looking for a hotel but I realised that I had left the country and that was a shame – I hadn’t thought about it at the time but it would have been a good idea and a feather in my cap to have stayed for a night in Nepal/Tibet and add it to the list of countries where I had stayed.

My Dutch/Russian friend was at breakfast and so was the other guy, so they talked amongst themselves and left me to it. But the other guy is leaving today so the Dutch guy and I tomorrow are going to empty all of the fridges, clean them, and throw away everything that doesn’t belong to us.

Later that morning I went up to the hospital to see the Welfare girl. I need a prognostic of my condition because it’s possible that if they acknowledge that my health will deteriorate, I might be able to claim an extra allowance for home help, and that will be nice. But she wasn’t so hopeful that this kind of thing will be possible.

After lunch I got on the phone to the people in Evaux les Bains. Caliburn still has his bump in the rear and the insurance company says that this garage can fix it for me. You remember that I visited there in December for an inspection of Caliburn. He’s booked in for Monday 13th March and they will let me have a rental vehicle while Caliburn is being fixed. They’ll also be dealing with the rust issues on the nearside sill.

As usual, I had a crash out and then I went up to make tea. Oven chips, beans and veggie burgers, followed by the last of the pineapples and vegan ice cream.

I’ll be having an early night now and getting ready for yet another day out tomorrow.

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Sunday 19th February 2017 – WHAT A NICE …

… meal that was!

Alison took me to the Indian restaurant on the Grote Markt for a birthday treat. I had a lentil curry which was delicious. not as good as mine and certainly nothing like as good as you might find in a restaurant in Stoke on Trent, but for an Indian restaurant in mainland Europe it was excellent.

Just for a change I had an excellent night’s sleep. Well away with the fairies right until the alarm went off. And I was on my travels too. Back to the hotel that bore a startling resemblance to the place in the Ardennes where I stayed in November. I was there with some people, one of whom was a disagreeable person with whom I worked at that weird American company where I spent 12 of the most bizarre months of my working life. She was complaining (as usual) about something or other and I had to go down to sort it out. This involved descending (at breakneck speed) a set of stairs with two different doors at the bottom. One of them was the door into the main area but the other one would take me round the back down a long dark alley, and that was the route that I decided to take.

Alone again at breakfast, which suits me fine of course, and then back down here where I had some work to do. I have a meeting on Monday and I need to be up-to-date with my paperwork. So I went throught and sorted it all out yet again. And I now have much more of an idea as to what I need to know for tomorrow at 11:00.

I had a nice chat on the internet with some nice friends of mine and then went for lunch. Nothing to go on my butties, but I had the other half-uncooked demi-baguette from yesterday (they come in packs of two and I used one for my garlic bread last night) so I baked that and used some more of the packet soup that I had bought from LeClerc when I was in Sedan.

Alison came onto the internet – she was going to the English shop and would I like to go? Well, do bears go for picnics in the woods? I went for a quick shower and a shave too look pretty, and Alison picked me up and off we trotted. I bought some more Dandelion and Burdock, more Bombay mix, some vegan burgers and a big bag of oven chips. Now I have all of my food (except the lunch stuff) until I leave here, and there’s even tons of stuff left that I haven’t used. And that’s a surprise.

We passed by here where I could dump everything in the freezer compartment of the fridge, and then off we shot into town for coffee, the Indian meal and a very lengthy chat.

Back here, seeing as how I’ve started to celebrate my birthday early, I opened a packet of mint sweets that I had brought back from Canada. Just a few – the rest are for later.

And now it’s early night time – I’m busy tomorrow.

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Wednesday 4th January 2017 – TEA TONIGHT …

… didn’t turn out like it should have done, and that was rather disappointing.

You may remember that I fancied chips, beans and vegan sausages. But firstly, the Carrefour had no vegan sausages. And while Alison had bought me some beans and malt vinegar, the Carrefour couldn’t produce any oven chips.

Well, it could. But in the LIDL in France you can buy a 800-gram bag for about €0:99 and that’s enough for two meals. But there’s nothing like that here. Belgium really is the land of the chip and there’s nothing less than 2kgs here and I have no way of keeping that much.

In the end, I had to settle for a 1kg bag of oven croquettes which is nothing like the same, and a couple of vegan curry burgers. This was something of a let-down, I can tell you.

Last night was another disturbed night, and for no good reason too. I don’t know why I’m having difficulty sleeping just now but it’s rather upsetting. Here we’re in almost-perfect quite with just two or three other guests of good habits, and I can’t take advantage of it.

I’ve not done too much today – in fact round about lunchtime I crashed out again for half an hour. But I did make it down to the Carrefour near the football ground for shopping. And as it happens, I forgot most of the things that I had intended to buy – and I’ve run out of pasta so that’s bad news.

But tomorrow night I have more croquettes, another burger and the rest of the beans. But no more Christmas pudding- I finished off the last of that tonight.

Now I’m going to have an early night and hope for the best. I’ve not managed to free off the mouse on the new laptop so I’ll have to continue with that tomorrow. I’m wondering if I’ve managed to get a biscuit crumb stuck under the mouse key – something silly like that.

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Friday 30th December 2016 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I’ve been out and about this afternoon.

But it was something of a bad night for me. I had all the good intentions of going to bed early but just as I was settling down, Paul Rhys came on the radio.

I mentioned the other day about him – the BBC’s 3-episode series of hour-long episodes of The Saint and what excellent programmes they are and how I can listen to them all night. Sure enough, one of them came on the air just as I was settling down and so I stayed awake to listen.

I had no change of sleeping after that and so I lay awake for ages. I must have gone to sleep somehow because it was the alarm that rocked me out of my reverie.

This morning I’ve been playing around with my 3D program and I’m going to have to expand my knowledge now that I have a computer that will enable me to progress. And to find more time too because I almost missed my lunch, I was that engrossed.

After lunch I prettied myself up a little because Alison came round and we went off for a coffee and a good chat to catch up on our respective news. She also bought me a tray of baked beans, some more gravy granules, some malt vinegar and some other stuff too. Now I’m going out to buy some frozen oven chips (well, not now, I mean that now I have beans and malt vinegar) and some vegan sausages so I can vary my food intake.

I’ve also been planning on microwaved potatoes for a change too. Anything to have a varied diet.

Later this evening I had a chat with Liz on the internet and I finished off my curry. My new housemates were in the kitchen too cooking tea. It’s quite exciting in there now.

So now I’m going to try yet again for an early night. Let’s see how we manage with that.

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Wednesday 11th February 2015 – THIS MUST BE SOMETHING OF A RECORD

Today, I had a massive 169 amp-hours of excess solar energy and the water temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load went off the scale (ie more than 70°C). There has never been that much surplus solar energy in the month of February – in fact we would not find too many days in July and August where we would have more than that.

That gives you some idea of what today wad like. The temperature outside reached 15.1°C and this was the first day for I don’t know how long when the temperature in my attic rose during the day rather than fell.

The increase in temperature prompted me into action and first job that I tackled was to paint the landing. But that wasn’t how it panned out, as I dropped my pliers into the 8 litres of white paint. They will be nice and pretty when I finally get down to the bottom of the tub and can fish them out. But that’s not going to be for a while yet.

landing painted yellow les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo here we are. You can’t really see things very well in the landing, but here’s the first coat of yellow paint on the wall. This is basically 8 litres of white emulsion and a tube of yellow paint pigment.

It’s not brilliant, but it will look much better tomorrow after I have done the second coat. And I don’t really like the colour – it’s come out much darker than I was expecting and much darker than what I wanted.

But never mind. it’s on and it’s staying on.

osb wall wardrobe s les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter lunch, I started on the second piece of OSB for the end wall of the wardrobe. That eventually went into place with a little bit of manoeuvring and fine adjustment, and it won’t be coming out again.

It’s a different colour than the rest, due to the fact that I didn’t have enough OSB in the house and had to go outside and scrounge a piece that I had been using as part of the false floor in Caliburn. But as it’s being coated in crepi, it won’t make much of a difference.

This afternoon, after a few other bits and pieces that I had to do, I made use of the surplus solar energy and started to sand down the plasterboard. That took ages and I’ve only done about half of it, but the sandpaper on the sander split itself, at exactly 18:05, and I took that as being the signal to knock off for the day.

And those falafel balls and oven chips for tea were delicious again.

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Tuesday 10th February 2015 – IN WHICH OUR HERO MAKES GREAT STRIDES

The first lot of great strides took me up to Virlet and the mairie to be censored, seeing as how it’s census time again and I missed both visits of the census team. And it’s clear that the people at the mairie read this rubbish because the first question that I was asked was ” did I manage okay seeing as how I was snowed in for 10 days at home?” and the second topic of discussion was about the postie and an explanation as to why she couldn’t make it here. All totally unprompted.

Not only that, I was taken to see the new snow-clearing apparatus and I was asked for my advice about some technical aspects. Well, well, well. Whatever next?

Second lot of great strides were down to the bottom of the garden and the composting bin, where I empted out the beichstuhl and refilled it. Such delightful jobs that I have to do around here. Still, it’s all grist to the mill, and compost for the garden too.

Once those delights were sorted out, I attacked the bedroom and gave it a thorough cleaning – or, at least, the best cleaning that I can do seeing as how there are still four sheets of plasterboard in the middle of the floor. And as usual, running my big magnetic dish through the pile of sawdust and plaster dust and ordinary dust, I salvage about a hundredweight of screws and nails that have been dropped over the passage of time.

plasterboard stud wall bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceWith that out of the way, I can press on and fill all of the joins in the plasterboard. And how I wish that I have the time and the money (and the inclination) to rip off the wall everything that I did a few years ago in here and start again.

All of that work so far took until lunchtime and it really is quite impressive, even though I say it myself (apart from the rubbish plasterbaording of course). I could be quite happy living here.

Although it was still very cold today, we had another really bright alpine day. Not good enough for varnishing or painting, but good enough to sort out the circular saw and cut the first of the two end-pieces for the remaining unfinished wall of the wardrobe. To cut it, shape it and fit it, it took all afternoon firstly because it needed to be an exact fit – 1mm out and it’s no good at all, and secondly because trying to fit it on my own was almost impossible.

It had to be the upper piece that needed doing. That needs to be fitted first and difficult as it might be with nothing underneath it holding it in position, fitting it in second is impossible. In the end I had a crowbar wedged underneath it at the bottom and an endstop nailed to the beam above, and I was gently levering it into position between the uprights with a big wood chisel.

osb wall boarding wardrobe end les guis virlet puy de dome franceI had it in position and screwed in nicely after about an hour and a half, only to find out that it had slipped down the crowbar and was about 15mm out at the top. Taking it out was a barrel of laughs too, as was putting it back in again in the correct position but finally, at about 18:30 it was in exactly where it ought to be, and all screwed in position.

A wash in the beautiful warm water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater (we had 104 amp-hours of surplus electrical energy today and we would have had more had I not used the circular saw) and up here for a nice warm fire and oven chips with peas, carrots and falafel balls.

What I’ll do tomorrow depends on the weather and the sun. We are promised a warm day and if that is indeed so, I’ll be painting the landing. Otherwise, I’ll be sanding down the filler.

But starting work on the wardrobe already. Isn’t this progress?

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Friday 30th January 2015 – NOW HERE’S A THING!

I was still working until after 20:00 this evening. And if that isn’t surprising enough, I’d already knocked off once and been down to Pionsat to do my shopping in the Intermarche, and then come back to carry pn working.

Mind you, this morning I thought that my muck was in. I was up quite early this morning and the sky was looking quite nice and blue. “At long last” I reckoned, “this would be the day where I could sand down the stairs, vacuum then and then varnish them”.

But it wasn’t to be.

I’d finished breakfast by 08:30 and so I set about doing a radio programme. By 10:00 I’d done the next month’s rock programme, including editing an hour-long live show. I must have been in a good mood.

However by this time, the weather had changed dramatically, and for the worse too. It was snowing quite heavily and all of the light had gone.

First thing that I did was to touch up the painting around the shelves. A bit of varnish had splashed here and there and I may as well have the place looking all shipshape.

recessed 12 volt LED light landing false ceiling les guis virlet puy de dome franceOnce I’d finished that, I set to on the end pieces for the plasterboard runs. And by 17:00 this evening every single piece was properly shaped, in position and nailed in place.

I’d even made the door frame for the bedroom, as you can see, and you’ll also notice the recessed light in the false ceiling on the landing.

Even though I say it myself, I’m really impressed with all of this, and no-one will ever notice that most of the end pieces and most of the door frame have been made from cut-down floorboard planks. It’s amazing what you can conjure up when you are driven by necessity.

There was still the filling to be done and so seeing that I was in such a good mood I pressed on. It was in the middle of all of this that I knocked off and went down to the Intermarché.

It’s now finished – or at least the first layer is, and i’ll sand it down at the first opportunity ready for the second layer.

For tea tonight I pushed the boat out and had oven chips, real baked beans and a veggie burger, all doused in proper malt vinegar.

And it was beautiful too.

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Saturday 23rd November 2013 – AND AS I SAID YESTERDAY …

… I had no plans to go out today. And so, in fact, I didn’t. Farthest I went was to Caliburn to fetch the frozen chips for tea. Chips and baked beans, with real vinegar! Yum yum!

First task was of course to shovel the snow off the solar panels. Not that I needed to bother because I won’t be going far with just 0.6 amp-hours of electricity, but it still has to be done.

But after breakfast I performed a task that I have been meaning to do for ages, namely to sort out all of the CDs into alphabetical order. That took me much longer than I expected, and I was surprised to see that it’s the “B” that has the most discs. Anyway now they are all done and labelled and I can see what I’ve got – or haven’t got, as the case may be.

Apart from that I’ve had a good tidying session up here. I’ve cleaned up the wood in here and swept the fireplace, and also cleaned up behind the TV unit, which hasn’t been touched in an age. I’ve also brought a huge pile of wood up here, and I’ve rescued the wooden box in which I used to keep the fruit and veg. Thats had a good clean-up and been put to use.

It’s looking a little more like it up here now but there’s still plenty to do to improve my quality of life. Still, every day and in every way it’s getting better and better.

And the snow is melting tonight.

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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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Sunday 12th February 2012 – IF ANYONE THINKS …

… that I’m going out and looking for a football match today, then they are very much mistaken.

Sunday is a Day of Rest, and that means not trying to extricate myself out of the little lane here and sliding and slithering around 100 miles of French countryside trying to find a football pitch that might be playable.

Because there will certainly be nothing anywhere in this vicinity.

Instead, I had a lie-in and when I finally did heave myself out of my stinking pit into Ice Station Zebra, I lit the fire and spent most of the day within about 6 inches thereof with the laptop, a good book and a couple of films.

Tea tonight was the rest of the oven chips that I didn’t cook yesterday, and that, dear reader, is your lot.

We are told that it will warm up tomorrow – I suppose that instead of -11°C that will mean -9°C.

We shall see.

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Saturday 11th February 2012 – IT WAS COLD …

… this morning … "ohh what a surprise" – ed … 9.5°C or thereabouts up here at 10:00 am this morning.

But that really was no surprise really because at that moment outside it was a mere -12°C. This weather certainly is ridiculous.

Anyway a blazing wood fire had the temperature up to 18.5°C within an hour and that was the important bit.

I stayed in and cracked on with the presentation about the Trans-Labrador Highway that I’ll be doing for the village, and by 14:30 it was done.

At least the text and the graphics are. I just have to make a powerpoint presentation of the photos, and that won’t take too long.

From there I nipped into St Eloy-les-Mines and did some shopping. And I excelled myself. Some potatoes to cook in my oven, and also some more oven chips.

Saturday night might be curry night and it has been for as long as I can remember, but not when it’s cold enough outside that half a packet of frozen oven chips will stay frozen for a couple of days while I had the rest with a veggie burger and baked beans.

But in Carrefour there were some young kids running amok, nominally (but not actually) under the control of a young woman with earrings and piercings through the nose and chin and the like.

And when she spoke – yes, it was in English. and we came out here to keep away from people like that, snobs that we are. Jarspur and Hooray Henries one week, chavs the next week.

I picked my way delicately to Rosemary’s after that, eventually, and we had a good chat for a couple of hours.

and so back here where I have a big fire going and I’m not moving.

The word on the streets is that things shall warm up dramatically on Monday night. The bad news is that we shall be covered in snow though. If it’s not one thing it’s another.

And once you get started, you’ll be surprised at just how many other things there are.

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Friday 3rd February 2012 – SO HOW DID THIS 06:00 START GO THIS MORNING?

Surprisingly enough, when the alarm went off at 06:00 I was already wide awake. Well, maybe not bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but I was there.

And what was nice about it was that it was 14.9°C in the room here, and when I riddled the ashes, there was still a glimmer of red heat in there.

So when the guy telephoned at 06:30 to say that he was on his way, I strode out of my room personfully and was almost knocked flat on my back. It wasn’t the -10°C in the verandah that did it but the -15.8°C outside.

The second-lowest temperature ever recorded here.

We inched our way into Montlucon and I went to sit in a cafe until 08:00 when the garage opened and I could reclaim Caliburn, which cost me an arm and a leg to do so;

bUt I’ll tell you what – for the first time ever, there are some real brakes on Caliburn and he stops just like he ought to do. He also handles so much better as well.

And that was only the beginning of the expenditure. After that, it was off to Lapeyre, from where I bought the house windows.

They told me last time I was there that they were discontinuing that particular product line in February and so if I wanted the matching door I needed to order it before then.

And so I did – a nice fully-glazed front door, one large panel to match the windows. Cheapest there is, as it happens but why I wanted it is that it lets in the most light.

Back in Pionsat I bought a few bits and pieces off the tool lorry at the market and then went round to Marianne’s for a coffee and a chinwag.

After that I came home and did some work. There’s a pile more timber gone into the bedroom ceiling and I’ve also carried on drilling away at the wall in the lean-to. But that’s hard work as the drill is really heavy and I’m up against some granite right now.

I also experimented with ways of unfreezing the water, something that I’ll need to be thinking of soon. One way I’m going to try is to wrap an old Volvo heated seat pad around the tap and connect it to the excess charge circuit – see what that does.

Tonight I had a gorgeous tea – a huge plate of chips and baked beans.

It’s so cold that I’ve bought a large bag of oven chips, put it in a plastic container and buried it in a snowdrift. I brought a pile of them up here and cooked them in the oven bit of my stove,

I cooked the pan of beans in there as well. It took a while but it was well worth waiting for, and i’ll be having oven chips again.

But washing up after was something else. Chopping board stuck to the table, tea towel stuck to the oven, everything else stuck to something else. I’ve got the water and the fruit and veg up here with me. Frozen lettuce goes not taste very nice, especially with frozen cucumber

I shall have to do something about this on a long-term footing.

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