Tag Archives: snow

Thursday 17th March 2016 – IT’S DAY FOUR …

…of my hospital marathon – the day that I had a marathon session in the allergy clinic, just by way of a change. And just by way of a change I was up a long while before the alarm went off too

And that surprised me immensely because I hadn’t ‘arf been on my travels during the night too.

I started off at the allergy clinic (I can’t keep away from here, can I?) and we were making up a soundtrack tape – don’t ask me why – and we found a record featuring someone singing but there were also loads and loads of background noises of all kinds of things that represented actions and items that were taking place in the song. We were listening to it. Liz was only listening with half an ear to it and all of a sudden she pricked up her ears – “did I hear a fox?”. “I think that it’s something on this record” I replied. We played the record back two or three times and, sure enough, there was some kind of reference in it to a fox, and the fox is barking away in the background.
Liz made a subsequent appearance too, in reference to a school trip that she was organising. In fact, she wasn’t really organising it because it was now September and the kids had been back at school for three or four weeks. The aim of this trip was that it was some kind of field trip which involved the children being away for a few days and this was to take place at the end of December. So much time and trouble had gone into the organisation of all of this but people had forgotten to tell the parents about it and it was only now that people at the school were discussing the presentation of the event to the parents. But Liz’s school was in such a poor, deprived area that it was obvious that not many of the families – Group B families was how she described them – would be able to afford the trip and wouldn’t have the possibility to save up between now and the date that payment needed to be made so that their children could go. So rather than be an exclusive trip and not allow some of the poorer kids to go, they were talking about postponing this trip to another year and maybe a few months later in the year so that everyone would have a chance to save up for it.
Next stop was back in Crewe, where I was going for a walk. and I’d been for a walk down Market Street, passing underneath the Cumberland Bridge at the bottom and into Middlewich Street (where we were a few weeks ago, as you might recall). As I was crossing the road I had to start to run as a car came around the corner under the bridge from Market Street at something of a speed on the wrong side of the road, which is actually the right side of the road because we are talking about the UK, although for some reason I wasn’t aware of this. So I had to make a run for the pavement. I had the idea that the road under the bridge was a one-way street, which it wasn’t as vehicles were coming from both directions. Anyway, I was around the corner by now and walking up Middlewich Street and a bus was coming down the street, travelling quite quickly. he reached the bottom and swung round to the right to go underneath the bridge but a car came hurtling out from somewhere under the bridge, shot off up the side of the railway line where there is no road, causing the bus to jam on his brakes. He only just missed this car. I carried on with my walk and it was dark by now. I’d been chatting to a couple of people whom I’d met on my travels but by now I had arrived at a place that was a bank. It had a cash-point which was in the basement, and there were people in there using it. It occurred to me to go and check my English bank account so went downstairs. I pulled out my card ready to use and while I was waiting my turn I noticed that there was something like a shop counter down here, with money all over the place, but no-one had taken any notice at all of this money. I already had a fair bit of money in my wallet, by the way. While I was sorting myself out, another person came down the steps behind me so I told him to go ahead – I’ll be a minute or two yet. he looked at me strangely and said “do you always carry that enormous amount of money around with you?”. I said “no” and carried on doing what I was already doing. But he stood there watching me. I told him again to go ahead and use the machine but he just stood there. I was starting to sense that we were going to have some kind of confrontation but just then, one of my friends from Brussels came in and came downstairs to use the cash point. He (my friend) asked me “what’s 212 plus 212?” as if this was the key to his PIN. I was having to be very vague in my reply because of this other person lurking around in the vicinity. But now of course there were two of us in there, both of whom were likely to be potential victims for this guy loitering around on the stairs.
We haven’t finished yet either, for there was some other part of the dream going on about my youngest sister. She was with a friend and they both drifted in and out somewhere along the way. But in the meantime there was a man who had come from the UK and was now in the USA who had travelled all around the USA on something of an extended holiday. He’d retired from work and there was a great deal of confusion about his pension arrangements, what employment pensions he was entitled to and what he was going to receive. In the end, after a great deal of argument and discussion, he’d been to his former employer who had promised to look into everything. This was an oil company, and the people there decided to make a presentation to him. They gave him an old oil drum which, while not sounding as it it was very much, was actually quite symbolic because it had fallen off a ship somewhere off the coast of New England and washed all the way down along the eastern coast of America (regardless of prevailing winds, tides and ocean currents), round Cape Horn and the Tierra del Fuego and then back up the western coast of America (regardless of prevailing winds etc) and had been recovered again near Seattle. They presented it to him as a symbol of his own voyage all around the USA. Eventually, it worked out that they had found three pension entitlements for him and so he could live happily ever after.

And so you can see why I was astonished by my early night.

On the way to Montlucon through the snow, which dramatically cleared by the time that we reached Pionsat, and then it was quite straightforward as far as the hospital, although I did stop for some cash at the bank on the edge of the town, seeing how the nurse will probably want paying this weekend before I go. And being nice and early at the allergy clinic, that meant of course that they were all late.

But I did happen to notice the first E-plate on the car park. It was a, EA — KK registration so I reckon that it’s about three weeks since they first came out. They now seem to be slowing down to well over two years a letter.

At the allergy clinic, first thing that they did when they arrived was ask me to take off my upper clothes and to check my body. Then they sat me down in a comfortable chair (or what passes for a comfortable chair around there), gave me a couple of injections and then started to squirt something out of a syringe into my mouth – something quite minty and also quite bitter. Then they told me to take a drink of water.

This was how we went on for much of the day. I’ve no idea what it was that they had given me but they ought to have given something to the room and the chair to stop them spinning around while I was trying to sit there quietly and do some work on my Canada notes.

They brought up some food too, but it was, as I expected, some meat (there seems no point in going to an allergy clinic and telling them about your allergies if they are going to totally ignore them, is there?). I was prepared for this however, and had brought along some vegan cheese and tomato butties. But we did have coffee too and that wasn’t too bad.

When I’d finished and the room had stopped spinning, I went off to find Caliburn and then I headed back to my place for an hour or so to gather up some of my possessions, or such that I could remember of them.

And the snow had gone, much to my surprise and pleasure. It was in fact quite warm and I felt a little better once I had warmed up.

Back at Liz and Terry’s, I had another early night. I need to build up my strength prior to leaving because it’s a long way to Brussels, even if I am going to do it in a couple of steps. The days when I could do a full day’s work and then drive the 800kms between Brussels and my Farm through the night – they seem to be long-gone now.

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Wednesday 9th March 2016 – I’VE BEEN OUT TODAY …

… and I didn’t feel much like it because it was taters outside and sleeting down too. But out I had to go.

Most important was to post my claim for medical expenses. As I said the other day, what my expenses to date (as far as has come in – there’s still plenty to go that hasn’t come in) come to is the equivalent of 3 months’ income. As soon as I can receive the reimbursement, the better I’ll be. It was well-worth the … gulp … $14:70 to post it off.

I had to go to the boulangerie too.When I left, the mobile boulangère hadn’t been by and we had run out of bread. You can’t leave bread to chance if you are going out anyway. And so I went to the wrong boulangerie, bought the wrong bread and when I returned home I found that the boulangère had been here anyway. But still, that’s what freezers are for.

Another place that I needed to visit was the pharmacie. The prescription that I was given for my new medication expires on March 16th so I need to order that now. And then I need another injection to take with me to the hospital when I go for the scanner on the 18th. It goes without saying that a remote pharmacie like the one at St Gervais wouldn’t have the stuff in stock and so I’d have to order it.

And so after visiting the Post Office I clambered back into Caliburn and drove round to where the pharmacie is – only to find that it had moved. Upon enquiring of a local yokel, I discovered that it had moved to just behind the Post Office, right by where I’d parked Caliburn.

But now everything ordered and I’ll pick it up on Friday afternoon on my way back from the hospital.

During the night, I don’t remember too much about my little wanderings. I remember having to take a group of kids somewhere – kids aged round about 4 and 5 – and so the first thing to do was to check them all to make sure that they were clean and properly dressed. And having done that, we could set off.Once we’d arrived at our destination, the kids went off to do what they had to do and I went into the hotel bar for a coffee. And who should be in there but a friend of mine. We ended up having a really good chat, and when I went to the bar, he asked me to fetch him a MacKay’s and something (I can’t remember what it was now). But anyway, a MacKay’s was a blend of whisky and the something was like a tonic water or ginger ale in a small bottle like that and the bill for this came to an astonishing £11 and more. I was totally surprised by this and so when I took his drink to him I asked him if that was correct – not that I minded paying for it but that I thought that it was really excessive. He assured me that the bill was probably about right, and I reckoned that I was glad that I don’t drink alcohol. From here, I had to go back and pick up my charges and make sure that that they were all present and correct and had everything that they had supposed to have.

What I’ve done today, now that my web server is back and running, is to finish the collating of the notes of my voyage to Canada for the month of October 2015, and I’ve made a decent attack on the notes for September 2015. We will then have the notes for August 2015, and then all of the notes for 2014. The notes and photos of much of the route that I did in those two years, together with some of my 2013 journey and some of my 2010 journey, can then be superimposed and make more of a travelogue than a blog. That’s what my aim is anyway.

So now that it’s stopped snowing again and the rainstorm has died down, I’m off for a walk and then an early night. But my walk around St Gervais (in the sleet) today has shown, at least to me, that my movements are freeing up.

I just wish that I could do something about this lump in my lungs. But, as my surgeon said the other day “we’ll see what this scan says and then we’ll see what we can do!”

Mother!!!!!!!

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Saturday 5th March 2016 – THAT BLASTED NURSE …

… forgot me yet again this morning!

And there I was, deep in the arms of Morpheus, miles from anywhere on this planet when the alarm went off. And I struggled downstairs pretty quickly, remembering the other day how I had been pris au dépourvu in my nightie by the nurse and vowing not to repeat that ever again.

And then after breakfast, I waited … and waited … and waited. And then that was that. I gave it up and went and sat down in the living room feeling rather annoyed. I could have had a wonderful lie-in for a change had I known that he wasn’t going to come.

So where was I then when I was away with the fairies?

I was actually off again playing cricket last night – something that I’ve done on one or two occasions just recently. And if you remember, I did say that if ever I were to be invited to play cricket for a team, it would be as a wicket-keeper before anything else. Certainly not my bowling, which is what I was doing last night. And my bowling was, as you might expect, pretty wayward but somehow it kept confusing the opposition and I ended up taking more than my fair share of wickets. One ball went hopelessly wide but the batsman waved an unnecessary wand at it and top-edged it down to a rather short long-on. Another ball that I sent down was a rather inviting dolly and received exactly what it deserved. It flashed past me and I just instinctively stuck out my right hand and much to the batsman’s dismay and everyone else’s (including my) astonishment, I caught it. and this meant that the batting team was all out for 66, which was quite a cause for celebration.

And then I missed the celebrations because the alarm clock went off.

What I’ve done today is to update my Open Office to the latest version. When I bought this laptop last year, I downloaded the current version but when I came to use the spell-checker today I found that I had forgotten to download it. And that led to the upgrade – together with the new spell-checker.

And once the spell-checker had been installed, then do you remember all of the dictaphone notes that I was transcribing over the last month or so? Then I spell-checked all of the Canada notes and now they are ready for the next stage of the process – viz. the tying in of the notes to the relevant photos that I took while I was over there on my travels.

We had a lovely surprise as well this afternoon. The beautiful smells coming from the kitchen turned out to be Liz’s first attempt at making home-made banana muffins (made, of course, with home-made bananas), vegan of course. And they were beautiful, especially with a nice hot coffee. Sitting inside with warm oven-fresh banana muffins and hot coffee watching the snow-storm that was raging outside was really pleasant.

So I don’t know what is going to happen now. The nurse is yet to arrive and it’s starting to be late – at least for me these days anyway. I’ll be going for my post-prandial perambulation in a minute and then I’ll be off to bed, whether he comes or not.

And even as we speak, the nurse turns up. 30 minutes late but there we are.

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Sunday 28th February 2016 – THE DOGS …

… managed to behave themselves last night. I hardly heard a peep out of them. But nevertheless, I was taking no chances and you have no idea just how pleasant it is, lying there in the dark with headphones listening to really good music at something of an impressive volume. I awoke briefly at 00:30 just in time to hear the tail-end of my Simple Minds concert, and that made me feel so much better.

But just a litle word of caution – when I went to the bathroom, I had to leave my bed on the left-hand side (which is what I do here, although not what I do at home) because of the floor on the right-hand side being littered with all kinds of stuff relating to my illness. I’m not quite sure what, but then logic has never really played a great part in anything that might (or might not) go on during the night.
After the customary trip down the corridor, I fell back into the arms of Morpheus and ended up somewhere in mid-Cheshire, at a Tesco supermarket (although the facade of the building did actually seem to be the Morrison’s supermarket in Winsford). I was carrying a bottle of water and looking for the manager, who eventually appeared to see me. I explained that I was from the Tesco supermarket at Whitchurch and when we were checking the shelves we found a bottle of water in a place where it shouldn’t have been on the shelves, and so it would seem to have been delivered to us in error. I was therefore taking the opportunity to return it. He took the bottle, went immediately over to the cold shelves, and there stacked in amongst the lettuce was another bottle of water of the same time. He said therefore that it must have been done in some kind of error and there was no problem or issue about our having this bottle of water.
So clutching a giant packet of crisps which I had somehow acquired, I left the supermarket and mounted my bicycle. I had the idea to telephone a girl that I knew in the Whitchurch area to see if she fancied coming out for a drink, seeing as I now had an hour or two to spare, and if she turned me down it would be no big deal. But my battery showed just 3% charge and so I needed to charge it up in the van. I freewheeled off down the steep hill to the car park and this involved a sharp right-hand turn into the car-park entrance. I remember pelting down this hill and swerving sharply into this car park entrance, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to make the turn. And just as we reached the crucial point, whether I’d miss the entrance, overshoot, fall off, hit the kerb or make it round, the alarm went off and I sat bolt upright in bed.

At least, despite everything, I’d had a reasonable night’s sleep.

After breakfast and after the nurse, I pushed on with the dictaphone notes. All of France 2014 is now done and dusted and I’ve started on the final batch of football notes. There were about 70 soundfiles of those to deal with and now the number is down to about 50. With a bit of luck, God’s help and a Bobby, this might be up-to-date by next weekend too. This will be progress, I’m sure. All that I need to do then, next time that I’m home, is to save it all to an external drive and then burn a CD with all of the files. Then, I can clear the dictaphone.

I’ve tidied up my paperwork too and managed to find the details of the next appointment that I have at the hospital. This seems to be Monday 7th March, although Liz and I are both convinced that there’s something mentioned about Friday 4th. I suppose that I’ll have to ring them up to find out.

This morning we had a snowstorm too. Just a small one for half an hour and nothing stuck, but just a reminder that winter hasn’t yet departed.

For tea, Liz and terry had chicken. But I was the lucky one, for there was some of yesterday’s curry left over. What with a baked potato and a naam bread that was discovered deep down in the freezer, I had a meal fit for a king. So much so that there was no room left for any vegan ice-cream.

So tomorrow is Monday.people will be back at work and so I’ll be expecting a “response” to the rather incendiary e-mail that I sent out on Friday, but I’ll also have to set Plan B in motion because I can’t wait any longer to start something off.

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Monday 15th February 2016 – WHAT A NIGHT!

Last night was definitely, to coin a well-worn football phrase, a night of two halves. I was in bed early watching one of the series of films of the “Three Mesquiteers”, a series that was heavily parodied in The Three Amigos! but afterwards, I just couldn’t doze off to sleep. I was awake for hours. By the time 01:30 came round, I was in agony too. I told you a day or so ago that I was really feeling uncomfortable in my stomach, and the feeling had developed right through the night until it was unbearable.

In the end, I staggered off down the corridor to the porcelain horse and this is where it all starts to become vulgar, because if … errr … flatulence had been a recognised sport, I would have comfortably won an Olympic Gold Medal.

Strangely (or maybe not), I felt so much better afterwards and even managed a decent sleep, of which I remember almost nothing at all. But I do recall some kind of preoccupation that the nursing staff at the hospital had with all of this. A couple of times per day they would ask me if I had … errr … made any gas recently. Clearly, in the nature of post-operative care, that kind of thing is quite important, and after last night’s effort I can now understand why.

This was like something out of “Kez”, which is quite surprising because that is a film that I have never ever seen, so how would I know? I can’t remember too much now about what was actually happening but what I do remember was that I was having an aerial view of what was going on, actually as if I had been the kestrel that was flying above the scene. It was all rather disorientating.

We had the nurse this morning, and my blood count has gone down again – to just 9.8. I’m hugely disappointed by that but then again, if it’s too early to be glad about the positive news from Thursday’s test, then it’s too early to be sad about today’s. I have to bear in mind that if someone had offered me 9.8 as a permanent figure after my operation, I would have been glad to take it, given some of the dire results beforehand. Don’t forget that I haven’t had any “extra” blood for well over a week.

We also had a heavy snowfall too. The temperature has been teetering around freezing point for most of the day so it was really only like slushy rain, I suppose, and while it looked as if it was so impressive, it melted away almost as soon as it landed. It will be interesting to see what happens overnight – I have to go back to hospital tomorrow.

The snowfall didn’t stop a visitor arriving. To save Liz the trouble of going out, one of her pupils came here and had a two-hour lesson. It was interesting for me to overhear what was being discussed as I’d never previously really sat in on a lesson.

For tea I had a beautiful bean pasta-bake with grated cheese. Gorgeous, it was. What was even nicer was the vegan ice-cream. That’s still just a little short on shop-quality as far as the smoothness goes (which is no surprise seeing that we aren’t set up here for an industrial operation) but as far as the taste goes, it was excellent and Liz can be proud of herself. It’s the third batch that she has made, all of which have been through trial-and-error, and each time there’s a major improvement.

I shall be really sorry when I have to go home.

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Sunday 14th February 2016 – THAT’LL LARN ME …

… to go bragging last night about being able to sleep, two nights running, right the way through the night. It goes without saying, therefore, that last night was a totally different kind of animal and I was awake for long periods on several occasions during the night.

But at least it meant that I remembered rather more of my nocturnal travels during the night. We started out with me having had my stitches out already but I was far from ready to have this done. I knew that my body hadn’t healed up properly but they had been taken out all the same, and you’ve no idea just how uncomfortable this whole idea made me feel.
From here I was on the move – quite literally too because I’d moved house – or, rather, a different house which was a two-bedroomed mid-terraced house of the 1920s rather like on the housing estate that I mentioned the other day. One weird thing about this house was that there were no doors to the rooms – just narrow slits in the wall. You had to be slim to squeeze through them. I didn’t have much problem to squeeze through but anyone overweight would have no chance of moving from room to room. A friend of mine and his wife told me that they would come to visit to look at the house, so I’d tidied up – just like normal. it really did need it. But in tidying up I’d left a big oily mark on the nice wallpaper on the bedroom wall – I’m not quite sure how. And so they turned up, and the first thing that I noticed was that it wasn’t his wife (although, actually, it was) and the second thing was that it was really late at night – more like in the small hours. Apparently they had been to visit someone else on the way and it was now 01:00. They had had nothing to eat that evening so i took them off to some kind of greasy kebab house in the vicinity where they had a burger and chips. They went to pay but there was no change in the place so I had to end up by giving them change out of my own pocket. We then started to go back to my house, engaged in deep conversation and as a result we walked right past my house – I couldn’t recognise my house from outside. It was only by looking at the house numbers that I realised that we had gone about 10 houses past where I was living, so we had to turn round and retrace our steps back to my place.
I was then in a prison but it wasn’t a prison, more like a hospital. I was sharing a room, or cell, with a couple, a couple who reminded me very much of a couple who used to go to watch the football at Pionsat every now and again. We could leave our cell, or room, but only step into the corridor. I found that I had a packet of biscuits but I couldn’t eat them because they contained milk so I was going to leave them outside my room for anyone else to take them away. But I was holding the packet in my mouth as I needed my two hands free to do something else but it looked just as if I was trying to tear open the packet, and I was seen by one of the “nurses”. Each time I went to put the packet outside, I had it in my mouth, and each time I was seen.

The alarm clock woke me up with its usual cacophony and off I trotted downstairs. We’d had snow again during the night and there was some of it still hanging around. The nurse came again – twice as you probably know – and it wasn’t quite as painful as last night. I’m now concentrating on having the injections on the left as the right is far more painful. To be honest, it feels as if I have a belt around my waist – a belt that is far too tight.

Liz has been experimenting with her cooking too. We now have home-made nut cutlets, home-made tahini, home-made hummus and my ice-cream too. It’s nice to see a fridge stacked high with vegan food.

Apart from that, I’ve done my usual badger-all today. There’s nothing to do and in any case I’m in no mood to do it. I wish that I could hurry up and recover.

Ohhh – and Happy Valentine’s Day to you all, with love from me.

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Saturday 16th January 2016 – I’M TRYING TO THINK …

… "always a difficult task" – ed … if I went outside yesterday. And the answer is that I did, briefly, to buy a loaf of bread when the mobile baker came round. That was the sum total of my adventures outside in the snow today.

But there wasn’t much in the way of snow. The promised downpour during the night never came and instead we had maybe half an inch and that didn’t last too long. The gritter finally found its way down here too this morning so at least it’s possible to travel around, if you wanted to.

But no-one wanted to. We all had a day in watching England dispose of the South African Test team in what can only be described as an eventful day’s cricket, and then watching the football. And probably the most exciting Premier League match that I have seen in years – the second half of Aston Villa v Leicester. A game that was played in exactly the fashion of how a good old First Division match of the 1970s would have been played instead of the boring, monotonous garbage that’s served up today where teams will pass the ball all the way back to the goalkeeper from the opponent’s penalty area if it means keeping possession of the ball rather than going on an all-out attacking rampage.

I’ve caught up with the second week of my animation course too. Back right on schedule although I’m the first to admit that I’ve not done the practical work. I don’t have the facilities here to do any of it so I’ll have to wait until I return home, whenever that might be. Furthermore, they make available the animation software that you need, but only for an i-Phone and my phone is a long way from being one of those.

But here’s something amusing. The postie came by this morning and brought three letters, all of which were for me! One was my blood test results and the other two were the long-promised letters from the hospital. I now know what is wrong with me and what they intend to do with me, and I also know that it’s going to be of long durée. so after this operation, I won’t be out of the woods – I’ll just have moved into different woods instead.

But it’s pleasing to know that I don’t have Hepatitis C, I’m not HIV-positive and that there are no traces of alcohol, tobacco or … errr … toxic substances in my blood. Not that there ought to be any of those things of course, but you never know what it is that’s going on when you are being injected with needles at least twice per day and receiving pints of blood from unknown sources.

So having had a nice, restful day, I can tell you about my nice restful night because for once these recent nights I didn’t get up to all that much. I started off doing something with one of the kids characters that I’ve created with the 3D modelling program that I use but I can’t remember what it was and which character it was (it was very likely K4). Anyway, someone (it might have been Cécile or Nerina) came around so see what I was doing but I explained that I don’t like people looking at my work until it’s finished so I wasn’t very enthusiastic about the idea. There was a new release of poses (for those who can’t create their own) for the character but these had to be applied only under certain circumstances. I applied them under all kinds of different circumstances regardless, but the characters came out all very wooden. I was wondering whether this was because I’d applied the poses in the wrong circumstances, or whether something else was going on.
I can’t remember where I was after that but it was Manchester or somewhere like that, at a concert venue below street-level and Man were due to appear. Instead of hanging around waiting for them, I went for a little wander around in the immediate vicinity and found another concert hall almost right next-door and this attracted my attention for a while. Then, returning to my venue, I could hear the music drifting upstairs so I dashed down, just in time to miss the last number! Drat! So I went to buy a beer (I haven’t had a beer in over 25 years, by the way) and there, sitting on a stool behind the counter as if he was supervising the place, was a boy who lived in the same village as me and who was on the same educational path and whom I haven’t seen for probably 40 years. But to buy a beer, you had to queue down a line of trestle tables until you reached the end, which was right up against the wall of the building, but the seats were so close to the trestle table that it as quite a squeeze to come back with your full beer glasses.

What? Me drinking beer? This really is becoming quite nostalgic. I’ll be eating cheese next, you just wait and see.

AND JUST IN CASE YOU ARE WONDERING why your comments on these postings aren’t appearing automatically these days – WordPress (which supplies the technical support for this blog) is being hit badly by another mega-spam-surge and we are being overwhelmed with spam-comments.

I’ve therefore had to delete the “automatic approval” setting for now and approve (or otherwise) all comments manually until the panic dies down. Normal service will (hopefully) be restored in early course (if I can remember how to do it).

Don’t let this hiccup stop you from adding your pearls of wisdom to my remarks.

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Thursday 14th January 2016 – SNOW!

first snow of 2016 sauret besserve puy de dome franceThis was the sight that greeted me this morning.

Well, actually, no it wasn’t. When I came downstairs, it was dark. Too dark to take a photo with the camera on the phone and I had to wait until it was lighter. By that time, some of the snow had melted and so it didn’t look quite like this, but still it’s the first snow that I have seen this winter.

It’s not actually the first snow of the winter, but when we had that, I was incarcerated in the hospital and never managed to see it.

The nurse managed to remember to come this morning, which was just as well because it was blood test day and I couldn’t have my breakfast until afterwards.

Once the nurse had gone and I had had breakfast, I didn’t do too much at all. Watched the first day of the 3rd Test with Terry and did some more of my animation course.

For tea, I made myself a pizza with peppers, mushrooms and olives, covered by grated vegan cheese. And I remembered to put the herbs on too. It didn’t half taste nice. And then I had a really early night – at just 19:45.

I had to go out to Caliburn though before retiring – to lift the wiper arms so that the blades aren’t touching the screen and to fetch my thermal mug, as I have an early start tomorrow. They’ve had my blood test results and despite the two pochettes that I had on Tuesday, my blood count has barely struggled up to 8.0. It’s clear that I’m starting to lose this fight and they have called me in to the hospital tomorrow for more blood.

As for anything else, members of my family are continuing to feature quite regularly in my nocturnal travels, and I still seem to be stuck in not merely a time-warp but a place-warp too, back in my old stamping grounds of my younger days. There’s clearly something significant, if not ominous, about all of this.

I started out last night by watching a film – one of these types of surreal horror film of the 1970s which centred around quite a few events. There was a girl aged about 9, rather a large girl, all covered in blood and gore. Anyway, there was a pile of us, all young kids, all living in a big house with a big bedroom. We all had our bed and that was about it – nothing else, and beds were crammed into the room everywhere with hardly any place to walk in between. We’d been doing something or other and I’d come back to crash out on the sofa. Also on this sofa were two jewel boxes that belonged to my mother and she asked for them back. My older sister however replied that she couldn’t get them back as I was asleep right there. At that, I woke up and asked her why she hadn’t reached in to get them? It wasn’t as if there was any big deal about this instead of making all of this comedy about everything. I crawled off into the bedroom and into my bed which was along the long wall. My parents came in and the whole thing erupted. There were all kinds of nightmare characters in these beds, we’d seen highlights in flashbacks from this film, rather like in Catch-22. My parents then went into a second bedroom where there were loads of kids, all of whom had the faces of gorillas and hippopotamuses and so on – astonishingly surreal. And the doctor had said something to this young girl – telling her to keep herself very clean and take care of her body.
From there, we moved on to another party designed to say goodbye to my niece and her husband, who had come over from Canada specifically for the party so that we could say goodbye to them! There were so many people milling around that we had to apportion them into all kinds of different vehicles. In the end they shot off to wherever it was that they were going for this meal, that was starting at 13:30. However I had a lot to do so I knew that I would be late, and I ended up at Alvaston Hall (or at least, what I reckoned last night was Alvaston Hall). When I finished, I had to get over to where this meal was taking place and for once in my life I had to take a taxi. At Alvaston Hall there were loads of people and loads of cars, but not a single taxi loitering in the vicinity. However, I noticed that at the table having lunch were three taxi drivers who I knew and who worked for a small company in Crewe. I went over to them to ask if any of them fancied a fare over to wherever this meal was taking place. They however insisted on their lunch-hour, so I asked them what time they had started. They replied “12:00” – which made no sense at all to me (even in a nocturnal ramble where nothing usually makes any sense) seeing as it was now 13:30. I asked them how long they would be, to which they said a half-hour or so. Totally crazy, but I was wondering that if I called someone out from Crewe, it would take that long for them to reach Alvaston Hall anyway. I then managed to lay my hands on a car, an old one of the type of the 1920s, and I planned to go off in that. However a group of young environmental campaigners was protesting against it. Of course, I was sympathetic with their aims but I was also in a hurry so when I made to drive off, they started to spray it with water and foam. I chased them all off but one young guy was really spoiling for a fight and was so insistent that in the end I had him on the ground and tied his hair to the railings in the best Vinny Jones fashion. “Get out of that without moving!” I then quickly cleaned the car, but when I opened the glove box, a pile of rusty water and old rusty Printed Circuit Boards fell out. One of these environmental protesters was there watching me do all of this – a young girl with blond curly hair, a green jumper and light brown slacks. We ended up having a rather heated dispute. She started to leave so I followed her to continue our argument and we ended up passing through the foyer of this 1950s-type glass and concrete conference centre and outside on the concourse. She didn’t make too much of an effort to escape so our argument continued, and suddenly, for no good reason, I put my arms around her in a rather passionate embrace. She offered me no resistance whatever – in fact she was rather encouraging.
I then found myself briefly in Italy with someone else and loitering around somewhere in the street. There was a young girl selling ice-cream from a mobile trolley so I went over there, took a cornet, filled it up with Neapolitan ice cream and stuck it back in the cornet holder. This girl didn’t make half a much of a fuss as I would have imagined.

It’s all still happening, isn’t it?

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Saturday 21st February – I WOKE UP THIS MORNING …

… "der dit der dah dit" – ed … to something like darkness.

And it wasn’t as if it was very early either. The truth was that we had had a snowfall during the night and the roof windows were covered.

It snowed intermittently throughout the day too – quite severely at times – but nothing seemed to stick. Nevertheless, seeing as how I’m going out tomorrow, I took Caliburn and parked him at the top of the hill in the lane because the temperature will drop during the night and if it snows like it did today then we really will be having transport issues.

The snow put paid to any plans that I might have had about going out. I stayed in all day and did nothing. I couldn’t even summon up the enthusiasm to do any tidying up.

I did go out to take the stats and while I was there I filled up the empty kettles, and that was the lot.

And I can’t say that I’m sorry either. I’ve been working hard just recently and I deserve a day or two off work.

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Sunday 28th December 2014 – BRRRR!

I’ve just been outside to take the stats, and it’s minus 5°C outside. Absolutely taters it was and my tiny hands were frozen.

Mind you, i’m disappointed with this snow that we had. Here I was, expecting about two feet of snow given the weather last night, but what we did have was a light dusting and plenty of ice.

When I woke up this morning, it was a mere 12.9°C in here and that was enough to make me want to go back to sleep. I’d been on my travels during the night, back to the days of my youth. There were two girls in the house where I was living. One was something to do with the owners of the house and had a superb bedroom all to herself. The other was an adopted girl and she also had a bedroom all to herself which, although nothing like as luxurious as the bedroom of the other, was still quite impressive nevertheless. However this perceived lack of facilities caused her to burst into tears and she came to me for some sympathy.

After breakfast, with the temperature still not rising and having to open the rooflights to clean the snow off the solar panels (although I needn’t have bothered – w’ve had hanging clouds all day) I lit the fire in here and I’ve had a low fire ticking over in here all day.

I’ve been working on the web page for the end-of-year summary for the work that I’ve been doing on the place here, and also on the itinerary for my North American trip of 2014.

And that’s about it really. This hasn’t been the weather to go outside and do anything.

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Saturday 27th December 2014 – I DID MENTION …

… that we had some wind last night, didn’t I?

tree blown down by gale virlet puy de dome franceI wasn’t joking either, as you can see. Here’s a tree at the back of Virlet that has been blown down overnight by the gales that we had.

I went off to Montlucon today to do some shopping, and in particular to buy the stuff that I need for the stairs and so on. I didn’t feel much like it this morning, listening to the icy rain clattering down on the roof. However, at about 09:00, a small amount of sun broke through the clouds temporarily and that was the signal for me to get on my way and not miss the gap in the weather, seeing as we are about to descend into deep midwinter.

And I’m glad that I did because not long after I returned, the weather broke and by 21:00 we were having heavy snow. Now, at least, I’m set up for a week or two.


In Montlucon I was able to buy most of the things that I required. No wood for fairing off the ends of the plasterboard though. The good pine planks were in Brico Depot but they don’t cut, and in Mr Bricolage, where they do cut, the pine boards were rubbish. I’m going to have a go at cutting the pine boards that I have here, and see how I do.

I couldn’t find any paint that I wanted either. So in the end, I bought a 10-litre tub of white emulsion and a tube of yellow paint dye. I’ll have a go at mixing that up and see how it turns out. One of these paint mixers driven by a portable drill should mix it up nicely I reckon, and I have one of those somewhere.

I didn’t buy much that was special, although I did stock up with the usual stuff. And in Amaranthe they had some Edam-style vegan cheese so I’m going to give that a try over the next few weeks. They had jars of Tajini -at quite a price, it has to be said, but I bought another one. At least I can keep my supply of home-made hummus going.

And diesel at €1:09 per litre. It’s not been that cheap since about 2006. I fuelled up Caliburn and now here I am – with no plans to go anywhere until Spring.

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Monday 8th December 2014 – WE WERE RADIOING TODAY

Just in Gerzat for Radio Arverne though.

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

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

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

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

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

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Saturday 6th December 2014 – I’VE BEEN OUTSIDE …

… just once today. And that was about an hour ago to take the statistics. And much to my surprise, I’ve had just half an amp of electricity today – and that was in the barn. It just shows you the importance of inclining the solar panels at the correct angle. Even though there are 6 solar panels on the roof of the house and just two on the barn, the roof panels are inclined at 48° (the pitch of the roof) whereas the ones on the barn are inclined at 71°, which is exactly what they ought to be (degrees north of the Tropic of Capricorn).

I had a late night last night, just for a change these days, and although I woke up when the alarm went off, one look out of the window convinced me that I was wasting my time. It was snowing just then, and had been for a while, and so I went back to bed.

When I finally did raise myself from the Undead, at 09:20, the snow had changed to light rain, and we had 5mm throughout the day. After breakfast I attacked the next month’s rock music radio programmes and they are now complete. It took me ages though because I’ve had to manufacture another concert as well as a speech, and everything was at different speeds and volumes so all of this needed arranging.

I’m beginning to understand how it was that when the radio station did the engineering, they made such a mess of it. I know the results that I am trying to achieve and it isn’t at all easy. The engineers don’t have a clue so they must have found it impossible.

I’ve also been spending some money again. This plant trailer that I bought with the mini-digger is a decent bit of kit, that’s for sure, but as I said the other day, I don’t know who has been playing with the electrics. The rear lights are add-ons – these really cheap and nasty 3-function lights that cost coppers each. And they don’t work either so there’s an even cheaper and nastier trailer board attached.

I hate trailer boards, especially on good-quality equipment, and so having a good browse around on the internet I’ve found a pair of rear lights – 5-function rear lights – that are such a good fit that they might even be the original equipment.

As well as that, I’ve bought a pair of these tiny LED real numberplate lights and a pair of side marker lights, the type that are on stalks so that they can be fitted on the mudguards to mark the extreme width of the trailer.

Apart from that, I’ve not done much else. It’s not been the weather for it.

-2

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 – I WAS RIGHT …

… yesterday when I talked about this snow.

snow 2014 indespension plant trailer les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis morning there was about half an inch on the deck of the new Indespension trailer and other similar surfaces. There was also a layer on the leaves on the plants and so on, but it hadn’t stuck to the ground.

And as the day wore on, the snow gradually disappeared, washed away by the thin drizzle that fell throughout the day.

I’ve been working on the power board in the barn. I’ve found two melamine-covered chipboard planks that were part of an old cheap chest of drawers. They are 25cm wide and so, together, were about right for the 55cms that I need to cover the power board below where the charge controllers are. I’ve mounted them on 37mm laths so that they stand off the back part of the power board and the cables can pass behind.

I’ve invented a kind-of hinge set out of a couple of L-shaped joinery brackets, so that these smaller boards will drop down so that I can work on the cables behind if necessary, and the upper board is installed.

solar power renewable energy control board les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs for the lower board, that has the laths and the hinges, and I’ve also drilled 3x8mm holes in it. I then cut some 80mm lengths of 8mm threaded rod and passed them through the holes.

I’ve fitted some plastic pattresses front and back on each of the threaded rods. And if anyone wonders why it is that I have fitted the terminal connections within pattresses, then drop a spanner down the back of the power board with no pattresses and 660 amp-hours of batteries wired in, and see what happens.

solar power renewable energy control board les guis virlet puy de dome franceI bolted the rods firmly in place so that there is 25mm of threaded rod out of the back and about 35mm out of the front. Attached to the rear of the threaded rods will be connections for all of the electrical equipment that will be permanently in place, and in the front will be the more temporary types of electrical equipment.

Two of the lengths of threaded rod have been connected together with a negative battery cable, as I’ve found in the past that I need about twice as many negative connections than positive connections.

And why is this?

That’s because there’s a fuse box off a Vauxhall Astra wired into the positive circuit. I like these because they are easy to take off scrap cars, and have one thick lead in, four of the giant fuses, and four wires out. I have four 12-volt electrical circuits – an upstairs lights and upstairs power, and a downstairs light and downstairs power. These circuits feed off the fuse box of course, but each one needs to have the negative circuit connected to the power board individually.

So that’s as far as I have reached today. Tomorrow I’m out, and so I’ll crack on with the power board on Friday.

-2

Tuesday 25th March 2014 – I WOKE UP THIS MORNING …

… as all of the good old Blues songs begin, but I woke up this morning to darkness.

Yes, we had another fall of snow during the night. However it didn’t last long as it’s been raining for most of the day – at times quite heavily. In fact we’ve had over 20mm of rain so far.

So as is usual now that I’m on summer hours, I worked on the web site until 12:00, and then I went outside to work. And despite everything that happened today, I’ve finished another raised bed.

The rain didn’t help. It was raining more-or-less steadily, with a few sunny spells, until about 18:15 when the heavens well-and-truly opened. It took me another 10 minutes, bu which time I was looking like a drowned rat, to finish the bed, and then I gave it all up and came in for an early finish. I would have been finished earlier too except that I … errr … fell asleep up here for half an hour after lunch.

french military aircraft turbo prop flying low les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut I had a couple of visits too. This missing Boeing 777 airliner from Malaysia – the French Government clearly thinks that I have it somewhere hidden about the premises because from about 13:15 until about 14:30 they had two huge transport aircraft flying low and circling around my property.

I’m certain that it isn’t anywhere round here, but they clearly seem to think so.

How bizarre.

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