Tag Archives: wood store

Sunday 21 July 2013 – AND AM I ALL PACKED?

Am I ‘eck as like.

No surprise there, is there?

I had a lie-in until about 09:20 and by that time it was far too hot to do anything much. Records have tumbled today and I can’t think how often it is that I have had to put cold water into the solar shower to cool it down to an acceptable temperature of about 37°C.

For yes, I did have my first (and probably only) solar shower of the year this evening, and gorgeous it was too – well-worth waiting for.

Mind you I almost didn’t manage to take it – there sunning itself on the concrete pad right almost where I was planning to stand was a whacking great snake – the first real snake that I’ve seen at my house, although I’ve seen plenty elsewhere.

He p155ed off pretty sharp-ish when he saw me and disappeared into the woodpile, right next to where the ladder is. I got to thinking of myself that it was a shame that I didn’t have a couple of friends, some counters and a pair of dice.

And if you want to know what kind of snake he was, at the speed at which he disappeared, he was definitely a calculator. That’s right – a calculator is a very fast adder.

Still, Caliburn is emptied and there’s a pile of stuff in it.

Not all I need to take all of it but there’s a slight change of plan. I’m not leaving right after the radio shows. It’s going to be even hotter tomorrow so it’ll be wicked on the road. I’m coming back here and I’ll leave at about 19:00 when it cools down.

Trying to print off the radio stuff, and nothing worked. It’s not gathering in the paper and so I’ll need to strip it down and find out why. But I never have any luck with printers. There’s dozens round here that don’t function as they are supposed to do.

Luckily Liz came to the rescue with some stuff (and a nice tea and some ginger cake for which I am always grateful) when I was down there rehearsing the radio shows and I’ll have to get Radio Tartasse to do the rest tomorrow.

Now as you know, every now and again I write down my dreams on here.

Many years ago when I was at Uni I helped out as one of a few guinea-pigs for someone who was doing research into dreams. We had to record our dreams and submit them to this guy who was using them as material for his thesis.

Even though the project ended years ago I still keep it up to a certain degree because it was so interesting and now it’s become something of a habit.

I don’t record all of my dreams because without the equipment that we had, it’s difficult to do so, and so I only record the ones that I remember really well. And last night’s was a corker, it really was.

Back in the 1980s when I had my taxi business in Crewe I had a young girl working for me on Saturdays. She stayed for a couple of years and then left to go to college.

She kept in touch with Nerina and me and there was talk at one point that she might come to lodge with us for a while as home conditions were difficult.

Anyway, to cut a long story short … “Hooray” – ed … Nerina and I separated a few years later and I was preparing to emigrate, and I bumped into Nerina. She asked me how I was and we had a little chat about this and that.

One thing that she said quite surprised me. “I’m surprised that you didn’t get …. to move in with you”.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, you must have known that she had a big crush on you”.
Rather like Hattie Jacques and Kenneth Williams in Carry On Loving“Surely you must have felt it?”
“Felt it? I never got anywhere near it”.
I didn’t, as it happened, and it was rather late in the day to tell me, I thought.

A good few years or so years later I did encounter … again – now separated from her husband and with a young baby in tow.

I was just about to go off New York for a holiday and, on a whim, I invited her along.  But it was far too short notice and it didn’t happen, and I always regard her as “the one that got away” – the lucky girl.

Anyway, last night, here she was. We were in Sydney, Australia, together as a couple, talking to someone about their cats, and a taxi driver stuck his head around the door and said that it was time to go. So we went outside to get into his taxi, a big modern silver Opel with a huge scrape all the way down the side and with a floor made of wooden pallets. He took us back to our home and when he dropped us off, I noticed that the letter box outside had been knocked off its pedestal and bent. So there I was fixing it and putting it back into position so I could post this huge pile of brown envelopes, but … told me that the postman had passed while I was fixing the letter box and it was now too late.

I’ve never had a dream as realistic as this – so realistic that in the middle of it and I had to get up to go for a Gypsy’s downstairs in the bathroom, when I returned to bed and went back to sleep, the dream carried on from where it left off.

It was totally astonishing and I would love to know what has been going on in the back of my mind somewhere that has made it come up with all of this. It’s quite unnerving for some reason and has put me right off my stroke. I shan’t be feeling myself for a good week or so …“and quite right too” – ed

Surreal was not the word.

..

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Tuesday 25th September 2012 – WELL …

… I did hear the alarm clock go off this morning.

But I also heard the rain teeming down on the roof and on the windows and so I thought “badger that for a game of cowboys” and stuck my head back down under the quilt.

I did eventually rise up out of my stinking pit – and what a beautiful night’s sleep that was – and after breakfast attacked the footy website until 12:30.

By then the rain had subsided and so the first job was to repair the wheelbarrow that had been out of commission since 2008. A new inner tube that I had bought in Cheze the other weeek and, much to my surprise, I could lay my hands on my tyre levers straight away without even having to look for them.

The Ryobi One-plus air compressor that I bought in Detroit in 2010 did the business and with a length of stud-iron I rigged up an impromptu axle and that was that all fixed up.

While I was having lunch the heavens opened and so, for the first time in probably 6 months or something, I worked inside, in the little cupboard that I’m making at the back of the stairs.

I gave the plastering over the joints of the plasterboard a good sanding down and they are ready to paint now.

wood store les guis virlet puy de dome france>But then the rain stopped again and so back outside,

I ripped up the terracing that I had laid out a couple of months ago using a couple of old pallets, and I used those pallets as a base for the extension to the woodshed.

And from then (about 16:00 until all of 19:30) I unloaded Caliburn of all of the wood.

There’s about 4m² of wood altogether in the pile, and I bet that Aunt Ada Doom could find something narsty in that lot.

But the woodshed isn’t half impressive and there’s room for plenty more under there if I put my mind to it.

At least, under normal circumstances, there’s enough wood here keep me warm for a couple of winters. And if this rain keeps up, because it’s pelting down again, I’ll be needing it sooner than I might think. 

Yes, it’s amazing what you can make out of old pallets and a few sheets of corrugated iron

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Tuesday 18th September 2012 – I’M WHACKED!

Yes, cutting wood is not necessarily all that easy.

Especially when you have as much to do as we did. We had Terry’s Ifor Williams trailer (about 5mx2m) stacked 1m high of wood, and then about another 3 or 4 cubic metres in his van.

We started at about 10:00 and by 17:30 the wood was finished – and so were we!

cutting wood caliburn les guis virlet puy de dome franceAll cut into 30cm lengths and split where necessary, and there’s about 3 or 4 cubic metres in the back of Caliburn.

I could have had much more than that but Caliburn was right down on the suspension and the tyres were bulging so that’ll do me for now.

That should last me all this winter and then some more.

Another problem that I need to face is that I have nowhere to store it. But then again, I would rather have that problem than the problem of having no wood in the middle of winter.

And it was certainly nice coming back home with the smell of newly cut wood percolating through the bulkhead from the back.

Mind you, it was hard to start to move again after sitting down. I wasn’t going to put a row or two of mortar on the wall, that’s for sure – even if it hadn’t been raining.

I’m not sure how I’ll be feeling tomorrow either.

Still, this was a good deal and I’m quite happy about it – and doesn’t that make a change these days?

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Tuesday 31st January 2012 I DIDN’T LAST LONG …

… outside this morning.

Just enough to cut up an old rotten chevron and then cold damp hands (I forgot to dry my gloves) drove me inside.

First thing that I did was to clear the bedroom of some of the junk that was in there. A pile of cardboard boxes were flattened down, the old woodstove went outside, and they were followed by the old windows. And as an aside, I now have a woodshed with windows 😉

Next task was to dig Caliburn out of the snow. And there was plenty of that to move as well. I eventually put him at the top of the hill and we went for a little drive in the snow – I need to be sure that I can move around tomorrow as he is off to be serviced.

After lunch I made some more space in the bedroom and carried on in there.

Now all of the plasterboarding on the outside walls of the bedroom is finished – something about which I am very pleased. I’m glad that I’ve done that. It looks quite good too. What it needs now is to be all taped down at the edges and then filled.

And when that’s done, I can carry on with the ceiling.

That’s two outside walls that have been plasterboarded. The third wall is the back wall and of course there’s a fitted wardrobe built into that. The fourth wall is of course the stud wall and half of that – against the corridor – is done. The half that is against the bathroom I can’t do yet until I’m able to sort out the plumbing. And then I also need to fit the door.

The window opening needs edging too, and then the floor has to be done.

But thinking about it, I’ll be putting hardboard on the floor and then putting some of that flooring stuff on top.

But it’s nice to see some light down at the far end of the tunnel and if this cold spell continues, I might see even more.

I’m also at the stage where I’m actively thinking about the bathroom too and how that is going to evolve. I reckon that it won’t be long before I have the plasterboard on there as well. But that means replacing the floor first.

But seeing how the weather has suddenly turned nasty, I’m still impressed with that 10 days of warm weather just after New Year when I managed to do the roof on the lean-to.

It really was astonishing and I’ll be talking about that for years.

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Thursday 26th January 2012 – I DON’T SEEM …

… to have done very much today.

Mind you, that’s not very much of a surprise considering that I managed to sleep through all of the alarms in here this morning and was … errr … somewhat late in raising myself from the dead.

In fact, much of the morning was spent sorting out the wood that is leaning against the end wall of the barn, and then sawing up a dozen or so lengths.

two storey wood shed les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe strange thing is that while the woodpile is slowly increasing, the number of lengths of uncut wood standing up against the wall doesn’t seem to have decreased.

Perhaps I have hit upon the secret of the self-reproducing wood supply – something that reminded me of the story of the Irishman, granted two wishes by his fairy godmother, asked for a bottle of Guinness that refilled itself every time he poured some out of it.
“And your second wish?” enquired the fairy godmother.
“I’ll have another one of those bottles”.

LED light 12 volt domestic circuit electric wiring les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis afternoon I carried on with the wiring in the upstairs of the lean-to.

Most of that time was spent looking for equipment of course, but I now have two lights and two pairs of 12-volt power sockets. They are all wired up, but they aren’t wired into the circuit of course – I need to drill a 40mm hole right through the stone wall into the house to do that, and that’s something that is going to have to wait for a bit.

I’ve a drill that will do it – a 1050-watt SDS drill, but with the current that it draws, you need a brilliantly sunny day. And while a strange golden thing did pop out from behind a cloud for 5 minutes, it’s been about 9 days since we have seen the sun.

It shows just how lucky I was with that little dry spell earlier in the month that enabled me to do the roof of the lean-to.

Regular readers of this rubbish in one of its several predecessor forms will recall that I bought 2 x 400-watt wind turbines from the manufacturers in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 2002. One of them flies proudly above the barn but the other one is in the back of the barn because the blades on these turbines are rather brittle and I’ve ended up having to make up one set out of the two that I had originally. And the manufacturers never ever replied to any of my mails asking about buying s new set of replacement blades.

So a couple of weeks ago I bit the bullet and contacted a company in the USA that makes parts for home-build wind turbines, and I’ve bought a set of blades from them, complete with hub, to fit on the other wind turbine.

In what was left of my working day, I’ve assembled the blades onto the hub unit and what I intend to do tomorrow is to resurrect the abandoned wind turbine and stick the blade and hub assembly onto it, and then shove it onto a pole somewhere where it will catch the wind.

These blades have the lowest drag co-efficient of any after-market wind turbine blades and so I’ll be interested to see just how they perform.

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Wednesday 25th January 2012 – HAVING RUN …

two storey woodshed les guis virlet puy de dome france… out of room to store firewood once it’s been cut, I’ve now invented the two-storey woodshed – and I bet there’s certainly something narsty in that!

It’s become something of a necessity to find a space to store the wood these days with all of the wood that I’ve been cutting up just recently and having acquired a cement mixer and needing a place to store it out of the weather.

The logical thing to do is to build a lean-to shed, out of old scrap beams off the house roof and the corrugated iron sheets that I took off the lean-to roof, probably on the car park up against the end wall of the barn.

But for this I need to move all of the wood that is leaning up against that wall, and the easiest way to move it is to cut it up into firewood-sized lengths and stack it somewhere.

Hence the two-storey woodshed.

Of course this isn’t going to be its permanent home, but it will give some kind of shelter to the wood for now.

And so this morning, as well as building the woodshed, I cut up a yet another load of wood. Some of it was quite thick and it showed the benefit of buying a decent saw.

And it also showed the benefit of buying a wood grenade – something similar to a large chisel but with a point, not a blade, and four serrated sides. Stuck into a log of wood and wallopped with a sledgehammer, it splits the log cleanly and effectively into a more-manageable size.

This afternoon I noticed, to my surprise, that the batteries on bank 2 of the barn were fully-charged. And that was a surprise in this weather, I can say. Yes, miserable, wet and depresssing – but that’s enough about me.

So with the batteries fully charged, I decided on a change. I disconnected them and connected up a couple of others, to let them charge up for a few days to see what they might do.

Following that, I sorted out the extension leads and put them upstairs in the lean-to. I may as well use it now I’ve built it.

And that led on to another idea, and I’ve started to install lights up there. Not that there’s much need because I noticed that at 18:00 when I knocked off work, the evening was still light. Yes, the nights are getting shorter again.

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Friday 20th January 2012 – I CAN’T SEE …

… a thing right now in my room.

There’s a gusting wind blowing up outside and it’s in just the right direction to blow right down my chimney so every couple of minutes a load of smoke is blown back down the fire and out of the air vent into the room.

I’m being done up like a kipper just now.

But I was right about the weather – it’s rained for most of the day. And it is indeed nice to see the rail cascading off the new roof on the lean-to onto the ground, well away from the wall, and everything inside the lean-to being bone-dry for a change.

I can’t believe my luck with the weather for that 10-day spell when I decided to go for broke and do the lean-to roof. It’s not like me at all.

So I did some sawing of the wood this morning, but a downside of this now is that I’m cutting it faster than I’m burning it and I’m now running out of room to store it. I suppose that I shall have to make a larger woodpile, or a taller one or something.

I could, I suppose, even dig the trench that I need to dig at the side of the house by the “other” lean-to, drop the drainage pipe in there that needs to go in there and connect it into the drainage system, fill the trench with gravel, cover it over with a weed blanket and then build the real woodshed where it is supposed to go, but that’s not the work of half an hour.

After the woodcutting (which I managed to do without any interruption for a change) I did some more tidying up, starting in the lean-to.

First job was to rescue the remaining Hawker deep-discharge batteries and charge them up.

And here I’ve hit a problem, in that the battery box I made for the previous batteries is too small – the Hawkers are taller. But anyway once they were out of the way I tidied up in the lean-to, collected all of the stray solar panels and stacked them in a corner, and then hung up the smaller gardening tools so that I’m not tripping over them.

Having moved a couple of solar panels out of the barn I could then get in there and make some space to put the old Rutland wind turbine tidily out of the way.

This led to the discovery of a circular saw, not the 600-watt one that I can’t find anywhere at all, but the old 1050-watt one that was all rusted solid having been left in a container that filled with water through a leak in the barn roof when I was ill and which had subsequently been partly-dismantled for spares.

Of course, now that I have a 1200-watt inverter all things are possible, so I gave the saw a good spray with WD40 and reassembled it with some other bits and pieces. And much to my surprise it fired up!

Even more surprising was that the inverter didn’t even bat an eyelid.

The saw needs some “attention to detail” before I can use it to cut wood, but this is definitely progress.

This afternoon, with the weather deteriorating, I restarted work in the bedroom – the first time for God knows how long. I’ve fitted the false beam at the side wall – the beam that hides all of the electrical cable – and I’ve also packed out one of the plasterboard panels that didn’t quite mate with the others.

It was then that I lost the light and so I spent the last hour tidying up in the barn again.

And despite all of this time that I’ve spent tidying up, a I really can’t see any difference at all.

This evening by way of an experiment, I brought a kettle of water up here and put it on top of the woodstove. And after about 2.5 hours it was gloriously warm and I had a lovely hot wash and shave in front of the fire.

Definitely the highlight of the week, that, and I can’t think why I hadn’t done that before.

Next step is the coffee pot on the stove, and put the produce in a thermos ready for the following morning.

I ought to be much-better organised than I am.

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Thursday 1st December 2011 – GOING TO BED EARLY …

… does you no good at all if you roll over onto your staples at 04:00. It’s flaming painful and you can’t go back to sleep again.

And so I was up early again and breakfasted, and then I went out to cut more wood. That’s a couple more of the old chevrons and the tree trunks from 2 years ago all ready to burn in my nice new wood stove, with which I am almost as impressed as I am with my galvanised steel dustbin.

But then I had another idea and I cleared a space near the big front gates and laid out a couple of pallets. And then I moved one of the wood piles – the one that was at the side of the lean-to. That’s now on the pallets right at the front of the house and will be easy to get to in the winter, whenever that might be.

That pile of wood was formerly at the side of the lean-to on a concrete pad that was formerly the base of a chicken coop. This concrete hardstanding is now covered with plastic roof tiles – I did a safari around the garden and hunted down all that I can find ready for doing that roof, whenever that might be.

I also took out the plywood from the back of Caliburn and I’ve stood that upon the concrete pad. Even though it’s for exterior use, I’ve covered it up with a tarpaulin to protect it for a while from the weather.

All that’s left in Caliburn is the window and that’s rather heavy. But I have a cunning plan for that, more of which anon.

When it went dark I fetched a shelving unit that I had forgotten and I have put it in what will be the bathroom. I’ve started making a tour of the upper floors rescuing tools and so on, so that I know where everything might be.

But that’s not so easy as there’s just so much stuff. I really ought to have a good tidy up sometime.

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Thursday 13th January 2011 – Oh look at that!

liz messenger vegan christmas cake les guis virlet puy de dome franceYes, doesn’t this look gorgeous?

It’s a home-made vegan Christmas cake specially made for me by Liz, whose culinary talents know no bounds and whose husband, Terry, is the luckiest man on earth. Liz made this for me for Christmas and now that I’ve finished everything else that was hanging around here, I can make a start on it.

So before I did anything else, I had to photograph it for posterity, and then I cut myself a slice.

And believe me – it really is as nice as it looks and I am ever so grateful to Liz for making it for me. It’s really nice to have good friends. This cake should keep me going until my birthday if I am lucky (said he, dropping a huge hint).

But back to the story.

With the weather being as it is right now, I’ve not been burning so much wood. But I’ve still been spending half an hour each morning in the woodshed, dragging out suitable wood and stacking it outside under the sheeting ready to burn. It’s keeping quite dry out there and the wind is helping to condition it for burning. And I’ve also been able to start to move things around a little so that there’s more space in there to move around. If I remember, I’ll post a pic of the place because I do remember taking one when I piled everything in there and there wasn’t room to swing a cat.

bedroom ceiling insulation tongue and grooving les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd up in the bedroom I’ve made a start on the ceiling.

You can see what I’m trying to do – put strips of tongue-and-grooving over the polystyrene insulation in the ceiling (which is actually the floor of my attic of course).

It’s slow work as each piece has to be cut separately as the beams are twisted and so the gap is never the same size. And then I have to wedge some more polystyrene in between the mounting rails and then nail the T&G over the top.

I’ve cut a hole in one of the pieces for the light fitting. There will be four lights, two by the window and two by the fitted wardrobe. Recessed MR16 12-volt fittings to take the LIDL LED bulbs that I can get.

What makes a difference of course is having music while I work. And I’m currently on the “W” and that can only mean “The Who” – followed tomorrow by “Wishbone Ash”. First album up was probably The Who’s second-best-ever album – Who’s Next. Every single one of the tracks on it is on my current playlist and rightly so – it’a an album full of classic Who music. And after a few other albums we came to what is probably the best rock album that has ever been recorded and which has never been off the top of my personal list since 1973, and that is of course Quadrophenia . That particular album is on a completely different plane than anything else that has ever been recorded and if you have never ever heard it then you really don’t know what you are missing. And at £3:99 for a copy of 1 hour 40 minutes worth of thumoing rock muisic, you can’t say that you can’t afford it.

Of course, there’s only one way to lsisten to Who’s Next and Quadrophenia, and that is why I have bought a house down the end of a dirt track miles from anywhere. And even old solidly-built stone houses can really rock with the volume turned full up.

That cheered me up as well, and I have four or five classic Wishbone Ash albums to listen to soon.

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Tuesday 17th November 2009 – Today I’ve been fighting …

lean to wood pile… my way into the lean-to at the other side of the house. It was full of bricks and wood that I threw in there when I had a tidy-up a couple of years ago. The plan is to put my plant-pot beichstuhl on the inside to the left of the door, put all my gardening tools to the right, and fill up the rest with wood that I’ll be cutting through the winter and of course all of the scrap wood from the roof that is too bad to reuse. There’s tons of that.

It’s not quite working out like this though as the best-laid plans of mice, men and yours truly have a habit of going gang awa’, but at least I’m making slow progress.

If you have been following my website over the years you will maybe remember that it was into here that I was planning to move when the idea of coming here full-time was first discussed. But a casual survey of the roof showed that two of the beams had rotted and when I came to replace them it turned out that seven needed to be replaced and while I was taking some of them out part of the wall collapsed. And it was just after having rebuilt the wall that I was taken ill, and that was that.

In other news, following the collapse of the English-language newspaper, the SMADC – the French Government body charged with regenerating the Combrailles – has been looking at other ways to communicate with the English-speaking community over here and one idea currently being batted around is to have a 15-minute English-speaking spot every Sunday on the local radio station. They are looking for a radio presenter for the programme (if it goes ahead) and it seems that someone has thrown my hat into the ring.

In other other news, it’s been announced that a 90 year-old German is to be tried for a war crime dating back over 60 years. This follows the trial of an 88 year-old the other day. Can you imagine the scene in the court …
“How do you plead?”
“Not Guilty“
“What evidence do you have to disprove the accusations?”
“Well none, actually. The last of my defence witnesses died in 1972“
So what chance of a fair trial are these people going to get? It’s like the case of Demianjuk – even the Zionists found him Not Guilty of war crimes but he’s being hawked around country after country until someone can find a crime to pin on him. It’s a total disgrace.

These two guys are being tried for a handful of civilian deaths, yet night after night after night members of Bomber Command of the British Royal Air Farce flew over Germany deliberately targeting innocent civilians and massacred them by their hundreds of thousands. When is someone going to round them up and put them on trial for the horrific war crimes that they committed? And how many Russian soldiers were prosecuted for the atrocious war crimes that they committed against the German civilian population as they overran the Eastern provinces of Germany?

History is indeed written by the victors and never by the victims. Bah! Humbug!

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