Tag Archives: blog

Monday 10th December 2012 – And there I was …

… lying in bed going through in my mind the things that I should (and shouldn’t) have done during the day, and it was then that I remembered that I hadn’t written up the blog for today. Mind you, it was about 03:00 (I had a late night) and I wasn’t going to get up and do it at that time. Hence the reason that you’ve all had to wait for it.

It had been a comparatively busy day too for round here. An early start saw me bash on with the Christmas special and I made huge strides in putting down what I need to say. In the best traditions of the Open University, I just write stuff down as it occurs to me, and then go through and edit it later. Ohhh, the joys of “cut and paste”.

A break at lunchtime though because Terry came round to pick up his orders from the UK. Piles of stuff there was too. We agreed that, seeing as he knows all of the best contacts, he’ll order on my behalf the new winter tyres for Caliburn off the internet. Caliburn won’t know himself, what with all of these new tyres just now. He’s certainly having a good Christmas, even if no-one else is.

At the Anglo-French group, at first there was just me. Terry came in later and explained that he had had to fight a major blizzard round by St Gervais d’Auvergne, which explained why no-one from that neck of the woods appeared. Jex told me that Marianne was in hospital (she hadn’t been looking too well last time I saw her) and so that explained that. I’ll have to get on to her and see how she is.

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Monday 5th November 2012 – IN POSSIBLY WHAT …

… is going to be one of the shortest blog entries ever, I’m clearly not quite 100% – but then you knew that anyway.

The effects of my weekend away must have taken out of me more than I realised because it’s been quite difficult for me to move. Leaving my bed was quite exciting, I’ll promise you.

So today, I’ve been slowly catching up on what I should have done this weekend, including writing up yesterday’s mammoth blog entry and when I finish it (whenever that might be) I can restart work.

Always assuming of course that it stops raining sometime soon. For if not, I’ll be building myself an ark

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Thursday 28th June 2012 – ONE OF THE REASONS …

… and there are many of them, to be sure, as to why I keep a blog is that I can refer back to it and find out when I did something.

I forget all too easily these days what I’ve been up to and when I was up to it – and just remember, before you start laughing, that you will be as old as me too one of these days too.

So I looked back and found that it was exactly a week ago today that I planted the courgette, cucumber, gherkin etc seeds, and sowed some lettuce seed in pots.

And while I was sorting out the herb buckets (those nice heaps of oregano and tarragon have gone – cut down now and hanging up to dry in my attic) I happened to notice that the lettuce were growing.

Blimey! That was quick!

So they had a really good watering, and they need it too in this heat.

And so, out of curiosity, I went to look at the beds where I had planted the courgette etc seeds.

And guess what?

Absolutely! They are rearing their pretty little heads too.

There’s even some beetroot from what I planted a week earlier, but the carrots are once again doing nothing at all.

Anyway, it seems to be all go in the garden again.

I didn’t manage an early start today, unfortunately. It was so hot that at 03:00 I was still up and about and I would probably still be flat out on my back right now if a hornet hadn’t come in at about 08:45 and chased me around the bedroom.

Still, makes a change from Percy Penguin, who doesn’t feature in these pages half as much as she deserves, chasing me around the bedroom.

This afternoon I started to draw up the plans for the next stage of construction work, and began to make a list of the bits that I need. Right on cue, Rosemary rang me up and asked if I would be interested in going to the Brico Depot in Montlucon.

Seeing as how it won’t be very easy getting all of this wood onto Caliburn’s roof rack all on my own, and it’s no skin off my nose whether I go tomorrow or Saturday.

And when I heard that half a day’s gardening was the reward on offer, then that was it, mercenary that I am. It’s a good job I emptied out Caliburn yesterday, wasn’t it?

In between the surveying I dragged out the tabletop washing machine and did a load of washing seeing as I had a pile to do, it was gorgeous and warm, and the water temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load for the surplus solar energy was at 60.5°C.

To finish off the day I treated myself to yet another solar shower seeing the temperature of the water in the black plastic solar hearing box had reached 41.5°C. And that was gorgeous too

It’s all go here right now, isn’t it?

    

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Thursday 19th April 2012 – This has been another day …

… where I’ve hardly set foot out of the house.

I was sitting up here quietly minding my own business, like I do (sometimes) when I had a visitor. It concerns a bill which, according to the company concerned, has been outstanding since 2008. And I remember it well.

In fact, it was the 30th October 2008 when this guy came round before (now you see the advantages of keeping a blog) with a bill, and which I disputed at the time. and correspondence with the company concerned led to a revised bill being sent to me, which was paid (according to the cheque stubs) in January 2009. And now this guy wants paying again – for the October 2008 amount!

Original bill – yes I have that. Copies of correspondence – yes I have that too. Cheque stubs – yes I have them. Bank statement for January 2009 showng the cheque clearance – … errrrr ….

So here’s me on one hand trying to tidy up before I go, and on the other hand I have a huge mountain of papers all over the place and it looks as if a bomb has gone off in here – it really is embarrassing. I’ve found tons of stuff that I had forgotten – absolutely tons. And there’s a pile of really useful stuff that has come to light too. But can I find this bank statement? And would you believe – it is the only one that is missing as well, and that is astonishing in itself.

This is going to be a long job.

Added to that, there’s a change of schedule to our recording plans, and we are in the studio tomorrow. Isn’t it a good job that I did all of the writing up the other week? But recording involves printing out over 40 sheets of paper and that takes an age. Add to that the letters that I need to write before I go away, and the stuff that I need to download for my journey on Wednesday, and it ended up being never-ending.

19:29 when I noticed what time it was. No wonder I’m getting all stressed out. I hate really do hate flying and I’m always thoroughly stressed out by the time I’m on board the plane. This year though, I seem to be starting a few days early.

What’s not helping either is that where my ‘plane will be landing, there will be a balmy 20°C and nice sunshine. 500 miles away, where my first port of call is to be, it will be -4°C and 20mm of snow.

I’m thinking that I’ve done more intelligent things than this as well.

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Sunday 5th February 2012 – SUNDAY …

… is a Day of Rest.

And so I did nothing – not even to write up my blog. I just stayed in here in the warmth, read the odd book, watched a film and did some more of my presentation on the Trans-Labrador Highway. And cooked pizza, garlic bread and rice pudding in the oven. I didn’t even manage to watch the superbowl – I was asleep a long time before that.

Mind you, I did actually do something else.

I’ve changed the furniture round in the room yet again and I now have the bed-settee going across the room in front of the fire where I can see the flames. That’s a much more logocal arrangement and it also helps to break up some of the draughts that circulate around the place.

I’m certainly living the nomadic life these days, aren’t I?

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Wednesday 10th August 2011 – I had an earlier night last night.

Yes, I was in bed by 01:00, just for a change. And so I was up at a reasonable time, fighting fit.

I’ve now reached the other side of Truro on my web site, heading for the industrial museum at Stellartown. I might even arrive there tomorrow if I’m lucky. But this radio web page is giving me a headache. It’s taking ages to upload the programmes to my website and I’ve absolutely no idea why it should be so. It won’t be finished any time soon.

I’ve also finished (for now, at least) the guttering on the barn roof outside here. That’s all re-positioned so I hope that it works better from now on.

solar panels anemometer les guis virlet puy de dome franceNow this is what I’ve been doing for another part of this afternoon. I’ve fitted the cheap anemometer to the roof of the house. It wasn’t giving me an accurate-enough reading from down on ground level in the garden and I still can’t find the data head for the new one.

Now I bet you will all be wondering how I will be changing the batteries in the unit, seeing as they are up there about 40cms above the roof line. Well, that’s easy. The unit is fitted to a 38mm pole that’s 2.5 metres tall, and that’s fastened into a key clamp on the side of the house. I’ve deliberately set it just outside the window at the top of the stairs outside the door into the attic. To change the batteries, you just slacken off the clamp and the pole slides down the kep clamp, and you lean out of the window to change it.

guttering house les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd while we’re on the subject of the guttering and the subject of the house roof, then seeing that I had the ladder out for the anemometer, I propped it up against the front of the house and re-positioned the guttering there a little too so that it looks prettier and is (hopefully) more effective.

And so having done all of that with the guttering, I’m intrigued now to see what will happen now when it rains. But it wasn’t going to work today though – for the first time for ages we have had a glorious summer day.

I hope that it stays like this as well.

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Tuesday 9th August 2011 – I’m off to bed in a sec.

And not surprisingly either. I was working on my stuff for Canada and chatting away to Rhys when he announced “you’re up late”. And indeed I was – 05:15 am. Carried away with work, as well as sleep issues.

And so the best-laid plans etc – they all went gang awa’ today. 10:30 when I woke up and after breakfast I attacked the radio blog. It took ages to sort out all the programmes and convert them from *.wav to *.mp3 format, and ages to upload. They still aren’t finished either. But once I’d emptied the 8GB data stick I copied a load of music onto it. And it works too, which is surprising, although it takes a while to sort out the directory structure.

This afternoon I’ve sorted out the guttering on the house and barn yet again. I know what the problem is on the barn, but that’s not going to be fixed in 5 minutes. It needs the downspout lowering down by 5cms but that needs a pile of brackets re-positioning. But with the improvements that I’ve made today it may well not overflow. We shall see. I also moved around a few more bits and pieces in my quest to tidy up the barn.

And I forgot to say last night – Rhys reminded me of it – on the way back here from St Gervais d’Auvergne last night I was chased along the road by two huge Audi saloons. The road winds around for the most part and is all up and down as well, and surprisingly to some, but not to others. Caliburn outran them for most of the way. Power-on and front-wheel drive into the bends, Caliburn is a match for most things in these sorts of conditions which is not bad at all for a small-engined Ford Transit, although I reckon that the driver and a set of decent expensive tyres have a lot to do with it. In fact it wasn’t until the long straight at La Celette that they managed to pass me. Yes, I’m really lucky to have Caliburn.

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Monday 1st August 2011 – Actually I’m quite astonished …

… by the people who read this rubbish, and how helpful they are. Having published yesterday about my missing morning, the farmer who owns the field next door came roaring to the rescue this morning on his tractor – at 07:11 exactly as it happens. And I didn’t even know that he read my blog!

And so after crawling out of my bed at a reasonably-indecent time, I spent a few hours on my website. I’m now finalising the pages on Halifax ready to publish them. I’ll let you know when they are on line and you can read them, and you’ll see why it is my favourite city in North America.

puy de dome franceBut before that – you might remember me saying that I have made a few alterations to the media corner in the attic where I live. Well, here you can see it in all its glory and I have to say that it does look quite impressive, as does the huge pile of wood and paper ready for winter.

And that’s not going to be all that far away you know. At least the wood is keeping dry in here. It’ll burn a treat when we need it.

After I finished on the website, I went outside and spent the morning working on the guttering. You may remember that I had several issues with the guttering – on the house there was a piece missing and there was another piece that had collapsed under the weight of the snow in the winter. On the barn, a piece melted in the heat from the fire earlier this year, and part of the rest of the guttering had sagged.

Anyway, I’d fixed it all before lunch. There’s a few new brackets and a couple of the old ones have been bent further round – let’s see if that stops the water cascading over the top. I also replaced the melted bit but apart from the fact that I can’t find the left-hand gutter end that was attached to it, I can’t find any other either – which is bizarre because I have three right-hand ones. How did I manage that?

The guttering on the house is fixed now as well and the missing piece added. I’ll post a pic here tomorrow so that you can see it, for I forgot to take one earlier.

After lunch, seeing as it was a glorious day, I did a load of washing. Temperature in the 12-volt immersion heater, heated by the surplus electric energy, reached 62.5°C and so it was a nice hot wash. And while that was doing, I did some tidying up and then I had a nice solar shower, seeing as the water in there was 38.5°C. So clean clothes, clean bedding, and clean me tonight. What luxury!

After the Anglo-French meeting I bumped into Simon. He was trying to fit a 700-litre diesel tank into the back of his van to take to the tip tomorrow and so I went to help him. But to cut a long story short, it’s now in the back of Caliburn ready for me to use as a biodiesel tank for when I set up my refinery. Thanks, Simon. And apart from that, Bill and I had the guided tour of his new abode.

Tomorrow if the weather stays nice, I’ll be doing another load of washing and that should bring it up to date. And now I have some heavy duty sacks, I’ll be doing what I ought to have done a year ago – namely emptying the Sankey trailer.

And while I was up a ladder hanging on grimly with one hand “lucky grimly” – ed, using a cordless drill and balancing a few lengths of guttering, I seem somehow to have pulled a muscle in my right forearm and it hurts like hell.

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Monday 9th May 2011 – I WAS CHASED …

… around the bedroom this morning.

And not by Percy Penguin (who doesn’t feature in these pages half as often as she deserves) either, but by a blasted hornet.

And at 07:3 too. Does it have no respect?

Yes, the blasted thing found its way in all right, but could it heck find its way out. And so it decided to awaken me. And by a few of the things that I said to it, you’ll understand the definition of “a rude awakening”.

So having had an early start, I was able to have a good crack at things in here and be out in the garden as early as 11:15. That’s not something that happens every day either.

I managed a really good day in there too and accomplished quite a lot. I even managed to have a little shower too – and it would have been a big one had the water not run out – Brain of Britain having forgotten to fill it the last time.

So a nice, reasonably-clean me headed off to the Anglo-French group.

Back here though, my blog host is down for maintenance. So you age going to have to wait until tomorrow to read this rubbish, aren’t you?

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Tuesday 18th January 2011 – We were recording again today

This time it was for the programmes for Radio Tartasse – the next lot of four-weekly programmes to take them up to the end of February. Luckily I don’t have too far to travel because it’s an early start in the morning, like … errrr … 10:00.

This time we were allowed to do the programmes how we wanted to do them, and it went much better. Liz and I have a very good rapport and much of our stuff is done as ad-libs and you can’t do that if you are having to concentrate on pages of script. And they have also agreed to let us have copies of the recorded programmes so that I can stick them on our blog when I have the time and I’m not so tired. But that will come – you can be assured of that.

And so back here, and carrying on with my ceiling. and that’s what I did for most of the rest of the day such as it was. And I’m making good progress too. It won’t be all that long before it’s done. BUt it went dark at about 17:00 – at least too dark to work on the ceiling, and so I had an hour or so outside doing a little more clearing up. And slowly but surely it’s looking a little (but only a little) more respectable out here. But the weather has turned. It clouded right over and it’s gone cold. I even have had the heating on a little earlier this evening. But not that that worries me. Now that the weeds and brambles are dying down I’m uncovering a few of the old chevrons that we ripped off the barn roof and threw down to the floor. It’s all more firewood for the stove.

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Monday 17th January 2011 – It was Monday today …

… believe it or not, and this afternoon we went to the recording studio to record our radio programmes for the month of February. And no offer of transport from our sponsors either. It seems that whatever budget that was available was only for 12 months and that has now expired.

Anyway, with a view to not taking this lying down, I have taken some positive action. I’ve created a blog for the radio programmes that we do and the intention is that I will stream the radio programmes on there for the benefit of those who can’t receive them or who forgot to listen to them. And in addition to that I will be offering advertising space, at a very democratic €30 per annum for those who run a business or have a service to offer, or €3 per 15 words per month for small ads and the like, people buying and selling articles and so on. And with the money that we raise, we can pay our own travelling expenses to the studio.

So I need help in spreading the word about the radio blog, and I also need customers to buy the advertising space. If you can do your bit to spread the word it would be a great help.

This morning I was up early (just for a change) and with the new insulation that I bought on Saturday I was able to have a profitable couple of hours doing the bedroom ceiling. And it’s advancing pretty well in there. I’m quite happy with that. This evening though we were in St Eloy for the Anglo-French group and we were so carried away with the discussions that instead of finishing at 21:00 as is our wont, it was almost 22:00 when someone noticed the time.

Tomorrow we are recording again – at Radio Tartasse. I need to encourage them to let me have the radio programmes from their end so that we can put them up on the blog too.

I hope it all works!

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Sunday, 16th January 2011 – What a beautiful day.

Definitely the best of the summ… errrr … winter so far. Not only did we have the hottest temperatures of the winter, we had the sunniest too. Not a cloud in the sky all day. My batteries in the house are all fully-charged and the water heater (that uses up the excess electricity) ran for 2.5 hours and warmed up the water to 32°C. Not quite shower-warm but we are getting there.

But how ridiculous is this though, when just 12 days ago we had -8.4°C? It could only happen here in the Combrailles.

Today I finished off “holiday lettings” ready for recording tomorrow, and then I worked on a blog for the radio programmes – an important thing that needs doing seeing as we seem to be going nationwide (well – alright, into the Allier and the Creuse). The aim is of course to stream out programmes so that people who miss them or live outside the reception areas can pick them up.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire st bonnet puy de dome ligue football league franceSo after that it was off to St Bonnet to watch Pionsat’s 1st XI give them a good spannering. and I arrived 10 minutes late to find that they were already ahead 2-0. They won 4-0 in the end and that included missing a penalty, thanks to an excellent double-save by the St Bonnet keeper.

But this match was well-planned to be played in mid-winter. The heat that was generated on the field both on and off the ball would have certainly melted any ice that might otherwise have formed in any traditional kind of winter weather.

And so round to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse our radio programmes this week. We are recording at Radio Arverne tomorrow and Radio Tartasse on Tuesday.

And now I’m back home in my warm unheated attic – two consecutive days that I haven’t had the heating on here – watching the Jets and the Patriots. And listening to the adverts – including one for Viagra “seek medical attention immediately if you have an erection that lasts for four hours”. At my age, it wouldn’t be medical attention that I would be seeking, I could tell you. It reminds me of the time that a new machine tools factory opened up in Crewe, and the proud owner put up his sign “O’Malley’s Tool Works”. So I rang him up and told him “so does mine, but I haven’t put up a sign about it”.

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Monday 3rd January 2011 – Liz rang me this morning.

“Are you okay, Eric?”
“Yes, fine thanks”
“That’s okay, but we were worried about you. You haven’t blogged for a couple of days”.

So my blog does serve some useful purpose – it lets people know that I’m still there. Not ALL THERE, of course, but then again you can’t have everything.

First job therefore was to put on line the blog entries for the weekend that I had … errr … overlooked to do.

As for today though, it was a much better day than we’ve been having just recently.

I woke up to about an inch of ice on the windows (outside of course) and a gorgeous Alpine morning. And if it had stayed like that all day it would have been wonderful.

But of course it was all too good to be true and by lunchtime had the clouds drifting slowly back.

However, we managed about 175 amps of energy – the second-highest since I’ve been back from Canada – and that has made a difference to my batteries. They’ve been quite down for a couple of weeks.

studding on wall space blanket insulation bedroom wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd inside the house I’ve finished all of the insulation in the bedroom and I’ve made a good start on the counter-battens.

Tomorrow will hopefully see me start fitting the plasterboard.

I’m having a little issue with fitting part of it and I’m going to have to put some of the boards on sideways. The sheets measure 2.50 by 1.20 and normally they would be fitted upright.

But the distance from the wall to the edge on the window is 1.24. A strip of 4cms would look pretty silly and you can also see that if I turn the board sideways-on, I can cut it so that it will do two strips with a very minimal waste.

So that’s what I shall be doing.

And Terry wants me to give him a hand with the scaffolding. “We’ll do it on a nice day” he says. So that will be some time in May then, I reckon.

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Thursday 22nd October 2009 – FIAT LUX!

12 volt LED lights attic LIDL les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd we aren’t talking about Italian cars and washing powder either.

This photo here was taken at about 20:00 this evening and the reason that you can see inside the room here is that I now have four lights all properly connected and switched!

They are in fact four of those 12-volt LED lights that I bought from LIDL a few weeks ago and while they may not look very bright; that’s just 4 watts of lighting in there.

Dunno about you, but I think that’s quite impressive.< And that's not all. I now have 12-volt power all around the room, and also mains power too. My electrical day was quite profitable and, much to my surprise, everything worked straight away. I didn't need to make any adjustments at all.

I’ve not done the 6-volt circuit yet though because I ran out of time doing the 230-volt lighting so I’ll do that tomorrow morning. And neither have I done the telephone. In fact, I dunno how to wire up the telephone plug so I’ll have to do some research into that.

Liz and Terry are coming round to pick up some stuff so I told them that if they can’t find me anywhere, look to see if there’s anything black and shrivelled stuck to the ceiling. That’ll be me having made a false move with the mains wiring.

But talking of Lux, the washing powder, do you remember the advert from the 1960s?
“If it’s safe in water it’s safe in Lux<" I wrote to them at the time "Now, about my goldfish ....”

In other news, I’ve been spending more money that I don’t have.

I’ve effectively abandoned night action photography because the lens on my camera won’t stop down far enough to let in enough light to take effective photos. And when I crop them they are far too grainy, as you will have noticed.

But that’s the problem with budget lenses – and by that I mean anything under about 500 quid and I don’t have that kind of money.

Rhys and I were discussing that last night and he found a second-hand lens, a Pentax 100mm f2.8 telephoto on the internet . If you don’t know much about photography, basically it’s one and a half times as long as the maximum on my zoom lens (which is a 17mm-70mm) so it needs less cropping, and it only needs about 2/3rds of the light that mine uses. It’s an old lens but they had a very good write-up and were much in demand by action and portrait photographers back in the old days.

And the price? Well, only $129 (plus $40 postage from the USA). I’m not going to get anything better than that on my limited budget so I’ve bitten the bullet and it’s on its way to here. I hope it works properly and does the business for me, as I’m not going to get anything better without spending a real shed-load of money.

And in other other news, this blog attracts quite a wide audience. It has its regular followers and contributors, but it also has a considerable number of lurkers who just quietly read it. I was talking on a messenger program last night to one of the aforementioned lurkers – Sheila – who I haven’t seen around for some time. It appears that Sheila’s mother has suffered an aneurysm – the same that did for poor Liz back in March – and while she has had the operation the prognosis is not too optimistic.

So what would be nice would be that we all find a quiet minute or two and think about Sheila and her mum and send them both some positive vibes. They could do with some right now.

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