Tag Archives: lie in

Wednesday 21st October 2015 – THAT WAS TEMPTING FATE.

Wasn’t it just?

Despite a reasonably-early night, it was all of, would you believe … errr … 13:00 this afternoon when I awoke. I’d been on a most exciting journey too during the night but when I awoke, it was immediately wiped from my memory and I can’t remember a thing about it now.

So after a rather late breakfast, I finally put myself into gear and cracked on with the next load of Radio Anglais programmes for the following month. I say “cracked on”, but that was something of an understatement as it was rather a struggle and I hadn’t done all that much by the time that the evening came around. In fact, I haven’t done very much of anything.

The weather hasn’t helped too much either. We’ve had cloud all day and no more that 20 amp-hours of solar electricity, which isn’t very much at all. As a result the temperature in here hasn’t risen very much and I’m teetering on the edge of lighting the fire up here. Not today though because for tea I had my lunchtime sandwich – no point in cooking anything. Had I wanted a hot meal, I might very well have considered lighting the fire.

Tomorrow though I have to be up early as I’m expecting a parcel. Hopefully I’ll be able to have a good session on the Radio Anglais programmes before lunch because in the afternoon I’ll be bringing the gas heater up into the bedroom and doing a few other things that need doing.

I just hope that I remember to hear the alarm, wherever I might be at 07:30 tomorrow.

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Monday 19th October 2015 – I SEEM TO HAVE …

… all of my days mixed up right now, such is jet-lag.

After having a really early start to the day yesterday – a very rare event for a Sunday, I awoke this morning, to a beautiful bright and sunny morning only to find that it was all of 12:50 – in the afternoon!

It was a good job that I didn’t have any plans for the morning, isn’t it? But it certainly was a proper Sunday lie-in – the type that I hadn’t had for I don’t know how many years.

Anyway, by the time that I’d organised myself and had breakfast, it was after 14:00 and so it was hardly worth doing anything else after that. I had a proper Sunday relaxing day where I did absolutely nothing whatsoever. And it’s about time too.

All that I can say is that it’s a pity that it was a Monday, because now I’m a day behind with what I planned to do. I’ll just have to work harder now for the rest of the week.

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Friday 16th October 2015 – I WENT TO BED …

… at 22:00 last night. And so I didn’t wake up until 12:00 midday today. And I would probably have still been in bed even now had I remembered to switch off the Canadian telephone last night so the alarm wouldn’t go off at 06:00 Quebec time (12:00 French time).

By the time I’d finished having a shower and a shave and a good soak, Liz was back from work and so I had breakfast followed by a bowl of Liz’s vegan soup, and then Terry brought me home.

The jungle has taken over as you might expect, and so finding the house was an adventure. But that wasn’t really what annoyed me.

You remember that just before I went away to Canada I had that pile of scrap on my yard that needed the head gasket changed. It leaked oil all over the concrete pan that we did last summer, and I had asked the owner of that Hyundai to come along and clean it off while I was away.

Of course, it goes without saying that the amount of time that I had spent oh his car, and how much I had put myself out for him with what I did, he couldn’t be bothered to come along and clean it off. And now my concrete is thoroughly ruined.

I’ll tell you something – and that is the that this is the last time that I am EVER going to put myself out for anyone. No-one else’s car is going to come onto my concrete and if anyone else wants any work doing on a car then they can whistle.

Just one exception for this of course. Liz and Terry have done me a great service in all the years that they’ve been living here and their vehicles are more-than-welcome to come here. And that reminds me – I need to buy an engine crane. I’ve promised myself that for years and I’ve a feeling that one is going to become necessary around here in the immediate future.

The house is freezing. It’s 9°C in the bedroom and just 11.3°C in the attic. And a mouse has managed to enter the attic and so it (the attic, not the mouse) needs a good cleaning and disinfecting. That has really dismayed me.

But the positive side of all of this is that, in contrast to last year, the batteries are fully charged and the fridge, that I had plugged into the overcharge circuit, was running quite nicely. All of this despite the miserable weather that we were having. But I dunno what has gone on here while I was away but something is lurking about in the fridge so I need to clean that. It looks like Quatermass’s Experiment in there.

So I cleaned off the attic a little and sat up here freezing, resisting the temptation to light the fire. Eventually, after chatting to someone on the laptop for ages, I decided to go to bed. Freezing in the bedroom of course, and so decided to slip into bed and undress under the covers as I warmed up.

Despite the cold, it was lovely to be back in my own comfortable bed and I wasn’t awake long enough to undress. I just went right out and that was that.

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Sunday 23rd August 2015 – SUNDAY IS A DAY OF REST

And that applies even in Canada. No alarm calls over here on a Sunday so I could have a decent lie in. And even when I awoke, there was no rush as nothing starts here much before 11:00

The Taylor Breakfast Brunches are legendary and this was another one of those. No-one leaves the table hungry after that.

This afternoon, I finished off emptying out the big freezer that had developed a problem. Most of the remaining stuff was stowed into the other freezer and what was left didn’t really matter too much. I then switched the thing off, shovelled out the loose ice and spent a while every half an hour doing that. Finally I filled it with newspaper to soak up the water as it defrosted, and changed that several times.

Eventually the freezer was empty and dried off, and now we have to leave it to evaporate. Once it’s totally dry, I can check the wiring and see where the fault in the circuit might be. I suspect the wall socket, but we shall see.

We went out for another meal. Rachel has done some good cooking just recently and she deserves a night off. Nowhere exciting, but going out is going out after all.

Back here, Amber had a copy of the Grumpy Cat film so we watched that. And then I went off to bed.

I can’t remember when it was that I have last had a Sunday en famille. I’ll have to watch out – I might be starting to become used to this.

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Sunday 9th August 2015 – YOU CAN ALWAYS TELL …

… what the weather has been like, just by looking at the difference between the maximum and minimum temperatures of the water in the solar shower.

Today’s maximum was 19.0°C and the minimum was 16.5°C, a difference of just 2.5°C. So, in other words, we have had no sun at all. We’ve been swathed in hanging clouds and had a persistent drizzle all day. It’s been just like November today.

I had a nice lie-in until 10:20 and I’ve been having a relax today, ready for my marathon packing and tidying up for the next three days.

As well as that, I’ve had a lengthy chat with Cecile on the computer. There was a lot of news to catch up on, and we were probably there for an hour having a good chat.

So tomorrow, I’m packing. And I’ve just worked out that I’ve forgotten something quite important – my proof of address that I was going to ask for at the mairie yesterday. That’s upsetting. I’ll have to see if there’s a way around all of this.

And, of course, it goes without saying that this Hyundai is still here in my drive.

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Sunday 2nd August 2015 – PHEW!

I’m glad that it was Sunday today and I could have a lie-in. Because I was thoroughly exhausted after my journeys during the night.

It started off with me looking for a vehicle to convert into a mobile home (obviously what’s going on in North America at the moment is preying on my mind). I ended up with a Leyland Leopard 53-seater with a Plaxton Supreme body – the body from 1979-81. It was blue, the same colour that YNT was when we bought it, with the company name in black block letters down the side. I had it parked in Buchan Grove but, thinking on now, it was on the wrong side of the road. We moved on from there to a newish house on a housing estate and Nerina appeared. We met in a dark and gloomy bar like the Crown Hotel in Nantwich, and she was telling me that she was going to move back. And so she did, but with a proviso that every now and again she would be staying in a hotel somewhere. But whenever she did, she was always back by 21:00. We ended up at my father’s, who was actually Terry, and he’d moved into a new house which had had half of the side wall demolished. It had been rebuilt but the repair and the bricklaying was dreadful – even I could do better. But as I said to Terry, at least it’s done and it’s easy to tidy it up.

So after that, it was 10:00 when I arose and quite right too. I was still not on the same planet as everyone else but a coffee dealt with that.

I’ve been doing more of this updating the blog and with summer having dramatically returned (189.9 amp-hours of surplus electrical energy – a record as far as I can tell) and water in the dump load off the scale, I put 5 litres of hot water into the solar shower and had the nicest shower that I have ever had.

Round to Liz and Terry’s for rehearsals and Liz had had a go at making home-made ice-cream, which wasn’t bad at all. Terry gave me some screwdriver bits that he had bought for me, and Liz had a cardboard box of supplies which I promptly forgot.

On the way back, there was one of the biggest moons that I have ever seen – really impressive, it was. And back here, I had some stuff to do and then off to bed as I have an early start in the morning.

Liz is off to Riom for a hospital appointment, Terry has some work, so I’m chauffeuring.

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Sunday 19th July 2015 – SUNDAY IS A DAY OF REST …

… so when I rolled over to see the time and it was 07:20, I said “sod this for a game of soldiers” and went back to sleep. 09:20 – that’s much more like it.

And quite right too because I was thoroughly exhausted after what went on during the night. I’d been imitating John Belushi and his mates in Animal House, causing mayhem at a school graduation ceremony by doing all kinds of things, and a girls’ school at that, to be precise, and everyone was looking for me.

In the end I had some of the girls lined up in the quad posing for me while I was taking photos of them with the camera on my phone. I was seen by the principal who came running after me with his cohorts, and I made good my escape by simply leaping over the precipice and sliding down the cliff, knowing full well that they wouldn’t follow me. By the time they had returned to their car, driven down the road and round to the foot of the cliff, I’d be miles away.

Strangely enough, when I was at Colditz just now,we had been discussing an escape that had taken place just like that.

But to return to the plot, I found myself in a flat by the seaside and we were pretty crowded in there and it was overwhelmed with small black flies like there are in Canada. And from there I was wandering about and encountered a young girl – with a lot of very pale blond hair, glasses, a blue sweater and pink jeans (or was it the other way round?). I was quite attracted to her and was keen to have a long opportunity to chat to her, but each time I tried to speak to her, she was quite keen but it was always about something that I couldn’t do, such as “go you have ten one-pound coins for a ten pound note?” and when I couldn’t help he rout she’s run off and ask other people. And then she’d be back to chat and ask for something else that I couldn’t do, so she’d be gone again. This was all becoming quite frustrating.

So it’s not surprising that I was totally exhausted when I awoke. I’ve had probably the quietest day ever, done nothing at all, and ask me if I care

And now I’m off to bedfor an early night, and i don’t care about that either.

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Monday 13th July 2015 – IT’S JUST LIKE OLD TIMES …

… up here in my attic tonight. I’m surrounded by papers everywhere – all over the floor and over the bed-settee and it feels so good to have reverted to all of my old untidy habits.

It all started off so promisingly too. I had a nice lie-in to reward myself for my efforts over the weekend and then after breakfast I attacked the dictaphone notes from my voyage to Canada in 2014 – must get that done.

No bread today because the boulangère is off on holiday so I needed to go into Pionsat, and that led to a little complication.

The insurance on Caliburn will expire on Wednesday and here in France, you have a little sticker to put in your windscreen to display your insurance details. I need to put the new one in the windowand I know that I have it – it’s been in my sticky little mitt at least once just recently and I’ve probably put it safe somewhere so that I know where it is.

But where?

This led to a search around up here, in the most obvious places, but it still hadn’t come to light by 14:30 and so, fearing that there would be no bread left at all in the Intermarché, I shot off to Pionsat where I was lucky enough to buy the last baguette. Not even one for tomorrow and that’s sad, as it’s Bank Holiday here and all of the shops will be closed.

After lunch, I started to search in the less-obvious places and that led to an unearthing of a load more paperwork – nothing to do with what I’m trying to find but there’s no sense in ignoring it so that’s being ruthlessly sorted out as well. I’m finding tons of stuff, a lot of which is really important and that I wish that I had found ages ago, but no sign at all of the insurance sticker.

Like I said, I know that it’s here somewhere, but the question is “just where?”

So guess what I’ll be doing tomorrow on my Bank Holiday day of rest? It’s not as if I don’t already have enough to do.

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Sunday 28th June 2015 – I’VE FINALLY MANAGED …

… to have a day off work today. And not only that, I had a decent lie-in too.

Mind you, I had to go to visit the beichstuhl and I did think about going off for a coffee but when I checked the time, it was only 05:45 so there was little chance of that happening. I went back to bed and slept until 10:00. And quite right too!

After breakfast, I reviewed the stuff that I had written for Radio Anglais and found, much to my surprise (or maybe not, as the case might be) that I had a totally new slant today on some of the stuff that i had written. Consequently, I had to amend some of it and edit out a pile of it from the notes so that I can review it for another time. I mean, it has to be correct.

I also built up a database of venues so that there’s a list of websites from which I can extract events to broadcast, and simple contact boxes from where I can copy-paste the information en bloc into the notes rather than having to type it out individually every time.

After lunch, I sorted out all of the washing that needed doing, including the bedding. Seeing as it was 38°C in the solar shower, I had a beautiful soak and I’m finally going to have clean bedding. I’d bought some new linen sheets and quilt cover last time I was at the Auchan and I went to use those, but much to my surprise, there were no pillow cases in the set.

Even more surprisingly, I’d had some pillow cases the same colour when I lived in Winsford 35 years ago and I had hardly ever used them. And even more more surprisingly, I managed to lay my hands on them. Isn’t it good having a well laid-out wardrobe and everything stowed away nicely?

I went round to Cécile’s to check on her house and make sure that everything was OK. That gave me an opportunity to borrow her washing machine to do a load of stuff while I went round to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse our radio show.

Liz cooked a gorgeous vegetable pie for tea and the dessert was out of this world – something like a Black Forest Gateau in a wine glass. I’ve never had a dessert as nice as this.

I picked up the washing on the way home and now I’m going to have an early nice – a nice clean me in nice clean bedding. How I’m looking forward to this!

But something interesting has happened on the Social Networking account that I use. I once had a friend – a friendship that ended quite acrimoniously over a posting that he made about me on another site – and he had a daughter who used to confide in me quite a lot about the problems that she was having at home at the time but whom I haven’t seen since then.

All of a sudden, my Social Networking site has put her on my “list of potential friends” whom I should contact. So what’s happening here? How come it is that this site has made some kind of connection between the two of us? Of the couple of billion people who have an account on there, this would be an astonishing coincidence if it’s been a haphazard connection.

Clearly there’s something going on here. I wish that I knew just what it was.

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Sunday 21st June 2015 – HAPPY SOLSTICE

Yes, the longest day of the year today. It’s all downhill from here. Where did the first 6 months of the year go?

And so I celebrated the Solstice by having a lie-in, seeing as it was Sunday today. And in view of the late night that I had had (02:30 when I finally crawled in), it was a good 10:15 when I eventually crawled out and gone 11:00 by the time that I had finished breakfast.

As for the laptop, it had indeed run out of battery so while I was breakfasting, I put it on charge in the barn using the 12-volt power lead that I have.

After breakfast, I spend a pleasant couple of hours going through the hard drive on the 1st Aspire, deleting loads of things that I no longer needed, deleting all kinds of programs and editing the start-up memory. Now, it fires up in seconds rather than the 10 minutes that it used to take and all in all, it’s now quite a stable platform.

But here’s a thing. I remember when I bought it that it had just 2GB of RAM on board, and that’s what it says on the sticker. But when I checked the system, it clearly shows that there is 4GB there. I don’t remember upgrading it, but I suppose that I must have done at some point when I was in the UK. And that might account for how much better it performs when compared to any of its later brothers. Upgrading this one to 8GB might just work because if i can make this perform as well as the 1st Aspire, then I’ll be reasonably satisfied.

This afternoon, I’ve been tidying up in here and for a change just recently, it’s now fit to receive visitors. I’ve even scrubbed the oilcloth that I use as a tablecloth on the table which I use for preparing the food.

I did set out to have a shower too, but the weather was deceiving. Although it looked quite a nice day outside, it wasn’t that warm – and the water in the solar shower was a mere 30°C. The water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load was only 54°C so I couldn’t put enough of that into the solar shower to raise the temperature sufficiently.

Mind you, that was my own fault. Feeling like having a coffee this afternoon, I had the electric coffee percolator going for half an hour. Coffee made in there tastes so much better than instant coffee, but it isn’t half energy-consuming.

So back to work tomorrow – fitting the worktop in the shower room and then starting on the door frame. I really will have a shower tomorrow if it’s warm, and if I can’t have it in the solar shower, I’ll use the corner of the verandah and a bucket of hot water from the home-made 12-volt immersion heater.

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Sunday 14th June 2015 – THAT WAS AN EXCITING DAY …

… today, wasn’t it?

I’ve set foot out of the house twice, I think. And that’s no surprise because it’s been another thoroughly wet and miserable day today. In fact, had I not had to leave my bed to go for a ride on the porcelain horse at 09:15 I would probably still be in bed now, and I wouldn’t have lost one minute’s sleep worrying about it.

The day started as it meant to go on, with the gas in the little stove up here running out while I was making my coffee. What a way to start the day! And then I caught up a little with some work on the laptop.

From here I went on with the tidying up that I started yesterday and you’ll certainly notice a difference here today. There’s a huge area of empty nothingness now between the door and the back of the bed-settee. everything that was hanging around there has been moved into the bedroom or downstairs to be turned into rubbish.

This led on to another project too. I’ve always had printer issues here as you know, and I inherited an HP 2100-series all-in-one printer. No installation disk so I’ve had to configure it manually but that didn’t enable most of its functions.

Searching for something else on the internet (as you do) I came across a FAQ “I can’t find the installation disk for my HP 2180”. And underneath was the answer – “you can download it from ‘this link’ “. So off I went and sure enough, there it was. And I set to and downloaded it.

218mb, the drivers, which makes a mockery of the old days when I had a 40mb hard drive on my 386, or when I ran my taxi business in the mid-80s with an Apple II that ran everything off a floppy disk of 128kb.

8 hours it took to download, but it seems to work and who knows? I might even have a printer here for a while.

And so with that and the tidying up, you can’t say that the day was wasted.

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Sunday 31st May 2015 – LOOKING BACK …

… over a few postings from last year, I see that I was having certain sleeping issues. Not so at the moment (said he, tempting fate) because last night I had another really good sleep. Out like a light and no danger of moving until 09:45 this morning. That’s what I call a decent sleep.

And I was on my travels too. I was in Canada driving a car with half a dozen or so other people, musicians in a rock group and featuring my niece’s husband. What was interesting about this was that even though we were driving on the right, we couldn’t turn right but had to turn left across the traffic and then turn right and right a little further along and then cross the traffic a second time. And when you weren’t on the main highway you had to travel in reverse, and reverse was powered by two engines operated by push-buttons. You had to push them both to travel in a straight line, and either the right or left button to turn right or left. And you went at such a speed backwards too but I did manage not to knock anything over or hit anything. At a Motorway Service area where we stopped for a coffee, there was a customised Harley Davidson, a kind of greeny olive green colour.

Anyway, enough of that. While I was having breakfast I was watching another film off the laptop via the big screen on the AKAI DVD player. That works well enough and I’m quite pleased with that.

After breakfast, I carried on with the radio programmes and I’ve done another pile of text for future programmes. I just need now to do some additional notes and the rock programmes and I’ll be a month ahead, which is where I like to be.

I had another play around with this 3D programme and that’s working just fine now, although I’m still of the opinion that it’s unnecessarily complicated and the file directory system is absolutely hopeless (and there’s no way of altering it either).

I crashed out again this afternoon and awoke with a start to find that I only had half an hour before I needed to go off to see Liz and Terry. But as it was nice, I had a heated shower in the verandah seeing as how there was plenty of hot water in the home-made immersion heater, thanks to the good weather, and now I smell of nice coconut.

Liz and I rehearsed the radio programmes and finished off a few bits and pieces, and then Liz cooked a lovely tea for the three of us.

Now the weekend is over. I have things to do tomorrow, including the radio, and then back to work on Tuesday. High time I cracked on with the bathroom.

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Sunday 24th May 2015 – WASN’T THAT A NICE …

… sleep last night?

I had a reasonably early night and went out like a light. And then I remember absolutely nothing until about 09:30 this morning. It’s a long time since I’ve had a good sleep like that.

A nice leisurely breakfast and then I sat down to carry on with the radio programmes, but I didn’t get far. I’m easily sidetracked, especially on a Bank Holiday weekend, and I ended up cutting my hair. it really did need doing too.

My experiments for watching the internet-streamed football on the laptop via the medium of the big screen on the DVD player were not so successful. But that wasn’t the fault of the screen.

In fact the screen worked very well, once I remembered that I could enlarge the web browser to fill the screen with the image, it worked quite well. But where it all fell apart was in the streaming.

Orange promise me between 2 and 8 Mbs, and according to the meter on their website, I’m receiving about 2.13 Mb. I don’t know where it’s all going though, because according to the meter that I have on my laptop, I’ve never had more than 280 Kbs and on Sunday we were having about 60 Kbs. That’s with everything else switched off and a very downgraded Google Chrome browser running just the one page.

Clearly something isn’t right.

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Sunday 3rd May 2015 – TODAY WAS ANOTHER DAY …

… where I’ve hardly set foot outside the door. In fact, the only time that I went out (apart from doing the stats) was to rescue my coffee mug from Caliburn.

And as it was Sunday, I had the alarms switched off and so I slept through until 09:50 – and quite right too. It’s what Sundays are for;

I was on my travels last night and I had one of those rare (for me, at least, but not apparently so rare for other people who were on this study that we did) occasions where I wasn’t a participant but a spectator. All the events took place in the USA, in quite a wealthy area in a huge modern house inhabited by a banker. He and another banker were busy trying to undermine the bank of a rival company and I was watching them try to use all kinds of disreputable tactics, including implicating the children of this third banker, to achieve their aims.

The interesting thing about this was the viewpoint from which I was observing the events. At times, I was in the room with everyone, and ay other times I was high up in the sky with a kind of drone’s-eye view. And the view from this viewpoint included a splendid school of a circus school and in particular the school for the flying trapeze and my view from here was being continually interrupted by trapeze artists flying through my field of view.

Apart from that, I’ve been working on the radio programmes for Radio Anglais. I finished off the rock music programmes and then did the additional notes for the next five weeks of Radio Arverne radio programmes.

As well as that, I did some research into where I’ll be going in Germany next week

And that’s my lot really. And quite right too. I’m entitled to a day of rest. Tomorrow, it’s back to work.

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Friday 1st May 2015 – IT’S THE FETE DE TRAVAIL …

… here in France today, and so everyone celebrates the Festival of Work by not working.

I’m included in that too – I had a day off and spent the morning in bed, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I was on my travels too – running a taxi company with one of my old drivers and with a yound lad who was a chauffeur with us in the EU. We were quite busy and the older driver had a long-distance job to do, so when someone asked me to send a car to meet the bus traveling from Chester to Newcastle-under-Lime, I was worried about whether he would be back in time to do the job, but as it happened, the younger driver was free at the right moment so he made the pick-up.

And meanwhile, I was living with Marianne in an apartment somewhere – a bit salubrious and run-down, and I remember changing my bedroom to one that was much smaller and painted yellow. As the alarm clock was showing the wrong time, I was busy resetting it, and Marianne, who saw me do it, asked me if I was planning to leave.

After breakfast, I had something of a rest and relax, and then went round to Cecile’s. There were a few jobs that needed to be done there, so I attended that.

I’ve had some paperwork to do as well. I’m going into Montlucon tomorrow and I need a few papers signing so I want to make sure that I have all that I need.

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