Tag Archives: lie in

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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Sunday 27th April 2015 – I WAS ON MY TRAVELS …

… last night too.

If you’ve ever seen the film Smokey and the Bandit you’ll remember the scene where the car transporter rips the door off the Sheriff’s car. Now I was at a similar site in an area of similar vegetation – a flat-bottomed river valley with a river (as you might expect), a road, a strip of vegetation of about 100 metres width and then a steep slope upwards with a winding side-road going up to the top.

I was here with a small army – a hundred or so men – and we were the rearguard installed here to hold off an advancing army. Every now and again, a lorry would come down the hill, take away more of our personal possessions, until in the end we had just the clothes that we were wearing, and some weapons and that was that.

What surprised me about all of this was the silence. I’ve never been anywhere or in any situation where there was such a complete and utter silence as we waited for the enemy to show up.

All of this goes to show just how deep my sleeping is and how comfortable my new bed is.

My lie-in lasted until about 08:50, which was nothing like enough as far as I am concerned, but again, I must have had a good night’s sleep.

After breakfast, I made a start on writing the radio programmes for the next series of programmes but my heart wasn’t really in it and I didn’t last long. I ended up watching Bala and TNS on the laptop and doing some more editing of old radio shows to extract more soundbytes.

So that was my Sunday – apart from the rain of course. 33mm fell during the course of the day and as I said yesterday, the big benefit of having the bedroom is that I can’t hear the rain falling on the roof when I’m in bed, like I could when asleep on the sofa bed in the attic. That’s definitely an improvement.

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Thursday 23rd April 2015 – SO, HOW WAS IT?

My first night in my new bedroom, in my new bed with my new bedding?

The answer was that it was delicious.

It took me a while to settle in there. There was something of a smell of rubber from the new pillows and that took some getting used to, and then I found it difficult to find a position in which I was comfortable, but once I was in, I was away and slept right through until 09:00 – one of the best nights’ sleeps that I have ever had.

And I deserved it too. It was worth all of the expense and the hard work.

I managed eventually to crawl out of bed and after breakfast, I had – would you believe – a day off! Well, not quite a day off because I did a pile of radio stuff such as preparing another live concert for the rock programmes and also clipping bits out of old radio programmes so that I can make little insets to run within the rock programmes.

I’ve also done another machine of washing. This means that the washing is almost up-to-date now. There’s just a couple of items left to do but I’ll do this when I organise some clean clothes at the weekend.

I went and had another 15 minutes crashed out on the bed this evening and it was just as comfortable as in the night.

The one thing that I do appreciate about it all is that when I feel tired I can go to bed. There’s none of this 10 minutes or so tidying the sofa and making up the bed, or putting all of the bedding away in the morning. That’s the best thing about all of this.

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Sunday 19th April 2015 – I HAD A NICE LIE-IN …

… this morning – but I nearly didn’t!

When I woke up, it wasn’t even 08:00 but if anyone really thinks that I am going to heave myself out of my stinking pit at that time of a morning on a Sunday, they are mistaken. I turned over and went back to sleep – and it was a much-more-respectable 10:30 when I finally awoke from the dead.

First job, after the usual offices, was to make another load of muesli, seeing as how the muesli drum was empty. For the benefit of my readers, it’s a pile of porridge oats with cornflakes and bran sticks mixed in. And then a bag of nuts, some trail mix (you know – the dried fruit, raisins, coconut shavings and the like), some dessicated coconut and anything else around here that looks nice. Sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and so on.

After breakfast, I finished off the live concert that I was engineering and I do have to say that it’s the best one yet. Tons of stuff has been hacked out, tons of stuff added in, and now that I’ve worked out how to overlap tracks and dub sound effects and so on, it comes out really well.

Working under pressure is a great way of pushing back the boundaries of knowledge with a computer program. When you know that a task is useful and that it seems logical for people to want to do it, then it’s sure to be there in a program somewhere and you need to spend the time to ferret it out.

When I first started to work with Audacity, the program that I use for sound engineering, I remember posting at length about how disappointed I was with it, and how I wished that I had the older program that we used in another lifetime – Polderbits – back again. But credit where credit is due. I’m becoming much more used to Audacity and each week I’m discovering more and more facilities and functions, and I’m now a quite happy little user of the product.

For lunch, I made some hummus again. A pile of chick peas, tahini, water, olive oil, turmeric, cumin and garlic. I remembered that I had fetched from Marianne’s an ancient electric stick-mixer and with that I made a hummus 10 times easier than I have ever made by hand.

The I sat down to watch the football. Next week is the final match of the Welsh Premier League season (already!) and Bangor are playing Rhyl. There cannot be two clubs anywhere in the footballing world that hate each other more than these two, and Rhyl will be going for the throat. They’ll do Bangor no favours whatever in their battle to avoid relegation. And Cefn Druids have an easier match against Carmarthen Town.

So today’s match against Prestatyn is vital to Bangor. Bangor are just two points ahead of the Druids and this is their match in hand, so they must get at least a point from this match to be safe. And of course, it’s being streamed live on the internet.

For once, the Bangor players remembered to turn up and while in the first half they were struggling a little (even conceding a penalty, but the Bangor keeper saved it) in the second half they came good and raced into a 3-0 lead before I’d even settled down.

Towards the end, Lee Beattie for Prestatyn scored what must be a contender for the Goal of the Decade – you won’t ever see a better goal than this one.

I was round at Liz and Terry’s later. We’re recording the Radio Arverne programmes tomorrow afternoon and so we had rehearsals to do. And Liz made a nice meal too.

Now I’m going to have an early night – I deserve it.

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Saturday 4th April 2014 – THAT’S MUCH MORE LIKE IT!

Indeed it is. I turned over this morning to look at the clock and … 09:00. “Badger this for a game of cowboys!” I told myself and curled back up underneath the quilt.

10:30 was when I finally heaved myself out of my stinking pit, and quite tight too. Nothing wrong with a good long lie-in, especially as I’m on a nice Spring break for Easter. No danger of me working on a Bank Holiday weekend!

Having said that however, it’s not all beer and skittles. Saturday isn’t officially a Bank Holiday and so seeing as I do have some work to do tht didn’t involve me leaving the settee, then after breakfast I set to work.

By the time the battery went flat in the laptop (this 5-hour battery life in my little Acer Aspire notebook is really the business) I’d written 5 weeks’ worth of radio programmes and a 1500-word text for the main topic on our Radio Anglais programmes.

Just a little finishing off and then I can start the rock music programmes, and that will be the radio organised. 5 weeks of programmes too – that takes us right up almost to the end of June. I need to forge ahead because I don’t know what the future might hold for me as yet. I briefly mentioned a while ago that there were a couple of things simmering away.

And that’s it. I’ve not set foot outside except to take the stats, and ask me if I care. The weather is miserable – it’s been 8 days since I’ve seen the sun and that’s quite depressing.

If I didn’t have so much to do around here, I’d have upped sticks and cleared off to the sunshine ages ago. Suffering from Cabin Fever in January is nothing new, but in early April it’s unthinkable.

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Sunday 29th March 2015 – SUNDAY IS A DAY OF REST

But not for me it isn’t – at least, not today.

Mind you, it was the day of a lie-in and it was 11:00 (or 10:00 in real money because we put the clocks forward today) that I crawled out of my stinking pit.

After breakfast, I carried on with the tidying up. And it looks a little more respectable in here (only a little, though) and another pile of stuff was taken out. I’ll crack this place yet, even if it will take me a century to do it.

At the footy this afternoon, FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 2nd XI were playing Sauret-Besserve. With a full side out, and even a substitute, the team was nevertheless rather imbalanced. Felix, the goalkeeper, was playing in attack and Vincent was in goal. That filled me full of foreboding as his only other match in goal had … well, not been a success.

I was proved right in the first 5 minutes. With a howling gale roaring down the pitch towards Pionsat’s goal, Sauret took the lead with a spectacular 40-yard punt that was picked up by the wind and sailed over the despairing Vincent’s hand into the top corner of the net. And in the first 40 minutes, I don’t think that Pionsat had managed to put the ball in the Sauret half.

Things changed as soon as the wind dropped slightly. FC Pionsat St Hilaire found a lull in the wind and soared upfield into the Sauret penalty area where a rather hopeful cross hit the arm of a Sauret defender. A cruel occurrence, but no-one can really complain about the award of a penalty. It may not have been intentional but it did deprive the attack of an advantage. Anyway, old Eric stepped up and calmly slotted home.

30 seconds later, Anthony did well on the right wing to hold up the play and then he hit another hopeful cross into the area. The Sauret keeper and the central defender both hesitated for a second as each one expected the other to come for the ball, and that gave Christophe just enough of a moment to slide his foot in and push it past the keeper into the net for the lead.

In the second half with the gale at their backs, Vincent (who has a huge kick for such a thin boy) was punting his clearances downfield well in front of his attackers. Nevetheless, Pionsat had three or four golden opportunities to bury the game, including one where Christophe sold a marvellous dummy to the Sauret defence, letting the ball go through his legs for Bertrand, running wide, to shoot across goal when surely it had to be easier to score.

And they might well have regretted that too, had it not been for Vincent in goal who made a couple of excellent saves that his big brother Matthieu would have been proud to make.

But with the game in its dying seconds, Felix (who had a good game up front for a goalkeeper) held up play on the edge of the penalty area, drew the entire defence onto him, and then just at the last minute slid the ball across the empty penalty area for Christophe to sidefoot into the empty net.

Yes, a good game, and a good result too. Pionsat’s team can be very proud of that.

Back here, I had a little fire tonight. Not that I really needed it, but it’s Sunday and pizza night. I may as well be comfortable while I’m cooking.

So tomorrow, back to work. And back to emptying the house.

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Sunday 15th March 2015 – WHAT A NICE MORNING!

I woke up this morning at 07:00, but sod that for a game of soldiers. I turned over and went back to sleep and that was that until 10:00. That’s much more like it on a Sunday.

And while I was deep in the arms of Morpheus I was on my travels again. Just across the Combrailles in fact to the house of a woman who lives near here, where I’d been invited for a party. The guests here were all women and they were so busy doing things that they totally ignored me, making me wonder why i’d been invited in the first place.

A nice leisurely breakfast and a film on the DVD player, and then I had a good wash and shave and hung out the damp washing, seeing as how it was such a nice morning. Cold though – it had been -2°C here during the night.

Pionsat’s 2nd XI was playing at Le Quartier today and lost 1-0. Most unfair, seeing as how they had the lion’s share of the play, missed a penalty, hit the bar and had about a dozen good chances. What made it worse was that they had just 9 players. With a full team out here today, they would have won this match at a canter.

But there’s something clearly not right at the club, the way that they keep on losing players and never seem to be able to sign any repacements. I smell a rat – there’s definitely something going on that I don’t know about and no-one seems to want to discuss it. Someone is clearly upsetting everyone else there and that can’t ever be right.

Back here, I had a leisurely evening too. I deserve it after working on a Saturday morning yesterday. A good day of rest will do me good, and it’s back to work tomorrow.

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Saturday 14th March 2015 – WHAT? ME?

Working on the house on a Saturday morning?

Yes, make a note of this because it doesn’t happen every week, or every year come to that. But running behind, and having lost half a day on Thursday, I need to catch up otherwise i’m going to be here for ever.

But it wasn’t an early start by any means.

I woke up this morning to a crash on the roof as if the chimney had blown off. But what had happened was that a pile of snow had slid off the roof light onto the tiles. Yes, we had a pile of snow during the night and it was cold in here.

So that was enough for me. Never mind the alarm, I turned over and went back to sleep where I remained until 10:00.

painted bedroom wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter breakfast, I went downstairs and finished off the second coat of paint on the wall in the bedroom. And as I say it myself, it doesn’t look too bad at all, although a third coat would help matters greatly.

Cecile came round in the late afternoon and stayed for a good two hours while she sorted out a few things. And now I’m back up here with the fire on to keep warm. No footy tonight so I’m staying in.

Tomorrow, Pionsat’s 2nd XI are playing just down the road at le Quartier. I’ll have a run out around there.

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Sunday 8th March 2015 – WHAT A DAY!

I should have gone to Clermont Ferrand this afternoon for the football. Instead, I stayed in.

In fact, I’ve been in all day and the only time that I’ve set foot outside the door was to take the stats. Such was my day.

I had a nice lie-in though. I was awake at 08:30 but badger that for a game of soldiers. I turned over and went back to sleep. I did the same at 09:20 too and it was in fact 10:15 when I finally heaved myself out of my stinking pit. And that was for reasons totally unconnected with being awake too, as any male of round about my age will tell you.

So after breakfast I spent a couple of hours working on my website. And since then I’ve done absolutely zilch. It’s been a nice relaxing day.

For tea tonight, I had the usual pizza. And it was the first time since I don’t know when that I used the oven in the verandah. As you know I’ve been cooking on the woodstove or else on the camping gas container.

And tomorrow morning I have to go and help Terry with a load of sand.

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Sunday 1st March 2015 – I SHOULD HAVE …

… gone to Chamalières this afternoon for the footy as FC Pionsat St Hilaire were replaying a postponed match from before the Winter Break. However, what with one thing or another, I couldn’t summon up the energy to hit the road.

I had a nice lie-in though – 11:00 it was when I left my comfortable bed. And after breakfast I finished off the rock music notes for Radio Anglais and then started on the additional notes for the Radio Arverne broadcasts. This wasn’t as easy as it might have been, because April is one of these 5-week months where I have to write something random to fill in the extra week.

I try to write something about French culture and history for those broadcasts, but my two little booklets couldn’t produce a single useful item that happened in that week in the past and I ended up having to use the internet to search out something. As it happens, that week in April is the anniversary of the date of an attempted coup d’etat against the French government in 1961, and while maybe the French don’t like to talk too much about it, it’s quite an interesting historical event for foreigners, for the coup d’etat hinged upon several other events in French history about which we foreigners know very little.

I’ve not progressed very far though because I’ve been more interested in reading rather than writing, but I’m hoping that I can find half an hour or so tomorrow morning to do some more.

I was on my travels in the night too. I’d actually bought another apartment in Brussels – one that was really nice and comfortable and with a beautiful west-facing balcony where I could sit in the sunset. One of the prime reasons for doing this was to keep in touch with the girl who was working at my solicitors as I had a little crush on her.

In fact, there was a group of us travelling somewhere and we had to meet up at a car park on the edge of town. I resolved to walk to the car park as I knew that she was taking her car and I intended to blag a ride with her. I turned down a couple of offers from other people and sure enough, she turned up but in another car driven by a friend. They agreed to give me a lift, but the girl sat in the back (which spoiled all my plans) and I sat in the front next to the driver.

On arriving at our destination, we all left the car but across the square was a Citroen Traction Avant painted bright yellow. Of course, I had to go off and photograph it (it had turned into a Solex moped by this time) and I lost touch with this girl with whom I had been hoping to spend the day.

Such is life when you travel on your nocturnal voyages.

But was really was significant about today was that this was the first morning of the year when I recall hearing the birds chattering away early in the morning. Spring must be just around the corner.

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Saturday 28th February 2015 – NOW HERE’S A THING

During breakfast this morning I gave the cinders in the woodstove the customary riddling-over to drop the ashes into the tray below and I also cleaned the glass window as usual. Half an hour later, I noticed that the cinders had caught light and were burning. The riddling must have done the trick, but it’s not every day by any means when I can restart the fire next morning. It certainly was an exceptional thing.

And it wasn’t early either.

I had a late night last night and so was in no rush to leave my stinking pit. But some ******* rang me up at 09:30 this morning and that was that. They hung up as soon as I answered the phone and if ever I find out who it was and lay my hands upon them, then they will find out just how much they annoyed me.

I did half of the text for the rock music programmes this morning, but I’ve been struggling this afternoon. In fact I crashed out for a good few hours until 20:00 – that shows you just how well I’m feeling just now. In fact I’m off to bed as soon as I’ve done this, and I shall sleep until my name changes to Eric van Winkle.

I’ve only been outside once today too and that was to take the stats and bring in some water. I’ve done nothing else at all despite all of my best intentions. I’m going to have to pull myself together I reckon and sort out this fatigue issue.

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Sunday 15th February 2015 – ONE THING THAT I LIKE …

… about Sundays is being able to lie in bed. And when I have nice clean bedding to lie in, it’s even better. I must admit that I’m looking forward to having a nice bedroom and nice brand new bedding to lie in too, and that day is coming closer and closer too.

So despite being awake at 09:15, it was 10:30 when I crawled out of bed, and I do have to say that that was probably the hardest work that I have done today. I did manage to bring up a small load of wood and a couple of kettles of water too, but I can’t think of anything else.

With the rain that we were having (12mm today) I didn’t plan on going out anywhere anyay.

I did have a look in the bedroom though, and the crepi that I had put on the OSB wall was drying nicely and had changed xolour to match the crepi that I had put on first from the almost-empty tub. I’m pleased about that.

Funnily enough, the part that is taking the longest to dry is the part that is on the piece of OSB that I had brought in from outside.

And I did say that, after fitting this piece, I found a complete OSB board that I had forgotten about – and in the house too.

I’ve been making the most of my day off working with this 3D program and I’ve overcome another major issue that was holding me back, as well as finding a “hidden menu” – something that completely baffles me. It doesn’t baffle me that there’s a hidden menu – I can in fact see the prupose of it – but why it should be set as the default and needs to be switched off, rather than the items in the hidden menu being shown in the default mode and “hidden” being an option. It doesn’t make sense to me.

But I have had a tragedy here today. I accidentally closed my browser window (with 22 tabs open) leaving a pop-up window open. Consequently when I reopened the browser (configured to show the last open configuration) it was the pop-up window that came up and I’ve lost my 22 open tabs.

That’s a tragedy and no mistake.

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