Tag Archives: radio anglais

Tuesday 9th February 2010 – This radio programme is taking shape

We were out at the SMADC offices today – the SMADC being something like Syndicat Mixte pour l’Amenagement et Developpement des Combrailles – where we discussed our tactics for the radio programme. Christian was there with his floozy and I was there with Liz. I have plenty of ideas and Liz approves of them and as far as the SMADC and the radio station go, then I don’t imagine that they will care less as long as we do it.

Apart from that, this morning I cracked on with my plasterboarding and it’s all but finished now. All I need to do now is to join things up with the tape and then fill over it. Of course I have put my jointing tape somewhere safe – so safe in fact that I can’t find it now. That’s a badger! But as soon as I find it and tape things up I can start to do the ceiling – with tongue-and-grooving. I can do that on my own and I don’t have any inhibitions as to how it’ll look.

And Claude came round. Yesterday finished him off for good and he wants to pause until Monday. He’s getting his son up over the weekend to move the heavy objects ready for us to load on Monday. But on Monday Terry is giving blood, Tuesday Liz and I are in studio and on Wednesday we are all at the bank. This timetable for moving Claude is shrinking rapidly.

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Wednesday 3rd February 2010 – The really big problem …

… with making offers on properties that are for sale is that when the offer is accepted unconditionally, you always wonder just how low you could have gone. And this was what happened today. So I am now a half-owner of two more houses in the local area – or at least I will be on Friday when the signing takes place. Normally when you sign for a house here you pay a compromis – or deposit and it’s almost always 10%. The estate agents want us to sign on Friday but it’ll take a few days to round up all of the dosh so we suggested we delay the signing for a few days. But ohhh no –
“Could you manage 5%?“
Clearly they aren’t intending to wait until we sober up. It’s either a case of if we wait until Monday to sign, the houses might fall down over the weekend or else the people at the estate agency need to eat this weekend.

Rhys was wondering, with all this talk about letting them, whether we were going to let out the rooms by the hour. I said that if we were to do that he could come and be the receptionist. We would supply the high heels, fishnets and basque but he would have to supply his own whip. There would also be the question of taking the sheep for a walk every morning.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I had another really good day of electricity and so I had the electric heater on for three hours. It increased the temperature by 4 degrees and with it being an oil-bath radiator it was still keeping the room something like warm even at 18:00 – three hours after I’d switched it off.

lining wall space blanket insulation les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ve finished lining the walls of this cupboard place with the insulation blanket stuff and I’ve started to fit the plasterboard. Another day would see that all finished but I’m going to be a tiler’s labourer tomorrow. Terry is tiling his kitchen floor and needs to complete one half of it so that he can move the gas oven over. Liz is going out so I got the short straw. What with all of this moving for Claude, signing for houses, preparation for this radio programme we are doing and all of this our plans have become somewhat shaken up.

And if that wasn’t enough I hear on the grapevine that there might be a chauffeur’s job coming up for a couple of months. It’s enough to drive you to drink.

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Wednesday 20th January 2010 – I see that some kind of wiser counsels have prevailed.

One of the “High Wycombe Two” has been released on appeal. He’s had his sentence reduced to 12 months (which is still 12 months too long) but suspended for two years, which is two years too long too. His brother is still inside though, but his absolutely ridiculous 39 months has been reduced to a just-as-absurd two years.

But the final (at least in the short-term) words must go to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Paul Stephenson. Now as you know if you have been following my outpourings for any length of time, there is no love lost between me and the Met, but I think that Stephenson’s words deserve full attention. He said that “people who put themselves in danger to tackle criminals should be celebrated as heroes. Courageous members of the public make our society worthwhile“. Now that statement is giving out a clear message to three groups of people – firstly the victims, who now seem (in Greater London anyway) to have some sort of licence from the police to beat villains to a pulp, secondly to the villains, that the victims are likely to beat them to a pulp with police encouragement, but thirdly, and most importantly, to the Judges. “Up yours, m’lud”.

In other news, I turned the place upside down this morning and found one of the missing papers. And so I went chaud-pied down to Pionsat to post my parcels of unwanted electrical goods. They are doing no good around here and I might shame the various suppliers into replacing them. It’s worth a try.

When I got back Liz called me and we had a mega-discussion about our forthcoming radio programmes. While she was on the phone Terry turned up – he’d been to Brico-Depot – and we had a chat about our future income-generating projects. And as I am in the middle of a culinary crisis (I’ve run out of vegan christmas cake) I tried my best to stimulate him into needing a helping hand round at his house. You never know – Liz might be baking!

Terry had also developed a flat tyre on his van so we had a tyre-changing session. He has 16″ wheels (Caliburn’s are 15″) and you’ve no idea how heavy they are. And I dunno who fastened his wheels on last time but I wouldn’t like to meet him up a dark alley late at night – it took a power bar and a long length of pipe to free the nuts off.

After Terry had gone I started work on the last bits of the studding for the false wall in the bedroom. And when it got too dark to work up there any more I glanced at the time – 17:58. Yes, the days are definitely lengthening.

And following my crowing about the weather last night, I was woken up at 04:00 this morning by a torrential rainstorm. Serve me right! But today was another good solar day and my batteries are fully-charged.

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Monday 18th January 2010 – You can tell what today’s weather has been like …

… simply by looking at a few stats.

Firstly, outside the temperature made it up to 7 degrees, but in the verandah it was as much as 16. Secondly, while bank 2 of the solar panels on the house registered 29 amp-hours, bank 1 registered 89!!!

We’ve finally had the day I’ve been waiting for, with brilliant sunshine all day, the highest solar energy since 18th November and now the batteries are fully-charged. So much so in fact that I ran the fridge for an hour or so.

This morning I had an “office”day. I managed to get the printer to work so I sat down and wrote a few letters. I did the CV for this taxi company and then I had to write a letter to Pentax as I need to send my camera away for repair. For the past few months it seems like the battery life has been getting less and less but when I put the “empty” batteries into something else they work fine. Fiddling around with the batteries in the battery holder sometimes gets the camera to work again so its clearly a bad contact somewhere.

And that got me thinking. There’s a few things that I’ve bought that don’t work and are just hanging around here doing nothing much. I’m going to pack them up and send them back to the vendors with a letter of dismay and see what happens. Someone might decide to do something.

This afternoon was the drive down to Gerzat. The guy from SMADC and his sidekick sat in the front of the car and totally ignored me in the back all the way there and all the way back. At the radio station I worked out a format for the programme with the presenter. Basically it will be a cafe scenario with people popping in for a chat, talking about forthcomng events, new legislation and problems with French administration. We’ll record an hour’s worth of programme one day per month and they will edit it into four 5-minute slots. Blast-off is said to be the 1st of March and so we go into studio in mid-February.

If this isn’t going to get my name in lights, shameful self-publicist that I am, then nothing will!

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Sunday 17th January 2010 – There’s been a major change in the weather today.

I don’t just mean that it’s not rained, or that the sun came out, but a significant shift.

The temperature in my room was in double figures this morning when I woke up – the first time for weeks – and it actually felt warm. Outside the sun was doing its best to break through the clouds and on bank 1 there was almost 40 amp-hours of solar energy and on bank 2 about 26. And that’s significant. The charge controller on bank 2 is set to disconnect at a lower voltage figure (14.1 volts) than bank 2 (14.2 volts) and so the difference in amp-hours indicates that the charging circuit has been getting close to full charge, and that’s the first time since mid November.

It also stayed light after 18:00 and that’s the first time since November. Of course, spring is a long way off and we’ll have much more snow before then but at least it seems that the cold spell we’ve had for 6 or 7 weeks has gone away for now. It makes me feel much more enthusiastic.

I’ve done nothing at all today. It’s Sunday and my traditional day of rest and it’s been a long time since I’ve sat around and relaxed. But then again I think I’ve deserved it. I’m going to have an early night too. I have to get myself fighting fit ready for this interview thingy with this French radio station.

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Wednesday 13th January 2010 – It’s back up again.

Well, erichall.eu is, anyway. Lesguis.com is going to have to wait a while longer. So anyone who sent me a mail that bounced – you can resend it now and I’m sorry for the inconvenience.

Mind you, once more, my address book, research subfolder and the like have disappeared into the ether. That’s a real pain in the aspidistra and what’s worse, it’s not the first time that this has happened either. You’d think that I would learn.

In other news, that weatherman we have is still up to his tricks, having wild and unpredictable guesses that fall hopelessly short of the mark. He promised us overcast and cloudy conditions with rainfall, but yon golden object was in the sky for the whole day more-or-less and I’ve had another reasonable solar day. Still not earth-shatteringly marvellous but it’ll do for now. I’ve also been cracking on with the insulation but I’ve come to a stop, on the grounds that I’ve now run out of insulation. But at least I can move. I dug Caliburn out of a snowdrift and went for a run up the lane so I reckon that this weekend I’ll go and do a mega-shop in Montlucon and have a shower at Neris.

Talking of showers, I hear that the OUSA Executive committee are to go “on the road” and “visit the regions”. The East Midlands is the first port of call and the Derby/Nottingham area has been suggested for the location. Of course, someone has suggested that they stay in the town of Clowne – after all, it’s midway between the two and somehow quite appropriate.

This afternoon I cut my hair, had a wash and shave, and changed my clothes. Well, it was 8 degrees in the verandah. In fact it was quite a major operation and I hed to tell the water board that it was on its way. But I must admit – I am looking forward to a good swim and a good shower, and I’m not talki …. “you’ve done that” … ed.

I’ve also been in great demand today. Firstly, the girl who came round here with Francois the other day – she phoned me up to talk about this and that. There’s an eco-fair in Clermont Ferrand next weekend and she’s going with Francois. There’s a spare seat in the car and she asked me if I wanted to go. Most people who read this blog are of the opinion that I ought to get out more often and so I’ve decided to go. It’ll do me good.

Next it was the turn of Terry who wanted a chat about one of our long-term projects. It’s nice to hear from him and Liz and have a good natter.

Thirdly, the guy from SMADC (the Society for the Mutual Aid and Development of the Combrailles) called. We are supposed to be having a meeting with a producer from a French radio station, and it’s now been arranged for Monday afternoon. This is looking uncomfortably like it might happen, this idea of an English-language radio programme on French radio.

Finally (at least up to now) Antoine called. He has an idea for a business opportunity for himself now that he’s taken early retirement and wanted a chat about it.

Meanwhile, in other other news, the McCann Media Circus is back on the road, suing anyone and everyone who says naughty things about them. It’s becoming a right money-spinner for someone – this disappearing daughter – and it’s spawned countless imitations right across the globe with kids hidden in settees, kids being dragged away by weather balloons and the like. But the McCanns are really starting to take the mickey now. Over a million quid they want now for their hurt feelings. The money will of course be paid to the “Find Madeleine” campaign, which might well fund further trips to exotic corners of the globe to visit more law courts to sue more people to get more money to pay to the “Find Madeleine” campaign that might well fund further …. “that’s enough of that” – ed.

What the McCanns don’t realise is just how lucky they are. If Mrs McCann had been a single mother and black-skinned, leaving a baby home alone to face a tragedy would have got her 7 and a half years in prison without any trips to any exotic corners of the globe – let alone any charitable funds and any sympathy from a gullible public.

It’s high time someone put a stop to all of this.

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Monday 7th December 2009 – I’ve fitted one of my verticals

stud wall bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou can see it in the photo – dead centre of the image up against the wall. Only one vertical though.

I woke up this morning to hear the rain lashing down on the roof again just like the other day. And just like the other day, even though I’m working inside, it’s not very encouraging. I’m wondering when we might have a dry day.

So when I eventually got out of bed and had my breakfast and went up to the first floor where I’m working, it was so perishing dark that I couldn’t actually see anything.

That prompted me hurling out of the window all of the old pallets that were in the pile against the wall and which you may well have seen in other photos. Some were broken, but others survived the fall and so I extended the pallet path that I laid 2 years ago. What with the marsh that’s developing outside, it seemed like a good idea.

So that was the morning accounted for, and in the afternoon I cut and fitted the vertical. It takes hours to do them as they need to be millimetre-perfect and so that involves cutting the lets slightly undersize and then filing them out to fit.

Tonight at the Anglo-French group we had a couple of new arrivals joining in – a French woman and an Austrian woman. They are Buddhists and have come here to be close to the Buddhist monastery in the area. Those of you who remember my blog in its previous home will remember my visit there one Sunday afternoon. And Marianne, the local journalist who sometimes comes to the meetings – she liked my pic from last night and intends to use it to illustrate an article on the village. Not that there’s any dosh in it but if it’s in the paper the villagers will see it and they might be interested in having a copy for themselves. It’s worth a go.

The proprietors of the Hotel in Pionsat where we meet have announced that they are leaving imminently – where to, they don’t know. You need a special kind of mentality to run a place like that and you can’t do it if you have small children and want a family life. Someone is taking over so our continuity is assured. But not so at St Eloy. You may remember that we were locked out of our venue the other week. It seems that the tenants (they were only tenants, not owners) have fled, leaving behind something of a financial muddle. We’ll have to find somewhere else in St Eloy now. Antoine is on the case.

And tomorrow I’ll be carrying on with the verticals if I can trouble myself to climb out of bed. The weather forecast is “no change”.

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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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