Tag Archives: eric hall

Wednesday 18th November 2015 – I DIDN’T …

… start to take the tiles out of Caliburn today, like I said that I would yesterday.

In fact, we had a beautiful blue sky for most of the day and that can only mean one thing … woodcutting!

So there I was after lunch, with the chop-saw and the excess solar energy and I had another good go at the woodpile. In fact, one of the woodpiles is done now as much as I can with the chop-saw, and I’ve started to attack the second woodpile – the pile with the old chevrons from the barn roof.

Some of the chevrons are quite good so I won’t be cutting them up. I’ll be using them in construction projects whenever I’ll feel up to doing something like that, but others are pretty mangy and so they have gone to the great woodshed in the sky. And there will be more to follow them on the next fine day.

Three large wheelbarrow-loads found their way into the woodshed today and that’s now looking quite healthy in there – about 2/3rds full. And when I finish the remainder, and then rescue my chainsaw and cut down the lengths that are too big for the chop-saw it’ll be bursting at the seams.

While I was doing all of this,I had visitors. The farmer who rents the field behind me came along with his wife, son and herd of cows. He’s pleased with the weather because he can keep his cows out in the fields and there was enough growth in the field behind me for at least 10 days of grazing. In fact, we all had quite a chat.

But as expected, I was totally exhausted after all of that woodcutting and I had to have a 10-minute doze before I could tackle the stairs up to here. When I finally made it up here, I put on a film to watch but crashed out through most of it. The St. Trinians – The Belles Of St. Trinians [DVD] it was, and here’s a thing. I thought that I recognised one of the voices when the schoolgirls were talking, and it turns out that a schoolgirl by the name of Jackie is played by none other than Diana Day, who is Susan, Jimmy’s sister in The Clitheroe Kid

This morning I had a good session on my course and found, to my surprise, that I’ve finished this week’s lectures already. We finished with a quiz that was actually a forensic examination of a skeleton discovered under a barracks floor and to my total astonishment I had 100%, which completely surprised me

So now that that’s all done, it gives me an opportunity to do the rock music programmes for Radio Anglais, and that should keep me out of mischief for the next few days.

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Tuesday 17th November 2015 – I’M FEELING A LITTLE …

… bit better today.

With having crashed out yesterday afternoon, it was gone 02:00 (more like 03:00, I reckon) when I went to bed. As for the alarm at 07:30, well, the least said about that the better. 09:30 it was when I crawled up here, and then I had to make some muesli as I’d run out yesterday

I had a good day on my course and astounded my tutor with an observation that I made about an Iron Age encampment in the vicinity of Hadrian’s Wall. But with the late start, it was after midday when I finished.

I crashed out again for an hour or so, but then found from somewhere the energy to go outside.

First thing that I did was to fit Caliburn with new windscreen wipers. The ones that were on it were the originals since 2007, so eight-and-a-half years is some going. They weren’t much good, in fact. but when I was at the Auchan the other day, they were having a sale of windscreen wipers and so I took advantage of it, ready for the winter which isn’t surely far away.

Apart from that, I’ve started to empty Caliburn. There was food in there (tins and stuff), some of which dates from before I went to Canada in August, as well as a pile of washing that Liz did for me. It can’t stay in there for ever so I made some space in the downhill lean-to and most of it is stacked in there. Some other stuff, including the washing, I dragged up here (and I do mean “dragged”).

Tomorrow, I’m going to be brave and carry on with the emptying, including the tiles and the tile cement. I may not be up to much at the moment, but tiling doesn’t take too much effort and with the old electric tile-cutter that I have, that doesn’t take too much electrical energy

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Monday 16th November 2015 – WHAT A DAY!

I had a really bad day today. I couldn’t haul myself out of bed for ages and when I did finally haul myself out, I didn’t do very much at all. In fact it was all that I could do to concentrate on my course on Hadrian’s Wall.

By early afternoon though I was well out of it and despite the beautiful day, I crashed out and I remember nothing at all after that. It was totally dark when I awoke and I had no idea of where I was or what time it might have. When I noticed that it was 18:30 I was astonished, and I felt thoroughly dreadful.

So that was that, really. I’ve accomplished nothing today and although I feel a little better, I don’t think that I’ll be doing too much tomorrow either. I’ve been having a bad time just recently and I’m going to have to do something about it.

Although I’m not sure quite what.

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Sunday 15th November 2015 – I SHOULD HAVE …

… gone out this afternoon.

I had planned to go out to Menat for the football today. Two matches – one of the 2nd XI who play at the same level as Pionsat’s 1st XI, and the Menat 1st XI who play a couple of divisions higher. But then last night’s Pionsat 2nd XI match had been postponed until today and so I was wondering whether to go down there instead.

But then I had something of a late start today (well, it IS a Sunday) and then I had a bad attack of Writer’s Block and couldn’t make a start on what I had to do today. By the time I could tune myself into whatever I was going to do, it was too late to go anywhere and do anything. But at least I’ve finished the radio programme, eventually.

I’ve also emptied the beichstuhl today. The first time since I’ve been back home. And it needed it too. So that’s one job well-done. And with the temperature in the verandah being 19°C and then temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater reaching 49°C, that was the cue for a shower. And gorgeous it was too.

Rosemary rang up for a good chat later, and we were on the phone for an hour or so. It seems from local gossip that our little ex-pat community is going to be thinned out even more, something that is surprising us because, by all accounts, it’s going to be an enormous backward step for the people involved. But then, what’s it all to do with us?

And in other news, we have had a definite candidate for not just “Quote of the Year”, or “Quote of the Decade” or even “Quote of the Century”, but what will probably end up being “Quote of All Time”. One of my “friends” on my Social Network who lives near Guildford posted, in relation to the events in Paris this weekend “… it could happen in Guildford or Bristol …”. it appears that the poster has totally forgotten that it DID happen in Guildford

And this just goes to prove a point that I have been saying for years. Atrocities committed by white-skinned Christian terrorists are totally forgotten, conveniently swept under the counter even by people who were exposed to the acts, whereas the mere threat of an attack by brown-skinned “terrorists” brings them out all in a cold sweat.

And why “terrorists” in inverted commas? That’s because one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. As a good example of this, certain white-skinned Christian terrorist swho had conducted a bombing campaign all through London in 1974 and 1975, convicted of 7 murders as well as a whole string of other serious crimes, were described as ‘our Nelson Mandelas’ by an MP who had served in the British Houses of Parliament for over 20 years and who was indeed a serving MP at the time he made the remark.

However, history conveniently overlooks all of this.

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Saturday 14th November 2015 – IT SHOULD BE NO SURPRISE …

… to anyone that after the amount of time that I’ve spent just recently discussing Hadrian’s Wall in the North of England, last night I was on my travels up to the Wall with a huge load of uniforms for the soldiers based there. But strange uniforms they were too, nothing at all like the contemporary styles that they would have worn, and it didn’t escape my attention either that they would all look quite bizarre up there confronting the Picts and Scots in what I had fetched them. From there, I went back home by train (my nocturnal rambles are superb, aren’t they?), the kind of multiple unit with lateral seating. This train took me I’m not quite sure where and I came across a huge digger crawling into a railway depot. I reckoned that the engine in this digger would be ideal for my lorry and so I alighted from the train and chased after the digger but couldn’t catch it. I had a great discussion about the engine with the guy on the gate and we agreed after much discussion that it ight have been a Cummins. He eventually let me into the depot and I had a good hunt around the huge hangar without finding it. Never mind though. Back with my friends, I dropped my bombshell. I was going to stay on in the USA for all of five months while I changed the engine over in my lorry. From here we went back to my old flat in an old building in the city centre (and we’ve been here before recently) and I went downstairs to meet some girl friend outside the ladies hairdressers on the ground floor. We arranged to go off somewhere else in the town but I had to leave my huge moose behind so I asked the hairdressers if I could leave it there instead of taking it up to my apartment. They had a little smile and a little bit of a moan about me always leaving stuff with them.

It’s no wonder that I was exhausted before I had to get up, what with all of this going on.

After breakfast I had to turn the place here upside down to find my cheque book. It’s time to renew my web hosting services and this is about the only time that I need my cheques. And after all of this I found it in the glove box of Caliburn, and so I nipped into Pionsat to post off my renewal.

Back here I spent most of the rest of the day working on the new series of programmes for Radio Anglais. I lost my motivation halfway through but I managed to pick it up and I’m about halfway through the Radio Arverne sessions tonight.

I went off to Enval too in order to watch the footy. Pionsat were well-beaten and I shan’t dwell on the match too much, except to say firstly that Enval scored only one goal that contained any kind of skill. All of the rest were presents from the Pionsat defence with some of the worst defending that I have ever seen. It was embarrassing to watch and I was ashamed. Secondly, Pionsat received three or was it four yellow cards. One was for pushing an opponent, an off-the-ball incident, and all of the others were for arguing with the referee. This kind of thing is embarrassing too. It’s all childish, juvenile stuff and counts for absolutely nothing. Stupid bookings that you might think that the Pionsat players would have grown out of by now, especially when one of the yellow cards is shown to the team captain and another one to the President of the club. What kind of example is this?

All in all, what it boils down to is that 4 or 5 of the players aren’t up to the standard required, and four or five others aren’t “grown-up” enough for this level of football. Pionsat needs an under-11s team for players like these until they learn how to behave like grown-ups.

But at least I had my pizza as promised.

Apart from that, almost all other news has been overshadowed by the night’s events in Paris. What I have to say on the subject will be well-known to many regular readers of this rubbish because I’ve said it all before.

Firstly, what are European forces doing fighting in Asia anyway? What has it all to do with us? Who cares if these people kill each other anyway? It’s nothing to do with us. We should stay on our side of the world, let them stay on their side, greet each other with a polite nod and leave it at that.

Secondly, I can’t believe how naive and innocent all of these people are. When you declare war on someone, you expect them to fight back. Surely everyone knows that? And when your opponents fight back, you should expect casualties. Surely everyone knows that too? And so why the surprise and shock that there are casualties in Paris? I don’t understand.

If the politicians were possessed of courage, they would have warned their citizens that WAR = CASUALTIES and the population should have been prepared. But politicians everywhere have no courage and have behaved like ostriches with their heads buried in the sand, hoping that the problem would never arise. And then we have the mock outrage and the crocodile tears. It really is shameful.

But going back to the question of waging war against guerilla forces, it’s a fact that even with the gloves well and truly off and using the most horrible reprisals, no regular army has ever succeeded in defeating a determined guerilla force. The Nazis couldn’t overcome the French, the Yugoslav and the Greek resistance, the French couldn’t overcome the Algerians, the Septics couldn’t defeat the Viet Cong and the Soviets couldn’t overwhelm the Afghans. Why does anyone think that the situation has changed?

After the American defeat in Vietnam the USA government held an enquiry into the war. Here are a few quotes from the report –

The alternative – no matter what we may wish it to be – is almost certainly a protracted war involving an open-ended commitment of US forces, mounting US casualties, no assurance of a satisfactory solution, and a serious danger of escalation at the end of the road – UNDER-SECRETARY OF STATE GEORGE W BALL, ON VIETNAM 1st JULY 1965

No-one has demonstrated that a white ground force of whatever size can win a guerilla war – GEORGE W BALL ibid

The war could well become an albatros around the Administration’s neck – ASST SEC OF STATE FOR FAR EASTERN AFFAIRS WILLIAM P BUNDY 16 APRIL 1966

We will find ourselves mired down in combat in the jungle in a military effort that we cannot win -JOHN McCONE, DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE TO DEAN RUSK AND McNAMARA – 2 APRIL 1965

The USA found itself at the end of August 1963 without a policy and with most of its bridges burnt – PENTAGON REPORT ON SOUTH VIETNAM

While tendentious reporting is irritating, suppression of news leads to much more serious trouble – WHITE HOUSE SPOKESMAN 17 SEPT 1963

A feeling is widely and strongly held that the Establishment is out of its mind – JOHN T MCNAUGHTON, US ASST SECRETARY OF DEFENCE 1967

The feeling is that we are trying to impose some US image on distant peoples we cannot understand and that we are carrying the thing to absurd lengths – JOHN T MCNAUGHTON, US ASST SECRETARY OF DEFENCE 1967

White men can’t win this kind of fight – WILLIAM BUNDY, US ASST SECRETARY OF DEFENCE ON INVOLVEMENT OF US FORCES IN VIETNAM 1961

You would have thought that with all of these comments, what on earth would the USA be doing, dragging itself and its “Imperialist running-dog lackeys” into other similar wars? It’s as if the Septics have learnt absolutely nothing from their involvement in Vietnam and they are simply making the same mistakes. And as the events unfold and the opposition fights back, the west is sucked deeper and deeper into the maelstrom. You only have to look at all of the incidents here in the West – under attack, overwhelmed by fleeing refugees, all of the border, airport and train controls – to see just how much the opposition has us on the run.

And our politicians won’t tell us the truth either. Brits will recall that over 400 British soldiers died “freeing” Helmand from the Taliban. What most Brits don’t know, because the Government hasn’t made an official announcement, is that most of Helmand has been retaken by the Taliban. So those deaths were really useful, weren’t they?

Just to repeat, “The war could well become an albatros around the Administration’s neck” and ‘We will find ourselves mired down in combat … in a military effort that we cannot win”.

“A feeling is widely and strongly held that the Establishment is out of its mind” – at least, from this particular point of view.

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Friday 13th November 2015 – I’VE HAD ANOTHER DAY …

… where I’ve not done anything much at all. I really need to snap out of this.

However, the day wasn’t suitable for doing much outside – grey and overcast – although that hasn’t stopped me very often before. And furthermore, the weather has gone colder and I can smell winter in the air.

I spent today revising what I’ve learnt over the last two weeks on my course about Hadrian’s Wall, and it seems to have worked because I took my test this afternoon and ended up with 93%, with which I’m quite satisfied, although I fell down on transcribing the inscription on a Roman monumental stone which is a disappointment because the only Latin that I can remember from my schooldays is due to my keeping it up by reading monumental stones. So Puer amat mensam, say I.

This evening I went off to St Eloy and shopping and due to my bulk purchases last weekend I spent a mere €14:00, mainly on fruit and veg, and also on the rice that I forgot to buy. And the grapes were beautiful, so much so that I bought two bags, one of which I ate on the way home and the second I’ll eat on Sunday. Not tomorrow though because I’m off to Enval tomorrow night for the football and do you know what? I’m going to buy myself a cooked pizza for tea and eat it in Caliburn on the way home.

You might be wondering how it is that I manage to eat pizza when I’m out, being a vegan. That’s because whenever I go to Brussels I buy a load of the vegan cheese slices that are on sale at the health food shop opposite where Marianne used to live. There’s always a pack or two in the coolbox wired into Caliburn’s ignition circuit and so when I order my pizza, I order it without cheese and ask the pizza place if they will stick three slices of my cheese onto the the pizza.

Of course, it’s a waste of time doing that at one of these big pizza chains, but most smaller pizza places and pizza vans do it quite happily, and I know for a fact that the one at Mozac (on the way home) will do it with no problems as I’ve had it done there before.

But depressing news at St Eloy. There was a “dispute” at LIDL between two shoppers that ended up with a punch-up outside the shop. I left the UK to get away from aggressive confrontations like this and it dismayed me to see this kind of thing over here. Mind you, St Eloy is a little … well … down-at-heel and depressed and I suppose that some of the locals relieve their tensions and stresses with alcohol and the like.

But it’s still a sad thing to witness. I’m dismayed.

0

Thursday 12th November 2015 – WE HAD AN UNEXPECTED …

… lie-in this morning. Due entirely to the fact that the battery in the mobile phone went flat during the night so the alarm didn’t go off.

Nothing at all to do with my nocturnal ramblings during the night. I was walking up the hill from the traffic lights at Burland crossroads up towards Hurleston Reservoir and Car Transplants. There wasn’t a road up there – just a dirt track between a couple of fields. And in the fields were a couple of guys working away and, quite interestingly, a couple of Alsatian dogs were conveying messages between the men and whoever it was who was in charge of them. At the top of the hill was a car – the type of early 50s American car with a V8 flathead engine and which was leaking oil out of the sump. I suggested that they went up to Car Transplants to see what they could find there, but they needed to sort themselves out because they were insisting that it was a ’57 model but of course it wasn’t. 1952 at the outside, I reckoned, but they insisted.

After breakfast I carried on with my studies but we had a change of plans round about 12:00. Bright sunshine streaming outside and the batteries fully-charged so I grabbed the chopsaw, the workbench, the extension cable, the plastic sheet and the wheelbarrow, and I attacked the woodpile again.

I can’t remember whether it was 5 or 6 huge barrow-loads that I cut but it was also two boxes full of kindling. You can now see the difference that I’ve made, and the woodshed is now looking like it ought to look. There was half a bin-bag full of sawdust too.

One thing that I did do was to cut up four or five window frames. A few years ago I came across a skip loaded up with old house windows and, with permission, I rescued them (you can’t live around here without a van – I don’t care what anyone says). The wood wasn’t up to much but I salvaged quite a few window panes that I’ll be using to make cloches and repairing windows around the barn.

But the wood – all oak – makes good firewood. A couple of 12-inch lengths on that on the fire will keep the place going through the night. I don’t understand the mentality of people who throw away decent firewood like this.

After that, I came up for my lunch (it was now about 17:30 by the time I’d tidied away everything) and instead, I just crashed out on the sofa for a good hour.

But this chopsaw is proving its worth, especially when I have the surplus electricity to power it. We had 34 amps of surplus solar energy again even with running the chopsaw, which at times brought the voltage down to 11.6 volts. But that’s not important because of the intermittent use of the chopsaw. Generating a (very) theoretical solar maximum of 70 amp-hours, it soon builds the batteries back up. It would of course be a totally different matter if the use of the chopsaw was persistent or continuous.

So I’m off to bed. I have a test tomorrow on my course so I need to be at my best. And then we’ll see what the weather is doing.

-2

Wednesday 11th November 2015 – HAPPY BANK HOLIDAY

But it’s not really a day of celebration. it’s a day of memorial for the millions of civilians who were enticed into the ranks by all kinds of false promises (“it’ll be all over by Christmas”) and who died a desperate death in a waterlogged trench, quite often with no known grave and with no-one having any idea of their fate.

As for me, I had a lie-in until 09:40 and then after breakfast I’ve done precisely nothing.

That is, nothing of any much importance except for me. That 3D animation program that I use celebrated its 25th anniversary today and amongst the special offers available to members was a massive shed-load of clothing, hair and so on for an obsolete character that I still use. About $179:00 worth of articles even with my membership discount, and all on offer for today only at just $2:99. The only downside to that was that with my flaky internet connection it took over 5 hours to download it all and another couple of hours to install it.

I had just under 75 amps of surplus electrical energy today, all of which went into the home-made 12-volt immersion heater. The temperature in the water rose from 14°C to 59.5°C – that’s an increase of 45.5°C, which means that 1°C of heat was produced with about 1.7 amps of current – a far cry from the previous immersion heater that needed 8 amps of current to produce 1°C of heat. And not only that, the cables were stone cold too.

This is however all going to lead to another problem – namely what is going to happen in the summer. 75 amps is nothing compared to what I can have in July and August as we know. And with the water being warm from the previous day, an increase of temperature of this kind of magnitude with the amount of excess current that I can generate will mean that the water will be boiling, and that’s not a good idea with a plastic box. The answer to this is, I suppose, to make a second tank and have it so that I can switch the current on and off as required.

But today I made the most of it. I had a shower in the verandah and then a really good shave. That’s used up about 5 litres of the water and tomorrow I’ll fill up the tank if needed. If the temperature in the tank goes out of control, adding cold water should calm it down a little.

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Tuesday 10th November 2015 – WE ALMOST HAD …

… two wheelbarrows up and running today.

I started off with the yellow wheelbarrow. That involved removing the old wheel, cutting down the axle of the wheel that I bought on Saturday so that the axle was the correct width, sleeving it internally with a length of copper tube, pumping a pile of grease up the inside, cutting down some threaded rod to the correct length to make a spindle, putting washers on the inside of the mounting brackets to keep in the grease on the spindle, and then passing the threaded rod through and bolting it onto the wheelbarrow through the holes in the mounting brackets.

All that then remained was to pump up the tyre with the portable compressor, and that was one wheelbarrow finished.

Then I turned my attention to the old B&Q wheelbarrow. The inner tube kept on going flat with that, and having dragged it through the wet concrete when we were concreting the parking, concrete worked its way inside the flat tyre and it’s ruined the tyre and tube.

And so I dismantled the wheel, took the tyre and tube off and filed them under CS, and then went in search of the wheel that I bought about 3 years ago. It took about an hour to find it, and when I measured it up for the wheelbarrow, I found much to my surprise that I’d already cut it down to size before.

So why hadn’t I fitted it?

Anyway, that needed sleeving on the inside and once more an off-cut of copper tubing came to the rescue. The spindle was made of threaded rod (I’d made this some time previously) and having packed the sleeving with grease, I then went to assemble it.

And then I found out why I hadn’t fitted it previously.

The fact is that the profile of the wheel and tyre is too high, so that there’s not enough clearance between the chassis and the bucket of the barrow. And so I’ll have to order a new tyre and tube, and I needn’t have bought the wheel that I did on Saturday.

Still, you live and learn.

I was on my travels during the night. I had enrolled on a computer repairing course with Terry, and we had started to learn a few basics. On one particular section, Terry remarked that he had once actually thrown away a computer that had suffered from the problem that we were resolving, because he thought that it was irrepairable. At the end of the day we all went outside and I went for a wander along the road between the cornfields and ended up at the border with the USA. Here I met up with pf all people, Zero (who accompanies me quite regularly on my nocturnal rambles) and we walked around chatting for a while. We then needed to go back into town but she said that she was tired and asked if we could take the bus. There was a bus – a school bus – waiting and so we climbed aboard but the conductor told us that this bus was going over across to the USA and so we needed to alight and wait for another.

After breakfast I carried on with my studies and I seem to be doing okay according to a test that I took this morning.

But here’s a thing. For about half an hour or so, we had about 21 amps of electricity going into the dump load. And while that’s not particularly exciting, the fact is that the cables were stone-cold as far as I could tell, and the temperature had risen by just over 5°C. Usually, for about 20 litres of water, a rise in temperature of 1°C in the water needs about 8 amps of current, and so it looks as if I’m getting twice as much current going into the water compared to previously. That’s how much must have been dissipated in heat down the cables.

Of course, it’s early days yet and I need much more current than this to prove the point, but at least it’s progress of some sort that there was no energy loss to heat down the cables.

I’ve tidied up a pile more downstairs and the table is looking clearer and clearer. I’m finding tons of stuff that I’d “lost”. But tomorrow is a Bank Holiday and that means a day off. When I start work on Thursday, now that I have a wheelbarrow I can start to move the stuff from out of the way at the front of the house and if the weather is good, I can cut up a pile more wood and move it much more easily.

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Monday 9th November 2015 – NOW, HERE’S A THING.

This morning while I was working on the computer, the temperature was such that I ended up opening the roof lights here in the attic. And I don’t recall ever having done that before in November (except when I had the fire burning – and just a reminder – I’ve yet to light the fire up here this autumn).

Yes, this weather is totally crazy and I’ve no idea what is going on with it.

I had a lovely night’s sleep and then came up here for breakfast and carrying on with my work. Studies first, and I’m a module or two behind. So I had to catch up with all of that before I could even start on this week’s sessions. But I am enjoying this course very much.

I had some other computing work to do, and I also made yet another exciting discovery with this 3D program that I mess around with some times.

I didn’t feel like any lunch and so I went straight outside (eventually) to work. I’ve repaired two flat tyres on the power barrow and pumped them all up to pressure – that Black and Decker portable compressor that I bought last summer is certainly doing the business. I started to dismantle the yellow wheelbarrow to fit the new wheel that I bought on Saturday, but the nuts were seized on and they took ages to free off. And I ran out of light while I was doing it, so that will have to wait until tomorrow.

I stayed working to 19:00 tonight, finishing by tidying up some more on the ground floor. And I can definitely see the table top in there now. It won’t be long before I end up with a place to work.

Up here I watched a film and crashed out, and finished off by having my lunchtime butties. I don’t seem to have the same appetite as before. And now I’ll take the stats, do the washing up and then go to bed. That’s me done for today.

-2

Sunday 8th November 2015 – THAT WAS NICE!

It certainly was. Fast asleep in my nice new and clean bed. And I was so comfortable in there that when I awoke at 09:30 I lay in bed until … errrr …. 12:30 doing some work on the laptop.

I could do that because I had the laptop with me at the side of the bed. I should never have drank those two cups of coffee at the football last night because despite going to bed at 12:00, I was still wide awake at 01:30 so I went and fetched the laptop and did an hour’s work.

I didn’t even have time for “breakfast” this morning because I’d planned an afternoon out with friends from FC Pionsat St Hilaire. Pionsat 2nd XI’s match had been cancelled this afternoon but just down the road from here, Le Quartier were playing two matches. The 2nd XI kicking off at 13:00 against St Maurice and the 1st XI playing Lapeyrouse at 15:00, and we had arranged to go. And such a beautiful afternoon it was too that I didn’t regret it for a moment.

Le Quartier won both matches, and deservedly so. Their 2nd XI wasn’t up to much but St Maurice were pretty dire and didn’t offer very much. As for the 1st XI match, Lapeyrouse were definitely better-organised and more skilful on the ball but were simply too slow. They couldn’t break out of defence quick enough to capitalise on attacks and on many occasions there was just one of them isolated up front on his own. They didn’t move around enough give the ball-player a choice of alternatives, and they were too slow to get back into position once the game had spread out – and that was fatal because Le Quartier had a couple of speedy players up front. They played the ball around nicely on one or two occasions and made the most of it.

And it seems that I’ve upset the military lobby again. My feelings on the Armed Farces are well-known to anyone who has been a regular reader of this rubbish, and I make no apologies whatsoever for my stance. But what was quite surprising (although it isn’t really) was that one of the contributors, a quiet and erstwhile well-mannered and polite woman, replied to my posting in language that would have been considered rather extreme had it been uttered in the fo’c’s’le of a whaler. It seems that the Military Lobby considers itself to be untouchable and above criticism, and if this is the kind of response that you have from “a quiet and erstwhile well-mannered and polite woman” then it’s no surprise that the military members behave as they do, burning down mosques, acquiring arms and murdering innocent civilians. They are all pretty much of a muchness and if I had my way, they would all be stuck on an isolated island and left to fight it out amongst themselves.

As I’ve said before, next time anyone proposes a war, there should be a vote on it. And everyone who votes in favour should be gived a rifle and a tin hat and sent off to fight it. These bumper stickers “We support our troops” are totally laughable. Anyone can be brave and belligerent when they are 5000 miles away from the conflict. If they really did “support our troops”, they should be out there in the front line with them, and we’ll see how brave and belligerent they are then.

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Saturday 7th November 2015 – IT’S ALL HAPPENING …

… at the swimming baths at Commentry.

Firstly, I forgot my cozzy and had to go back to Caliburn to find it. Secondly, the big pool was freezing. 29°, it said on the temperature, but I reckon that that must have been Fahrenheit, not Centigrade. Thirdly, there was a group of kids aged about 7-8-9 playing on a couple of foam-rubber rafts down one lane of the big pool. They were having an enormous amount of fun, trying to row, totally out of synch and quite often in opposite directions. As a result, every now and again there was a squeal and half of the kids fell off. They clambered back on again and a short while later we had another squeal followed by a splash. And so it went on. They were having a great time and it was quite amusing watching them.

But the fourth thing was the most interesting. There I was sitting on the jacuzzi steps and some young girl swimming past under water grabbed hold of my foot. I thought that my luck was in, but it turns out that she was aiming for her boyfriend sitting next to me.

Ahhh well 🙁

But you can see what the weather was like today. Totally glorious. And there I was, having disconnected the 12-volt immersion heater (I don’t want it to fire up until I’m there to see what happens). In fact, I went off to Montlucon where I spent a King’s ransom. And it wasn’t as if I had bought anything special, except for 2 inner tubes for the power barrow and a new heavy-duty wheel for the yellow wheelbarrow. It was cheaper than buying an inner tube and tyre and I must get myself organised.

But at least I’m stocked up with tins, macaroni, rice and the like ready for when the winter bites. As long as I have plenty to eat, plenty to read and a few good films to watch, I could be snowed in here for amonth and I couldn’t care less

I didn’t meet anyone whom I knew around the shops either, which makes a change. I’m not sure what happened there.

Pionsat had a really good match tonight against Mozac. They won 3-1 and we had four of the best goals that I’ve seen for ages. Peach of the night was Pionsat’s second, which started off with, would you believe, a one-on-one between a Mozac attacker and Matthieu in the Pionsat goal. The ball bounced off Matthieu’s leg and, just for once, went upfield out of danger. It was played forward to Cedric who rode a few good tackles and, surrounded by two or three Mozac defenders, laid it off to Frédéric. He sold a beautiful dummy to his marker and stepped inside, giving him half a yard of space and he coolly spicked his spot in the corner of the net.

For once, Pionsat had the rub of the green, the benefit of a few unclear decisions, and they played like they ought to have played for the last three or four years. I’ve complained about their “powder-puff” approach to the game in the past but tonight they put in quite a few crunching tackles to make their presence felt. If only they had done this in the past, their position would be totally different.

I was on my travels last night again. Once more, as just a couple of nights ago, I was trying to catch an aeroplane out of Canada but I was running really late. During my stay there, I’d used three cars but I only had one to hand back and I was desperately trying to trace the others, and time was running out. It transpired that one of the cars was “in the bodyshop” and wasn’t quite ready. And so, I thought, there goes my return flight home. I dunno why I seem to have this on my mind at the moment.

But tonight, it’s Saturday and there’s a long lie-in, I hope. I’m all clean with clean clothes and clean undies and so what I’m going to do right now is to change my bedding. A nice clean me with clean bedding and a long lie-in and I shall be in my elephant.

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Friday 6th November 2015 – THIS WEATHER IS WEIRD

Here I am, it’s the 6th November and I still have the fridge running 24 hours per day and not only that, at 19:00 this evening I was outside in the verandah with a bucket of really warm water having a gorgeous shower.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t with warm water out of the heat exchanger because the weather didn’t permit it. It started off quite well but round about midday we had a rainstorm and then it was clouded over for the rest of the day. The batteries didn’t charge right up and so we didn’t have anything going into the dump load. I ended up boiling 2 litres of water on the gas stove.

And that reminds me – I’m planning to go into Montlucon tomorrow so I ought to disconnect the dump load before I go. I want to see it in operation and make sure that it’s safe before I go off and leave it alone.

But with the rainfall and the lack of excess power I wasn’t able to cut any wood – once more. Instead, I started to tidy up outside somewhat (although it doesn’t look as if there is any difference). Once I’d sorted some of that out, I started on tidying up the ground floor in the house and I’ve made some progress in there. In fact, you can even see the top of the table now in places and you’ll be surprised at the things that I found. I know that I was!

I took the opportunity to empty some stuff out of Caliburn. In fact there’s some food in there still that I bought in August and seeing as it’s mostly tinned stuff, it can stay there for now. But taking some stuff into the barn I found quite by accident the big drill for which I was looking the other day. Isn’t it always like that?

And so I now smell nicely of coconut and my nice clean clothes smell nicely of hint of soap. On that note, having crashed out for a short while just now, I’m having an early night. I deserve it.

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Wednesday 4th November 2015 – WELL I DIDN’T …

… cut up any wood today either.

Awake once again after the alarm went off, then after breakfast I cracked on with my studies and I’m making progress. So much so that I’m actually enjoying this course. It’s certainly making me think, which is what is the aim of it all, after all.

I had a phone call too. “Your order is now at the transport warehouse. To arrange an appointment for delivery, please call 0899 …..” But what kind of tree do these people think that I have fallen out of? For a start, I don’t have any orders outstanding. But secondly, I know all about these 0899 phone numbers. They are not free-phone numbers but uncontrolled premium rate lines and telephone companies should be censured for lumping them along with the other “08” numbers because a call to a 0899 number will cost you about €130 a time. It’s not free like you might be thinking, and telephone companies should identify them properly.

Beautiful and bright it was, this morning but by the time I went downstairs the sun had gone in and we were all overcast. Not enough power to run the chopsaw so that will have to wait for another time. Instead, I attacked the 12-volt immersion heater.

It’s all assembled now and there are no leaks as far as I can tell, and so I went to make uo the cables. And first off, I can’t find any 10mm cable despite turning the house and the lean-to upside down. In the end, I’ve had to use 6mm cable and that’s not doing to be enough.

I crimped the ring terminals onto the cables and then cut off the insulation because I’m going to solder them on. And so that meant hunting around for the solder and the little gas pistol. I eventually found them but the gas pistol wouldn’t work, no matter how much gas I put into it. In the end I dismantled it, only to find that the jet was blocked with a piece of solder. Pushing that out damaged the jet and so the subsequent flame was pretty much uncontrollable and took ages to solder up all of the cables.

So even though it was 18:55 when I knocked off, I felt as if I’d done nothing at all today what with all of this nonsense.

Tonight I’ve had a tea too – pasta with vegetables, boulghour and tomato sauce. I felt like it too, for the first time for ages.

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Tuesday 3rd November 2015 – I DIDN’T …

… manage to do any wood-cutting today. But there’s a good reason for that – in fact, 6.5mm of it. Yes, for the first time since I’m not sure when, we’ve had a persistent rainfall throughout most of the day.

So I was awake at 07:30 but it was about 08:15 when I finally crawled out of bed. And after breakfast I cracked on with my studies. I’m really getting into this.

I didn’t have lunch today either, but I was downstairs working. Or, at least, trying to work. But with more than 10 weeks away from work I can’t find half of the tools that I need, despite turning the house upside-down a couple of times.

But what I’ve done it to start work on the new Version 4 of the home-made 12-volt immersion heater. And I’ll tell anyone before we even start that this one is not destined to last very long. The plastic box isn’t anything like as strong as I would like it to be, and it’s rather brittle. It shouldn’t be brittle as that will be more likely to crack up under heat. I need a proper water tank or, better still, a copper-sided container of about 25 litres. I must look into this properly.

But at least the holes are drilled into it and the tap and element fitted. It’s now sitting on a dry dusty concrete floor so that I can check if there are any leaks.

But one design change that I’m doing (apart from the obvious one of repositioning the heater element so I’m not falling over the wires) concerns the element. It’s two x 250-watt elements connected by bridge pieces and held together by screws into captive nuts. You need to undo the screws to connect the wires and then screw it back together and this is one of the faults – that you can’t tighten up the screws sufficiently tight to prevent arcing.

What I’ve done is to do away with the bridge pieces so that I have the two elements separate. I’ve put nuts and bolts in through the holes on the elements and what I’ll be doing is to run two sets of wires, not just one, to the immersion heater, and bolting them up rather than screwing them. This will mean that the joints will be tighter thanks to the bolts, and that with two wires then there will be less amperage running down each cable so they won’t heat up as much.

Another advantage of this is that in the summer with all of the excess energy that we receive, I can start a second immersion heater and disconnect one set of wires from one of the elements on the first one and wire them to one element on the other immersion heater. That way I’ll have 50 litres of water and that will warm up quite steadily.

But these aren’t long-term solutions of course. I must have a proper immersion heater with proper joints and a proper element connection. But trying to find anything suitable is well-nigh impossible.

Back up here I sat down to watch a film but went straight to sleep for half an hour. And for tea, I had my lunchtime butties.

Now, I’m off to bed. See you in the morning.

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