Tag Archives: caliburn

Tuesday 27th May 2014 – 43.5 MILLIMETRES …

… of rain – that’s what we had yesterday. It’s totally unbelievable and must be a new record for here. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Anyway, this morning it stopped for a while and we even had some blue sky. And so Terry rang me up. His Jeep needs to go for a Controle Technique sometime soon but the rear brakes weren’t up to much – could I go for a look at it.

That reminded me. Caliburn’s Controle Technique is up too and so I passed by the place at St Gervais to book an appointment. As it happened, he was in the middle of two retests and so that gave him 5 minutes free and as Caliburn’s check was the “odd year” emissions only check, he did it then and there. Of course, Cailburn passed and so he is all nice and legal again.

Round at Terry’s, I stripped down the rear of the Jeep and it didn’t take long to find the problem. The handbrake shoes were worn down to the rivets and a disc pad had disintegrated. All of that meant that the rear drums and discs were totally shot and so we needed to order all of it.

It was interesting to note that the brake shoe retaining clips were missing in the rear offside drum, and that the brake pads on the front were almost new. What I reckoned is that the previous owner had noticed the brake issues, fixed the front and then taken one look at the rear and given up in disgust, thrown it back together any old how and then sold it quickly.

Jeep spare parts are shockingly expensive if you don’t know where to go for the parts. To give you some idea (and I can’t remember the exact prices but it’ll give you a clue) we needed left-hand headlights for it. In the UK a set was £300. In France, they were about €350. In the USA they were 70 – not Pounds or Euros, but dollars, plus £30 postage.

Terry was also having problems with the handbrake of his van. I had a look at that too and that didn’t take 30 seconds to see the problem either. A weeping rear cylinder has soaked the nearside brake shoes. We ordered a pair of new cylinders and a pair of brake shoes for that.

That means that in another week or 10 days I’ll be round there again dealing with all of that.

So let’s see what tomorrow’s weather brings. Because if it clears up any and stays fine, Terry will be round here repaying the favour. I have a cunning plan.

-3

Tuesday 13th May 2014 – I WOKE UP THIS MORNING …

… "da dah, da da dah" – ed … to find myself abandoned once again by my companions of the night. And there were quite a few of us too at one time.

Mind you, I’d had plenty of companions during the night. I had to meet a friend of mine at the new airport in North-West England, called Skipton although God knows why as it’s miles away from Skipton and much closer to other places, and I didn’t know if he was coming or going, if you know what I mean, so I had to watch both terminals. I ended up talking to someone who was telling me about this most circuitous route he was having to take to go to Frankfurt and it wasn’t until after he left that I realised that he was in fact an airline pilot.

A group of us stopped off at a pub that I knew to do something and then set off back to the airport and on the way back I noticed that the whole bus was littered with frozen food all thawing. It seems that an airline stewardess coming back from Spain had been disciplined for something and so to revenge herself she had emptied all of the frozen food cabinets. I said that it was a pity that no-one had said when we were at the pub because they had a huge frozen food chamber and it could all have gone in that.

Bak at the airport I wondered if I had time to go and sit on the beach (Skipton is a wild place) before my flight and so I telephoned the hotel, that had all the details of flights, but some Australian woman answered the phone, answered me in the rudest of terms and then hung up. So I stormed off to the hotel to register a complaint.

Back in the land of the living (or, at least, the undead), I’ve been wandering around Burgundian towns and villages today – ones through which I have often hurried and never stopped.

We had St Florentin perched on its lofty bluff overlooking the valley in which the road between Auxerre and Troyes has run since long before Roman times. This has been a very rich town at one time as you might expect – on the border between the land of the Dukes of Burgundy and the Counts of Champagne and all of the tribute and tolls that must have flowed through here.

There’s evidence of a great deal of wealth in the past but today the old part of the town is semi-derelict

Pontigny is another place I visited. That is famous for its Cistercian Abbey which is remarkably intact despite the best efforts of the Wars of Religion and the Revolutionary Terror.

Its major claim to fame is that it was the refuge of Thomas A’Beckett and Stephen Langton after they fled into exile having upset the king. Another Archbishop of Canterbury, St Edmund, who served between 1233 and 1240, he is buried here after having died nearby on his way to the Vatican to see the Pope

I was disappointed with Auxerre, despite all of my hopes of the place and despite how nice it looks from across the river.

But then again, it’s probably a very bad idea to come and see anything or anywhere while Troyes is still running around inside my head. Troyes was certainly one of the most beautiful and interesting places that I have ever visited in recent times.

Auxerre does have a lot going for it of course – its river, its churches and abbeys, the vestiges of its walls and its famous clock dating from 1484, but the integration between modern and historical isn’t anything like as well-done as Troyes, and many of the narrow Medieval alleys have been swept away and for no good reason too if you ask me.

And to prove that my stories about fires ravaging the whole of Quebec are… well, not exaggerated but, shall we say, over-emphasised, Auxerre has had its share of fires too. 900, 950, 1023, 1825, to name just 4.

There are some little gems too along the road. One such is the town of Coulanges sur Yonne. This is another place that has been by-passed by the modern road so travellers don’t get to visit it but for a little place of some few hundred inhabitants, it’s gorgeous and you can imagine what many modern cities of today must have looked like 1000 years ago simply by walking around here.

A word has to be said too about its setting. Here at the foot of a steep valley alongside the River Yonne with the high hills and plateau in the background, no wonder it has been left behind in the mists of time.

But anyway, it’s late – later than I was hoping but I needed to push on or otherwise I won’t ever get here. Now I’m off to find some food – at Clamecy more likely – as I have no gas and I’m not paying … … €54:00 to fill up one of my little gas bottles – it’s cheaper to eat out for the last couple of days.

-1

Thursday 8th May 2014 – I HAD THE BEST …

… night’s sleep that I have ever had in Caliburn, to be sure. I was late dozing off – round about midnight I reckon, but I remember nothing else until the alarm went off at 07:30. Even the morning’s heavy traffic didn’t wake me up. I’ll remember this spec – down at Boisfort on the road out towards the motorway and tucked behind a hedge on the road at the side – for another time.

So once I was organised, I went to park Caliburn on the hypermarket car park and I was off on the Metro once I found the entrance to the station.

First stop was the Troc. All of Marianne’s possessions have been sold, so it seems, and her account cleared. Similar news at the Bank too – the notaire has done the necessary there.

One of the things that I needed to do was to make my annual report to Marianne and check on her grave now that her gravestone has been installed.

The gravestone contains several errors that need to be corrected and so I’ll have to get on to that pretty smart-ish. But at least an all-over stone means that no work is required to maintain her grave. That was always going to be my biggest headache.

Anyway, it’s hard to believe that a year has gone past since she went to meet her maker, and I hope that she is happy wherever she might be.

After that, I turned my attention to happier things and WHA…HEY! I’ve booked my annual journey to Canada. Leaving 28 August and returning 8th October (actually 9th October as it’s a night flight). And with booking so far in advance and not travelling at a weekend the flight works out even cheaper than my previous two flights there, which is excellent news. Just €580 including taxes (which are more than the base price of the flight, would you believe?)

That’s not the best of it either. Had I wanted to go via Air Transat it would have cost me €50 less, if that were possible, but I’m flying Air Canada – a flagship airline too at that price – direct on the outbound flight and via Brussels on the return. I’m quite pleased with that deal, as you might guess, and I’m pleased that Connections, my travel agents, came up with the goods.

I’ve booked 4 nights at that hotel at the Cote de Liesse on the edge of Montreal where I stayed last year. That gives me plenty of opportunity to continue my exploration of the city so I need to make a list of things that I would like to see. I need to focus myself much more positively this year.

I’ve booked another big Dodge too and I do hope that I get one – I’ve heard a nasty rumour that Avis are planning to change over to Fords and the Ford Flex isn’t half as versatile as a Grand Caravan. That was a good deal too, better than last year.

The plan is to explore Montreal, then do the Richelieu Valley in the reverse direction (I hope that they have good mirrors on the car) then go to the Maine State Fair and tractor pull at Clinton. From there to the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival at Fredericton and then I’ll be off to Cape Breton, Newfoundland and then back to Labrador ro complete my visit of Highway 138 and then retrace my steps along the Trans-Labrador Highway.

Such is the plan but as we all know, “the best-laid plans of mice and men” etc etc.

One final task before I leave Brussels. They’ve fitted new brake shoes at the rear of Caliburn but I clearly interrupted them when I arrived to pick him up yesterday, for they had of course slackened off the handbrake cable to remove the brake pads but in the confusion they forgot to tighten it up so I had no rear brakes and no handbrake to speak of when I left the garage.

Now we are all happy again.

Leaving Brussels in a rainstorm, with traffic queues and roadworks all the way beyond Charleroi and I’m now in a lay-by with a couple of lorries in the foothills of the Ardennes near Couvin. Still not out of Belgium, but as my adventure starts at the frontier just up the road, I don’t want to do it in the rain and the gloom of the evening. Who knows? It might brighten up in the morning.

But I won’t have the sleep that I had last night anyway – the rain is bouncing off Caliburn’s roof and it sounds like a drum in the back.

-2

Wednesday 7th May 2014 – I MUST HAVE HAD A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP …

… despie the howling gale that was blowing in around the badly-fitted double glazing units.

During the night, I was back in the UK (well, it’s not all that far from here and you don’t need a ferry for your nocturnal perambulations anyway) with the long-suffering Nerina and I couldn’t take her somewhere on the following day (a Monday) as I’d promised Maria, a Greek girl with whom I was quite friendly when I worked at the EU, that I would do something for her at some place that she had told me and which I knew, but which has now gone out of my head once I woke up.

Nerina wanted to know what it was, and I thought that it was a motorway service area and so probably I had to pick her up off a coach or something. Anyway, our phone wasn’t working properly – when people called us, the phone didn’t ring – so one of us had to stay by the phone (nothing in your dreams is logical, is it?) and I had promised to take Zero to the adventure circus on the Sunday night, so poor Nerina drew the short straw, again.

I took Zero to the circus and right at the end they opened the mudbath for the children. After a couple of minutes of vacillation, one girl leapt in fully clothed, up to her knees, and once she was in, all the others followed suit.

I was then interrupted by another friend, someone from waaayyyyyy back, asking me why I hadn’t done the shopping, to which I replied that I was booked up until Tuesday morning, and what did he need that we didn’t have? He replied “well, wine, of course” – something that brought a smile to my face.

Meanwhile I had lost sight of my charge and had to chase around looking for her and eventually I found her all cold wet and muddy, wrapped in a big fluffy white towel. I had to wash her and shower her off to get her nice, warm and clean again.

So despite all of the excitement of the night, I was once more awake before the alarm went off so I managed to have a good hour or so on the computer before breakfast. Downstairs at breakfast though, I was joined by a coach-load of British tourists and I had forgotten how much I hate the “little England” provincial attitude of the aforementioned, even if it was my bread-and-butter for 13 years in the late 70s, 80s and 90s. I’m glad I don’t have to mix with them today.

Still, never mind. The Hotel New Astoria didn’t let me down. The bed and breakfast that I had for €45 plus local taxes has to be the best deal that I have had on my travels these last few years, despite the company.

Having dealt with the issues of breakfast etc I went for a wander around. I’d seen some kind of ship working just offshore last night in the doom and gloom and lo! and behold – here she was again. Quite an old ship by the looks of things and probably a dredger too, she’s called the Pinta.

Presumably named after one of the three ships – the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria and not after an old Milk Marketing Board advert. And anyway, she looked as if she was old enough to have accompanied Columbus on his travels

On my way back to the station area I found, much to my surprise, a free ferry that crosses the harbour to the other side. I’ve not noticed that before and I wonder why not because I’ve been to Oostende dozens, if not hundreds of times.

As you know with ferries because I’ve told you before, every time I see a ferry it makes me cross, especially if it’s free, and so here I am sailing, or rather, dieseling, across the harbour. No sense in missing out, is there?

The other side of the harbour is also somewhere else that I’ve never visited and, once more, I can’t think for the life of me whyever not.

It’s quite historic over here and all kinds of things are happening, or are on display, or are simply “there”. Like this old barque called, incidentally, the Oostende moored here at the foot of the lighthouse. There has to be a story about this kind of ship and I wonder what it might be.

And, more to the point, why it isn’t moored up with the Mercator, another historic survivor fro the days of sail.

You don’t need me to tell you the story about all of this, do you?

Oostende was one of the more important ports along the coast facing the UK and the Germans had something of a fragile hold here. The ports along the coast, Oostende and Zeebrugge, had been raided in force in World War I and the unsuccessful landing at Dieppe in 1942 showed that the Allies had not forgotten the importance of these ports in World War II.

The Germans thus fortified them as part of the Atlantic Wall defences that I showed you a couple of years ago, and the fortifications still remain.

From this side of the harbour I managed a closer look at Larkspur.

There was no-one around who really knew what was going on with her – I asked a couple of people and they each gave totally different answers – but there was a couple of people in industrial safety clothing on the deck and I noticed a few rubbish skips present at the scene.

From my untutored eye it looked like they were gutting the ship of anything that was of high value in preparation for sending what remains of her to Turkey or India where she will doubtless be turned into a couple of thousand baked bean tins.

What a sad end.

After a marathon hike around the docks (because it is) I made it to the station for the 14:45 train and that had me back in Brussels by 16:00. I picked up Caliburn, did a few bits of shopping, had an excellent falafel supper at that place near Marianne’s and now I’ll be settling down for the night.

I hope.

-2

Tuesday 6th May – I’M GLAD I WENT TO BED EARLY LAST NIGHT …

… because at about 02:00 the refrigeration unit of the lorry parked across from me suddenly sprung into action.

And it was rattling away for about half an hour and just when I thought tht it ould never stop and I was thinking about giving it up and moving on, it cut out as dramatically as it had started and we all managed to go back to sleep.

And no harm done either as I was awake long before the alarm went off too and I even had time to make myself a coffee. No hot water in the Gentlemen’s rest rooms so that ruled out the possibility of a good wash and shave.

There’s no ticket machine at the terminus at Berchem St Agathe and the bus driver wouldn’t change €20 so I ended up at the railway station with a 40 minute wait for a train to the Centre. Fird train that passed was the train that I used to take to go to work when I worked at Boisfort. I was debating whether to take it and do my business around Schuman first, and I wish that I had now because my train was cancelled and I ended up with over an hour to wait. It’s just like a third-world country here.

Anyway I hopped onto the next train going to Schuman and started from there, albeit an hour later than planned.

I dealt with the stuff that needed doing in the city centre and then caught the train back to Caliburn, and doesn’t the rolling stock look modern compared to the relics of the 40s and 50s that they still had here when I used to go to work?

There’s a fritkot right by the station at Berchem and the smell was overpowering. And it was lunchtime too and so I fell by the wayside.

Caliburn is now in the garage having his check-up and I set off to the station. I’m having a night out and so I’m going to the seaside – and why not? It must be all of 2 months since I’ve seen the sea, and it’s not all that expensive on the SNCB, certainly when compared to railways in the UK.

I wouldn’t have made it here to Oostende and back on the amount of diesel that the railfare would have bought me

I’ve found a cheap hotel, the Hotel New Astoria, for the night and I really did forget just how tacky these package holiday resort hotels can be, even down to the organist in the lounge at night. This brings back a few memories I can assure you.

As for value for money, no complaints here at all. I’m quite happy from that point of view.

Down the the docks to see what’s happening and first port … "ahem" – ed … of call has to be the old Larkspur, now apparently known as Lark.

Built in 1976 (so I’m surprised that they didn’t change her name to Ark), which is well past her sell-by date according to EU legislation, she was formerly pride of a couple of ferry fleets, especially the Sally Line with whom she sailed for years as Sally Sky and then Eurotraveller.

She ended her days as the flagship of Trans-European Ferries, who inherited, at several removes, the old National Belgian shipping line that ran between Oostende and Dover. Without the financial backing of the Belgian government, which struggled even so to keep the line running, no-one made a success of the line and TEF was the final fling, having worked some kind of deal with the town of Ramsgate about running into the harbour there.

Now she’s sitting here rusting away while her future is debated.

You have probably seen Larkspur’s sister. A video of her being run aground full steam ahead on a beach in Turkey to be broken was posted on the internet a few months ago and did the tour of the world in seconds flat.

But it’s sad to see her, or any ship for that matter, end her days as a rusting hulk.

She wasn’t the only ship in the harbour either. There were a couple of cruise ships moored here too.

One of them was totally inaccessible but the other one, the Delphin out of Nassau, was moored up next to Larkspur which must have been a different kind of experience for the holidaymakers.

Or maybe it isn’t, for the Delphin is even older than the Larkspur, being built in 1975 and her claim to fame is that she was refloated after sinking in Singapore harbour in 1992 and subsequently undegoing a full refit.

The Delphin was also apparently a former a car ferry – or at least, that’s the impression that I gained after learning that her refit included "welding closed the opening bow doors". She was formerly based at Odessa in the Soviet Union and owned by the Black Sea Shipping Company.

Since then she has passed through many hands, several of them ending in bankruptcy.

There was something of a crowd on the jetty opposite the Delphin and on making enquiries I was told that she was just about to depart. And even as we were speaking, a tug sidled up alongside and a line was heaved aboard.

One the line had been secured, the Delphin cast off from the quayside and with a little "slow astern" and probably some "left hand down a bit" too and "full speed ahead" from the tug, the Delphin slid away from the quayside and executed a beautiful 180° turn in the harbour.

Poetry in motion, you might say.

Now that she was pointing in the correct direction, it was "full steam ahead" and she set off into the setting sun with her full load of passengers – next port of call Ijmuiden in the Netherlands.

I set off too in search of food and ended up with the worst, and probably the most expensive, falafel supper that I have ever had the misfortune to eat. That was a real disappointment after the excellent falafel suppers that I have had in Brussels.

Anyway, that was enough excitement for me. Back to the hotel where I discovered that I had forgotten to bring with me my USB key with my collection of feature films downloaded from http://www.archive.org.

Never mind – I had an early night instead.

-1

Monday 5th May 2014 – I KNEW THAT IT WAS A MISTAKE …

… to have that final cup of coffee. Despite being nice and comfortable in my little bed – no complaints there of course – I couldn’t get off to sleep and I was watching dawn break through the windscreen at one moment. I think that the best sleep that I had was the hour or so after the alarm went off, to be honest.

Mind you, no complaints about the choice of service area either. This was quite quiet and isolated and with the “usual offices” close to hand, which is always a bonus.

The coffee was still warm in the flask as well and so that saved on brewing up too.

Once that was organised, I could hit the road, but not before laughing at some Parisian’s idea of parking. Why take up one place when you can take up four? No wonder that all of the other French people that I know don’t have a very high opinion of Parisians.

The journey to Brussels was quite uneventful but I realised that I would be too late to do what I needed to do as I wouldn’t be there before lunchtime, so I hit the shops at Waterloo. And Media Markt was having a sale so I stocked up on a pile of DVDs. There’s enough there to keep me out of mischief.

In Brussels, Caliburn’s annual check-up is fixed for Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning and so I need to find something to do for Tuesday night. And I have a cunning plan too! Just wait an see!

A visit to IKEA is always compulsory espcially as I have a few little things to buy, and I finally found a sofa that is what I want for the house, whenever that it might be that I’m ready for it. But I’m not holding my breath, as you can imagine;

However I saw the funny side of something that happened in IKEA and when I find my micro-SD card converter I’ll show you a photo of it.

After having had multi-level marketing

on an Air Transat flight last year, we now have staggered opening times for different nationalities. This must be something of a first in the Developed World, although of course it is Belgium and anything can happen here.

As indeed it did. Half an hour after typing these words I had a run-in with the Belgian police – yet again. And it wasn’t as if I was doing anything either. I was quietly parked up at the side of the road reading a book. Either Caliburn or Yours Truly is well-known to the Belgian police, I reckon. But then again I recognised one of the policemen – he was one of the two with whom I’d had a “frank exchange of views” last year, so he was probably getting his own back.

God how I hate this country.

Anyway, If that’s not enough excitement for the day, while I was parked up at the motorway service area outside the town (and outside the jurisdiction of the poilce of Bruxelles-Capitale, I ended up repairing some young guy’s car that had broken down and later I witnessed a collision between two lorries on the car park.

It really IS all happening here.

-3

Sunday 4th May 2014 – I HOPE THAT YOU ALL HAD …

… a happy Star Wars day. Yes, May the fourth be with you, all of you.

As for me, I had a Happy Star Wars day, and for two reasons too.
Firstly, I had the first produce out of my garden. Only a handful of lettuce leaves, nothing to get too excited about, and especially since they were from bought baby lettuce that was planted and grown on, but garden produce just the same and it tasted beautiful.
Secondly, I had my first soalr shower of the year. And admittedly the water was only 26.4°C so I had to add 5 litres of hot water, but that solar hot water came out of the dump load for surplus electrical energy so it was all mine anyway. And besides, it was the first go in the new shower cabinet and that was exciting too.

Yes, you’re right. Surplus electrical energy. We finally had the day that we were promised for yesterday, with beautiful sunshine and not all that much cloud in the sky. And about time too.

And I missed some of it as well. With it being Sunday I had a long lie-in until 09:40 for which I was very grateful. Then after breakfast I carried on with the web pages. I’ll get them up-to-date if it kills me in the process.

After lunch I swept out the rear of Caliburn and now he’s clean and tidy. He has a bed – the one that I shortened the other day – suspended from the sides, and a matress abd clean bedding and it’s all looking quite comfortable in there.

When I had finished tea I washed up, finished loading Caliburn and then hit the road. 21:30, it was when I set off and by 02:00 I was somewhere between Paris and Lille in a service area having stopped off for 10 minutes to fuel up and pour some coffee out of the flask for me.

And now I’m going to try out the bed.

-1

Saturday 3rd May 2014 – I’VE BEEN A LITTLE PREMATURE …

… about these batteries, so it seems. The problem has been that it’s not been quite dark when I’ve taken the readings and when I’ve been out the next morning to check, the sun has been up for an hour or two, so the voltage reading is being distorted by the amount of energy being received.

However, it’s possible to program the charge controller to show Minimum Volts, and that’s what I’ve done. And that reading isn’t anything like what I was hoping it to be. But the barn is lit by a few of these 1-watt LED lighting strips and they are plenty bright enough even with a lower-than-expected voltage so no harm is being done. The batteries are certainly good enough to power them and I don’t need anthing more than that for the time being.

So apart from that, what else?

I had a late night last night and so it was a struggle to crawl out of bed this morning. But I did, and at a reasonably-respectable time too.

And I worked on the web site too and uploaded a pile of pages – the effort of the last couple of weeks on the North Shore of the St Lawrence River. If you go to this page and follow all of the links, you’ll see the … gulp … 18 pages that I’ve uploaded.

And I’m nowhere near the end quite yet either.

This afternoon I’ve been tidying up a little. That’s right – only a little. As you know, I’m off on my travels on Sunday night as I have a few things to attend to in Brussels. And for that I need to find a few papers and a Bank Card – hence the urgency.

Anyway, much of the stuff has been found and I can now head off tomorrow night in reasonable peace, once I’ve cleaned out Caliburn. The back of the van is in a desoerate state after having had all of that mess inside it.

So apart from that, not much else to tell you about. I haven’t done too much else.

What is a real shame though is that my little attic doesn’t look very much different after my tidying-up session, despite the two bags of rubbish that I took out. All of this is very depressing.

And the glorious, clear skies that the weathermen promised us today. Ptah!! That’s very depressing too!

-1

Friday 2nd May 2014 – I’M CLEARLY …

… in the wrong line of business, that’s for sure.

I went round to Rosemary’s and loaded up her old zinc guttering and downpipes into Caliburn along with the btteries and aluminium and then after having given her a hand with a few little jobs we set off to St Ours les Roches and the metal factor.

We didn’t have enough to be put on the weighbridge so we had to unload it and sort it by hand, which took about 45 minutes, and then weighed it on some smaller scales.

And then off to pick up the money.

And then to pick myself up off the floor and walk out waving a cheque for … errr … €363:23. Yes, I’m clearly in the wrong line of business.

Mind you, we were lucky to get there because round about St Angel I head a rumbling from the front end as if a tyre was about to go. The noise worsened, without the loud bang however, and the steering didn’t seem to be affected, but at the first available opportunity I stopped for a look.

At first I thought that a wheel bearing had given up but in actual fact the wheel had worked loose – nothing more than that. So I tightened it back up.

I also checked the other wheels and about half the wheel-nuts had come loose, so i’ve no idea what was happening there. So they are all retightened now and I’ll check them again in early course.

Back at Rosemary’s we had home-made soup and a chat, and then I nipped off to do my shopping to save me coming out tomorrow. In the Intermarche at Pionsat I met Rob and Julie and then Keith and Clare.

It was all happening today again.

-2

Wednesday 30 April 2014 – POOR CALIBURN!

He’s a bit down on his springs at tha moment.

And that’s hardly surprising either because inside there are 29 industrial batteries and about 2 cubic metres of aluminium – that being the bodywork off the 2 caravans that I scrapped here a few years ago.

I rang up the metal factors at St Ours this morning and they are interested in it all and so that’s where it’s all going on Friday afternoon.

Once I’d finished the website work I went off and started to round up the batteries. And then I had to check them over. There were three or four that still had something left in them and so I’ve done some battery-swapping in the barn. That’s left me with a decent battery that I’ve fitted in Caliburn to work off the solar panel on the roof rack, and that will come in handy.

All the rest have gone into the back.

Once I’d done that I started to look for the aluminium. And that wasn’t easy either as that was all over the place too with all kinds of weeds and trees growing through it. But I’ve gathered up as much as I could find (which was certainly more than I thought that I had) and that’s all loaded up too.

The local farmer with the wind turbines came round too. He’s decided to cut his losses and sell them if he can. I said I’d make certain enquiries.

All of that while it was pouring down with rain. 16mm we had today, most of it down the back of my neck.

And now I’m cold and wet, just like the weather. I’m going to have an early night now and it’s Bank Holiday tomorrow so no alarm clocks for me!

-1

Tuesday 29th April 2014 – I WAS UP …

… before all of the alarms had finished going off today. That’s keenness for you and it shows just what an early night can do for you.

It was a gorgeous day too at that time of morning. But it didn’t last. As I was working on the website again it started to rain and that’s what it’s been doing on and off all day.

after the website I went out to plant the raspberries and strawberries that Liz gave me yesterday. That meant hoeing the bed right through from one end to the next and then adding a pile of sand to lighten the soil.

Once I’d raked and hoed all of that well in, I could plant everything, and now they are in. And to take me up to lunch time, I hoed the onion and shallot beds.

I was in no rush after lunch as we were having a rainstorm. But once it died down a little I popped out and put the secon coat of wood treatment on the raised bed that I made the other day.

I’ve also been working on Caliburn. The back is all cleaned out nicely now and I’ve rebuilt a bed for the back. I’ve been using the old hammock-type of attachment that was a fifth bed in an old caravan that I broke for spares ages ago. But that gave up the ghost a while ago.

But then I had a brainwave. When I was living in a caravan I cut down a bed to fit in an odd corner and I’d forgotten all about it since I scrapped that caravan too. I resurrected it, cut it to fit the rear of Caliburn, fastened it all together with some angle brackets and aluminium strips riveted in position, and then made a cradle out of the old hammock supports.

It works a treat too, and I’ll be very comfortable on that bed, for I’m going away next week for 10 days or so, I reckon.

-2

Monday 7th April 2014 – I DON’T BELIEVE IT!

Well, I suppose that I ought to really. It should be something that I’m used to by now. But do you remember me saying that I replanted 4 strawberry plants the other day? I had a look today and there are now only 3, with a hole in the soil where the 4th one was, as you can see in this photo.

I’ve no idea what happened there. I suppose some local bestiole has taken a fancy to it.

But you can see the soil just there – clay with a barrow-load of sand worked in. That should lighten it considerably.

As for the garlic and shallots though, I don’t know if you can really see them here in this photo but they have mostly done the business.

One or two garlic bulbs seem to have failed but I have some of last year’s crop to plant in there to replace them. And one or two of the shallots needed reseating, but otherwise they are fine. The onions in another bed are pushing up too.

Nothing stirring with the carrots, parsnips and radishes yet. I’m not surprised about the parsnips, but the carrots might have done something by now and I’m bewildered by the radishes. They should be almost ready.

I have a courgette plant about to rear its ugly head out of its pot too. And where there’s one, the others shouldn’t be far behind.

So today after website work I went out and the first thing that I did was to empty out all of the herb beds. I have a row of flower boxes and I use them as herb beds and they were all overgrown.

If anyone wants some mint and thyme cuttings, let me know as I have tons of the stuff here. It really did run wild while I was away last year. Anyway, everything is now rosy in the herb beds and I even had fresh rosemary from my own garden in my onion and mushroom gravy tonight.

For the rest of the day I’ve been sowing seeds in pots. And here’s a list of what’s gone in –

Aneth
Coriander
leeks
cucumbers
lettuce
aubergines
basil
chives
cayenne peppers
mixed peppers
broccoli

They are all in pots in the little greenhouse thingy that I bought the other week.

I also have some beetroot seeds soaking ready to plant tomorrow, and I’ll also look at the rest of the brassica to see what I have an what I need.

All that needs doing then is to make some more pea and bean frames and then start some of those off, and to sow some more carrots and parsnips.

Mind you, that’s not all that I’ve done. I went to St Eloy at lunchtime and spent a whole shed-load of money, in fact the only time that I’ve ever spent more money than this was in buying Caliburn and buying my various houses and apartments. Yes, there will be a new arrival here shortly, more of which anon.

And I forgot two pieces of news from yesterday. Firstly, the mystery of Matthieu’s appearance on the football pitch Saturday night is now solved. He had no intention whatever of playing, so it seems, but someone couldn’t make it at the last minute so he went out rather than let the teamplay short-handed. If that’s not courage and devotion to duty after all he’s suffered with his injury, I don’t know what is.

And Nane rang me up for a very long chat, in the middle of which she announced that a mutual acquaintance of ours had died on Saturday. It’s never nice to hear of a death, especially of someone that you know, but this friend and I did have some issues between us that have been the subject of a considerable rant from me in the past. Nevertheless I wish her bon voyage to wherever it is that she wishes to go.

-3

Tuesday 1st April 2014 – IT WAS A LITTLE BETTER …

… getting up this morning, which was just as well as I had a lot to do today. So I was sitting eating breakfast before the 08:00 alarm reminder went off. I can’t remember when (or if) that has ever happened before.

And at 08:55 I was at the bank at Pionsat ready to withdraw some cash, only to find that the Credit Agricole plays right along with this Poisson d’Avril lark by having expired my bank card yesterday. And, according to the guy behind the counter who has tken over since Madame de St Rémy retired, “we posted your enw one to you three weeks ago”. So now I’ll have to sift through this enormous mountain of post that accumulated while I was in the Pyrenees.

Off to do this furniture removal and either I’m becoming much less tolerant as I grow older or else people are just losing all sense of proportion and priorities, in that the place wasn’t even packed up – even down to last night’s leftover food still in the saucepan on the cooker.

Everything should have been packed up and the furniture dismantled … "disPERSONtled" – ed … a long while ago and we could then have slung it into the van and cleared off. As it was, we didn’t even have the first load (because we ended up having to do two trips) into Caliburn until long after 11:00.

On the way into Montlucon we had to make a diversion as the mother of the guy who was helping us had had a power failure and Yours Truly was asked to take a look. But I tell you what – I am never going to complain about the standard of my wiring ever again. The fuse box of this house had been assembled on a wooden frame and whoever assembled it had trapped a wire in the framework and then driven a screw right into it, missing the wooden support completely.

So we just dumped the stuff into the garage and went back for the second load, by which time we were having the hottest day of the year so far. There was tons of stuff left over, but none of it packed and so they can pack it themselves and move it in a car.

Then of course we had to take it all upstairs. And by that, I mean three and a half storeys without a lift. And no hot water here – I spent about an hour trying to make the gas water heater work, but with no luck.

We’d done about three quarters of the work but they decided to knock off for lunch (it was about 15:30 by this time) so I left them to it and went to Neris-les-Bains. Yes, an absolutely gorgeous day and so I sat in the park and read a book until 17:00 when the swimming baths opened. First time for ages, and I was feeling all hot and sticky and sweaty.

Feeling much better, I came back here and had a coffee and then crashed out. Finally I managed to make one of my legendary aubergine and kidney bean casseroles, and that will keep mein business for three or four days.

And now that I’m clean, I’m going to have clean bedding tonight. Definitely pushing the boat out here.

-6

Monday 24th March 2014 – THAT SNOW THAT WE HAD …

… didn’t last very long. It was already melting rapidly when I awoke (early, for once) and it had soon all gone.

Which was just as well, for we were radioing today. I recorded the rock music programme at Marcillat at 09:30 and then Liz and I did the current affairs programmes. From there we went round to Liz’s for lunch (and if you remember the car in the ditch from a couple of months ago, it now seems to have become a rather permanent feature of the landscape).

After lunch we went to Gerzat to record the Radio Anglais programmes for Radio Arverne and, having stopped to fuel up Caliburn on the way back, we were back at Liz’s for 17:00.

Just by way of a change, I spent some time helping Liz create a spredsheet and I showed her a few formulae. Long-term readers of this rubbish will recall that it was inter alia due to what I knew about spreadsheets that I had that job working for that weird American company in Brussels.

Back here it was freezing and so, seeing as I had a pizza to cook, I lit a fire – the first since February and cooked iton the woodstove. And now having eaten my fill, I’mm off for an early night.

See you tomorrow.

-5

Monday 17th March 2014 – I HAD AN EARLIER NIGHT …

…than last night. In fact I was in bed by all of 04:00 would you believe? Carried awy again by some work that I was doing.

Even more surprisingly, having set the alarm for 07:30 this morning (we’re back at wrok as of today), I was awake – and wide awake too – before it even went off. I’ll probably pay for that later today but never mind.

I was quite busy during the night too. It was the week of beating the bounds in Wales where everyone has to walk – or run – around the borders of the country to satisfy themselves of the correct location of the markers. You could start at any time of the day that you liked, and I remember always starting at 10:20.

Sometime during the night I ended up in broad daylight in Birmingham (a city that I detest) with Zero. I on’t know why we had gone there but I was carrying a geren folder with all of her mother’s bankruptcy documents in there, as well as two rather large kitchen knives. Zero wanted an ice cream and a cake so we went into a cafe and while I was sorting her out, one of the serving staff picked up the folder and started to read the papers within. She then came over and asked us to leave
“Why on earth should we do that?” I asked
“Well, I’m afraid that you might use our premises to solicit donations from the large number of customers (there were about 4 in the cafe) who use or premises”.
She was surprisingly insistent, and even more surprisingly, made no reference to the two very large knives, and they were certainly large enough to frighten anyone.
I made a remark something along the lines of “the trouble with most people in Britain these days is that they are totally paranoid and immediately see things in a situation that simply aren’t there” but that cut no ice with her.

So now that I’m on summer hours, after breakfast I attacked the computer and restarted work on the website. That went on until midday when I knocked off the computer and ent outside to work.

I’ve promised 2 half-days on the garden each week and so I made a start on one of the raised beds, digging it over and weeding it, but I didn’t get far as I had to go to Cécile’s as there was a man due to come to check the septic tank. Accordingly I had a shower in the verandah (and we are talking about nothing to do with the Open University Students Association by the way) and then rounded up all of the washing from my holiday.

Once he had gone I came back via the Intermarche where I bumped into Jean Lauvergne and his wife and then when I was back here I had a couple more jobs to do on Caliburn. Firstly to change the passenger-side mirror. It was cracked quite a while ago but I caught in on something at Rennes-le-Chateau and that finished it off.

After that, I changed his tyres and he now has his summer tyres on. That took much longer than it should have – one of the wheels was rusted onto the hub and on another wheel the jack couldn’t find a good purchase. But anyway that’s sorted out and now Caliburn is ready for the summer.

I went back into the garden after and promptly broke the handle on the fork. It’s not my day is it.

But I did notice that some of the more sheltered trees and bushes are now budding. That’s early this year. It can only spell doom as I’m not quite convinced that winter is quite over yet, even if we did have over 25°C.

We also had 170 amp-hours of surplus electrical energy today. That might sound a lot but it isn’t as much as yesterday’s 205 amp-hours, which is about a record as far as I can tell. But there’s a reason for this. Now that the days are lengthening dramatically and the sun is much higher in the sky, I’ve started disconnecting the lights of the house in daytime and plugging the fridge in there instead. That way it runs through the day and the current doesn’t pass down the overcharge circuit, which is still running too hot for my liking.

I’ll have to do something about that.

Anyway now I’m off to bed. A nice clean me and nice clean bedding too. Luxury!

-8

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality