Tag Archives: lie in

Saturday 10th January 2015 – I’M A FIRM BELIEVER …

… that if a thing is destined to happen, it will happen. Regardless of however much input one puts (or doesn’t put) into the whole procedure. It seems to happen time and time again and the only secret of this is, as Jacqueline De Bellefort said in Death on The Nile – “You have to follow your star wherever it leads, even to death itself”.
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And with this in mind, I went off to Commentry this afternoon.

Mind you, I nearly didn’t.

I had made a stunning breakthrough with this 3D program that I’ve been playing with. I had totally given up on the modern version of it ages ago and had gone back to an ancient version, and there I was last night trying to make a 4th Generation character work properly when, all of a sudden, it all clicked into place and I was so engrossed in what I was doing that it was 06:00 this morning before I realised it, and I hadn’t had any tea either.

Consequently, it was 11:20 when I crawled out of my stinking pit and seeing the bright sunlight and clear sky I resolved to go to Commentry and the swimming baths. Pausing only to add a little more filler to the wall where there was a hole or two, at 13:30 I was off on the road.

The pool was a little (just a little) warmer than last time, practically empty and the shower was just as delicious, even though the private showers were closed for maintenance. And seeing that I was only half a mile from Bricomarché, I went off in search of some sunken hinges – I’ll need these for the trapdoor that I’ll be making in a week or so.

While I was there, not only did I find siome hinges that will do the job, I solved the problem of the handrail for the stairs. Some huge screwed eyes, with 16mm holes, and a 2-metre length of some very nice 14mm hemp rope – that will make a lovely handrail.

But here’s the exciting bit, that relates to what I was talking about earlier. I was thinking again about these wooden ends for the plasterboarding. Cutting up pine boards was my original idea but at Montlucon the other week the stuff on offer was rubbish. At Bricomarché the stuff is so much better, the staff is so much more friendly and they have cutting facilities too.

So while I was wandering around turning things over in my mind, I came across the tool sale, and there on offer at just €44:00, was a cheap 600-watt table saw. It was the last one in stock too.

It’s not the ideal thing, but it’s the nearest that I can find and i’ll need to build a table for it if I’m going to cut doors down doors and things like this, but for what I want to do at the moment it’s ideal. I can soon trim down half a dozen floorboards with this.

I went to the new NOZ at Commentry too. I didn’t buy anything exciting but nevertheless it was a good opportunity to have a look round.

Back here, nice and clean for once, I crashed out for an hour or two. And I’m not surprised either. And I’m off to bed in a minute with nice, clean bedding too. And as it’s Sunday tomorrow, I ccan have a nice lie-in.

But I’m glad I followed my star all the way to Bricomarché at Commentry today.

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Thursday 25th December 2014 – MERRY CHRISTMAS …

… to all my readers. And I shan’t make any wisecracks about the walls of the public conveniences on Crewe Bus Station because I say the same thing each year and you must be sick to death of it by now.

During the night I was in Rome being fleeced by an Italian shopkeeper, and having to sort out a few kids, some of whom were mine and the rest of whom were kids that I was looking after, and they were having a fight in a hotel room and the police had been called.

I was awake early this morning but managed to stay in bed until about 08:30 – I wasn’t in anything of a rush to leave my stinking pit as I’m sure that you can imagine. And after breakfast, I did precisely zilch.

I’ve watched a few films though. First up was The Mask of Dimitrios starring Peter Lorre and Sidney Greenstreet. Lorre is one of my favourite actors and this film continues the joint roles that the two of them played in The Maltese Falcon. That’s a film that I can watch time after time after time, and having seen the Mask of Dimitrios, that will be the same.

I’ve also watched the first couple of Fantômas films. Louis de Funès is my favourite actor but occasionally he has a tendency to over-act and these films are not amongst his best. But still, I found a box set of the Tantomas films going cheap

I’ve not eaten much today either. I have plenty to nibble on so I’ve been attacking all of that. I even found a bag of Bombay mix from I don’t know when and that tasted wonderful.

And do you know what? It’s more of the same tomorrow. I’ve absolutely no intention of going anywhere or doing anything at all. Which is probably just as well as when I went out just now to take the stats, there was the start of a heavy frost. Everywhere is cooling down again and there’s snow forecast for Sunday.

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Wednesday 17th December 2014 – THE WORST DAY …

… that I can ever remember having since I’ve been here.

By the time I took the stats this evening, we’d had 32mm of rain. It’s rained non-stop throughout the day, the ground is totally waterlogged, there’s surface water on the mud outside and the run-off has come into the verandah and the floor of that looks like a swamp.

If that wasn’t enough to be going on with, when I went back outside after (a rather late, it has to be said) lunch, it was so dark that the outside lights had come on. In fact, had I not been awaiting a couple of parcels still, I would have thrown a suitcase into Caliburn and gone off to find some sun somewhere, even if it had been Italy or Greece. Things are that bad here.

As far as the work around here goes, it was another somwhat later start. Hearing the amount of rain that was cascading down onto the roof made me rather unwilling to leave the comfort and safety of my warm little bed.

Outside though, I was in the barn working. More tidying up and repairing things that needed fixing. And I have also found, at long last, one of the 12-volt DC cables for the charger for the rechargeable batteries – something for which I have been looking for years. It just goes to show you what a bit of tidying up can do. And it was a nice change doing it all to music.It made me feel so much better just having the music playing in the barn again.

I’ve also made a temporary connecting board. I quite often have to quickly connect something to the DC ciruit to see if it works or to see if there’s a polarity issue (these IKEA LED striplights do have a polarity issue and the cables aren’t marked) and on the old power board I could touch the wires of any appliance to the connecting points of the terminals. Of course, with this new power board, the connecting points are behind the front panel and sheathed in pattresses, so I can’t reach them. I’ve therefore made up a wooden board with two wires connected to a plug that I can plug into a 12-volt DC socket. The other ends of the wires are connected to two bolts in the wooden board. One bolt is marked red (for positive) and the other one black (for negative) and there’s a warning light to tell me that there’s current at the terminals. This will do what I need to do.

After lunch, I carried out another long-term issue – namely replacing the final 12-volt flourescent light with one of the IKEA 12-volt strip lights. I do have to say that they are nothing like as good as the LIDL 12-volt striplights, but drawing 1.2 watts instead of the 7 watts of the flourescent light is a huge improvement.

I wasn’t in too much of a rush to knock off so it was 18:20 when I finished. And a little later I had to go to Pionsat to meet up with Liz and to give her the Christmas presents for them both.

And the rain is still cascading down. Since I’ve been back from Canada on 8th October, there’s been just one whole day when there has been no rain, and the weather forecast for the next 10 days is “more of the same”. I’m sick to the eyeballs of all of this.

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Sunday 7th December 2014 – SUNDAY IS A DAY OF REST …

… and so when I woke up at 07:30 this morning, I simply turned over and went back to sleep. Sod that for a game of soldiers.

09:30 is a much more realistic time to be up and about on a Sunday, although of cours that is nothing like what used to be usual in the not-so-distant past when on a Sunday I would be lucky to see the morning.

After breakfast, I did some work on the radio programmes and there’s now another month’s worth of rock music programmes. The live concert was rather more straightforward this time as it wall came from the same source and so mixing it was quite straightforward. However, each of the tracks was about 4 minutes long and there were 14 of them, specially designed for the truncated attention span of the MTV generation, so it took ages to merge them, edit out the gaps and overlap the applause.

This evening I went round to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse the radio shows for Radio Arverne. As well as the usual month’s worth of programmes, we’ve also been rehearsing the Christmas Special. Normally, our radio programmes aee part of an hour-long magazine programme but the magazine doesn’t run on Christmas week (too many absentees) and so we are taking it over.

And talking of taking over, I had my first mince pies at Liz and Terry’s, and I was given a pile to bring home. Home-made too – Christmas is definitely just around the corner.

But I’ll tell you one thing – sitting up here in my attic with the woodstove simmering away on a low heat and with a mug of coffee, made from water that has boiled up in a kettle on top of the stove – there can’t be too many things in life better than that.

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Saturday 6th December 2014 – I’VE BEEN OUTSIDE …

… just once today. And that was about an hour ago to take the statistics. And much to my surprise, I’ve had just half an amp of electricity today – and that was in the barn. It just shows you the importance of inclining the solar panels at the correct angle. Even though there are 6 solar panels on the roof of the house and just two on the barn, the roof panels are inclined at 48° (the pitch of the roof) whereas the ones on the barn are inclined at 71°, which is exactly what they ought to be (degrees north of the Tropic of Capricorn).

I had a late night last night, just for a change these days, and although I woke up when the alarm went off, one look out of the window convinced me that I was wasting my time. It was snowing just then, and had been for a while, and so I went back to bed.

When I finally did raise myself from the Undead, at 09:20, the snow had changed to light rain, and we had 5mm throughout the day. After breakfast I attacked the next month’s rock music radio programmes and they are now complete. It took me ages though because I’ve had to manufacture another concert as well as a speech, and everything was at different speeds and volumes so all of this needed arranging.

I’m beginning to understand how it was that when the radio station did the engineering, they made such a mess of it. I know the results that I am trying to achieve and it isn’t at all easy. The engineers don’t have a clue so they must have found it impossible.

I’ve also been spending some money again. This plant trailer that I bought with the mini-digger is a decent bit of kit, that’s for sure, but as I said the other day, I don’t know who has been playing with the electrics. The rear lights are add-ons – these really cheap and nasty 3-function lights that cost coppers each. And they don’t work either so there’s an even cheaper and nastier trailer board attached.

I hate trailer boards, especially on good-quality equipment, and so having a good browse around on the internet I’ve found a pair of rear lights – 5-function rear lights – that are such a good fit that they might even be the original equipment.

As well as that, I’ve bought a pair of these tiny LED real numberplate lights and a pair of side marker lights, the type that are on stalks so that they can be fitted on the mudguards to mark the extreme width of the trailer.

Apart from that, I’ve not done much else. It’s not been the weather for it.

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Saturday 29th November 2014 – WHAT A PLEASANT DAY.

We were invited round to Clotilde’s for lunch today. It’s been ages since I’ve seen her so I was quite looking forward to it.

I had a little lie in this morning (slept through the alarms again – whoops!) and then had a nice relaxing morning catching up on a few things that I’ve let go while I was doing this Christmas Special

At 11:30 I cleared off down to Clotilde’s for lunch, and was delighted to see not only Clotilde, Liz, Terry and Rosemary, but also Ingrid who I haven’t seen for years. There was also another couple there who I had never met before.

Clotilde had cooked a really nice vegan lunch, which was very thoughtful of her and then seeing as how the weather was quite reasonable, we went for a walk.

From Clotilde’s house there’s a good walk through the old quarries of the Gré de lapeize, the stone with which much of St Gervais and St Priest was built.

From the top of the hill at the back, near to where Arno lives, there’s a magnificent view of the town of St Priest les Champs across the valley in the distance, with the Puy de Sancy in the distance.

From there we went round the corner and up to the top of the next hill, and from there was a lovely view of the Puy de Dome in the distance.

I couldn’t resist taking a photo of it. And I’m glad that we are in late autumn because the absence of leaves on the trees at this time of the year add some different kind of dimension to the photo.

This evening I was down at Pionsat for the football. Pionsat’s 2nd XI were playing Teilhet. And despite the strength of the team that Pionsat put out (and there won’t be a stronger team than this on the field for the 2nd XI), they really struggled and the attack offered absolutely nothing at all. And that’s a surprise considering the fact that in the 8 games to date, they’ve scored 31 goals. An utterly impotent offering.

They ended up beating the Goatslayers 1-0, with the goal coming from a corner. The ball was headed out but only as far as blond Frederic on the edge of the area who put everything into it that he had, including the kitchen sink.

Still, a win is a win, as anyone will tell you, and the top 4 clubs, including Piosat, have now broken well clear of the pack.

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Wednesday 26th November 2014 – I HAVE HARDLY BEEN OUTSIDE TODAY

I’ve been far too busy in here.

I had an early night last night – in bed before 23:00 and that doesn’t happen very often does it? And even more interestingly, I slept through all of the alarms and didn’t wake up until 09:15. I must have been tired last night.

After breakfast I had a good hunt around and found the script of our Christmas Special from December 2012 and luckily there were a few pages that we didn’t finish. So I added on the bits from the radio programme that we didn’t record, and I wrote some kind of joining text, and that gave me the outline of a radio programme.

It’s not an hour long as yet, but I’ve been embellishing it and adding bits to it and it’s slowly taking shape. I probably have about 45 minutes’worth already.

So despite not going out, it’s been quite a profitable day. Another day or two and I might have a reasonable radio programme. But I really didn’t need this. I have far too much work to do as it is.

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Saturday 22nd November 2014 – IT WAS ANOTHER LOVELY DAY …

… today. This weather is totally crazy.

Mind you, I missed quite a lot of it. I actually managed to have a good lie-in and it was after 10:30 this morning when I crawled out of bed. And quite right too. I’ve not had a decent lie-in for quite a while.

After a leisurely breakfast, I attacked the radio programmes and now that’s all finished and ready for tomorrow’s rehearsal. And the weather was still holding out too, and that made up my mind for me. I’ve not done any washing since I came back from Canada and there was a huge mound of it lying about. I therefore made some butties and went down to Pionsat where I stuck the lot (the washing, not the butties) into the large 18kg washing machine. And while that was doing, I ate my butties.

I put the lot into the drier for 20 minutes afterwards, and while that lot was drying I went and took Calibutn for a really good wash and (just for a change) bought another pile of grapes. They are really nice and I’m sure that they do me good.

Tonight we had the footy of course and Pionsat need to put their train back on the rails as they’ll drop off the bottom on the table. However, tonight’s opponents, Blanzat, look like a tough proposition.

Much to my surprise, Pionsat fielded one of the strongest sides that they’ve been able to field this season. Cedric was back from injury and playing in defence again, with Julien and Jerome up front.

Even more surprisingly, Blanzat offered nothing whatever up front. I can’t think of a weaker attack than the one that was out there today. Their goal was direct from a free kick, but in reply, Pionsat scored two. A real screamer on the volley from Michael from about 25 yards out, right into the top corner. The second one was one of these ping-pong efforts from close range – three Pionsat players had a go at getting the ball into the net before it finally crossed the line.

So a valuable win for Pionsat, one that keeps them in touch with the pack down in the basement. But it was marred by a fight on the pitch after the final whistle – one that looked like it meant business too. Two players were involved, both of them from Blanzat. It’s rare to see two players from the same team having a go at each other like this. And I’ve no idea what had caused it either.

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Friday 21st November 2014 – AFTER MY EXERTIONS …

… yesterday, I planned to have a lie-in this morning. Consequently I switched off all of the alarms and dug myself in for a long siege. And if I ever lay my hands on that telesales operator who rang me up at 09:15, she will need new dentures and a pair of crutches. I was not in the least amused.

I had a leisurely breakfast, boiling the water up here for my coffee again, And then I didn’t do too much until Sophie the boulangère came with my bread, and we had an interesting chat for a while.

After lunch, I was trying hard to make up my mind to go out and work when the farmer came down with his cattle. It’s very late in the season for him to put his cattle out, but nevertheless he was here all the same. And regular readers of this rubbish will recall that a couple of weeks ago I lit a garden fire in the lane and the pile of ash was still there. Consequently I had to spend a quick half an hour shovelling the ashes away so that his cattle could pass by.

It always happens like this.

After that I started to unload the new batteries. While they aren’t as big as the other ones that I have been moving around just recently, they are still huge and heavy. And there’s something of a problem with them. The terminalsare not across one end of the battery, but down one of the long sides. This means that they won’t go into the battery cupboard as I had intended, and the only way that I can put them in is groups of three – so either 3, 6 or 9 and here I am with 8. Mind you, they are 110-amphour batteries, not 100-amphour ones.

6 of the batteries are now fitted in place and connected together. That was when I ran out of time and also out of strength – moving those six was bad enough. On Monday I’ll make a start on the control board for the wiring in the barn.

I went to Intermarche when I knocked off work, and finished off my shopping. 25 minutes it takes from here to Pionsat to do my shopping and then to go back home. And the prices aren’t so bad when you consider the saving in fuel and time. I bouhgt myself another kilo of grapes, and I’ve just sat here and ate them. I love grapes, especially at this time of year when they are very ripe and very sweet. I might even go back to Pionsat tomorrow and buy some more.

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Thursday 16th October 2014 – THIS WAS ANOTHER MORNING …

… when it was difficult to haul myself out of the stinking pit. I’m not doing too well at this.

After breakfast, I started on some work for the radio programmes and prepared a live concert for the rock programmes for Radio Anglais. This concert is not so easy to prepare as it consists of live recordings from a variety of different concerts and I’ve had to edit them together to mke a seamless performance. We ended up being a good few minutes short and I found a studio track to fill the gap so I had to edit in some applause and links. The lengths that I have to go through for my listeners, but it’s worth it because it’s made quite a good concert and I’m impressed with the editing.

After lunch I attacked a huge pile of errant papers and most of them have ended up in the bin. I there was, however, some good stuff that would do quite nicely for the radio programmes so I’ve cut them out to save for later.

I’ve also been editing the kitchen equipment that is up here too. I can’t think why I have half of it up here as I don’t need anything like this much.

This evening I crashed out again for another half hour or so and then I had another go at the aubergine and kidney bean casserole. It’s nice not having to cook much when I have a pile of that.

Wednesday 15th October 2014 – I WAS SOMEWHAT DISTRACTED …

…today and didn’t accomplish anything like what I intended to do.

It’s difficult to raise myself out of bed at the moment, particularly as it was another 04:00 night (or early morning) last night by the time that I had finished what I was doing. But after breakfast I made a start (or, rather, carried on) with some work that had been backing up for quite some time on the computer.

Rosemary rang me up during the afternoon – she wants to take a rain-check on our shopping trip as she has the roofers round. Her roof was badly damaged in that hailstorm last year and she’s had an emergency tarpaulin over it since then. The insurance company’s roofers have been executing their clients in strict rotation, and they’ve now appeared at Rosemary’s. Naturally, after all this time, she doesn’t want to slow them up now that they’ve finally arrived.

I stopped work at about 19:00 (yes, I was rather carried away by what I was doing) when the battery went flat again in the laptop (there’ no doubt that this little Acer Aspire notebook and its 5 or 6 hours of battery life was a magnificent purchase) to watch a DVD, but crashed out in the middle and I’ve no idea why because it wasn’t as if I had been doing anything exhausting.

I made one of my huge aubergine and kidney-bean casseroles for tea – and as usual there’s enough left over for another three meals and that saves me having to cook for the next few days, which is always a useful idea.

After tea, it was back on the laptop again to carry on all of this sorting out of files. I’m not sure where all of this will finish but so far I’ve liberated about 10GB of space on the hard drive and many of the files are much easier to find now. If I carry on like this, I shan’t know myself.

Sunday 12th October 2014 – WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME …

… that you have heard of someone waking up at 16:30 in the afternoon? Well, you’ve heard of it now.

There are three reasons for this.
Firstly, jet-lag counts for a lot of it, even though I’d tried my best to deal with this
Secondly, I should never have had that final cup of coffee at Liz and Terry’s. That didn’t help
Thirdly, with the internet back on, I had a lot to do and I ended up being somewhat carried away.
As a result of all of this, I had the dubious distinction of hearing the alarm clock ring to wake me up before I’d even gone to bed to sleep.

Dawn had long-since broken when I went downstairs to switch off the inverter and take the statistics. There was a high wind blowing too and the big wind turbine on the barn was going round like the clappers. That’s always nice to see. I wired in the 12-volt immersion heater too before I went to bed. If there’s any surplus energy, I want to lay my hands on some of that for sure.

On waking up, I wasn’t sure whether to have breakfast or lunch. Anyway, I decided on breakfast, which saves me having to look for extra bread for Monday.

And then I started on the tidying up – or at least, some of it. I decided while I was away that I need to be much more ruthless here with the stuff that I own and that I’m never ever likely to use. There’s reams of stuff that is simply junk and needs to be disposed of. And there’s other good stuff too that is never ever going to be used and I could generate some income from that if I stick it on the internet.

There wasn’t much time to do very much however, as you have no idea how quickly it’s going dark these days, sO it’s not even correct to say that i’ve made a start.

Saturday 26th July 2014 – WELL, THERE I WAS …

… lying in bed this morning waiting for the alarm to ring, and after a while I thought that this can’t be right. Yes, it was 08:30 and bith the battery in the phone and in the alarm had gone flat through the night. What are the odds on that happening?

So after a rather late breakfast I sat down and dealt with this outstanding programme that I have to write for Radio Anglais. I did five and a half weeks, and there’s just the bit about tourism to finish off. Then there are two rock programmes and some information notes to do.

I tried a different tactic about shopping today. I worked on the radio programmes until about 14:45 and then ent straight to Neris and the swimming baths. It wasn’t as nice as last week – just a mere 9.5 out of 10 – -and there were a couple of bizarre goings-on in there too today.

I then went to Commentry to do the shopping and ran straight into a motor-cycling weekend and the town was packed with people and motor bikes.

I didn’t buy anything extra either today, and I was back home at 19:00, nice and clean (for a change) and shopped. And then I crashed out yet again for half an hour.

And that was today finished. Tomorrow is a day off and a lie-in.

SUNDAY 20th July 2014 – THE WEATHER CHANGED …

… during the night. I was awoken at about 05:00 by a torrential downpour which was rather a shame as I was enjoying my clean bedding.

I was on my travels again too. it went on for ages and ages and another one of those that I was determined to remember when I woke up, but I completely forgot most of it. I do remember being in a service station having fueled up and while the attention of the young girl cashier was distracted, I was trying to buy some bread. All they had was a pack of 6 bread rolls but that was no use. I did find some bread that was suitable but it was in the form of a sandwich and had ham inside.

A little later I was walking down a hill with someone talking about taking Ford Cortinas for the MoT. I was giving this other person loads of useful information but I noticed Nerina having little enigmatic smile because I was being somewhat economical with the truth.

A little later still I was with a group of people in a second-hand clothes shop in Stoke on Trent. They were looking for skiing clothes and all intended to buy a one-piece skisuit. I was instead extolling the virtues of two-piece clothing and here was just the thing – a perfect ensemble. I was trying to attract the attention of my friends to it, without making it too obvious because I wanted it for myself and if I drew too much attention to it, it would be sold before I could rustle up the money for it.

I was up and about at 10:40, a nice lie-in for a change, and after breakast I had another go at this programme I’ve been working on. Not much point in doing everything as it rained almost non-stop throughout the day – 15mm all told.

The bad news is that all of the downloads that I had of this program seem to have been lost with an external drive that went missing when I was at Marianne’s. That means that I can’t go ahead and restore the previous version. But I’m finally making good progress with it, having realised that the reason why I could never make one important part of it work was because I’d forgotten to add in the serial number.

GRRRR

So the weekend is over and it’s back to work tomorrow.

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8th June 2014 – HAVE YOU EVER FELT …

… a fool?

I spent most of the morning trying to make this cassette recorder thing work. It’s like an old-style walkman but connects to the PC via a USB cable and it is supposed to be able to convert cassette tapes (of which I have thousands) into *.mp3 files.

It cost me all of about €17:00 from an ALDI when I was on my travels the other week.

I could plug the machine in, with no problems, and the bleep that my PC gave me told me that it had accepted the connection, but the machine didn’t show up on Windows Exploder. An automatic-peripheral search failed to pick it up, and neither did a manual-peripheral search. I ended up reading every help file that I could find but to no avail.

I even left the tape player running to see if the Audacity program would register anything, but nothing there seemed to do anything.

Searching deepinto the bowels of the PC I did notice that I seemed to have acquired an “external USB microphone” that I had never had before. And when I unplugged the tape player the microphone disappeared, and when I plugged it back in, it came back again.

It was then that the penny dropped. I set the tape player to play, reopened “Audacity”, and in a brilliant flash of inspiration, I clicked on the red “record” button. And sure enough, off it jolly well went.

D’ohhhhh!!!

So having wasted all of the morning (and I did too, for it was 10:10 when I woke up), this afternoon I turned my attention to the radio programmes. But I didn’t make much headway as once more it was far too hot in here to do anything. 29°C in fact and even as I type, it’s 27.3°C

Not that i’m complaining because we can do with the warmth, but it’s still not conducive to work and I can understand why it is that these people go in for siestas.

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EPIC HALL

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