Tag Archives: rosemary

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.

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Tuesday 14th October 2014 – THIS JET LAG THING …

… is still affecting me and I’ve no idea why. Last night, it was 05:00 when I finally went to bed. And had Terry not telephoned me at about 10:30 to come round and pick up some things from here, I would probably still be in bed even now.

But anyway, seeing as I was up, I was up and I had a leisurely breakfast and watched a film on the DVD – Rio Bravo, one of my favourite Westerns and another one in which the actors are more intent on having a good time than they are on focusing on the script and the stage direction. Of course, it’s the kind of thing that only good actors can get away with.

This afternoon, the clearing up started and by the time that it went dark, I had no fewer than 10 bin-bags of clothes prepared for recycilng. And that’s not all either as there are three dustbins full of clothes in the barn plus a few items of clothes elsewhere. I can’t believe how much rubbish that I’ve actually managed to accumulate here – there’s even stuff that I remember buying in the UK before I met Nerina, and that’s 30-odd years ago. Still, it’s all ready now to be transported to the local clothes recycling bin.

Something else that I can’t believe is that despite all of this, there still doesn’t seem to be very much difference in the amount of space taken up in here. It’s as if nothing whatever has been moved or emptied. But then my tidying up is always like that. If it looks any different from before, it’s usually that it’s more untidy, with having to move all kinds of stuff around in order to get at what i’m looking for.

I rang up Rosemary as well in the evening. On Saturday I’m going to be taking all of these unwanted clothes to Montlucon and to do some shopping too, as it seems that I’ve run out of oats and things like that. Rosemary is always game for a wander around the shops so I invited her to accompany me, which makes a nice change.

And then I finished off the vegan lasagne that Liz had given me in a doggie-bag the other day. That was tea, and then I settled down to see what was happening in the big wild world.

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Monday 25th August 2014 – I HAD A LIE-IN THIS MORNING …

… yet even so, I was up and about by 08:05. And after breakfast, I set about packing everything.

And despite everything that I had done, there were still one or two things that I could not find and led to me having a good search around for everything. I reckon that I’ve now found everything that I’ll want, but if that really is the case, it will be a first.

Plenty of room in the suitcase for a change so in an amazing departure from the norm, I’ve cut up a couple of strips of that space-blanket insulation, 1.50m x 1.20m.

There’s a good reason for this. I’ve been using tarpaulins as curtains in the Dodge but that’s not particularly efficient. If I cut each sheet of this insulation into 2 strips 60cms wide and obtain some double-sided tape from Home Depot, I can stick this insulation onto the windows to blank them out and this will be much more appropriate, as well as keeping the temperature in the vehicle a little more comfortable.

Anyway, with all of this insulation in the suitase, the suitcase is very full but doesn’t weigh all that much.

Apart from that, I’ve sorted out the washing, tied up the onions and the garlic, put the shallots in a panier and did some tidying up and cleaning too.

I’ve also has Rosemary, Liz and Cecile on the phone.

Anyway, now I’m off for an early night because I’m going to have an early start tomorrow. There’s quite a bit to do tomorrow and then we’re radioing.

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Thursday 21st August 2014 – THIS TIME NEXT WEEK …

… I’ll be at 34,000 feet. I hope that the aeroplane will be too!

And I can’t wait to go either – I need a break. Especially after today. It took an hour and a half to sort out the difficult part of the wiring issues. The problem was relatively straightforward but it didn’t half take some fixing. What had happened was that when we must have fed the huge cable through the piping, the pipe had come away from its mounting and dropped down through the floor some way. Pushing the pipe back up had wedged it underneath the floor and trapped the wires.

Of course, now that the plasterboard has been put on the wall in the shower room, it’s not possible to reach the pipe from underneath. Consequently I had to drill out the floor from above and chisel part of it away. That freed the wires off but the insulation on the one that had been trapped under the floor was damaged so I had to wrap it in insulation tape. It’s a good job that I noticed.

But this huge armoured cable going through the pipe – I can’t understand that. Why did I choose that? Two strands of 16mm cable takes up much less room than that and will be much better at carrying the surplus current upstairs when I finally manage to move the immersion heater up here when the bedroom is finished. Consequently I pulled the cable right out.

It still wasn’t as easy as it might have been to pass this cable through the pipe but anyway, there it is. And there’s plenty of room for 2 strands of 16mm cable as well as one or two others if necessary.

Before I could restart work after lunch, Rosemary came round and we pulled up the onions and garlic. And what a crop! I’ve never ever been so lucky as to have had a crop like this. It seems that this wet weather has done some good somewhere.

That took us until 19:30 and I was looking forward then to coming upstairs and tidying up because it is a total disaster here what with me trying to pack as well as having to clear part of the attic to access this cabling.

But it’s not to be. I’ve had a phone call that means that either tomorrow or Saturday, Caliburn and I will have to take the big trailer on a rather long run. Consequently I had to empty out Caliburn and rescue the trailer from the undergrowth where it lives. Of course, there was a light out so I had to fix that too and that took me right up to 21:30 when it was too dark to do any more and I didn’t feel like tidying up at that time of night.

Tomorrow I’ll have to finish off all of the stuff for Radio Anglais if we aren’t going until Saturday. The radio stuff can’t be left and so for the moment this is the priority task.

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Tuesday 19th August 2014 – WELL I’LL BE …

Yes, absolutely!

Just about to go to fetch some cable trunking out of Caliburn this afternoon when a big red Honda motorcycle pulled up just outside here. A lady descended from the rear and smiled at me, which was a surprise – not something that happens every day – and then the driver came over, shook me warmly by the hand (which was also a surprise – regular readers of this rubbish will remember that most people who come here usually shake me warmly by the throat) and said “Jean-Marc”.

Well I am actually Eric, as most of you realise, but it turns out that the motorcycle rider was called Jean-Marc.

You may remember that several weeks ago on the way back from Munich, I called off at a village called Chasselas, near Macon, a village where I had stayed with a French family in my mid-teens. And now Jean-Marc, the son of the family, had come over to repay the compliment.

Yes, it’s totally astonishing. It’s 44 years since we have seen each other. And it was totally unexpected and I wasn’t in the least prepared, with stuff all over the place here. Good job that it was sunny so that we could sit outside. If it were raining, it would have been very embarrassing.

And sunny too – that’s about three days now that we’ve had some sun and I’ve had hot water. Too late to do much about it now – Jean-Marc was telling me that the grape-harvest in Macon will be a total disaster this year.

But this place is even more of a mess than usual. There’s stuff all over the place while I’m working out what to pack to take with me. And I also forgot to charge up the video camera so I had to do that as well.

I’ve also been trying to download off an old dictaphone some soundbytes – one of a Canadian diesel locomotive and and the other about a peal of bells from a Canadian church. But for some unknown reason, the lead that I have to connect the dictaphone to the computer isn’t picking up the sound. I’ll have to look further into this.

After Jean-Marc and his girlfirend left, I still had time to go up onto the scaffolding and throw piles of stuff off the top. That seems to be the usual practice these days and I was up and down the ladder for most of the evening.

But now, I have outside lights underneath the eaves to light up where I usually fall over everything when I’m out after dark. And they work too, much to my (and everyone else’s surprise). And all of the cables are in trunking made from 32mm water pipe and it all looks quite tidy, which doesn’t ‘arf make a change around here.

And no gardening today as I promised?

No, because Rosemary telephoned me to say that she might be round on Thursday. We can pull up the onions and everything else then.

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Sunday 17th August 2014 – OHHH LOOK AT THAT!

new potatoes harvested les guis virlet puy de dome franceYes, look at that indeed.

Roselary came around this afternoon and so we decided to pull up the new potatoes. In fact we ended up pulling up all of them as the lates seemed to be ready too, and this is what we ended up with after about 4 hours of uprooting.

There’s about 20 litres of potatoes there and and that’s a lot of potatoes, much more than I was expecting and much more than I usually have. Clearly the wet summer is having something to do with this.

Rosemary stayed chatting until almost 20:00 and that made a pleasant evening, even if it was a little cool.

But not as cool as yesterday evening – the temperature dropped to an astonishing (for mid-August) low of 9.1°C, and if you think that this is bad, then Friday night’s temperature was an even lower 8.2°C. For mid-August, these figures are unbelievable. I haven’t seen anything quite like this.

This morning I finally finished this mega-backup. It’s all on a big external drive, a portable hard drive and (minus the photos) on a 64GB memory stick. That should keep me going if anything happens.

I’ve also prepared an old portable hard drive and another 64GB memory stick.They have the old films that I downloaded from archive.org and also the old-time radio programmes that I like to listen to. There are directories for the photos, the dictaphone notes and the text that I’ll be typing.

One thing that I’ll try is a 64GB SD card too. The trouble with portable hard drives is that they eat into the power supply of the laptop and, of course, with moving parts they will use a good part of the power. Solid-state is therefore the answer, hence a memory stick, and I reckon that an SD card might be even better in this respect.

We shall see.

So tomorrow, I’ll go back in the garden, churn over the beds agaon to see if we missed anoy more spudes, then hoe and rake tham and finally cover them up with black plastic to keep out the weeds.

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Sunday 3rd August 2014 – I HAD A LOVELY …

… afternoon out today. Rosemary rang up this morning for a good chat and so we agreed to meet up at St Eloy at 15:00.

At St Eloy we went to the cafe by the little beach at the lake and ended up staying there chatting until 20:00, such is the way of things. But it was lovely to get out and about for a change and the weather wasn’t quite as bad as it might have been.

Rosemary wasn’t the only one to phone up either. I had Julie on the phone for ages having a lengthy chat this morning too.

I had something of a restless night last night and was awake quite early. When I finally got out of bed it was only 08:40 and that was rather disappointing – so much for my nice Sunday lie-in.

After breakfast I finished off the tourism part of the Radio Anglais programmes and then hunted down some topics for the main text. I wrote two small articles that might do for three weeks or so – there’s planty of stuff in store that will fill in for the rest of the time.

I’ve also found another good topic that I can expand upon and if I do that next weekend I’ll be ahead again, which is where I want to be. I need to get ahead as much as I can with my impending voyage to the colonies.

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Friday 1st August 2014 – I’VE FINISHED …

rear of house lime morttr cement pointing les guis virlet puy de dome france … the rear of the house this afternoon. I put in two big buckets full of lime mortar before lunch, and then two-and-a-half buckets full went in this afternoon.

Not only have I finished the pointing that I wanted to do, I managed to cut down a pile of brambles embedded in the wall between the field and the public highway on the other side so that I could get to part of the wall of the lean-to that badly needed doing, and I’ve done that as well.

While I was cleaning off all of the tools and so on, the 19:00 time signal went off and so it was 19:10 when I knocked off. Later, I crashed out once again while watching Carry on Columbus
. Many people think that that is probably the best thing to do while watching the film – it had some dreadful reviews – but I personally think that it’s a film that is rather underrated and deserves more credit than it ever received.

I’d been on my travels again during the night.

I ended up playing in goal for Pionsat’s football club through the night.It was an indoor match in some kind of Sports Centre. And I was total rubbish. I must have let about 5 or 6 goals in in a space of about 5 minutes but luckily no-one noticed 3 or 4 of them that had squirmed out of my grasp or under my body. I do remember Pionsat’s regular goalkeeper (no-one I knew) having a shot at goal that bounced off the sidewalls five or six times before finding the opposition net

From there I went into a little gift shop to look at the Teddy Bears. There was nothing that I particularly fancied but I do remember that I was carrying so much stuff with me that it took me four trips to get out of the shop. There were several cars parked outside and a few of them had left their lights on so I wrote some notes to stick underthe windscreen wipers of the cars. One though, a big white American muscle car thing, had a few kids playing in it and so I gave the note to them to give to their dad.

While I was working on the website I was interrupted firstly by the boulangère, and then Rosemary telephoned me for a chat. So one day I might even finish what I’m working on if I’m lucky.

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Monday 28th July 2014 – NOW HERE’S ANOTHER THING

Yes, when I knocked off working this evening it was 19:40. Much later than my usual time of course and that’s not something that happens all that often. My excuse was that I had been up on the scaffolding redoing some of the mortar that I did on the lean-to in 2012.

Three buckets-full went into it today and it took ages as I had to rake out all of the loose stuff. As well as that, I had to adjust the scaffolding. Another level has been demolished meaning that there’s only one level left to do.

The night as interesting too.

I didn’t go to bed particularly early, and I was awoken at about 05:00 by the most tremendous rainstorm – by far the best of the rainstorms that we’ve been having this year and, of course, the problem with living in the attic is that I can hear every drop of rain that falls.

And it was a shame that I was awoken because I was in Sheffield watching “Yes” on tour. Every one of the spectators was hovering in the air looking down on the performers who were all illuminated with LEDs and spotlights and the stage setting was magnificent. I was of course focusing on Chris Squire the bassist who, despite being one of the best bassists in the world, lets himself down by over-elaborating – playing 10 notes where three or four would be much more effective (but isn’t that the story of “Yes”?) and he was in some kind of well or pulpit fashioned out of a couple of giant-sized bass guitars and it was ever so spectacular.

But anyway, I struggled out og bed at about 07:50 for breakfast and while the kettle was boiling (not enough solar energy for the percolator in this weather of course) I went to look at my guttering. That was quite rewarding – the rain cascading down the roof into the guttering and then cascading out of the downpipe onto the lean-to roof and down the downpipe off there to where the underground water tank will be. I’m glad that that works, anyway.

I carried on with the website this morning and after the rain stopped, I went outside and started the cementing.

This evening, I’d just settled down with a good film, only for Rosemary to ring me up. It was well after 22:00 when she hung up so I just made a quick tea.

Tomorrow, I’ll carry on with the cementing. It won’t take much longer to finish off, but I’ve said this kind of thing before, haven’t I?

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Thursday 24th July 2014 – SO DESPITE THE LATE NIGHT …

… last night, I was still up at something like the correct time. And we had the usual procedure this morning of breakfast and then work on my website until midday. It was interrupted by a phone call from Rosemary – it’s nice to have phone calls from friends.

When I went outside, I went up onto the scaffolding in the beautiful weather and sloshed a pile of wood preservative onto the wood in the roof – the bits where I did the first coat yesterday.

While I was up on the scaffolding I untangled the mooring wires for the wind turbine. There’s only one attached to the wall at the moment and over the passage of time the other three have become tangled. It was a complicated manoeuvre involving a 4-metre lath of wood and a garden rake.

kwikstage scaffolding rear of house les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis afternoon I started checking over the rear wall of the house, slowly making my way down the scaffolding, dismantling it as I descended. I’ve arrived at the level of the roof of the lean-to and so I sloshed a pile of wood preservative on that too and I’ll do the second coat tomorrow.

I’m at the stage where I need a couple of buckets of mortar for the wall of the lean-to – some of the mortar that i did in the summer of 2012 needs some attention.

That’s tomorrow’s job and I finished off my working on the Sankey trailer. Of course, with it being ex-British-Army from the 1950S and 60s it’s a mixture of AF and Whitworth nuts and bolts. I have all my AF spanners but I’ve no idea where my Whitworth stuff is and so it wasn’t easy. I’ll have to use the angle grinder tomorrow on that. But the chassis isn’t as bad as I thought and even a manual wire brush cleaned it off quite well. I’ll still get the wire brush on the angle grinder to do it properly.

After knocking off, I watched The Spy Who Shagged Me, the same film that I tried to watch last night. And tonight I fell asleep in a different place and woke up in a different place too.

One day I might get to see all of it.

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Thursday 10th July 2014 – WHAT THE …?

Yes, I’ve spent ages this afternoon looking for a black jump lead. I save all the old ones as they come in useful as a cheap source of heavy duty cable, and I can find no fewer than 5 red ones, but there’s not a black one anywhere to be seen. I just don’t understand this.

During the night I was in Calveley with my father and a few other people, visiting the farm that belonged to my father’s parents. All of the outbuildings were still there but the farmhouse was a prefabricated type of bungalow. It seems that the farmhouse had burnt down and my grandfather had erected a kind of mobile home to replace it, with no planning permission. The uproar that this had caused led to a variety of court cases against my grandfather, all of which he lost, and the farm had to be sold to pay the legal expenses and grandfather went bankrupt. My father was in tears when whoever it was told this story.

So when I woke up and after breakfast I carried on with the website for the customary couple of hours, and then as the driving rain was preventing any outside work, I started to tidy up the bedroom.

This led to a couple of discoveries, one of which was a halogen table light. After lunch (I had to go into Pionsat to buy some bread) I rewired it and fitted a LED bulb in it, and that’s now illuminating my new comfy chair.

I also found a multiple cigarette-lighter socket with USB socket and so I rewired that and fitted it on the control board downstairs.

While I was there, having been told that the bad weather is to contine, I emptied the 12-volt immersion heater and ripped the wiring out. When I made it, I had forgotten to insulate the terminals and that’s not been helping the circuit, and the cables are scorched as I suspected. This led to a couple of design modifications, and then the search for heavier cables, such as old jump leads.

At about 19:15 that up until tomorrow and knocked off work. Rosemary rang up for a chat for about an hour, and then I had tea.

I’ll continue the search for the cable tomorrow.

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Tuesday 24th June 2014 – IT DID CLEAR UP …

… even though it didn’t look much like it when we started. Damp, claggy and overcast.

Nevertheless I was at my task early and first job after brzakfast was to empty the beichstuhl as I was to be having visitors. I also steam-cleaned the kitchen in the verandah and unblocked the sink there – I need to have the place looking something like. I followed that by working on the web pages again – getting back into my normal routine.

After lunch, the weather picked up and it looked quite nice. Rosemary turned up as planned and we set about a couple of the raised beds. Rosemary weeded four and I weeded almost three and I do wonder about my technique because Rosemary’s weeding looks absolutly perfect whereas mine looks a total mess. I wish I knew what her secret was.

We had a long chat afterwards and at about 19.15 Rosemary went home and that was that.

Tomorrow I won’t be doing much as I’m off on the road tomorrow night.

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Thursday 19th June 2014 – I HAD A DAY OUT TODAY

I mentioned yesterday that I had to go to Montlucon today for some more grillage for the concrete that’s coming tomorrow.

As it happened, Rosemary rang up and so it came to pass that we met up this morning at the Texaco garage outside Montaigut and she came with me to Montlucon.

We didn’t spend too long in Brico Depot but I bought the grillage, some more pylons, a few other bits and pieces and so on. I now have everything that I need for tomorrow, especially as Terry has remembered to put the bolt cutters into his van.

Rosemary and I then went to the garden centre and a few more shops before lunch and then afterwards, with the weather being so nice we went for a walk around the lake at Premilhat, stopping for a cold drink half-way round.

We came back via the Gorge de la Cher and, strange as it is to say it, at the tinky village of St Therence, miles of the beaten track and far from anywhere, there was a barrage. Half a dozen gendarmes, a dog handler and a dog were stopping all of the traffic, namely about one vehicle and four cows per hour. I don’t mind these at all, especially these days as Caliburn and I are all totally legal, but it’s still totally bewildering as to why they should have a barrage in such an out-of-the-way place.

Back home, I finished off the shuttering and backfilled with soil and stones ready to lay the grillage. But what a weird place to have a barrage.

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Friday 6th June 2014 – WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME …

… I was awake at 06:00 (and I don’t mean as in not gone to bed yet)? Anyway, so I was this morning, despite having been on my travels during the night.

And it was all to no avail as well because when I pulled into Brico Depot at 06:55, 5 minutes before opening time, there was already a packed car park and a queue of about 40 people at the door. And then at 07:00 they wheeled out the 4-wheel 1.5 tonne 4-wheeled close-coupled trailers for sand and gravel, that were on special offer at just €799. There was a total of 4 trailers and so that was that. I, and another 30-odd people, had had a wasted journey.

Not quite wasted though because I filled up Caliburn with everything that I might need for the next stage of the concreting (because there will be one) except for the 100mm breeze blocks, which I forgot. I also did a round of shopping, to save on going out tomorrow and at the Auchan I bumped into the Megemonts – a couple from Virlet. M Megemont is President of the Virlet Historical Society and mme Megemont is on the local council so I took the opportunity to ask her to send me anything that might be interesting for Radio Anglais.

I was back here for 15:00 for my butty and it’s clearly a case that Rosemary has a spy camera here as she phoned up the moment I set my foot in the door.

It was 20:00 when I went back outside to unload Caliburn. We had the hottest day of the year to daye and it was not possible to work outside. The temperature today reached 34.50C today.

So now I have the fan on here – the first time this year – and I’m off to bed in a minute. I hzve to start on the Radio Anglais programmes tomorrow.

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Saturday 31st May 2014 – I WENT TO MONTLUCON TODAY

And I wasn’t alone either for Rosemary came with me. We met up at the Total garage at Montaigut, but first port of call was back here. Rosemary needed a new worktop for the two cupboards that she had bought and although Brico Depot no longer stocked it, it was exactly the same as what I had bought for my house and I have tons of it around here. I could certainly spare a sheet of it.

After that we blitzed the shops – I did my usual round and Rosemary did hers. As well as that, we went around a few furniture shops as Rosemary needs some things for her cottage.

I loaded up Caliburn at Brico Depot with a pile of breeze blocks and some metal pylons for next week’s work around here, and I bought a two hook from Espace Emeraude. The Kubota came with just a stalk for ring-coupling trailers whereas my trailers are ball couplings so I needed a stalk with the ball on the end.

Rosemary bought lunch and on the way home we stopped at Neris-les-Bains for a cold drink. it was the start of the theatre season there and so we were serenaded by an Opera singer, just by way of a change.

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