Tag Archives: eric hall

Friday 30th May 2014 – I’VE BEEN DIGGING AGAIN

Yes, and here’s a new development – I was actually outside working at 08:30 and I can’t remember if that has ever happened before.

Terry had a day off – he had another job to do and of course, paying jobs with folding stuff always take priority over anything else, and so I was on my own.

I started off by picking out all of the large stones from the pile of earth that I had excavated on Wednesday evening, And then I started to shovel up all of the earth into the trailer to empty at the precipice.

I’d dug out the soil a little too deep so it seemed, and so I ended up by having to backfill it and then driving up and down everywhere to flatten it all down.

Considering that it’s my first job with the digger, it’s not come out too badly but Terry says that he’ll smooth it off on Monday. Yes, we’re a long way from being finished.

There was still plenty of time left and so I started to clear out all of the weeds from where I had parked the Sankey trailer.

By the time that I had finished , I’d cleared out quite an area and it looks quite good there now – quite an improvement. I’m going to park the Kubota there for now as I’ll be using the Sankey trailer for a while as long as the digger is here.

But with my early night last night, I had a good night’s sleep without any interruptions. Nerina wandered along too. I was in Crewe again at the Bus Station in the good old days when Crosville did the bus services there prior to the apocalypse of the mid-80s.

Each of the buses carried a notice of some kind and the notice had a glaring spelling mistake. I spoke to Nerina, who was working for Crosville, and it turned out that it was she who had written the notice. I told her that she should take more care about what she writes, but she had the air of not caring less about it.

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Thursday 29th May 2014 – I HAVEN’T DONE A TAP …

… today. Nothing at all. Just spent my day off working on the website and sorting out a few images, and that was that.

But I had an interesting night. I was up 9 times during the night with attacks of cramp. It’s been a long time since I’ve suffered an attack, and I seem to have caught up with it in spades. It was a dreadful night.

I also had a busy night. I was in a hotel room in a dingy room and I noticed that the bed was full of maggots. There was also a mouse’s nest in the skirting board too and all in all it was a most disreputable place. It made me realise just how comfortable I am here.

So tomorrow, it’s back on the digger if the weather holds up.

Wednesday 28th May 2014 – I’VE BEEN DIGGING …

… today. But not, as you might be thinking, with a shovel or a spade.

Just for a change today we had a nice day and I was up with the cock (but enough of my personal habits). And a little later, Terry came round. With his van. And the big trailer. And with our mini-digger, because if you remember, we own a mini-digger between us.

While Terry was sorting himself out I was rescuing the very sad Sankey Trailer from out of the undergrowth and coupling ut up to Caliburn, and then we set to work.

A few years ago I had someone from the football club pay me w avisit with his digger and he dug out a couple of ruined houses so that I could make a car park. He hadn’t done it exactly as I had wanted but he had been and gone while I was at the shops and so I wasn’t going to stand in the way of anyone who can work at that speed.

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that Terry brought the digger around and we carried on where the prevuous guy had left off.

It took much longer than I anticipated as firstly I wanted to save all of the big stones to build a nice stone wall, and secondly, we had to keep on taking Caliburn and the trailer up to the precipice and shovel the soil out by hand.

Terry left at about 16:30 and hopefully he’ll be back to help me carry on on Friday, and I had a play around with the digger as I had never used one before. And I had an enormous amount of fun and I can certainly see a pile of uses for this.

I was all hot and smelly afterwards and even though the water was only 32.4°C in the solar shower I had a shower as I certainly needed it.

I crashed out for a while afterwards and then had a long chat with Rosemary on the phone. She needed a little cheering up.

So tomorrow is a Bank Holiday and I’m having a Day of Rest.

But it was sad to see the state in which the Sankey Trailer finds itself. The floor is dropping out of it and the chassis is rotten. It’s not got long for this world.

-4

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

Monday 26th May 2014 – THIS IS ASTONISHING …

… but here I am at 22:15 on a Monday evening and in a minute I’ll be off to bed.

Clearly something’s up, although I’m not quite sure what, and I did have a little something of a late night last night but nevertheless …

And the weather doesn’t help at all. It’s been raining for almost all of the day and this afternoon we’ve had some terrific rainstorms – coming back between Gouttieres and Pionsat I could hardly see the road.

So this morning I was up early and in Marcillat-en-Combraille for the Radio Tartasse version of Radio Anglais. And we had the usual shambolic performance that is becoming something of a trademark these days and it’s a good job that I’m engineering my own rock music programmes, for Heaven alone knows what they might be like.

Terry’s big Ifor Williams trailer was in Pionsat at Simon’s so I had to pick that up on the way back and drop it off on Terry, and then Liz and I made our way down to Gerzat for the Radio Arverne sessions.

Bernard for some reason wasn’t there and Philippe, the young apprentice, was there waiting for someone else (it seems that they had forgotten about us). But the someone else didn’t turn up so Philippe did the engineering for us. It took ages as he didn’t really know how our shows work but eventually it finished, only for Philippe to find out that the studio calendar was on the wrong page and we were indeed expected after all.

So what happened there I really don’t know.

So braving the rainstorms, I’m back home and I’m off to bed. I’ve had enough for today.

-1

Sunday 25th May 2014 – THIS BLASTED WEATHER!

When I finally awoke this morning (at … errr … 12:37 this afternoon – I must have been tired) it was absolutely beautiful. But I didn’t have much chance to enjoy it as I had a lot to do (much of which didn’t get done).

I left early for the football (as Pionsat were playing the Goatslayers at Teilhet) as I went via Cecile’s to check her mail, check on the house and do a load of waxhing. and the lawn is completely overgrown – I’ll have to cut that again pretty soon.

Pionsat lost 2-1 at the Goatslayers which is hardly a suprise as they only had 9 players out. Christophe, Julien and Jerome are injured and Kevin was unavailable, and after the maximum effort last night no-one was available from the 1st XI. But the weather broke. We had a thunderstorm and torrential, driving rain enought to chill anyone’s ardour.

I was round at Liz and Terry’s later to rehearse our radio shows, and Liz cooked a vegan lasagne which was excellent as usual. And then I made my way home, picking up the washing on the way back.

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Saturday 24th May 2014 – PHEW! THAT WAS CLOSE!

Pionsat are not totally safe from relegation but this evening’s result means that St Priest must win tomorrow by 13 clear goals if they are going to escape.

A desperate struggle on the field against the runaway champions this evening. In the opening 20 minutes, Lempdes missed two absolute sitters in from of goal and immediately afterwards, Pionsat stormed up the field and took the lead. A long clearance by Matthieu was misheaded across the defence by one of the central defenders. It fell on the feet of a fellow defender but Nico was by far the quickest, whippingit off the defender’s feet and smashing it in past the unprepared goalkeeper.

Lemdes pulled one back near to the end when Pionsat were caught stranded upfield when they lost possession, and in the closing seconds, had two goals disallowed for offside much to their dismay. Pionsat were dug in on the edge of their own penalty area for the last 10 minutes or so, and when the final whistle was blown, an audible sigh of relief could be heard all around the ground.

This all looked most unlikely three matches ago. Pionsat’s final 3 games were – team 2nd, away; team 3rd in the table, away; champions at home. You couldn’t have a final three games much tougher than this and yet we had a draw, a very unlikely win and then a draw – 5 points out of 9.

All of Pionsat’s goals in those matches have been goals of sheer opportunism and we have had some desperate last-ditch defending with balls being kicked upfield or out of play without any ceremony at all, with the team captain bellowing out orders to his team-mates.

This is just how football at this level should be played and the irony of it all is that if Pionsat had played like this for the rest of the season, they would have been challenging for promotion, never mind battling desperately against relegation.

Apart from that, I’ve spent the morning and some of the afternoon writing stuff for Radio Anglais, been to the shops in St Eloy where I bought a vine to plant at the front of the house, and then crashed out for an hour this afternoon.

And Thursday, so I’ve found out, is a Bank Holiday. I’m going to have an unexpected day off work.

-4

Friday 23rd May 2014 – IT’S BEEN GETTING ON FOR 25 YEARS …

… since I cooked any sausages, but guess what I was frying tonight for tea?

And not just any ordinary sausages either but some vegan ones too.

I completely forgot that last year when Rosemary went to the UK she came back with about 20 packets of dehydrated vegan food from a British mainstream supermarket. Some I gave to Cecile but I completely forgot about the rest until I was talking to Rosemary once more this afternoon.

That got me thinking and I had to scratch round in the house until I found them. It wasn’t easy and it took a while but here we are. First packet that I put my hand on was the dried sausage mix (add 250ml of water and roll into shape) and there we were.

Surprisingly, they weren’t too bad either – much better than I was expecting, and there’s more for tomorrow night too. And I now know where that packet of dehydrated falafel mix that I had last weekend came from – I’m just curious as to why it wasn’t with the rest.

So after the usual morning’s performance I was outside doing a few odd jobs and so forth before starting on the bean frames. And I made one before lunch , sowed a pile of seeds into two rows and screwed the bean frame into position.

During lunch, the heavens opened and that was effextively that. In four hours we had 13mm of rain. I went out and did some tidying up in the barn and in the lean-to, sorting out some space and also finding some more wood for my bean frames. I did manage to make another frame and sow some more rows of beans during the odd break in the weather.

But this weather is getting me down. Every day this week it’s started off nicely and then degenerated into this depressing, miseerable weather that we’ve been having. It’s almost the end of May too and the weather forecast for all next week is the same – risque de pluie – a very good probability of rain.

It’s high time we had some summer.

-2

Thursday 22nd May 2014 – I’VE BEEN OUTSIDE …

… in the garden again today.

Despite another late night, I was up at the usual time this morning and it was once more difficult to concentrate on what I was supposed to be doing. I must do something about this and learn to discipline myself better, especially as I can no longer afford that woman in Soho …

Outside though, first job was to empty the beichstuhl. And it needed doing too. That’s all in the compost now, quietly festering away, and there’s a nice, clean beichstuhl ready for the morning. That will be a delight.

Afterwards I went in search of scrap wood. I needed some old laths, of which there are plenty around – it’s just a case of finding them and that took me hours as well.

During the lunch break, the weather broke and we had another torrential rainstorm. After my butty, I ended up in the lean-to doing a little tidying up and then did some concreting in the living room. Years ago I dug out a hole in the floor so as to take the batteries that I use. Once I’d done that, all nicely made-to-measure, they discontinued the model that I’ve bee using and so I have some larger ones. And so I need a larger battery box, hence the concreting.

The rain eventually stopped and so I went back outside. And with the old laths that I had gathered and some fencing that I had bought, I made two bean frames. They are now planted in the garden and all of the peas have been sown, as well as the very first double-row of beans.

I’ll be making some more bean frames tomorrow and sowing another load of beans. They seem to do fine in my garden so I need to encourage them.

-2

Wednesday 21st May 2014 – I HAD A BETTER …

… night’s sleep last night. Going to bed before midnight always helps and I wish that I had done so tonight instead of typing this perishing blog at 02:15 because I can’t sleep.

Even with having been out and about on my travels during the night, I woke up all bright-eyed and bushy tailed and after breakfast set about the web site. i’m on the last lap now, out on the icebreaker smashing our way through the pack-ice in the Gulf of St Lawrence in mid-May 2012.

After that, I attacked the mega-cloche and gave it a good weeding. You’ve absolutely no idea how much rubbish has grown in there in the last 3 or 4 weeks, but it’s all out now. Once it was ready, I planted the tomato plants that I had bought from the supermarket at the weekend.

After lunch, I weeded around one of the pea and bean beds, the one that already has a few peas in. Some of them have germinated (but many others haven’t) so I filled in the gaps with some pea seeds that I’ve had in a damp paper towel since Monday.

There were plenty left over too so I repaired another pea and bean frame and sowed another two rows, one either side. With any luck, they’ll grow and tangle themselves in the netting and keep on going upwards. I need to make a few more frames for peas and a pile more for the beans, and I’ll look into that tomorrow..

We had an incredibly windy day – gusting up to almost 50kph throughout. And it’s one of those days where the bigger wind turbine produced more than the smaller wind turbine. As I’ve said before, it’s a fallacy to think that you receive more charge from a more powerful wind turbine. The more powerful the motor, the bigger the magnet there is inside it so the more force that you need to overcome the resistance. That’s why in low-speed situations (and nowhere is any much lower then here) the 70-watt turbine almost always produces more than the 400-watt one.

Except today, of course.

And I was a little too optimistic about that battery that I installed the other day. One of the cells has boiled up today and distorted. So now it’s on 5 cells only until I can get round to sorting some more out.

-2

Tuesday 20th May 2014 – YAWN

Yes, I had a bad night last night. I was editing sound clips and the like when I happened to glance at the time – 03:45.

It ws about 04:00 when I finally went to bed and i had a very disturbed night, but I still managed to wake up and be out of bed before the cacophony of alarms finished at 08:00.

However it ruined my day quite considerably. I couldn’t concentrate on my website work and in the end rang up Rosemary for a chat.

Outside, I dug over the two potato beds, fitted the new raised bed and then planted all of my potatoes.

I checked over the seeds in the small greenhouse and I’ve planted some more lettuce and leeks. Nothing much survived my two weeks away. I then watered all of the plants (that’s why we’ve had a torrential rainstorm tonight) and soaked everything in the greenhouse.

Only a short blog as I’m shattered and now I’m off to bed. See you in the morning.

-3

Monday 19th May 2014 – I FORGOT YESTERDAY …

… to post this photo of the football, and it was only when talking to Cecile that I remembered.

This is Charensat’s first goal but never mind that for a moment – look at Charensat’s n°12 on the extreme right of the photo.

You’re quite right – it IS a girl. Charensat brought with them a couple of substitutes, one of whom was female. And with there being no official from the Puy-de-Dome league present, no-one saw any good reason why she shouldn’t be allowed onto the field.

That’s one of the good things about playing against Charensat – people are out there to have a good time. Not like the thugs from down the road at Montel-Villosanges who appear regularly (and always in a bad light) in these pages.

Having forgotten to switch on the alarms this morning it was 08:45 when I heaved myself out of the stinking pit. And after breakfast and the compulsory couple of houes on the web pages, I went outside to tackle an urgent job.

Just before I went away, bank two of solar panels in the barn began to lose its charge and finally it gave up the ghost. I hadn’t had time to look at it though.

When I returned, everything working off bank two was thoroughly dead so I resolved to look at it today.

I ran all kinds of exhaustive tests and eventually came to the conclusion that there must be in “incident” in one of the cables that runs between the junction box on the panel mounting bracket and the charge controller.

So after lunch I disconnected all of the wiring and then went to hunt down a new set of cables. Eventually I had a brainwave. I had some 10mm exterior pair cabling in a waterproof sheath. I’d used that to connect up the wind turbine when it was on the other end of the barn, so I went to track it down.

That wasn’t as easy as it should have been either, but I found it and installed it (and that wasn’t as easy as it sounds either) and now it’s all connected up.

And, much to my surpsire, working fine.

So I wonder what has happened there. I can’t think that a mouse has eaten the insulation on the old wiring as it’s sheathed in flexible trunking, but one never knows.

Just as I knocked off (I took 10 minutes to plant my courgettes) Cécile rang up. Perfect timing. We had a chat for an hour and I made tea.

And now I’m off tobed – to see if I can finish this dream from last night where I was in an old wreck of an American convertible that pulled to the left quite savagely when I braked.

-2

Sunday 18th May 2014 – WHAT ON EARTH WAS I DOING …

… being awake at 07:35 this morning? And a Sunday too? This kind of thing is unheard-of.

And not only that, I’d had a late night too and I’d been on my travels during the night (don’t ask me where – I fogot as soon as I woke up) as well. So I dunno what was going on.

Anyway, I had the whole morning on the computer with Audacity and it now does what I want it to do. Having seen (and heard) the shambolic mixing that Radio Tartasse does of my live concert rock shows, I’m now going to be doing my own. I had a fiddle around with the next one and I now have 58 minutes of perfect continuous sound stream with no interruptions or pauses or clicks. It’s properly balanced too.

Not only that, I’ve found on the internet a couple of websites that have classic radio shows so I’ve been downloading a few streams of programmes and editing out some suitable soundbites to use on the radio. I always like to have special guests on my programmes and have little conversations with them.

The football wasn’t quite as successful this afternoon. Having given it maximum effort last night, it was a very thin team that went out this afternoon – no substitutes available and in the heat, a couple of players wilted and the team ended with just 9 players.

Charensat had packed their team with a couple of first-teamers (not that anyone can complain – Pionsat would have done the same in similar circumstances) and in the end the score was 2-2. Kevin was in goal and played a blinder, making a couple of excellent saves at vital moments and I really don’t understand why he won’t play in goal more often.

Matthieu was hurt in a tackle and limped from the field in the final minute and from the free kick, his brother Vincent, from 45 yards out emulated his brother by blasting the ball through the wall and through the keeper into the net for the equaliser.

So this evening I did a little tidying up with the green boxes that I bought from IKEA in Brussels. However, I can’t see the difference and I dunno why.

Anyway, back to work tomorrow.

-4

Saturday 17th May 2014 – TOTALLY ASTONISHING!

Yes, Pionsat go to Lapeyrouse, 3rd in the table, to continue their desperate struggle against relegation whereas Lapeyrouse desperately need 3 points to keep their slim promotion hopes alive.

First things first, though. It was nice to see Matthieu finally back where he belongs – between the posts of Pionsat’s goal. Two years, is it, since he broke his leg?

, Lapeyrouse scored three times, but even more astonishingly, Pionsat scored 4 times. Two of them were throroughly excellent goals and Nico’s will be goal of the season I reckon.

Frederic’s opener was another superb opportunist effort out of nothing and the fourth goal (I didn’t see who scored it) was down to Frederic’s perseverence on the goal line chasing after what looked like a hopeless cause.

Had St Priest lost this evening, Pionsat would have been safe but they managed a surprise draw at St Gervais. This means that Pionsat need 1 point next weekend (against Lempdes who have already achieved promotion) to be totally safe, unless St Priest drop points at home to Beauregard.

But Pionsat can look at 2 totally silly, needless goals that they conceded the other week – that has what has made them suffer. Had they won that match instead of lost it, they would have been home and dry a few weeks ago. It’s the story of the last couple of seasons.

So I had another disturbed night in which I was very active on my travels, but it was all wiped away as soon as I woke up so I can’t remember where I was. But I did another rock programme for Radio Anglais this morning to put myself out in front a little.

I went shopping in St Eloy and bought nothing special except some tomato plants seeing as I have just one that seems to have run aground now and stopped growing. But back home with solar water temperature at 30°C, I chucked 5 litres of water out of the dump load (for that was a healthy 62°C) into the tank and had a most delicious shower. Now I’m all clean and smelling of coconut.

I’ve also continued my play around with Audacity and I’m making progress. Trouble is that large files are taking so long to load and are thus so slow to edit. I need to work on something that has a built-in DVD drive rather than an external drive. Maybe that might speed things up.

Finally a word for Bangor City who progress into Europe next season after their victory over hated local rivals Rhyl at Nantporth this afternoon. Let’s all hope that they can find the consistency that they need to make some progress in the Europa Cup. it’ll be nice if they can make it to round Two.B

-4

Friday 16th May 2014 – AT 04:00 AM THIS MORNING …

… I was thinking about doing the washing up. Yes, I’d had my first coffee for several days, hadn’t I?

Even more surprisingly, I was wide awake at 08:30 and even now, at 01:20 the following morning. Ahh well.

So what did I do today?

The answer to that is “not very much” – although that’s not true. I’ve been hard at it all day working on the next round of Radio Anglais programmes and I’ve done a great deal too. Not only that, I’ve finally managed to make Audacity work like I would like it to (but I would still prefer to have “Polderbits”), dealt with a pile of correspondence, handled a notional complaint from a descendant of a historical with whom I’m at odds, and helped someone out over a prehistoric Timothy Hackworth boiler.

And if that isn’t “not much”, then nothing is.

-2

EPIC HALL

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