Tag Archives: anglo french group

Monday 20th June 2011 – I didn’t get my early night last night.

I had a diversion from my plans.

You might remember that I am now the proud owner of some Transatlantic real estate – an acre and a half at Mars Hill Road in New Brunswick, Canada, right next door to one of the biggest wind farms in the USA. And you might gather that I have plans for this land – to erect a couple of wind turbines and have my own little windfarm on it.

Startling news came in last night, that the Canadian Government has bought the power output of the American windfarm.

Now there’s only one way that they can run a cable from the Mars Hill wind farm over to Canada, and that’s via my land. And if all of the cabling is in place, it will save me a fortune when I build my own wind farm. I might be sitting on a gold mine here.

And so with all of the excitement I didn’t get to sleep until I dunno what time, and so I missed a lot of the morning. There was still enough time to do some tidying up up here though, and after lunch I set about the garden. I can now get down to the vegetable plots in their raised beds without getting myself stung, pricked or thorned, and I’ve started to saw up the tree that has collapsed all across the garden. What a mess that was.

A solar shower followed by a quick shopping expedition to St Eloy-les-Mines seeing as how I was in no fit state to go on Saturday, and then the Anglo-French group meeting and then that was the end of one of the nicest sunny days of the year.

But it’s not all sun though – I seem to have acquired a wasps’ nest right by the bedroom window. That’s inconvenient.

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Monday 16th May 2011 – Well, it was a nice afternoon out.

Riom is quite pleasant at this time of the year and it was a nice drive too. And seeing as how what I had to do took nothing like as long as I was expecting, and with 2 hours to spare, I went for a swim in the baths there.

And the baths were delicious. New, clean, modern, light, airy, and plenty of room to move about. A few activities for the younger ones too. I really enjoyed that swim and the shower afterwards (… “what, was the OUSA EC there?” – ed …) was nice and warm. And so I am nice and clean and I’m even going to have clean bedding tonight.

At the Anglo-French group tonight we had a good chat about current events – Strauss-Kahn, Fukushima, that kind of thing. It’s nice to be with pleasant company.

And on the web pages I’m now on Cape Breton Island and taking the Englishtown Ferry over to the Cabot Trail. I’ve been there before, in 2003 of course, but I was quite ill then and I really wasn’t enjoying my journey. 2010 was a much different kettle of fish – 5 years since I’d been on a decent adventure, when I went off to South Carolina and I was all fuelled up for it.

“And Newfoundland?” I hear you ask. That’s all done and dusted and it’s on line. You can read it here.

Monday 9th May 2011 – I WAS CHASED …

… around the bedroom this morning.

And not by Percy Penguin (who doesn’t feature in these pages half as often as she deserves) either, but by a blasted hornet.

And at 07:3 too. Does it have no respect?

Yes, the blasted thing found its way in all right, but could it heck find its way out. And so it decided to awaken me. And by a few of the things that I said to it, you’ll understand the definition of “a rude awakening”.

So having had an early start, I was able to have a good crack at things in here and be out in the garden as early as 11:15. That’s not something that happens every day either.

I managed a really good day in there too and accomplished quite a lot. I even managed to have a little shower too – and it would have been a big one had the water not run out – Brain of Britain having forgotten to fill it the last time.

So a nice, reasonably-clean me headed off to the Anglo-French group.

Back here though, my blog host is down for maintenance. So you age going to have to wait until tomorrow to read this rubbish, aren’t you?

Monday 18th April 2011 – I’ve been gardening today.

Well, after all it is the full moon. Before lunch I planted all of the main crop potatoes – I put 64 into two of the raised beds – the last two that I installed the other week. I’ve had to be careful how I planted them because the baby lettuce that I bought the other week – they are in one of those beds and I’ve had to fit the spuds all around them.

After lunch I planted this week’s seeds – things like cauliflowers, broccoli, carrots, courgettes, beans, peas and so on – they all went outside and into place. In the smaller cloche I planted into small pots some more peppers, chilis, cucumber and gherkins. And there are already some of those sprouting up from a fortnight ago. I’ve also weeded out the strawberry patch in the mega-cloche. That’s doing really well in there and it’s a mass of flowers, looking like there might be a bumper crop, and quite early too. But then again, this magnificent spring has a lot to do with that.

But there is a down-side to this magnificent spring. When I finished weeding and planting, I gave everything a thorough watering. And with no rain for 14 days, all of the casual water, that in buckets and bins and tubs about the place, that’s all gone. All that’s left is my rainwater for household use and there’s just about 150 litres or so of that remaining. I’m drying up and this could make things difficult here. I shall have to start a rain dance if it carries on like this.

But there’s still some water for a shower and at 36.5°C I had one as well. And then off to St Eloy and the Anglo-French Group where I set everyone an exercise – I’d found some old notes that I had made, with useful French phrases that are used in everyday life. And so I set everyone to translate them from French to English, to keep them out of mischief.

And so apart from working on the Newfoundland web pages this morning, that was my lot. Tomorrow we are in the studio at Radio Tartasse again. Don’t the months come round quickly?

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Sunday 17th April 2011 – The full moon tonight …

… was really beautiful. As I was cooking my pizza I had half an eye on it slowly moving around. Later when I was doing the washing up it was just appearing above a rare scattered cloud and it had the little Rutland WG901 wind turbine in a perfect silhouette. I couldn’t resist it.

But rare indeed are the clouds these days. I’m going to be tempting fate by saying that apart from two days where there has been a minimum amount of rain, the odd drop or two, there’s been no rain here at all for 14 days. Now that’s guaranteed to produce a thunderstorm, isn’t it?

And talking of full moons, I reckon I should be spending tomorrow planting, rather like Neil Young’s mates in Thrasher I’ll be hiding behind hay bales and planting in the full moon tomorrow. There are the spuds to put out for a start, as well as a few other things. And there’s definitely more than a few signs of life in the cloche now.

It was Sunday today and so a day of rest. But not really – I was up and about before 10:00 and I did some tidying up in here first as well as doing some research into my Newfoundland pages. But the weather was so gorgeous that I went outside and did some tidying up and general nonsense.

After lunch the water in the home-made immersion heater was at 50-odd degrees, what with the blue cloudless sky and all that, so that was the cue for a load of washing, especially as it was a blowy kind of day. While that was doing itself I went down to Pionsat to watch the 1st XI play St Bonnet. They were a loud-mouthed lippy team when I saw them at home, giving the referee all kinds of grief. Today, the official referee didn’t turn up so Damien ended up refereeing.

That was the cue for all kinds of histrionics.

And just how stupid are some footballers?

It was 1-1 and one of the St Bonnet defenders had already been given a yellow card for dissent. He actually scores a goal a few minutes later to put his team in the lead and to celebrate, goes up to Damien and says “how about that then, you **** **** ****?”

So he’s sent to the dressing room as you might expect, St Bonnet are down to 10 men, the missing player being a defender of course, and Pionsat win 3-2 accordingly

At least, there can’t be any disputes about any of Pionsat’s goals – they are all excellent well-taken efforts especially the second one, which was a peach and worth the price of admission on its own.

But somehow St Bonnet still moan and groan all the way through the final 30 minutes of the match, and carry on long after the final whistle has been blown, but of course it isn’t going to do them any good and I don’t know why they bother.
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So now, with the football being over, it’s back home to finish the washing and while that was doing, I did some more tidying up but this time in the little roon underneath the barn. There’s tons of stuff in there and it all needs to be sorted out.

So tomorrow I have the website to work on for a couple of hours, and then planting my stuff for the second half of April. Tomorrow night is Anglo-Francais night at St Eloy as well – it’s a busy day tomorrow.

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Tuesday 22nd March 2011 – I knocked off early today …

… which might come as a surprise to many, seeing as it was probably the nicest day of the year and that I didn’t wake up this morning until … errr …. 10:20 and so I owe myself a couple of hours.

But once I was up and about I started on the vegetable plots, and not before time either. I cleared away some more of the jungle and that will be where I’ll be putting in another line of raised beds – the spuds will be going in there this year to start them off. You’ll remember that I have about 10 raised beds, in 5 rows of 2. I’ll be putting in a sixth row and also a third bed in that row – the extra bed going behind the compost bins. Ultimately there will be three beds in each row, but that won’t be this year.

I needed the pickaxe to pull up a few tree stumps too – there were in somewhat deep. It’s harder work the further down the slope I go because the further down, the longer the ground has remained undisturbed and the ground alder has got a severe hold down there.

Mark, who comes to the Anglo-French Group, gave me an idea too. He doesn’t use a chainsaw for chopping wood (neither do I) and while I’ve been struggling with all kinds of methods to cut wood, he says he uses an ordinary saw but one with huge teeth. A while ago I was in Brico Depot and saw exactly what he meant – a scie de coffreur – or joiner’s rough-cut saw. I bought one back then, and today I tried it out and I’ll tell you that there’s some mileage in this. It did an excellent job of cutting down overhanging branches.

And so why did I knock off early? Well with it being so nice just now (3 days that I’ve had the fridge running and 2 days that I’ve had no heating) I happened to look at the water in the solar shower tank at 17:00. 28°C. And seeing as there was no wind, it was 15°C outside and bright sunlight, I filled a kettle, boiled it up, made myself a coffee and tipped the rest of the hot water into the solar tank. That brought the temperature up to 42°C and I had an impromptu, unexpected but most welcome solar shower. In March as well. That’s a new all-time record.

And with the water temperature in the home-made immersion heater reaching 59.5°C today, I’m going to keep my eye on it. And if it gets up to that tomorrow, I’m going to do a load of washing using the home-made immersion heater to fill the machine.

That will be exciting.

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Monday 21st March 2011 – And if you thought …

that yesterday’s 260-odd amp-hours was impressive, then what about today’s 300 amp-hours? We haven’t had many days like that in June and July.

Not only that, the water temperature in the home-made immersion heater topped 60°C and that was impressive too. In fact, it was more-than-impressive – it was the highest figure ever recorded. And it’s only March as well.

You can guess the kind of day that we’ve been having today. Cold and windy but totally beautiful.

And what have I been up to today? Last night just as I was going to bed Terry mailed me. “I need to give you your stuff back as I need the van empty”
“Okay” I replied. “I’ll see what I can do. Come round as late as possible”
And so today I started to tidy up in the barn again and make a huge pile of space to put stuff. But then I had a phone call. “I need to come to see The Beguiled. Can I drop your stuff off in an hour’s time?”

So the tidying went out of the window and stuff was thrown everywhere to make a big space. Terry arrived and so did my furniture, and that is nice. There’s still lots of space too, which I’ll need for when I go back and fetch the rest of the stuff. But the barn where I want to put the Ford Cortina 2000E – that can be cleared in a day or so. I just need to move the caravan shell.

I was whacked after that (strange things go on around here) and crashed out – I almost missed the Anglo-French Group meeting but I awoke just in time.

But I’m thinking about this barn. It’s not going to be difficult to put a suspended floor in over the garage bit, you know I’m going to be looking into this

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Monday 17th January 2011 – It was Monday today …

… believe it or not, and this afternoon we went to the recording studio to record our radio programmes for the month of February. And no offer of transport from our sponsors either. It seems that whatever budget that was available was only for 12 months and that has now expired.

Anyway, with a view to not taking this lying down, I have taken some positive action. I’ve created a blog for the radio programmes that we do and the intention is that I will stream the radio programmes on there for the benefit of those who can’t receive them or who forgot to listen to them. And in addition to that I will be offering advertising space, at a very democratic €30 per annum for those who run a business or have a service to offer, or €3 per 15 words per month for small ads and the like, people buying and selling articles and so on. And with the money that we raise, we can pay our own travelling expenses to the studio.

So I need help in spreading the word about the radio blog, and I also need customers to buy the advertising space. If you can do your bit to spread the word it would be a great help.

This morning I was up early (just for a change) and with the new insulation that I bought on Saturday I was able to have a profitable couple of hours doing the bedroom ceiling. And it’s advancing pretty well in there. I’m quite happy with that. This evening though we were in St Eloy for the Anglo-French group and we were so carried away with the discussions that instead of finishing at 21:00 as is our wont, it was almost 22:00 when someone noticed the time.

Tomorrow we are recording again – at Radio Tartasse. I need to encourage them to let me have the radio programmes from their end so that we can put them up on the blog too.

I hope it all works!

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Wednesday 29th December 2010 – I FINISHED MY CD PLAYER THINGY TODAY;

It’s made out of the old CD/SD card stereo out of Caliburn, a pair of speakers that I bought ages ago for the LDV, and then a pile of scrap wood I had lying around, the leftovers of various projects.

It’s really heavy and solid, which is just as it is supposed to be. No tinny rattles and reverberation, just good heavy and solid bass – exactly as I want, and it works perfectly once I worked out that it isn’t the red that’s the live cable but the yellow.

It does exactly what it is supposed to do and I’m impressed with it.

But before that I spent ages cutting up a huge pile of wood. It’s quite damp and airless but simply pulling it out of the lean-to is doing it a little good. And it won’t be long before I can start to use that room for what it is intended to be – a kind-of washroom and gas bottle store, the outside composting WC, some stairs up to the first floor and a general storage area.

It’s nice to see it emptying, and quite quickly too. In fact, if I knew where my huge sledgehammer was, I could demolish the concrete feeding troughs in there and get started on that tomorrow.

After lunch I started on some more studding on the front wall and I now have another length of this space-blanket insulation on there. It won’t be long now before all of that is done, and then I can start on the plasterboarding. This will be done with the huge sheets that have the insulation built-in and they are not going to be easy to cut and manoeuvre.

But once it’s on, then that will be that indeed.

Finally, I hunted around for more wood from the pile that I cut up 18 months ago and which was scattered to the four winds when we put the scaffolding up. A few more loads was recovered and piled up in the heap at the side of the lean-to and now that’s overflowing with wood with plenty more to come.

This woodpile is getting out of hand now – it’s amazing just how much wood you can have from just doing a bit of hedge-trimming.

And I’m in demand too. I’m wanted on Friday afternoon to help move a bed and then deliver it to Espinasse and then I’ve been invited to the Reseau Rural‘s New Years Day party on Saturday.

Yes, after all of the disputes that went on over the “Temoin de Whatsit” and the Teilhet goatslayers (for which I am still awaiting an apology by the way) a few years ago, you might think that my sudden surge to popularity is a sign of my own good character and likeable qualities that have been sorely missed by the members.

But the cynic in me tells me nothing of the sort.

In fact, following the spectacular collapse of the Reseau a short while ago and the general level of (dis)interest shown by anyone else, there’s only me doing anything (namely organising the Anglo-French Conversation Group) and hence there’s only me that has an active e-mail list of all the members.

And so if you want to hold a New Year party and invite everyone you need to come to me for the list of addresses. And you can hardly ask me to send out an invitation to everyone and NOT include me on the list of invitees, could you?

But then again, the definition of a cynic is someone who sees things as they are and not as they are supposed to be. And that’s me to a Tee.

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Monday 20th December 2010 – I MADE A LITTLE PROGRESS TODAY.

Yes, I now have the first sheet of plasterboard on the wall in the bedroom.

Mind you, it wasn’t until late afternoon that I got as far as doing that.

This morning was … errr … rather a late start and after breakfast I went and cut up a huge pile of wood. The deeper I dig into the lean-to the worse the quality of wood seems to be and it’s taking ages for it to catch light, so I cut a huge pile of the old laths that were on the barn roof. They should burn like Billio. I want to empty the lean-to as you know so I reckon I’ll use a half-load of that with a half-load of old laths each time I fill up the woodstove.

I was just about to cut my hair, seeing as it’s all nice and clean, but Terry turned up. He’d been hedge-trimming at The Beguiled and so he came round to look at the bedroom. While he was here we measured up the windows for the bedroom and the bathroom and one day this week when Terry and Liz are going to Montlucon I’ll tag a ride and go and buy the windows.

After that, the hair-cutting recommenced but A DISASTER. I somehow managed to walk on my no1 fitting. And so after many hours of messing around with that I ended up … errr … shaving my head with the thing and that was that.

Lunch at 15:30 (I was rather carried away, wasn’t I?) followed by finishing the odds and ends of insulation in the bedroom, and then fitting the first sheet of plasterboard. And then I lost the light.

But with the meeting of the Anglo-French group being in St Eloy and me needing some shopping, I went early into there and took the opportunity of doing a load of washing in the launderette. It’s going to be ages before I’ll have the weather conditions suitable to do any washing here.

And now it’s gone cold again. And they are talking of snow for Thursday. But at least I’ve now restocked with food, I’ve plenty of wood and gas, so what more do I need?

A few days of bright brilliant sunshine would be nice.

Monday 13th December 2010 – AND AFTER A DAY …

… where I did nothing at all (and I mean nothing at all) it was back to work today.

First job was of course the fire and the wood but by way of a change I rearranged it all today as I was fed up of the heap collapsing every five minutes. it’s now in a bigger, deeper box so there’s more room for it to spread out and the place looks a little neater up here.

There’s another load of wood cut up for the next few days and the lean-to is looking emptier and emptier. If I put my mind to it I could do the stairs in there this week but the weather will have to warm up quite a bit before I venture outside for a long period.

Emptying Caliburn took a while too. The wood and the breeze blocks are still in there but everything else is out and put away as far as is possible, and so I was finally ready to start work.

Not quite though, because there was still some slate in the way. 9 bucket-loads went downstairs onto the pile and that was that. There’s some room to move about in there now although I still have much more stuff to sort out in there. Nevertheless I’ve managed to put all of the framework onto the long wall in the bedroom and I followed that up with another length of insulation.

But that was all, though, because due to my Sunday inactivity I had things to do – like make a start on the Christmas Special. That took a couple of hours and I reckon I’ve done about a third of it. At the moment I’m just writing down whatever comes into my head and I can edit it once I’ve got to the end of my ideas. But it’s coming together nicely and I reckon that I may well be on to something with this.

Tomorrow I’ll do some more work in the bedroom and a bit more on the Christmas Special unless the weather warms up dramatically and I can work outside. But not much hope of that as we are on course for another candidate for the coldest night of the winter. When I came home tonight after my Monday night conviviality it was -3.9°C outside. In the 45 minutes it took to make a quick tea and wash up it had plummeted to -5.1°C. Heaven alone knows what it is right now.

Tuesday 21st September 2010 – I’ve been really busy today ….

… and I couldn’t really afford to spend the time as I have so much to do.

This morning we had to go to this radio station in Marcillat en Combraille to discuss the arrangements for the programme they want us to do. And what we discussed was almost exactly the same and no different from the last time we were there. Mind you, the guy we talked to was as interested in the Ligne Economique as I am and he told me that he has ridden on it to Durdat Larequille. And seeing as the line closed in 1932 and he has ridden on it, then he probably has a good excuse for forgetting things.

He was minded by a woman who may well have been his wife, and while she was much more purposeful about things and helped to keep her husband on track, she had hearing issues. So as you might expect, this meeting was a bundle of laughs. But nevertheless we did fit in a good chat about solar panels, the Anglo-French group and Terry’s little business.

Then it was off to the Mairie to give them copies of the photos from Saturday.They are “internet” quality so if they want them at proper press quality (350dpi and all that) they can tell me which ones.

Then off to Marianne’s where I stayed for ages talking about Pionsat-Patrimoine, the Anglo-French group, the newspaper, the Foreign library and all that kind of thing. Things are moving around here, although you wouldn’t believe it.

The next people to have the pleasure of my company were the people at the bank. I warned them that I would be going to Canada shortly and so not to be surprised at my “extraordinary expenditure” and not to cancel my bank card – not like 2002. I suppose I ought to do that for a couple of other cards too.

I also bumped into Damien from the football club while I was in Pionsat.

Rob and Nicolette were out so I couldn’t give them their photographs (they were out later too) and so after lunch I wrote a few important letters (it’s great having a printer that works!) and carried on with my researches. And I might just be onto something. A company called Tiger Rentals might let me have a Toyota Yaris for just about $1500 CAN – about €1100. It’s said that this figure includes the collision damage waiver and all taxes, allows unlimited mileage and permits travel to the USA and the rest of Canada. Now this sounds too good to be true so I’ve sent them a mail for confirmation.

Watch this space.

Of course I need to pay for the accommodation on top but a Yaris does just about 50mpg whereas a motorhome will do just about 18 to the gallon if you are very lucky before you even think about the extra rental charges and whatever charges you might have to pay for camping.

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Monday 6th September 2010 – I just KNEW …

… that it wouldn’t be THAT easy.

I’ve been all the way to Clermont Ferrand today about this perishing driving licence. And here’s a pic of part of the centre of the city with the Puy-de-Dome towering in the distance. I hope you like it.

So I got to the city early this morning (well, early for me, anyway), found a parking space, paid for three hours parking and picked up a nice thick book (on the Treaty of Yalta, in French if you must know) as I know what these Government departments are like

At the prefecture I took my ticket for the queue and was totally astonished to find that the number of people ahead of me in the queue is … errr … NONE – now that’s a first in any Civil Service department anywhere in the world. What a waste of all of this parking money that I’ve just spent!

And so the woman at the counter went through my paperwork, and suddenly came to a dead stop.

“What’s this?” she said, brandishing a document that she had found.
“It’s my medical statement that I had done on Friday” I replied
“I can see that” she said, “but why have you had it done?”
So I explained slowly and gently that it was for a PSV and HGV driving licence.
“I can see that” she replied “but who told you to do it?”
“I understood that this was the procedure and no-one has told me any different” I replied
“Well, the doctor should certainly have told you different. He ought to know that for all new French commercial driving licences, whether for a new candidate or a transfer in from abroad, the medical is done here by our official doctor!”

So I explained that I needed the licence, and an International one to boot, by the end of September. She retaliated by offering me a medical appointment in, if I heard her correctly, the year 2016.
Yes, it was too good to be true. I knew it would be.

But after a lengthy discussion she did in fact become quite helpful in her own way. She promised to do her best to have my medical certificate accepted. And if she failed, she would send my Belgian licence back to me to take to Canada, but she would “make sure” that I received an International Driving licence.

Now having had years of promises made to me by all kinds of Civil Servants the world over, my bitter experience is to reserve judgement until I have the paperwork in hand. But it was really nice to find a French Civil Servant doing her best to deal with a difficulty that is not covered by the rules and regulations, and doing her best to think around corners and find a solution.

So after that I went for a wander around. I had paid for all this parking and I wasn’t going to waste it. And in any case I hardly know Clermont Ferrand, even though it’s the “county town” of the area where I live.

The most important place to visit in Clermont Ferrand is the cathedral. I went inside and managed to take one photo, and then we had an announcement –
“it is now midday and the cathedral is closing until 14:00. Could all visitors make their way to the exits”.
Yes, even God has his two-hour lunch break here in France. Heaven help the sinners in the meantime.

I can’t be doing with this.

So had a good wander around until 13:15 and then off to the Footy offices where they gave me some log-in details for the website so that I can see my programme. And I am indeed refereeing on Sunday as announced earlier.

Then to Brico Depot for some wood for Terry, followed by a stop off at the Carrefour at Riom for some shopping. But I didn’t do much as I was waylaid at the computer counter. I have a couple of printers here – the very old first-generation printer/scanner/copier that won’t work on Windoze Vista and so I have to copy it onto the old laptop to print it, and the little DJ540 that swallows expensive ink cartridges at an alarming rate. And I need a working printer to print out my refereeing stuff and stuff for the local history group, so I was pricing up another load of cartridges for theDJ540 when I was interrupted by a pile of Epson SX115 printer/scanner/photocopiers reduced on sale to just €49. And the ink for them is the cheapest on offer. So I bit the bullet and purchased one of the aforementioned.

At Liz and Terry’s I gave Terry his wood and inspected our new toy, the Ifor Williams trailer, which isn’t half a mega-beast and well-worth the money that we paid, and then back here to pull more caterpillars off my brassica – I’m in the middle of the second round of the cabbage-white infestation.

It was my turn to animate the Anglo-French group this evening and I had everyone discussing DiY tools and words that derive from them. It went down rather well.

And in other news, terrorists have attempted to bomb a Primary School packed with children, and an 8 year old boy discovered the primed and armed bomb, picked it up and took it into the classroom to show all of his classmates. The carnage that might have been caused can only be imagined.

Now where did this outrage take place? Iraq? Afghanistan? Well actually, it was in Antrim, Northern Ireland, which for those of you who are geographically-challenged, is in the UK. Of course it is rather ironic about how the UK is going to war to deal with “terrorists” who attack armed soldiers who are trained to fight back and to kill, so I carefully scrutinised the news report for the expressions of outrage, horror and revulsion from the British Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the B liar and assorted American politicians who have criticised Scotland’s “interaction” with one of that ilk, yet do you know what? There’s not a word!

And I wonder what they would have said if it had not been the white-skinned Paddy O’Reilly who had planted this device, but the brown-skinned Abdul Mohammed?

And I’m waiting for the aforementioned Paddy O’Reilly to be uncovered and to be named as someone with an interest in the Irish Republic, because I shall be eagerly awaiting the Anglo-American invasion of that country to sort out that nest of vipers that are sending foreign fighters abroad to spread their messages of extremism and hatred amongst innocent children.

But I am not holding my breath as it isn’t going to happen. The Brits and the Americans, and the Irish, and most of the other white-skinned westerners are the biggest bunches of hypocrites I have ever encountered.

It makes me sick.

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Monday 2nd August 2010 – We talked about the rain.

And I can tell you with complete confidence that in the 18 hours from about 14:15 to 08:15 this morning we had a total of 42mm. Now that is not all that far short of a record, and it gives you some kind of an idea of what kind of weather we had just now.

The morning was dark and miserable – at about 10:00 I was getting a total of about 2 amps of my charging system, a right winter’s day type of charge. Mind you this afternoon it brightened up considerably and it was quite warm. But it didn’t last and as I was leaving Pionsat after the Anglo-French group meeting we were having torrential rainstorms again.

As I turned up the lane to here I noticed the sun setting between two heavy rain clouds and so I quickly took a pic. I didn’t have much time to set up and what with the driving rain it’s not come out as well as it might.

But it’s impressive just the same and I’m getting to like this new Nikon D5000 camera. And that’s just as well, considering the money that I spent on buying it. I’d be disappointed with anything else.

We managed to get a load of work done on the roof today in between the rainstorms. All of the chevrons are on and they are bricked in and cemented into position. It looks quite impressive. Tomorrow we can add the laths and the voltige and put the tiles back on, that is if the weather lets us. It’s looking pretty ominous outside there right now.

After we knocked off on this roof Terry came to give me a hand in this lean-to for 10 minutes, for which I was grateful. We took out the collapsed beam and fitted the new one, and then fitted the other new one into the beam hangers against the wall.

After Terry left I had a root around upstairs in the barn and came across some 25mm planks. They are now fitted and you can see the hole in the floor where the stairs will come in from downstairs.

Once the floor was fitted I roofed the place over with a pile of corrugated iron sheet that I have found over the years in various places. I have some others but they are underneath firewood, gravel, hardcore and the like, preventing that from being infiltrated by weeds. I looked out for a tarpaulin but the only one I could find was a 6×4 meter and I don’t want to waste that. I’ll have to buy another 4×2 metre that should do, and I’ll need a thin piece of 25mm to fit against the wall.

And I was carried away doing that and so almost missed the start of the Anglo-French Group meeting tonight. That shows you how keen I was.

-1

Monday 19th July 2010 – There was no conversation group today …

… so Clotilde invited a couple of us round for a chat and some snacks, which was very nice of her. Of course Strawberry Moose came along too to meet some of his admirers.

Clotilde’s house is gorgeous but it’s really discouraging to hear her say that it took 46 years to get it into the condition that it’s in today. And she showed us a photo of how it was when she bought it – and it really was a right tip too.

On the way down to Clotilde’s, I went the long way round with my new camera via the birdwatching centre at the back of St Gervais d’Auvergne seeing as how it was a beautiful early evening. This as you know is my favourite photography spot.

Here’s a beautiful view of the Gorge de la Sioule just down there in the centre of the photograph and over away to the left is the church at Sauret Besserve

I wanted to take a couple of photos of the view from there – a view which you all know is one of the best in the whole of France – and see how the new camera performs in the excellent weather conditions.

This is a close-up of the radio antenna on the Puy-de-Dome – a little bit of crop-and-enlarge from a full-size image. We have a new high-quality lens and I was keen to see how that performed too.

But that wasn’t all that was exciting about my little visit to the centre ornithologique this evening. As I was there this evening, the moon rose. Quite early for once, I know, and so I gave it a little go with the new lens too.

Quite honestly, this photo couldn’t have come out much better, could it?

All in all, I’m well-impressed with my new camera and lens. And quite rightly so, considering the money that I’ve spent on it.

Back at Pooh Corner this morning, Terry has started on Lieneke’s roof and I’ve been roped in to help. That’s going to be the plan for the next few weeks I suppose. And her roof is a right mess – far worse than mine was – and only patching a part of it is not going to be a long-term solution, for the more that you rip off the more damage that you find.

The chimney is leaning quite ominously too and I don’t like the look of it.

But it was hot up there on that roof today and my being stung by a wasp didn’t help matters much. 30-odd years since I was last stung by a wasp and now it’s twice in as many weeks.

And we’ve set a couple of records today. A total of 317 amp-hours on the two banks in the house will take some matching. And 44 degrees in the solar heat exchanger and 42.5 in the electric heater – those figures are impressive too. I’ve been thinking about the electric water heater – a 25-litre oil drum would do the job but an old milk churn with lid would be even better. I need to search the brocantes.

But at Clotilde’s this evening I did hear a story about a man who ran some cold water slowly onto his tin roof and took a shower underneath the downspout – and burnt himself, the water was so hot. And here I am, just having fitted about 150 sq m of metal roof on my barn. I’d love to try that out!

EPIC HALL

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