Tag Archives: clermont ferrand

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.

-3

Friday 3rd September 2010 – In a change to the advertised programme ….

…. I had a day off today. Totally unplanned but somehow things just seem to work out that way. But first, just have a look at this picture. And what do you make of it? You might need to enlarge it first.

The giveaway clues are in between the two rails in centre pic and also in the top left corner.

What has happened is that at some time or other some kind of railway conveyance has come off the rails at the points just here and ridden along the sleepers for a long way. And no-one has bothered to repair the damage.

Where I am in fact is at the old Les Ancizes-St Georges de Mons railway station, where I have been for a prowl around this evening. This is on the abandoned railway line between Lapeyrouse and Volvic – the one that crosses over the Viaduc des Fades and which was closed in dramatic fashion a couple of years ago when they “suddenly discovered” that the viaduct was unsafe. But you know me and my conspiracy theories – I reckon that the closure was planned for years and the lack of maintenance along the line merely proves it. And not replacing these clearly-badly-damaged sleepers just adds more fuel to the fire.

So how come I had a day off when it wasn’t planned?

This morning I went to the doctor’s to have my football medical signed off – if I want to play I need a certificate. As it happened, it cost me nothing as all my details of the medical I had for my referee’s test were on file.

So that was good.

Then I decided that seeing as I was in St Eloy I would do my shopping. and LIDL was good too.

I needed some more identity photos so I went to Carrefour where I planned to finish my shopping. But no photo booth!
“We don’t have one” they said.
“So where do people go for their identity photos?”
“The professional photographer” she said – and watched me splutter.
“Anyway” she added “he’s closed until 15:00”
Sod this for a game of soldiers – a 50-mile round trip where I drove to the Intermarche at Commentry – I know that they have one. Mind you, I half-expected it to be closed for lunch or the machine out of order but no – it worked, and that must be a first.

They aren’t have having their money’s worth out of me, running around to collect all this paperwork.

On the way back and passing through Marcillat en Combraille I went to look at a building that I noticed when I was with Liz the other evening. Now is this a former railway station or is it a former railway station? You can even see the platform.

In fact what we here was the terminus of the Ligne Economique, – the narrow-gauge railway that ran between Marcillat en Combraille and Commentry.

Commentry is a steel-making town and there was a huge lime furnace just a mile or so away from here, so it’s no surprise that there was a railway line between the two towns. The station building here is in a direct line with the old lime furnaces, but modern building has obscured whatever track there might have been in between the two.

The narrow gauge track was ploughed up in 1930 when they built the standard gauge line over its track bed, so when the main line service was suspended in 1939, Marcillat en Combraille lost its passenger service completely, even though the rest of the tacot system staggered on into the 1950s

So while I was here in Marcillat en Combraille I went to the local Mairie and the secretary agreed to talk to the people who know, to see what help might be given for my proposed research

At Pionsat I dropped off my forms at the Football Club, only to find that I can’t find the receipt for the referee’s stuff, and I’ll need that if I want the club to pay it. I remember seeing it floating around the van so I picked it up to put somewhere safe. That says it all really.

So after a solar shower I went to St George for my HGV medical, and here’s another doctor who tells me that there is nothing dropping off quite yet. Mind you, he had me doing some funny things like standing on one leg with my eyes closed and all of that. And as I’m after a change of licence and an International licence he gave me my file back and told me to take it myself to Clermont Ferrand on Monday.

On the way back I went for a prowl around the deserted and abandoned railway station at Les Ancizes and took a pile of photos, a couple of of which you have seen above. In his book First and Last Loves” John Betjeman wrote that “Nothing is more empty than a deserted fairground”. But that was because in his day there weren’t any deserted railway stations. He’d change his tune if he were alive today.

And after coffee at Liz and Terry’s I came home just in time for tea at 21:00. And now you see what I mean. Tomorrow I shall have to work to catch up.

-1

Thursday 2nd September 2010 – I had a little fun today …

… with the Nikon. As you know, I’ve started to work on a little website about Virlet, and the major claim to fame of the village is the Dominican Abbey of Bellaigue.

You can see it from the end of my lane, way down in the valley below and so I took a pic of it. And considering that it’s about 6 km away it’s come out rather well.

The camera by the way is set to images of 4200×3000 or something like that, and the quality of the image is set to HIGH.

What I have done with it though is to reduce it to 800×533 and set the quality to 42% – what I always do for images that I’m posting to the web.

The next bit was the exciting part. What I have done is cropped out a section that is just 350 x 220 or thereabouts and blown it up to 800×533. I had to sharpen the image a little but I reckon that this has come out superbly.

Like I said, it’s 6 kilometres away from where I took the pic. Spending that money on that 105mm (3xzoom) lens has been well-spent if you ask me.

>Now despite what I said yesterday, I didn’t go to Clermont Ferrand today. I made it as far as the mairie but the secretary was involved with some complicated with someone and it took 40 minutes while I was there! So by the time I had my paperwork and had reached Clermont Ferrand, it would have been lunchtime and I would have been hanging around for a couple of hours.

But she had given me a list of doctors authorised to give medicals for truck and bus drivers, so I rang them to see about an appointment for me. The first one said “mid-October” – the second one said the same. And none of this surprised me. Long-term followers of my outpourings will remember all of this from before.

The next doctor I tried said “Friday 18:00”.
“Like tomorrow?” I asked with disbelief
“Yes, tomorrow” he confirmed.

So badger going to Clermont Ferrand this afternoon and trying to blag my way around getting my commercial licenses somehow. I can go on Monday with all of the paperwork properly complete. I worked hard to get my commercial licenses so I’m not going to surrender them lightly, that’s for sure.

So this afternoon I added a couple more buckets of mortar to the wall. And ended the day with a solar shower. Only 35.5°C so it was rather cool, but welcome nevertheless.

-4

Wednesday 1st September2010 – A couple of things have happened today …

… that have been well-worth recording.

Firstly, an event that happens so rarely that a note needs to be made of it so that it can silence my critics, and that is that I was up, washed and breakfasted this morning before the alarm went off. And how often does that happen? It must be my guilty conscience pricking me, or else I wet the bed or something.

Mind you, this back trouble that I have, with it sticking to the sheets, is something of a recent phenomenon. When I lived in Crewe, you know I was quite an early riser. For example, there were 37 magistrates that sat on the bench of the Crewe Petty Sessions and I was up before them on a regular basis.

Second thing that happened to day was that the home-made immersion heater that has been ticking along quite nicely, burst into frenzied activity today.

52 degrees it made, with an ambient temperature of just 21.5. And by the time the water had finished doing its stuff it had reached 53.5. A load of insulation wrapped round that will see that fine, I reckon.

But the sun has gone down from the solar water and it struggled up to 31 degrees, even though it was bright sunshine outside. However a bucket of water out of the small boiler settled that and I had a nice shower this evening. I’d already sampled some of the hot water for a wash and shave as I was going out. I like this boiler!

There were two reasons why I had to look pretty. Firstly I’ve been appointed to this referee’s whatsit. I’ve had my letter today, so it was off to Montlucon to buy some kit. A nice shirt, shorts, socks, whistle and red and yellow cards. What else does a man need?

The sports shop where I had to go for my kit is opposite the Auchan and so I have to go past the big traffic lights at the top of the hill. And this was the site that caught my eye this morning.

The big Saint Maclou home decoration place seems to have suffered a major catastrophe since the last time that I passed this way. This is a bit of a mess, isn’t it? I wonder what happened here.

And that’s not all that was interesting either. An ancient Peugeot 404 pick-up caught my eye while I was waiting at the traffic lights.

Back 20 years ago you would see thousands of these with their huge canvas tilts on French roads and they were the arch-typical French motor vehicle. Every farmer or rural dweller was the owner of one of these. However, today, you are very lucky if you actually see one. They are a dying breed and that’s so sad.

One thing that I learnt when I was talking to Franck in the Sports Shop is that have to go to Clermont Ferrand on Saturday 11th September for a referees’ induction meeting. It starts at 08:45 – heck, I can’t even normally make my kitchen for then!

But the second reason for going out was that Liz and I had been summoned to Marcillat en Combraille – the offices of Radio Tartasse, a small local radio station that broadcasts to the south of the Allier and the eastern Creuze as far as Gueret. They want to franchise “Radio Anglais” too. Yes our fame is spreading.

And after going to a cafe in Marcillat en Combraille, where the waiter forgot to bring us out coffees, Liz and I went for a nosey around the old station site there, now that I have been able to work out where it is.

This is the railway station of the very, very ephemeral railway line built by the Paris-Orleans railway company between Montlucon and Gouttieres

I say “ephemeral” because it really was. Although the line was agreed back in the 1880s to be of public utility, it was the “discovery” of coal at Gouttieres (about which we talked a good few weeks ago) at the turn of the 20th Century that provided the impetus for the building of the line to start.

1912 was when construction started and was stopped at the start of World War I, before any kind of real progress had been made.

By the time the War was over, it had been discovered that the Gouttieres coal seam was uneconomic and its exploitation had been abandoned, so further progress on the line was very half-hearted indeed.

It wasn’t until 1932 that the line was finally opened, and the passenger service lasted just 7 years. At the outbreak of World War II it was suspended “for the duration” and was never seriously restarted – certainly this far down the line.

Although a goods service continued on the line as far as Pionsat until the 1960s, the last passenger train on any part of the line was a weekly service between Paris and Neris-les-Bains which ceased operation in 1957.

Sticking our heads to the window of the railway station though, we could see in what was the public waiting room some really wonderful railway posters from the 1930s advertising all kinds of railway excursions.

So there you are then – wasn’t that an exciting day out?

Phew!

-2

Tuesday 31st August 2010 – I’ve been out and about …

… for part of the day today.

One of the places that I visited today was Virlet, the village that is my postal address. And while I was there I went to take a few photographs.

Now that my website is practically up-to-date I’ve started on doing some new stuff and one of the things I’m working on is a page about the village. There’s nothing at all in English about it.

While I was there for the brocante I took a few pics but I really wanted one of the church. There has never been a decent one because it’s surrounded by clutter – a stone wall, trees, the village hall etc.

So I had this idea of driving right across to the other side of the valley, using the 105mm (3x) zoom, doing a nice long-hop (it’s over a mile away across there) and then cropping the church out of the photo.

And do you know, it’s come out rather well. It really is the only position where you can see it to its best advantage , and in fact I’ve never seen a photo of the church taken from this position. I’m well-pleased with this.

So why was I in Virlet today?

Two reasons really. Firstly to obtain an attestation that I am a resident in the area and secondly to have a copy of the list that gives the names and addresses of doctors who are authorised to give medical examinations for commercial driving licences. If I’m changing my driving licence for a new one I may as well change my truck and bus (and taxi) licences too while I’m at it. You never know what might happen.

But of course, as you would expect, it wasn’t all plain sailing. The mayor’s secretary is away today and he doesn’t have a clue what to do. So I’ll have to go back on Thursday. You’ve never ever seen anything like this place for chaos. But at least the guy at the Driving Licence centre answered his phone this morning and he was even helpful. I don’t have much time to apply for this licence so I need to put my skates on. I’ll go down to Clermont Ferrand on Thursday when I have my attestation.

So this afternoon I carried on with the pointing and it doesn’t half take ages to do. You can see just how far I’ve done today – the grey-mortared bit at the lower edge of the wall. That’s about one-sixteenth of the wall done. At this rate it will take for ever but I’ll keep on plugging away at it as long as the weather lets me.

And that might not be for long – last night the temperature fell to 7.2°C, the lowest so far. I ahve all the windows closed up here and I’m wearing a jacket – in August.

And in other news, Terry and I are now the owners of an Ifor Williams 2.5-tonne trailer. Fed-up of messing about with old trailers that won’t even carry a set of scaffolding when they are working properly, we have bitten the bullet and paid up. It’ll move the scaffolding and Terry’s tractor quite nicely, help me fetch all my cars down here, and we can hire it out as well to make a little bit on the side, like we do with the scaffolding.

-3

Monday 30th August 2010 – No photo tonight people.

That’s because I forgot to take one, and probably there wasn’t anything worth photographing anyway. But what a day it was!

This morning started with the website. I’m trying to bring August 2010 right up to date and then that will be all the arrears sorted out and I can move on to doing some new stuff. I’ve not had the opportunity to do anything to it properly for over a year.

So when the battery went flat I went outside to try to sort myself out a wheelbarrow. The Caliburn-coloured one won’t be going anywhere for a bit. It was okay until a huge pile of slates from the house roof landed in it from a great height last year and that blew the tubeless tyre off the beading and try as I might I can’t get it to go back. So into the barn to look for the B&Q wheelbarrow that is in pieces and I eventually tracked all of the pieces down, despite doing a good deal of tidying up … “Aren’t you feeling well?” – ed … and discovering more things I never even knew that I had.

That inner tube is perished and the two tubes that Claude gave me – so are they and so that was that. I’ll have to bite the bullet and get some wheels or tubes the next time the lorry comes round, or see what there is on ebay.

This afternoon I played a round of the French national sport of “here we go round the mulberry bush” trying to get a Social Security number. Seven different numbers I was given, and seven different people I spoke to until I finally found someone who could help me with this. Apparently I need to produce a birth certificate giving not only the details about myself but also the details about my parents.

Now many people reading this blog, especially Turdi de Hatred and everyone else from OUSA, will be wondering how I will be able to find out the details of my father, and they would be surprised at how close they might be to the truth.

But having said all of this I can understand why it is that so many people in France work on the Black Economy. It’s not that they have any lack of goodwill, it’s just that they get totally fed up of this absurd and relentless paper chase and I can’t say I blame them as I was pretty fed up by this time too and ready to renounce my registration and do it all stumeling, as they say in Flanders.

And the best is yet to come. I need to change my driving licence over to a French one so I rang the sous-prefecture. They told me that I can’t do it there but at the prefecture in Clermont Ferrand. They gave me the number but told me not to ring as apparently the guy doesn’t answer his phone in the afternoon. And do you know what? They were dead right too.

It’s not surprising that no-one ever does any business around here.

I mentioned Turdi de Hatred just now, and that reminded me. When I was at the brocante yesterday I came across a video entitled Return Of The Living Dead. You know, I had no idea that anyone had filmed her reading out the Open University Students Association election results.

So after my marathon session on the phone I went into the garden and sorted out the veg for tea – a veggie burger with onions and garlic, and with spuds, carrots, beans, spinach, sage, rosemary and mint from my garden. Beautiful it was too.

But the meal is in the future. While the veg was soaking itself I mixed a bucket of mortar and started on the pointing of the house wall in the lean-to. High time I did that so I can put the lean-to roof on again. But it’s going to take me forever I reckon. It doesn’t go as quick as you like it and you might remember what happens if you take the cheating way out and just crepi it to hide the gaps. There’s a pic of the results of that on this blog from a few weeks ago.

When the bucket was empty and it was 17:40 – not worth mixing another – I went to chop some wood. An after a little while I rediscovered the branch cutter that had seized up and stopped working. Now that I have a workbench and a place to work I stripped it down to look at it and sure enough there was a bolt that was badly worn that was distorting the cutting angle. So I swapped it round with a less-important bolt from another part of the machine, cleaned and greased it, and now that’s that fixed.

My day isn’t finished yet either! Bernard from the footy club rang up. Apparently my name is now on the referees’ list for the forthcoming season and so he gave me the telephone number of the sports outfitters who supply the club, and told me to order what I need in the way of referee’s clobber.

No wonder I’m knackered after all of this!

-3

Friday 6th August 2010 – I had a bit of a day out today.

One of the places that I visited was the Meandre de Queuille – where the River Sioule makes an incredibly tight turn around a promontory of hard rock (yes, we ought to put a cafe on it – I know).

I’ve never been here before, even though it is something of a local tourist attraction that brings the crowds a-flocking. But maybe that’s the reason – having spent as long as I did working in the tourism industry my cynicism has made me immune to all this kind of thing.

That’s not the only thing that’s interesting about this place – at least, from my point of view. There’s also a dam – or barrage – across the Gorge de la Sioule just here and a very early hydro-electric generating plant.

Following the success of the hydro plant across the Sioule at the Viaduc des Fades, they built this one here in 1905. There’s a drop of 24 metres that powers 6 turbines that have an output of something like 20,000 volts and the power was supplied to the city of Clermont Ferrand.

I had set out originally to go to see these Health Assurance people. As I’m now a French businessman the health cover that I have is deemed insufficient. I’m required to take out a complementary assurance. But as luck would have it, the cover that I do have is recognised by the French government so I only needed to take out a top-up cover that makes up the difference between the total cost of any treatment and the amount that I would be reimbursed.

It isn’t cheap but in actual fact it is cheaper than the insurance I could take out in Belgium.

After that I hit the shops – Carrefour, LIDL and Bricomarche in Riom and the Auchan in Clermont Ferrand. And nothing of any real excitement except a USB fan for €3:00 – I’ll install that in Caliburn.

Outside the Bricomarche I saw the absolute ideal trailer. It’s 4 metres long, takes 2 tonnes in weight and has a double-axle with 13-inch wheels. It’s a bit knocked about but it’s not all that bad. It belongs to a company that is rebuilding part of the Bricomarche and the manager says that they haven’t used it in years. “So is it for sale then?” I asked optimistically. “Dunno” replied the manager “but I can find out”. So now that he has my phone numder we will have to wait and see.

But the most interesting part of the day was just outside Chatelguyon this morning. You’ve all heard of staff-and-ticket single line railway working. On single track railways there’s a danger that if two trains are heading towards each other they will have a collision. So what they do is to divide the line up into lengths with a signalman at each end and a passing place. These sections are called blocks.

Each block has its distinct staff – a brightly coloured stick – and no train can proceed into the block unless the signalman can give it the staff. If he cant give it the staff, because it is with the signalman at the other end, the train has to wait in the passing place until a train coming the other way brings back the staff. With only one staff then of course there can only be one train in the block at any one time and hence the risk of collision is nil.

Of course it may be a while before the staff comes back to our signalman from the signalman at the other end of the block and if two trains are following each other this could be inconvenient. What our signalman would do then is to show the staff to the first driver who would then sign a movement book in the signalbox to say that he had seen the staff, and he would be given a ticket to proceed, which he would hand to the signalman at the other end of the block in lieu of the staff – effectively reminding the second signalman that the staff is still at the other end of the block and that another train is following.

And so today they were resurfacing the road in the hills outside Chatelguyon. The road was cut down to single-track and there were no traffic lights but a man was there stopping the traffic. There was a stream of cars coming the other way and the last car stopped and handed the workman a brightly-coloured object. Once that car had gone the workman waved us forward and showed us all the object – his authority to allow us to proceed and which he would presumably give to the last car in the queue to take to the other end.

I’ve never seen this done before on the public highway. I was impressed!

-2

Thursday 1st July 2010 – I mentioned yesterday …

… that one side of the barn roof is finished. And so, here’s a pic that I took this morning not long after I woke up.

It’s quite impressive this roofing stuff isn’t it?

I’ve been quite busy today, although it might not seem much like it. I started off with a little gardening and then went into Pionsat for 11:00 to meet Max the secretary of Pionsat’s football club who had to sign a document or two for me.

Then it was back to gardening again and everything that is going to be planted this year is now planted and that is that.

That took me until 13:10 when I went chaud-pied into Montlucon. First stop was LIDL as they were selling some more 12-volt LEDs and at €3.99 too – I bought a pile of them. And then to Brico Depot for the guttering, the nails and stuff. No downpipes and no joints (it’s a rather familiar lament isn’t it?) but tons of other stuff, including a pile of drawers (not THAT kind of drawers, Rhys!). Yes, here I am planning to build myself a fitted wardrobe and a fitted kitchen and there they were with some end-of-range drawer kit – deep 40mm ones at €3.50 (you can’t even buy the sliders for that) and deep 60mm ones at €5.00. I now have 8 of each which is impressive.

Following that was my test d’effort. They put me on a running walkway thing for 7 minutes and attached a load of electrodes to me. I ran about 2.5km in that time (and in that heat too – it’s been glorious today) and the verdict is “very good condition for his age”. I sound like a horse or an old Ford Cortina.

I’d missed the post by then and so I had to drive all the way to Clermont Ferrand to deliver my file to the Referees’ Association, taking in a visit to the Auchan on the way. And I can’t find my satnav now – another thing I’ve mislaid.

But the highlight of the day had to be in the doctor’s this afternoon. He was helping me fill in the medical form –
“Sex?” he asked
“Put down ‘yes’ for that” I replied.
“Errrr … I think they wan’t you to put down ‘M’ or ‘F’ there” said the doctor.
“Okay – put down ‘M’ then” I said. “It’s been years since I’ve had an ‘F'”.

-2

Wednesday 5th May 2010 – This is just flaming ridiculous!

It’s the 5th of May today (did you all have a good Star Wars Day yesterday?) and we have had a heavy snowfall. It’s unbelievable.

We were out and about on our travels today, as I told you yesterday, and on the way down to Clermont Ferrand we noticed in the rain that at times it was looking like snow. In Clermont Ferrand we saw one or two cars that had a covering of snow, which surprised us greatly.

But that was nothing like the surprise that we had as we were coming back over the Col des Goules near Orcival we were greeted by the sight in this photo. This is just absurd.

Mind you, in certain respects I whouldn’t have been surprised. When I woke up this morning, the temperature in my attic had dropped to a mere 12 degrees, just like winter in fact and the driving rain that we had through the night was still falling .

Still, never mind. I set of for chez Liz and Terry through the rain and all in all it was very unpleasant but we managed to accomplish all our tasks.

We obtained the tax certificate for Terry’s van and then doorstepped the lady at the Chambre de Metiers who, despite her surprise, received us and gave us all of the information we needed.

After lunch (thanks, Terry) we went to the URSSAF to enquire about why our applications for this auto-entrepreneur registrations for Liz’s and my business plans had never been processed. It turns out that we had missed out a vital step in the process so the woman there (probably the most helpful and friendly French Civil Servant I have ever met) completed mine on the spot (so now I am a properly registered French businessman), gave Liz the advice she needed to complete hers, and told Terry what he needed to do to make his application.

What was funny about the visit to URSSAF was that we couldn’t quite find the building on this Industrial estate so Terry helpfully suggested “it’s a Government organisation so look for the poshest building”. And he was right!

At the Tribunal de Commerce the reception staff were much less helpful – hurling abuse at us as we tried to find out where to go but one of the administrators who we doorstepped in his little office put us on the right track.

But back here, even though it’s cold and miserable and wet (I have the fire on here right now) there is only a scattering of snow. But we have had TWENTY EIGHT mm of rain today and it is still pouring down. You really cannot believe this weather.

-1

Friday 16th April 2010 – I must be off my head.

I bet you have been wondering what I’ve been doing going to Clermont Ferrand every Friday evening and what is the real reason behind my sudden quest for fitness. The truth is that a couple of months ago I saw a course advertised on a website and being a keen follower of further education and broadening my sphere of knowledge, I decided that I would talk my way onto it.

And sure enough I did, and I’ve been on this course for six weeks and I am now, would you believe it, a fully-qualified French football referee. I reckoned that seeing as I have more than a passing interest in football and I go to as many local matches as I can, I would take something of a more active role in the sport. If I were really honest about it I’m in no state to actually play and so refereeing would be a suitable role. And it’s also an unusual qualification to have, isn’t it?

Many people had to study hard and take this examination, but not me of course. My route to the top was somewhat easier –
1) They enquired if my parents were married at the time of my birth
and on hearing that the answer was no —
2) They gave me an eyesight test
which I promptly failed …
and so I was passed straight through and didn’t have to sit this 2-hour exam consisting of 44 video extracts of matches and asked several questions on each extract.

Today I did some work up here until about 12:30 and then I started to tidy up in the garden now that work has finished there. This afternoon I had a good go at tidying Caliburn and I have the cab quite clean and tidy.

But I still can’t find my mobile phone and I’ve no idea where it is that I have left it.

-1

Friday 9th April 2010 – This morning …

… there was a thick hanging stationary cloud over the mountain (as predicted last night) – the first one for ages. It was grey and drizzly so after breakfast I came up here and carried on with updating the footy website.

Once the cloud lifted a little (and I mean a little) I went outside to start on the megacloche. This involved rooting around in the barn for the wood and this led on to searching through the old clothes and rescuing a few that are too good to chuck in the bin. Once that was all out of the way and I’d found the wood I cut it all to shape ready for after lunch.

So now the base has been made and laid in position, I’ve built the two sides, and I’ve got the wood ready to make the back so with a bit of luck it will be ready on Monday. It’s 1m60 wide by 1m15 deep by 1m20 high at the back and 15 cms at the front – so it will be a veritable sun-trap (assuming that we get more sun). Fenestration for the moment will be by somoe of the old caravan windows that are lying around here – a useful quarry of all kinds of spare parts is an old caravan.

The trip to Clermont Ferrand and back was uneventful but we finished early so coming through Pionsat I noticed that the floodlights were on at the ground. They are training, maybe. I hope so as they need some good results this weekend and all three matches are derbies against hated local rivals where considerable bragging rights are at stake.

In other news, there is to be a meeting shortly of nuclear powers and a motion has been tabled to quiz the Zionists about their possession of nuclear weapons. As a result, the leader of the Zionists has pulled out and instead is sending a minion who will doubtless reply “I know nothing”.

Although the Zionists refuse to comment, it is a rather open secret that they possess nuclear armaments – they had a secret arrangement with another pariah state – White South Africa – back in the 1960s and 1970s where nuclear technology leaked from the USA by Zionist and White Supremacist nuclear scientists, with the covert agreement of the USA Government, was put to use by those two groups. In the 1970s Jimmy Carter estimated that the Zionists had about 150 nuclear weapons. How many they have now is of course anyone’s guess.

Mordechai Vanunu, a Zionist “scientist”, was imprisoned for many years for trying to leak to sympathetic newspapers details of the Zionist nuclear arsenal, and the terms of his release forbid him to talk to any foreigners or any journalists and every time one of them hovers around his place of abode Vanunu is whisked off back to prison. Yet despite the furore about Aung San Sun Kyi in Burma (whose father as we all know was the person who “invited the Japanese liberators” into Burma in 1942 and co-operated (at least in the early stages) in the wholesale massacre of tens if not hundreds of thousands of innocent Burmese civilians, many of whom were women and children), no-one ever tries to rally round Vanunu.

There are just four states in the entire world who have refused to sign up to the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty – Pakistan and India (who would wipe each other off the face of the earth in the twinkling of an eye given half a chance and never mind the consequences), North Korea (which has an American nuclear arsenal right on its doorstep) and …. errrrr …. the Zionists if I break my usual convention and accord them – for the purposes of this discussion and no other – some kind of de-facto statehood.

So if the Zionists have nuclear weapons and refuse to be called to account over them, would someone mind explaining to me what exactly is the issue that the west has about Iran and North Korea having them?

Nothing but rank hypocrisy.

If the Septics were to come to some kind of realism and tell the Iranians that they can have nuclear weapons as long as they point them at Tel Aviv, it might knock some sense into the Zionists. But as if that will ever happen!

-2

Friday 19th March 2010 – It’s raining now and blowing a gale.

In fact the rain is the first we’ve had since a week last Thursday -over a week ago. And hasn’t a lot happened in that time? A week ago we were still in the grip of the icy weather with the temperature as low as minus 9. Last night it was as low as … er …. PLUS 9.2

And look at everything I’ve done too – finished off weeding the hedge and the area around the vegetable garden, burnt all of the rubbish in a mega-bonfire, moved the greenhouse, moved the cloche, dug two raised beds, planted tons of seeds. Today I finished all of the sowing for February and March and I’ve started to repot the Liz Ayers Memorial Orchard, as the trees are having to stay in their pots for another year.

One thing I noticed in a gardening book is that they reckon that the soil I’m planting things in should be friable. One of my plots has onion and garlic in it. Now how friable is that?

But I’m going to have to do something about the manure water distiller. Since its installation back in February it’s given me about half a litre, most of which was yesterday.Today it gave me three litres and there is more beckoning. I’m going to have to move it no matter what otherwise they will be changing my address from “Les Guis” to “The House at Pooh Corner” and like Christopher Robin, I’ll go down with Alice or some other infectious disease. Which of course reminds me – the new AA Milne Travel Company is now organising trips to London where you can visit Buckingham Palace to see The Changing of the Guard, followed by a trip to the Bank of England to see “The Guarding of the Change”.

And I’ve not long been back from Clermont Ferrand, I’m thoroughly exhausted after this hard week, and so I’m going to have an early night.

Goodnight All!

-6

Friday 12th March 2010 – No wonder …

… it was flaming cold (like 7 degrees) in here when I woke up this morning. Outside it had dropped to minus 9!!! That is just crazy.

So after breakfast in the cold I started to tidy up the wood that I’d cut down. And as you can see I’ve collected quite a pile. That wood is for three years hence and so it’ll stay on the pile for a while until I get round to cutting it up -which won’t be for a while because I’ve broken my loppers. That’s the third pair I’ve broken down here.

On the other side of the patch of land is a huge pile of brambles weeds and the like. And if Monday is a good day all of that will be burnt and I can get on with digging up tree stumps. I’ve washed the inside of the plastic greenhouse ready to move down here and I need to think about uprooting the raised beds.

And this evening I’ve been for a little drive to Clermont Ferrand.

-7

Saturday 15th August 2009 – I SAW THIS MOST MAGNIFICENT CLOUD …

… on my way to Liz and Terry’s this evening. A finer example of an “anvil” cumulonimbus cloud you cannot hope to see.

It’s hovering just about over Clermont Ferrand so I reckon that the good citizens of that fair city are having a right pasting this evening, for “anvil” clouds are associated with heavy thunderstorms.

So what was I doing at Liz and Terry’s this evening? You may well ask.

In fact it all starts this morning at about 11.45. There I was casually nailing my fascia boards to the ends of the chevrons when suddenly Terry put in a dramatic appearance.

“There’s a damsel ( or was it a damson?) in distress at the Brico Depot in Montlucon” he announced

Of course, someone’s antlers pricked up at that. All his life he’s been in training for just this moment and despite one or two false starts
“Help help I’ve been tied to this tree and ravaged by the entire crew of the HMS Victory” cried a damsel in distress, tied to a tree in the forest.
“Well, it’s just not your lucky day, is it?” Strawberry Moose
, unbuckling his tunic.
he was well in form.

He leapt into Caliburn, his trusty steed (in the old days when I used to be a superhero all on my own and the job didn’t pay as well as it does now, some of the vehicles I owned were rather less than reputable and were more like rusty steeds, but certainly not Caliburn) and as his driver, I leapt in beside him and we chaud-pieded it to Montlucon.

This digital revolution and mobile communications has brought about some significant benefits and so on – but also a major disadvantage that as far as I know, everyone else has overlooked. In order to be a superhero you need to have your underpants on outside your trousers, and telephone boxes are the traditional places for superheroes to change their clothing.

But try finding a telephone box these days now that everyone has a mobile phone! Strawberry and I had to search for ages until we found a suitable telephone box to change in, and that’s in the Auvergne where mobile phone coverage is patchy at best. How is Superperson managing in the USA where telephone boxes are all but redundant?

Superheroes will have to find new venues in which to change.

Public toilets are likely to receive plenty of support, and I have indeed made use of just such a venue on a previous occasion. But these days you have to fight your way into a public toilet past the drug abusers, the cottagers, the cross-dressers (“Mabel, if you don’t let me wear your tights I’ll smash your ****ing face in!”) and the like.

Mind you, I did have a brother who almost always used to come out of a public toilet with his underpants on outside his trousers, but that was more to do with his status as being a couple of sandwiches short of a picnic rather than any superhero status he might (or might not) wish to claim.

So Strawberry Moose
, Caliburn and I duly arrived at Brico Depot and found Terry standing guard over a trolley with a pile of windows too large to go in the back of his car.
“Where’s Liz?” I asked
“Ohh, she’s going to take advantage of you while you’re here” he replied.
Now, I don’t know about you, but it’s a long time since anyone has ever said anything like that to me, and my surprise was quite clearly written all over my face.
“She wants to make use of Caliburn now you are all here by getting some more windows”
“Ahhhh” I replied, this time with disappointment all over my face.

Liz asked me if I could deliver the windows this evening.
“Might that involve some of your vegan chocolate cake?” I enquired.
“I’ll see what I can do” she replied.

And hence my visit to Liz and Terry’s this evening. And not only was there vegan chocolate cake, there was some vegetable curry with rice, and some vegan chocolate cake to bring home.

We have a system round here of chantiers communaux – where if anyone has a work project that needs many hands, we all do a blitz on their premises to get the job done. And whenever there’s a chantiers communaux at Liz and Terrys, you are usually trampled to death in the stampede, so well-known is Liz’s vegan chocolate cake.

And in other news, it was the hottest day of the year so far – almost 42 degrees – and I’ve fixed the fascia boards, tacked on the guttering (I can’t fix it on until the scaffolding is moved) and put on the first row of tiles.

-3

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: clermont ferrand

Monday 6th September 2010 – I just KNEW …

Friday 3rd September 2010 – In a change to the advertised programme ….

Thursday 2nd September 2010 – I had a little fun today …

Wednesday 1st September2010 – A couple of things have happened today …

Tuesday 31st August 2010 – I’ve been out and about …

Friday 6th August 2010 – I had a bit of a day out today.

Thursday 1st July 2010 – I mentioned yesterday …

Wednesday 5th May 2010 – This is just flaming ridiculous!

Friday 16th April 2010 – I must be off my head.

Friday 9th April 2010 – This morning …

Friday 19th March 2010 – It’s raining now and blowing a gale.

Friday 12th March 2010 – No wonder …

Saturday 15th August 2009 – I SAW THIS MOST MAGNIFICENT CLOUD …

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