Tag Archives: marianne_contet

Wednesday 12th December 2012 – Winter is back.

Minus 4.8°C here last night and the earth as hard as iron, water like a stone, as Christina Rosetti would have said, had she been here.

The weather today was gorgeous though, just a few scattered clouds all day. And I’ve been stuck up here in my room working on the radio programme.

Not without interruptions though – Firstly, Marianne rang to ask if I can move a couple of beds tomorrow for her and then I had Cecile ringing up to say hello and to have a chat. And if that wasn’t enough, I also had the bank on the phone about one thing and another.

Tonight though I went to meet Liz in Pionsat. Bill had ordered a pile of cheese and bacon and it can’t live in the back of Caliburn. Especially if the weather warms up. Liz offered to put it in her fridge to keep it cool.

But poor Bill – I do hope that he’s ok.

Tuesday 11th December 2012 – I rang …

… Marianne’s house this morning to enquire after her well-being and she was there. She told me that she had been released. “Expelled, more like” I told her, but it was nice to hear her voice. She certainly sounded better than she did the last time that I spoke to her.

What wasn’t so good was the news that I had from Rosemarie when she phoned up later. It appears that Bill has been rushed to hospital, quite ill apparently. That’s really sad news because his general health isn’t so good at all. I do hope that he recovers quickly.

Apart from that, the Christmas Special is progressing nicely. There’s enough now to make a decent programme and when Liz tells me of her choice of music I can tidy it up and finish it off.

I’ll be glad when it’s all done – I can go back to bringing up to date the Quebec web pages upon which I’ve been working since the summer.

-1

Monday 10th December 2012 – And there I was …

… lying in bed going through in my mind the things that I should (and shouldn’t) have done during the day, and it was then that I remembered that I hadn’t written up the blog for today. Mind you, it was about 03:00 (I had a late night) and I wasn’t going to get up and do it at that time. Hence the reason that you’ve all had to wait for it.

It had been a comparatively busy day too for round here. An early start saw me bash on with the Christmas special and I made huge strides in putting down what I need to say. In the best traditions of the Open University, I just write stuff down as it occurs to me, and then go through and edit it later. Ohhh, the joys of “cut and paste”.

A break at lunchtime though because Terry came round to pick up his orders from the UK. Piles of stuff there was too. We agreed that, seeing as he knows all of the best contacts, he’ll order on my behalf the new winter tyres for Caliburn off the internet. Caliburn won’t know himself, what with all of these new tyres just now. He’s certainly having a good Christmas, even if no-one else is.

At the Anglo-French group, at first there was just me. Terry came in later and explained that he had had to fight a major blizzard round by St Gervais d’Auvergne, which explained why no-one from that neck of the woods appeared. Jex told me that Marianne was in hospital (she hadn’t been looking too well last time I saw her) and so that explained that. I’ll have to get on to her and see how she is.

Saturday 17th November 2012 – AFTER AN EARLY …

… early start this morning, I dashed off a complete Radio Anglais programme – the rock music programme for January.

I can do things like that at one sitting when I’m in the mood and I wish I were in the mood more often. When I’m feeling like that I can move the world and that’s a phenomenon that I would like to maintain.

I had a quick whizz around the shops at St Eloy-les-Mines where I bought nothing of any importance, and then round to Marianne’s for a chat and a coffee. She gave me a couple of prezzies too, which was nice.

This evening it was out to Marcillat-en Combraille for the football.

This match tonight could best be described as a “warming” match – very entertaining, and all for the wrong reasons too, with AS Marcillat winning 2-1 in the end.

Tomorrow I’m having a lie-in, I hope and then I have more work to do. I can’t even arrange to have a day off these days.

Ohh how times have changed 🙁

-4

Thursday 15th November 2012 – THE SHOWER ROOM FLOOR …

… is almost up

Just two boards left to pull up but they aren’t going to be easy as I can’t get the circular saw in to trim them off the boards that run through the bedroom.

For that, I shall have to resort to some heavy engineering.

And I’m glad that I decided to take it up anyway, as two of the boards are pretty rotten. They weren’t going to hold much up.

All of that means that the beams will need to be treated with xylophene just in case there’s anything living there that shouldn’t be.

You might be wondering where everything has gone, because the last photo that I took showed it all covered over with junk.

So here, while I have the camera handy, is the cupboard at the back of the stairs with everything arranged thereupon.

And you can see that there’s plenty of room left for more stuff – but that’s never going to be a problem around here, is it?

This morning though, I read through everything that I had written this week, made a few corrections and then printed it off. That takes ages with my sick little printer but at least it’s all done now.

I reckon that there’s enough stuff now in the pipeline for three months, which is just as well.

I’ve also been inundated with phone calls again. I don’t know what it is, but I’m clearly doing something right.

But as a result of all of this, tomorrow I have to go to the printer’s, then to Marianne’s, then to the Radio Tartasse at Marcillat-en-Combraille and then round to Cécile’s – all before midday.

I’ll be having my work cut out to do all of that.

-2

Sunday 23rd September 2013 – AFTER THE DEBACLE …

… that was yesterday, and being still awake at 05:30, it’s no surprise whatever that I had something of a late start this morning.

And the … errr …. 11:30 start meant that the day was over before it had really begun.

I had to be at Marianne’s at 13:00 to set up the stage for this show that started at 16:00. so there was no time to do anything else.

Setting up of the equipment didn’t take all that long and after the sound check we settled back to listen the music.

We were being treated to a concert of Haydn’s Die sieben letzten Worte unseres Erlösers am Kreuze – “The_Seven_Last_Words_of_Christ” – with three violins and a ‘cello.

As you know, it’s not my type of music but even I can recognise quality when I hear it.

I would rather have a different kind of music as you know, but as I have said before … "and on many occasions too" – ed … around here, you have to take whatever entertainment that is offered, wherever, and whenever you can find it.

The musicians were extremely professional and very well-rehearsed. They certainly gave the music a good haydn. The packed crowd in the church certainly appreciated the performance too.

It all made for an extremely enjoyable afternoon, I have to say

With having set up the sound quite quickly, it gave me a god opportunity to have a look around the church.

Of course I’ve been here before, but I’ve never had much of an opportunity to go for a good prowl around.

And I’m glad that I did, because for a modern church (built in 1888 which is new for around here), it is surprisingly interesting and there’s a lot to see.

The thing that you’ll notice about this church is that it is not aligned in the more-traditional east-west direction. And there’s a reason for this.

This isn’t the original site of the church – that can be found across the square near where the steps down to the old market place are.

The church that was there was disaffected, like all churches were, during the French Revolution. It was used as a store for saltpetre.

Saltpetre is however extremely corrosive and during a survey of the structural stability of the church some years later, they discovered that the saltpetre had eaten away all of the structure of the church and it was totally unsafe.

Not only had the church to be demolished immediately, they couldn’t rebuilt on the same site. The site where the church might be found today was the only empty plot of land in the centre of the town, and so they had to build the church around the plot, not the other way around.

Even more interesting was the fact that it was the feast of St Bravy

He was an abbott on the 8th Century and is the patron saint of the church. And with it being his feast day, his skull, one of the relics of the church, was actually on display for all to see.

This led to one of these fascinating conversations that only ever happen once in a lifetime
Marianne – “it’s a very small skull, don’t you think?”
Our hero – “it’s probably the skull of St Bravy when he was a small child”.

Radio rehearsing came next with Liz, and a lovely stuffed courgette meal later, back here to carry on working.

Printing out the notes for tomorrow produced nothing at all and as I’m too tired right now to do anything about it, I changed the font colour to blue and now I have blue notes. I’ll have to look at this black ink cartridge when I feel more like it.

Right now I need to sort out some music for our radio programmes tomorrow if I can manage to stay awake, and then I’ll be off to bed.

I just hope that I remember to wake up.

-4

Saturday 22nd September 2012 – YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING …

… what happened to the blog last night and why you have to wait until Sunday evening for Saturday’s write-up,

The truth is that it’s been something of a totally mixed-up couple of days.

I managed an early start on Saturday morning and long before lunch I’d even selected the music for the rock programme for December – talk about trying to get ahead – but then it all went a little haywire.

I had four phone calls one after the other. Marianne rang me to see if I would like to be a technician at a Haydn concert on Sunday afternoon (so much for my day off), then Percy Penguin rang, and then a solar panel salesman phoned up.

As for the fourth person who rang me, I can’t now remember who it was.

In between the phone calls I was trying to do some tidying up, without too much success, and so I made a coffee and sat down for five minutes.

Next thing that I remembered was that it was 14:43 – I’d missed my window of opportunity to go shopping in Commentry and then for a swim at Neris-les-Bains.

Instead, I simply nipped into St Eloy-les-Mines (remembering while I was there exactly why I needed to go to Commentry – those 12-volt light strips at LIDL) and then came back home to prepare for the footy.

If you think that the 7-0 hammering that FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 2nd XI had at Chateaugay the other week, that was nothing compared to the score against Nord Combraille.

No goalkeeper, and so a young boy going between the posts, last season’s 3rd XI defence, and the result was a foregone conclusion even before the kickoff.

It was a shame because for the first time for ages the team had a shape and a plan, and in midfield and up front they weren’t too bad. They certainly had a few chances against the Miners in this game, but every time they lost possession that was that.

The FC Pionsat St Hilaire 1st XI won 2-1, scoring two goals that were, well, extraordinary.

Beating the offside trap completely and utterly for one goal, and the second, a free kick from 30 yards out that went straight through the hands of the keeper.

Still, they all count, and that’s what is important.

Of course, with two matches and a pile of injury time, we didn’t finish until almost 23:00, and so it was midnight when I came up here.

Too tired to do anything but all that coffee and the nap at lunchtime made sure that I was still awake at 05:30.

Thursday 30th August 2012 – I DIDN’T DO …

… anything like as much as I was going to do today.

I was up early and spent a few hours on the computer as usual, but it was after that that it all started to go wrong

Finding a fully-charged battery for the Hitachi SDS drill was the first issue that I had, and once I’d managed that, then drilling the brick pillars has caused some of the bricks to split. That’s annoying to say the least.

But anyway the window frames are fitted and that’s something. Next plan was to fit the fascia boards to the end of the chevrons on the lean-to,

However, in an astounding achievement the type of which surely only I can be capable, it seems that having cut the wood to the right length, I somehow have managed to discard the piece that I want and I’ve painted the off-cut instead.

As Kenneth Williams once famously said, “I’m often taken aback by my own brilliance”

I didn’t get much done after lunch as the phone rang. The handbrake on Marianne’s son’s car has ceased to function and so could I look at it.

He brought it round and I dismantled the rear end (brake drums held on by the wheel bearings, how I hate that!) to find that the auto adjusters aren’t working. So no surprise as the handbrake needs 12 clicks to work.

I reset the adjusters but that didn’t do much so crawling underneath the car, it turns out that the cable adjuster (there’s one of them too) has slipped out of position. I reset that and now the brakes will stop that little Twingo on a sixpence.

But that cable is totally weird. Most cars have one single cable and there’s a slider at the centre of tha cable that’s attached to the handbrake arm so that the brakes pull evenly, and when you work the manual adjuster, the adjuster works on both brakes.

But not the Twingo.

There’s no slider at all but just a single fitting on the end of the handbrake arm, and two cables, one for each rear brake on each side.

Consequently although moving the manual adjuster will tighten up the cable, it doesn’t equalise the brakes. If one side is lack, then tightening up the cable adjuster will over-tighten the good side.

It took us ages therefore to adjust the brakes correctly, setting up the automatic adjusters individually by trial and error until they were equal, and then tightening up the cable adjuster.

And then of course we had the issue of refitting the hubs and bearings, and torquing up the nuts. That’s something I really hate doing.

Back on the lean-to afterwards (just as well I finished the car as we had a torrential storm straight afterwards), I’ve fitted one window pane (one of them survived having a ladder thrown on it) and the second one is ready to cut.

But by this time, it was 19:00 and I was well fed up, so I called it a day.

And tea tonight? Courgette and lentil curry. You can see that things are going berserk in the garden right now.

-4

Wednesday 29th August 2012 – WE HAD OUR FIRST …

… no-show today.

Marianne and I went all the way out to Vergheas this afternoon for our Wednesday walk. Unfortunately no punters showed up, which was rather sad.

Mind you, it was only to be expected, I suppose. There had been the walk here a few weeks ago – the good one that I had been on, and then there was the pélerinage to the statue of the Black Virgin 10 days ago.

I suppose that everyone is simply Vergheased out.

Mind you it was just as well that no-one came because the sky was clouding over rapidly. We didn’t want to hang around too long. But long enough for one thing that I had wanted to do.

Vergheas is an old (and I DO mean old) fortified site – the mound upon which the church is built looks artificial to me, and that’s a good-enough indication.

What I had wanted to do was to see if there might be any trace of the old walls still remaining. When we had been here before, I’d had a good prowl around and had made a mental note of a couple of places that might be likely.

There was another flattened terrace on a lower level than that upon which the church is situated. This looked artificial to me.

The edges of this terrace were quite steep and in one or two places sloped down considerably towards the stream at the bottom. And sure enough, the side of that was lined with dressed stonework.

On the way back to Pionsat the heavens opened and we had 6mm of rain that fell in minutes. I can’t say that I’m sad about that, because we needed a good torrential downpour.

I was going to carry on working when I arrived home but I went upstairs and crashed out instead. I’d had a long, hard day.

This morning I was up early and met Rosemary at Montaigut en Combraille. She hopped into Caliburn and we went in to Montlucon. She ordered her new window at Lapeyre and I bought a load of stuff from Brico Depot.

I was back home for 13:15 – plenty of time to put the final coat of paint on the new woodwork ready to fit it tomorrow.

And in other news, and a bit of malicious gossip, if the conversation that was reported to me today means what a couple of people think that it might mean, no-one will be surprised if there’s a tiny addition to our little expat community’s population round about the start of the New Year.

-3

Sunday 26th August 2012 – TODAY DIDN’T WORK …

… out like it was supposed to.

The morning bit went OK, though.

The first port of call was to La Cellette down the road, because today is the Pélerinage de St Avit – the Pilgrimage.

St Avit was the Bishop of Clermont-Ferrand in 570-something and his claim to fame was that at the time when th village suffering from one of these mysterious infantile epidemics, he summoned up a Spring, the water of which apparently cured the children.

This was something that was classed as a miracle and so every 2nd Sunday after 15th August the well is blessed and a statue of St Avit is paraded around the village.

Hordes of children come to the pilgrimage, especially those whose medical condition isn’t so good. They are presumably hoping for a similar miracle as that which happened 1450 years ago.

But something that Liz and Terry said later on in the day made me think, which is a rare event, I know.

With the current state of the National Health Service and other medical services in the United Kingdom, praying for a miracle is probably just as effective as a means of cure that any kind of treatment dished out in a British hospital by the NHS might be.

From La Cellette, Marianne and I went on down the road to St Maigner.

This is our final pot d’acceuil of the tourist season and I can’t say that I’m sad about it. These persistent early starts have been wearing me out.

The attraction here was not a musical turn but a rope-maker, who spent the session teaching people to use his rope-making machine.

My attention however was distracted by the vehicle in which the cordier arrived. And isn’t it beautiful?

It’s a 1949 Renault Juvaquatre, and what’s interesting about this is that it’s not the more usual saloon but an estate car.

The Juvaquatres were inspired by the Opel Olympia that had been released in 1935, and Renault quickly set down to work on a similar car. So quickly that it made its appearance at the Paris Motor Show in 1937.

Serious production had hardly begun before the Second World War intervened and it was not until 1946 that serious production began.

They filled the streets from then on for many years and you can still see them about on the roads very occasionally even today.

You aren’t likely to see an estate car – a break – version though. They are as rare as hen’s teeth and it’s been ages since I’ve seen one like that.

Paradoxically, when the Juvaquatre was replaced by the much more modern and legendary 4CV – the quatre chevaux – in 1951, they realised that they couldn’t make a van – camionette – or a break out of it because of the rear engine configuration.

Consequently, they reintroduced the Juvaquatre break and production kept on going until the quatrelle was launched in 1960

We did actually have some music though – it wasn’t all quiet.

Someone from the village produced an old wind-up gramophone and a collection of 78s and spent a happy morning there winding up the music.

It was all good stuff too – the traditional type of French accordion music that you would hear almost everywhere in the 1940s and 1950s and which has sadly long-departed from the scene

I was back home for lunch and then I waited for a phone call – and waited, and waited. I had arranged to meet up with someone so that we could go together to the Virlet brocante but i didn’t get the call.

And to tell you the truth I fell into the Arms of Morpheus at about 16:00 – I really don’t know what’s up with me these days.

At Liz and Terry’s, Liz and I rehearsed our radio shows and after tea we discussed a few plans and projects that we might undertake whenever we have some free time – whenever that might be.

Tomorrow we have our recording sessions, and after that it’s back to work.

-1

Friday 24th August 2012 – WELL, FOLKS …

… here it is. The wall’s all finished!

I was rather optimistic about my “couple of hours” – in fact it was more like 3.5 hours before it was all done.

But the hardest part of it was of course the clearing up afterwards that took the time – I don’t do clearing up as you know.

Anyway, there you are – all done and dusted. The tools have been put away and the araa has been cleared of rubbish the best that I can do.

As for the bits of old cement and so on that I dug out of the wall, they are on a tarpaulin at the side of the house. Soon I’ll be doing some concreting and I’ll be needing hardcore.

As for the weather behaving itself, the moment that I finished putting the last trowel of mortar into the wall, it started to rain. Bang on cue, you might say.

Anyway, seeing as it was 18:10 when I finished, I called it a day and boiled up some water for a shave and a good wash.

Following that, I crashed out, to such an extent that I didn’t make tea. I’d probably be asleep even now if Radio Tartasse hadn’t rung up – apparently the music files for the radio programme are corrupted so can she copy them again?

That’s where I was this morning, in Marcillat-en-Combraille, recording the Radio Anglais rock music programmes for Radio Tatasse. That was fairly straightforward after last month’s debacle.

So tomorrow is shopping at Commentry and maybe even the swimming baths at Neris-les-Bains. A good soak and a good relax should do me the world of good, I reckon, after all of my exertions.

Sunday is the pellerinage at La Cellette and the pot d’acceuil at St Maigner with Marianne, followed by the Virlet brocante and then Liz and Terry’s for rehearsals for the rest of the Radio Anglais programmes, and that’s the weekend done.

And do you like my Sunday?

That, would you believe, is a day of rest.

-6

Tuesday 21st August 2012 – I HAD ONE …

… of those days where I couldn’t get myself started.

At least I had a good night’s sleep with the fan going through the night – so much so that I dreamt that I was back working at a job that I hated in a place that I hated with people who I hated.

Surprising isn’t it, what goes through people’s minds.

So this morning in the heat I stirred a few papers around – but I’ve managed 14kb of notes so far for the radio programmes and that should see us through the next recording session if I can’t summon up the enthusiasm to do any more.

>Outside this afternoon another 6 buckets went into the wall but it’s slow work despite me standing on the ground today doing the work.

I’ve been filling in two of the vertical cracks, and that has been time-consuming, and also it’s not been easy to move some of the old cement pointing that needs to come out.

The old metal screwdriver that I use as a chisel is giving up the ghost, I think. I shall have to buy a new one … “this heat really is getting to you” – ed.

Anyway, I reckon that if I can keep up this schedule, another 5 days will see this wall finished – and then it will be time to start on the long wall and point that.

But that should be easier … “famous last words” – ed … as I’ll be working off the scaffolding and you saw how quickly I did the house wall once I had a scaffolding up there.

Nevertheless, I’m impressed with what I’ve done so far. I shan’t know the place when it’s finished, whenever that might be.

Two phone calls too – one from Marianne telling me that our walk tomorrow at St Hilaire is cancelled as there’s a funeral at the church, and secondly from Rosemary who wanted a chat.

And I cooked a mega-aubergine-and-kidney-bean doodah to last for the next 3 days and just as I finished, the gas ran out. That’s over 10 months (8th October – I mark the bottles with the date when I connect them) that that bottle has lasted.

It just shows you the benefits of having the electric steamer and also the new woodstove. A far cry from when I needed to buy a new bottle every three weeks, isn’t it?

-3

Sunday 19th August 2012 – THERE WAS SO MUCH …

… that I wanted to do today but I ended up doing nothing at all this afternoon;

And I mean nothing except spending most of my time sitting with a damp tea towel on my head.

The reason for that was that the temperature today reached an astonishing – unheard-of 44.7°C outside, and that must be a world record by anyone’s standards. In my attic it reached almost 36°C and that is unsupportable.

I ended up sitting on a chair downstairs amid the rubble. at least it was a cool, balmy 33°C down there. But this really is ridiculous and it can’t keep on going like this.

Mind you, I understand now why they have four-hour siestas in mid-afternoon in Spain, and why many people from around the equator are said to be indolent.

Well, I certainly was indolent today and if it carries on like this, then tomorrow I’ll be even more indolent. No-one can work in conditions like these.

This morning though Marianne and I were out for the pot d’acceuil at Le Quartier.

It’s the turn today of that village to have the pleasure of our company on this series of rotating exhibitions.

We had the jazz band – the fanfare – from Pionsat playing the music today and Lieneke was there with her flute. They played outside too but their sort of instruments are not the sort that blow away in the wind like poor old Rick’s cello did in Bussières.

There was quite a large crowd there too this morning, sheltering in the shade ‘neath the spreading chestnut tree, or whatever kind of trees they might be, out of the sun.

It was nice to see so many too, and that makes a change from some of the more recent pots d’acceuil.

However, chatting to some of the visitors, it appears that some had turned up by accident – just passing through and seeing the crowds.

it looks as if the mayor of his committee had not let everyone know that the do was on today. None of my friends from Le Quartier (Bill, François, to name just two) had made it to the occasion and I was looking forward to seeing them.

Now, here’s something of note.

I haven’t had a coffee at all today. 29°C in my attic when I woke up and that’s definitely NOT coffee weather.

And that’s quite a change for me, isn’t it?

-5

Thursday 16th August 2012 – ONE THING …

.. that can be said about the weather that we had on Sunday is that the garden has really come to life.

The courgettes have finally started to flower, which is quite a relief as I was starting to worry about them, and then also the corn has started to push its tassels out which means that they should be starting to develop their cobs pretty soon.

I was worried about them for a while too.

But I do have to say that my potager has never ever looked so good and a huge thank-you to Rosemary who has motivated me, kept me going, and come to lend a hand on occasions too numerous to mention

But never mind the garden for the moment. I had the usual few hours on the internet this morning working on the website as usual.

I’ve also had to spend some time sorting out all of my photos from yesterday. Marianne wants a couple of the walk for her newspaper, and Rick the trailer guy wanted the ones that featured him on his poor ‘cello to pass on to the insurance company.

But after all that, another 6 buckets of mortar went into the wall.

And this is the difficult bit because firstly I’m working on the bit that’s bulging and dropping stones, and secondly I’m uncomfortably perched on the ladder.

it’s too high for where I need to be and any smaller ladder isn’t tall enough.

Not only that, I have to carefully chip out the flaking cement that someone has tried to use as weathering over the old mortar, and do that without disturbing too much the weak stones.

Those 6 buckets don’t seem to have done much – but then again these cracks are way deep and forcing in the liquid cement isn’t quite as easy as it might

But I’m making slow progress all the same and in another 10 days it will be finished.

I hope.

-1

Wednesday 15th August 2012 – I WITNESSED A CALAMITY TODAY!

I mentioned yesterday that I was technicianing for Marianne this morning.

And so I was. We were doing the pot d’acceuil at Bussieres for the tourists this morning.

The weather was fine and so they decided to hold it outside, even though there was a fair wind blowing.

Music was provided by Rick the Belgian trailer guy on the ‘cello and a girl friend of his on accordion. I really enjoy listening to those two playing and indeed they did not disappoint this morning – that is, until the tragedy occurred.

Halfway through the proceedings they stopped for a breather. Rick stood his ‘cello on the tripod and went over to chat to someone he knew.

Just at that very moment a violent gust of wind picked up his ‘cello, hurled it down the street and smashed it into a stone wall.

And “smashed” was the appropriate word too.

35 years he’s had that ‘cello. He was devastated, and so were all of us. It’s an awful thing to happen to someone.

I’ve had my bass guitar for that length of time and I know how I would feel if something were to happen to it.

I felt really sorry for Rick.

All of that put rather a damper on the proceedings.

It’s really hard to focus and have a good time when you’ve been the witness to a personal tragedy such as this.

What made matters worse was that the event was very poorly attended. I’m not sure what had happened to all of the publicity but it certainly didn’t reach the hands of the people whom it was intended to reach

So after that tragedy we went into Pionsat for the kermesse – or more to the point, for the midday meal at the kermesse. Marianne had reserved a table for her and some friends and I took along my butties because of course you won’t find anything there that I might be able to eat.

It comes as a huge surprise to most people when you tell them that the site that they know today as Pionsat is not in fact the original site of the town.

I’m standing roughly where the original site of the town might have been, looking back at the present site of Pionsat with the zoom lens on my camera

We are about one kilometre south of the present site, at a lieu-dit or hamlet known as Durat,

There was said to be an early medieval fortress here at Durat, but no-one is quite sure where.

they say that the fortress has been completely dismantled and that nothing whatever remains – and that they are surprised by this.

This mound here is my best guess, although there is nothing that has ever been found to prove it.

Remember that building that we saw just now on what might have been the castle mound?

I went for a little probe around and I noticed this. Of course, there is nothing whatever to suggest that this is any part of the original fortress, even if the fortress had been built of stone, but it is certainly significant.

People have this strange idea about castles being made out of stone – like in the film The Vikings starring Kirk Douglas.

That is clearly an anachronism.

Stone-built castles wouldn’t come onto the scene for another 100 years. Wood would have been the more usual building material round about this time. A wood castle “completely disappearing” wouldn’t be too much of a surprise

On our way out to Durat we passed another significant Pionsat landmark.

This concerns a citizen of Pionsat, one Désiré Chaffraix, who left the town to go to seek his fortune in the USA.

And having made his pile (some say in the brothels of New Orleans but no-one has ever dared put that in writing), he returned home round about the turn of the 20th Century.

He fancied himself as a “man of the people” and as there was an agricultural recession in the area at the time, he used his fortune to employ the locals to build three huge mansions.

This was one of the earliest make-work projects for the unemployed, but there seems to be little doubt that he was doing it for a rather sinister purpose.

He had the idea that he would lead some kind of new political movement in the region, and used these projects as a means of “encouraging” the locals to vote for him

Of course the locals took his money and started to work on his project, but at the next round of elections, the perfidious locals voted for his opponent.

In an evident fit of pique, Chaffraix stopped the construction, cut off the funds and moved away. And left behind three magnificent but only half-finished stately mansions.

And here they stand, even today, like the Maison Durat which is one of these three unfinished tributes to the ambitions of Désiré Chaffraix.

On our way back into town we were treated by Marianne to a guided tour of the Chateau de Pionsat.

It’s not been possible to visit the chateau for a number of years now because it’s been undergoing a programme of major renovation, so we wre quite lucky.

And Marianne was quite pleased too. The chateau is her chou-chou and she delights in having the opportunity to show people around her celebrated pile.

Not that there’s as much to see of it as there would have been 300 years ago, that’s for sure.

You only have to look at the dressed stone used in some of the most banal buildings in Pionsat dating from the 19th Century to know where much of it has gone.

It’s actually in two parts – a Medieval part that dates from the time of the 100 Years War and was built on the instructions of Charles V as a barrier to marauding English troops from the Aquitaine, and the second part is from a couple of centuries later.

After the Revolution it fell into disrepair but was later listed as a Historic Monument and is now slowly being pieced together.

We finished everything by about 19:30 and I came home.

Completely worn out and it’s supposed to be a bank holiday – a day of rest – too.

But at least we had a pile of rain this evening, and the garden didn’t half need it;.

And I really do feel sorry for Rick the Trailer Guy and his cello.

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EPIC HALL

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