Tag Archives: montaigut-en-combraille

Wednesday 3rd March 2010 – I didn’t get as much done today …

old cars ford cortina mercedes 240d w123 les guis virlet puy de dome france… as I was planning to. First thing I did was to put the battery on charge for the Escort and while that was brewing away I carried on down in the field where my garden will be.

It was quite a reasonable day this morning and so I cracked on, and I managed to uncover the scrap Cortina and the W123 Merc. Of course, the Cortina will never go anywhere much under its own steam. It was built in 1980 and spent its entire working life on a salt mine and by the time it was scrapped in 1994 it was rotten in places that Cortinas don’t even have places. It was driven through the night from Middlewich to Brussels in 1995 and since then it’s been moved around Europe on a towing dolly or an A frame, finally coming to rest down my field in 2000.

old cars ford transit les guis virlet puy de dome franceIts purpose is the provide spare parts for XCL – the Cortina Mark V estate that was my pride and joy for many years and which is languishing in a lockup garage in Montaigut. XCL has many happy memories for me – that was the car in which I came over to Belgium from the UK in 1993 with all my worldy goods in the back and for a few years we drove for tens of thousands of trouble-free miles all over Europe.

The Merc on the other hand has another significant memory for me. I was stuck without a reliable car after the Senator and I parted company in 1997 and I had to go to the UK to pick up a caravan for down here (the one that I lived in and was trashed by rats). A lovely girl called Annette from Guyana or Trinidad or somewhere like that and worked in the Guyanan or Trinidad embassy in Brussels wanted to go to visit the UK for a while too on a kind-of conducted tour so a decent car was essential if I were to take her. So I mentioned to a friend that I was looking for something respectable and he produced the Merc. And I had a lovely week in the company of Annette all around the UK. She really was a lovely girl and I was quite upset when she was transferred back home to the Caribbean.

We had a torrential rainstorm this afternoon so I decided to take the towing dolly (which you can see in this photo with the Subaru that Ric and Julie gave me being towed by the old LDV back in 2001) round to Bill’s. He has an old car he needs to remove from off the public highway. I got round there and asked him when he planned to move the car, to which his response was “well we could do it now if you’re free“. No straps, no chains, no anything, but so what?

We winched the Rover on board and with nothing to hold it on I set off to turn round. First bump in the road the Rover bounced out of the wheel traps and the car’s towing eye wedged up against the dolly’s mounting bracket. So when we finally got everything into position where Bill wanted the Rover to be, I had to jack the car out of its position with a trolley jack, two axle stands and a huge pile of blocks of wood. And all the time it was teeming down with rain.

It was just like old times when I had my taxi business back in the 1980s, doing crazy things with old cars in torrential downpours. I was soaked to the skin and I took ages to dry out afterwards. I’m trying my best to get warm now before I go down with pleurisy or something.

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Thursday 25th February 2010 – When I took the rain measurements just now …

… there was 1.5mm in the rain gauge. And if I had taken the measurements 10 minutes later it would have been completely different as we had the most terrific thunderstorm. Lightning, thunder, hailstorms, torrents of rain – you name it, we had it.

But I dunno what happened today but I was feeling quite enthusiastic – I haven’t felt like this for a while. I was up early and after breakfast I sorted out the seeds for this year’s garden. I’m throwing away all of the older stuff and starting afresh. I took the opportunity to plant a few lettuce seeds seeing as the weather has improved. I improvised a hot bed – a container in the verandah right over where I cook so the heat will keep the container warm.

So after that it was outside shifting piles of things around – like pallets, bags of gravel, that kind of thing. I’ve laid some corrugated iron roofing sheets down and I’m using one for storing the grave and some others for the rubble inside the house, starting with what used to be the bedroom wall. That led to some more pulling up of brambles and some cutting of wood. And that got me started on the wood and all of the remains of the trees thatI demolished last year and left lying where I’m hoping Bernard is going to flatten – I’ve started to cut them up into sies that will fit my stove up here.

After lunch I nipped down to the quarry to enquire about roadstone and delivery and so on for when Bernard comes to dig out, and then back here cutting wood until the rain drove me inside. I hadn’t finished then – in fact I carried on insulating the back wall until it grew dark. Working until 18:30! Whatever next!

All in all it’s been an impressive day and I’ve no idea how come.

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Monday 22 February 2010 – Only one more day …

…and this furniture removal will be over. And I can’t say that I’m sorry either. Today we took the final two loads to the new flat in St Eloy and then afterwards the first of the loads to the dechetterie. And just for a change the guy who was working there was extremely helpful and did his best to sort us out, including getting his own hands dirty.

But amongst the rubble set aside for the next visit to the tip (the first one of tomorrow) was an incredible find. Long-term readers of my ramblings will recall the discovery at the Montaigut brocante in the summer of 2008 of a parabolic heater attachment for the 920 series of Camping Gas bottles, together with an almost-full bottle. In the rubbish for the tip was a cooker attachment for the 920 series of bottles, complete with an almost-full bottle. I have issues about standardisation when I’m living in Caliburn and I’ve been trying to settle on a heater and cooker system that uses the same gas bottles. I’ve had to resort to those tube canister things with a stove and heater but they aren’t all that satisfactory. But with this find to go with the heater, I’m now set up exactly as I want.

Lieneke is here too and I went for a chat with her after I finished with Claude. It’s nice to see her again and we had a good old chinwag. after that I came home and lit the fire in the woodstove and got a nice roaring blaze after many tribulations. But then someone called me on the phone and kept me chatting for ages and the blasted thing went out.

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Friday 5th February 2010 – Well, we’ve done it now!

This afternoon we signed the compromis for these houses in Montaigut. Mind you, it’s not all plain sailing as you might imagine with anything involving me. Firstly the houses are situated in a historic area (in fact,just round the corner is the blacksmith’s where Joan of Arc had her spurs made) and so the town has the right to match any offer made on any property in that area. Mind you the town is flat broke so that’s unlikely to happen but I bet they’ll soon find the money if they get to hear that there might be a possibility that I might be moving in there.

Secondly the properties have already been sold elsewhere. However the guy can’t get a loan (and looking at them, it’s no surprise) and so he has renounced his offer, but nevertheless he needs to give his formal agreement.

Nothing is ever straightforward, is it?

Completion is set to be the end of April so the major plan currently is
1) finish Terry and Liz’s kitchen on rainy days
2) point the outside wall of their house on dry days
3) change my barn roof
4) go to Brussels and have a blitz on my apartment in Jette and put it on the market.
5) come back and start on these houses

So that’s the plan for the next three months anyway. You can see what I mean about being busy.

les guis virlet puy de dome franceTalking of being busy though, I’ve finished insulating this cupboard space, put the horizontals in and now I’ve started to plasterboard it. It won’t take at all long to finish now and when I’ve done that I can put some shelves in there to store anything that needs to be kept clean and tidy.

And whule we are on the subject, Terry and I have been discussing my lighting. Terry is refusing to get involved in my electricity ( well, he is an electrician and he does have his professional pride) and he is quite impressed with these 12-volt LEDs that I’m using (and they had a few more on sale in LIDL today). So much so that he agrees with me that a mains (230-volt) lighting circuit is pretty redundant. So what am I now going to do with all these light bulbs that I’ve been collecting? But I’m not all that bothered. It’s saved me a lot of work and it is rather unnecessary.

And who was Joan of Arc? Why of course, she was the wife of Noah.

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Tuesday 2nd February 2010 – I’ve had another one of these days …

… where I haven’t done very much. Life seems to be conspiring against me right now.

I was awake long before the alarm went off – in fact I had to crawl out of bed to go for a Gipsy’s but it was far too cold to stay up so I went back to bed until the alarm went off. At least, that was the plan but for some reason or another it was 10:04 when I came to my senses (such as they are).

I didn’t have time to have my breakfast either for while the kettle was boiling the phone rang. It was the Mairie ringing up – could the woman doing the census come round and take my details? So she and her minder came round (they’ve clearly heard all about me) and took down my particulars. It was a good job I had put clean ones on. But the French census is a lark – they just want to know your age, place of birth, profession, education standard and your employment as well as something about the conditions in which you live. Vastly different from the UK where they want to know more about you than you know about yourself.

After that, someone from the Conversation Group rang up with a chagrin d’amour. I suppose that I should be pleased that people feel comfortable in confiding their problems to me. It’s a pleasant change from being totally ingored – the usual state of affairs.

I managed an hour or two on the wall but it was then time to go off to Montaigut to look at these two houses. One is supposed to be livable in a certain fashion but the other one is merely four walls and a roof. We had a good poke around and as you might expect the “livable” one didn’t live up to expectations – damp penetration being one of the major problems. And from the corner of the roof that was supposed to have been fixed. But we had a good chat afterwards and some serious discussions took place, with the result that for better or for worse we placed an offer on the properties – suitably balanced to cover the cost of re-redoing the roof (I made sure that the estate agent was aware of the defect) and putting right the damage. The way we see it, the more time we spend discussing the situation the longer it’s going to take us to make a start. And all the time with inflation at 3% and bank interest at just 0.5% the longer you wait the more the real value of your savings melts away before your eyes. The quicker we can find something suitable and start to invest our labour into it the better.

After that, it was 17:00 when I came home and I didn’t feel like starting work again just for an hour – which was just as well as Claude came round for a chat and he was here for over an hour. I’m going to have to put in a good day tomorrow.

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Wednesday 27th January 2010 – I haven’t done much today.

I crawled out of bed this morning on time for a change and after a quick breakfast I piddled off to St Eloy to meet Liz and Terry for stage 2 of our househunting. First estate agent was on the phone all the time we were there and so we went to the second. Three people inside the office, two chatting to each other and the third on the phone.
“Ohh, she’ll see you. She won’t be a minute” said one of the chatting colleagues, indicating the one who was on the phone. So we waited and waited and waited while she carried on talking on the phone and the others carried on chatting to each other. 10 minutes of this and we piddled off elsewhere. Yes, don’t sell your property with ORPI of St Eloy – total waste of time and treat the customers with contempt.

At the third the estate agent selected three properties for us to have a look at and we wandered off to look at them. One was out of the question – although you can make 7 or 8 apartments in it, it’s expensive and needs a lot of money throwing at it. And there’s no way you could just do up one or two for starters – it all has to be done together. The other two are distinct possibilities and one particularly has fired our collective imaginations.

But why oh why is it that estate agents over here are so disorganised. When we looked around Pionsat the other day the estate agent forgot the keys and had to run back to the office to find them and here today the estate agent had “issues” with the keys. No sense of organisation, let alone “customer service”.

This afternoon I did even less. I’ve had a whole run of bad nights where I’ve had problems sleeping and it caught up with me this afternoon and I crashed out. But it’s no surprise. Minus 273 degrees C, or zero on the Kelvin scale, is when all molecular activity ceases. And while it hasn’t got that low yet it’s …. gulp …. minus 9 outside and my molecular activity has ceased. And I shan’t be doing much tomorrow if it doesn’t warm up any.

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Monday 25th January 2010 – I had my first garden fire of the year today

ford transit garden fire jungle les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs you know if you’ve been following my outpourings for a while, I have enormous difficulty getting a fire to burn when I really try. When I don’t try, like while I’m welding up a car or something, I can summon up a raging inferno in no time at all. But Liz, whom I spoke to on the phone this morning , gave me a few tips and I had quite a nice little fire burning. I was happily pulling up the brambles and chucking them on the fire and watching them burn.

But fires need careful watching in order to keep them burning and so it was no surprise at all that the phone rang immediately after this shot. It was the lady from Luxembourg who lives up the road and she was in the mood for a good chat. And of course by the time the phonecall finished, the fire was out.

This morning I wanted to get the wood off the roof of Caliburn but to do that I needed the ladder. And that was underneath the insulation which was stuck at the side of the plasterboard. So I ended up emptying Caliburn anyway and then I unloaded the wood. The ladder on Caliburn, when it’s on the roofrack, is held on by a patent clamp that I made. But the stud iron (or threaded rod as it is called these days) is quite long and useful for a multitude of sins and so takes a while to fasten down. So I found another bracket and made a made-to-measure bracket for the ladder that now fastens on in seconds.

And after lunch it was the garden.

This evening I went to Montaigut for this meal with Antoine. And it was what you call an “interactive” meal, involving the employees of the restaurant and some of the other customers. I’d never experienced anything quite like it. But it was a nice pizza restaurant and I’ll go there again. It’s good to know that there’s somewhere respectable to take my guests, if ever I have any. Although they might not let me in another time.

And tomorrow with a bit of luck I’ll be on the piste.

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Thursday 26th November 2009 – "This is the song of a girl and goatherd….

…. lay oh dalayee oh da layeeeeeeooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhh”
sang Julie Andrews in “The Sound of Music”. And I should know. Having a stagestruck mother whose own mother (my grandmother) was a Zeigfield Folly on Broadway in the 1920s I had as a child to sit through every single musical that ever came out and I know the script and the lyrics of each one off by heart. And I don’t ever want to see another musical for as long as I live.

But Julie Andrews didn’t know the story about one particular goatherd who lived just down the road here in Teilhet. He had rented some land for his goats – land that had been “promised” to other people. And one night all his goats were killed. And another night his barn was burnt down. And then he received threatening letters.

A group of people around here felt that the police were dragging their heels and that it was the locals, having been “promised” the land, who were behind all of the shenanigans. This group organised all kinds of demonstrations aimed at confronting the police, trying to provoke some kind of retaliation by the authorities into the locals and their affairs – generally stirring up the community and the like. I was asked to join in the action too, but I stepped back and urged the others to think before they went too far. I usually like to hear both sides of the story before I leap into anything.

This didn’t go down too well at all with some of the others and when a most offensive petition aimed at the local community was drafted in the name of an organisation of which I happened to be a member, I withdrew my support. I received a barrage of e-mails the contents of which would have been out of place in the fo’c’sle of The Good Ship Venus. Accusing me of “being just as guilty as those who are behind the violence” was the least of the criticisms.

Meanwhile, about 100 miles away from here in a village called Tarnac, there is “The Tarnac affair”. Persons unknown placed some railway sleepers across the main TGV line in an attempt to derail a train. Luckily no major damage was done. A short while later a group of young persons in Tarnac was rounded up by the police in respect of this sabotage and were charged, not under “civil” legislation such as criminal damage and the like, but special “terrorism” legislation. It was claimed that this group of persons had contacts with other international groups aimed at disrupting civil society and that sort of thing.

One person whose evidence was instrumental in this case was the famous “witness X”, whose identity was kept secret to avoid “repercussions” due to the nature of his evidence.

And today, the identity of “witness X” has been announced. And who do you think that it is?

Yes, you’re right. None other than our local goatherd.

Now of course there is no evidence to suggest that this group of terrorists or any supporters thereof are behind the attacks on this guy’s farm and his goats (graphologists attached to the French Government say that the writing on the letters matches his own handwriting but he denies this) but it’s a story that is at least as plausible as that of the outraged locals undertaking the attacks. And you can see why the authorities have been thought to be dragging their feet in this affair – the ramifications of the goatherd’s involvement with the “terrorists” of the Tarnac affair stretch across all kinds of international boundaries and go way beyond an ordinary village feud.

Pretty soon, I’ll be seeing some of the people involved in this sorry affair. I’m not expecting an apology for the vilification and the ostracism to which I have been subjected over the past 12 months, but I’ll be intrigued to see how many of them come up to me and admit that I had a very valid point.

In other news, Terry came round today and we went and shovelled some sand into some sacks. 1.4 tonnes of it. We had some good luck too at the quarry, but in the interests of discretion (you never know who reads this blog) I can’t say anything about it.

Afterwards I did some washing, including my really comfy “Hawkshead” boots that a slug had made a home in and as I couldn’t settle down afterwards I went into St Eloy and did my shopping. I met Francois from the Anglo-French group in LIDL and we had a chat.

Yes, shopping today. That’s unusual. But I’m busy all day Saturday. Terry and Liz are having a chantier at their house and that might mean vegan chocolate cake.

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Monday 16th November 2009 – This evening I had to go into Montaigut en Combraille …

church montaigut en combraille… to return a guitar lead to Robert the drummer. I’d borrowed one from him to try out this Carlsbro combo that I bought. Where he lives is just 20 yards from the town church, and it was looking so nice bathed in the orange lamps of the square that I reckoned it was worth a photo.

Montaigut is a deceptive town, there’s a main road that runs right through the middle of it and that road carries a great deal of heavy traffic – it’s the N144, the main road between Montlucon and Clermont Ferrand. It looks dirty and dingy and full of abandoned shops and houses.

But the main road was only built through it in the 1920s. Prior to that all of the traffic passed through the real centre of the town, the centre that most people don’t even know exists. It was formerly a mediaeval walled city complete with castle (now long-demolished) and narrow winding mediaeval streets that are difficult to walk through, never mind drive through.

This morning I set the alarm – for the first time in 12 days – but it was still difficult to crawl out of my stinking pit. And I started on a desultory tidying-up. I’ve found some more scaffolding buried in the undergrowth and all kinds of bits and pieces. I’m busy sorting out the wood that we ripped off the roof, seeing what is salveable and what is just fit for burning.

I’ve also added another compost bin – we have a black plastic dustbin with an old caravan window over the top. You might be wondering what I’m doing with this but it concerns the beichstuhl arrangements. I shan’t go into the gory details as you are probably eating but if you remember back a few weeks ago, it involves a plant pot, a load of biodegradable bin liners and the fact that I’m a vegan. Keeping the soil fertility going is quite important.

Tonight is the 3rd Monday of the month and that’s when we meet at the hotel at St Eloy. A sign on the door said “back at 19:00” but by 19:40 we were fed up of waiting and so we went to the bar down the road instead. It seems that Mark is something of an expert at pointing stonework using chalk. Terry has asked him to give him some lessons so Mark is going round there on Thursday morning. I’m always keen to learn whatever I can at times like this so I’m going round there too. After all, my place is in need of a good pointing too and so I’ll make a point of learning all I can.

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Wednesday 4th November 2009 – Well, folks – here it is!

attic finishedAnd about time too, I hear you say. One attic duly completed (more or less).

If you look very closely you can see that all of the skirting board is fitted, even in the little cupboard. And the room was emptied and brushed out by 18:15 too.

Tomorrow is going to be cleaning and tidying, and then moving in. And I’m going to have 10 days off and put my feet up to relax.

It goes without saying that a great big thanks is due to Terry, who came along, got me motivated and got me started on the roof back in July.

A big thanks too goes to Liz, who kept me going with supplies of vegan chocolate cake, to Dave who came to join in for a couple of days, and also to Rhys and Krys who kept me at it with loads of virtual cyber-support.

attic no roof no floorAnd we really put our backs into it too. It’s very hard to imagine that it was only on the 18th of July that the attic looked like this.

So here’s a little quiz to keep you all going until tomorrow.

I said that tomorrow I’m moving into the attic once I’ve cleaned it. The bed-settee, the desk and the coffee table are already up there. What you have to do is to guess which domestic item is going to be the first to be moved up there from anywhere else. An easy one if you know me – not so easy if you don’t.

As for this evening, we had an exciting jam session in a living room in Montaigut. I took the acoustic bass as I don’t have an amp and speaker for the Gibson but I needn’t have bothered – the living room was like something out of a who stage set, complete with soundproof room for the drums. Michael had only ever played once before with other people – I haven’t played with anyone else for about 30 years, but the drummer would have been out of my league even back in those days. His mane won’t mean anything to you but he was formerly the drummer in Gong – Daevid Allen and Pierre Malherbe’s group from the 1970s. Strangely enough, he’s interested in getting together again so when Michael comes back from the UK I’m going to teach him the basics of 12-bar blues and we’ll take it from there.

Meantime I need to talk to Trixi about some singing lessons. Last time I had to sing in a rock band Sue Willett gave me some lessons and some tips – but I’ve forgotten those.

What a day!

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Thursday 24th September 2009 – TODAY’S PIC…

space blanket insulation fitting stud wall les guis virlet puy de dome france… is taken from almost the same place as yesterday’s. That means that it is much easier to compare the progress for today.

what you will notice is that the framework around the head of the stairs (or where the head of the stairs will be) is now in position. And I have to say that I’m quite impressed with it, even if it means that I have to enter the room now via a ladder. You can almost picture it being clad in plasterboard (except for where the water tank will be, which will be a wooden door).

The horizontals are not permanently fastened yet, which means that I can still bring bulky objects into the room, but I’m not sure what objects I’ll be having that will be so bulky.

I was about to start on the insulation but then I noticed the time – 18:15. As the late, great Arthur Naylor once said -“it’s not worth starting another case” and I resolved on an early night. well, late by normal standards but early these recent days.

It doesn’t look a lot of work, but each one of those joints has been filed by hand to make a millimetre-perfect fit and that takes time. And then I had to go with Terry to the quarry to help him with his order for sand. And a good job I did, as the digger was out of action and we had to handball 800kgs of sand onto the Sankey trailer.

Tomorrow I’ll be insulating, and then finishing off the flooring. Once that is in I’ll be plasterboarding the outside wall. The plasterboarding for the partition walls won’t have polystyrene on them , so that will be done at a later date.

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Wednesday 23rd September 2009 – NO VEGAN CHOCOLATE CAKE! SHOCK! HORROR!

But there was vegan ginger cake instead so that was ok.

And I reckoned I earned it too. Caliburn certainly did, hauling almost 2 tons of gravel over the Font Nanaud in the Sankey trailer. And then we had to unload it and bag it afterwards.

Terry offered me a shovel – a standard size one but I had my LIDL special – a long handled variety.
“It saves my back – I can shovel up while I’m stading upright”
“But the long-handle means you bash people with it when you turn round”
“Anyone who has worked with me for any length of time ought to know not to get too close to me no matter what tool it is that I’m wielding”.

space blanket insulation erecting stud wall attic les guis virlet puy de dome franceMeanwhile, back at the ranch, I’ve started to erect the other pillars and cross beams for the partition around the head of the stairs. This is the part where the door will go.

I’ll be fitting the water tank in the space over the top of the door but it’s looking smaller than I expected it to be. I have a 200-litre tank that someone gave me but I don’t think that it’s going to fit and so I’ll have to actually go out and buy … “you do know that word then” – ed … a smaller one.

Talking of buying, I’ll be having a weekend of not going to Brico Depot. Caliburn is still chock-full of stuff from last weekend and I’ve nowhere to store it, so I’m going to have to work on using all of the material that’s hanging around in order to make some space.

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