Tag Archives: lie in

Thursday 13th June 2013 – THE ANSWER …

… to that question was “no”.

At least, that’s how it appeared at 07:00 this morning when I awoke.

Absolutely hissing down with rain. No-one felt like leaving the comfort of their heaving pit and so it wasn’t until about 09:00 that we all assembled for breakfast.

A quick nip into town afterwards for one or two purchases, being soaked to death by the rain, and that was about that for the morning.

This afternoon though it did brighten up somewhat so after we dropped Cécile’s mother off at the OAPs club for the Thursday singalong, Cécile and I went for a walk along the rocks on the shore.

We spent much of the time looking in the pools for the marine life left behind by the tide. And believe me, there wasn’t half enough of it.

Cécile spent quite some time pointing out to me all of the different varieties of marine life and, true to form, I have now forgotten them all

This evening we were invited around for drinks and a chat by Cécile’s mother’s neighbours so I had to be sociable – not like me at all. And we were there until well past 21:00 too.

Cécile and I went for a long walk afterwards in the gathering gloom and that was that – the rain was still holding off.

Highlight of the day was that Cécile’s mother’s cat, Chaupette, finally allowed me to pick her up and stroke her.

We are definitely making progress.

-3

Saturday 5th January 2013 – I’M NOT …

… at home today either.

Waking up in strange surroundings is not something to which I’m accustomed, even if many people tell me that there’s nowhere more strange than my house.

It wasn’t very early either because things are a little more anarchic here. I need to lead a regimented kind of life because it’s the only way that I can ever motivate myself.

I’m the world’s worst at self-motivation, but other people can motivate themselves much better in other ways.

So we had a lounge around for a while after breakfast, not doing very much, and I ended up being invited to stay for lunch which was nice.

One thing led to another, as it often does, and once you get started you’d be amazed at just how many other things there are. And as a result, I’m sill here tonight too.

Ahh well.

Thursday 3rd January 2013 – WHAT A LOUSY …

… day

Grey, wet, miserable, depressing

But that’s enough about me – the weather was even worse.

So with almost no solar energy today I didn’t do all that much. When I opened my eye and saw the weather, I closed it again and went back under the duvet.

And if it hadn’t been absolutely necessary to visit the beichstuhl I’d probably be there now.

After breakfast and working on the website for a while I started on the floor in the shower room. But I wasn’t there as long as I might have been, and for a very simple reason too.

I will swear blind that I bought 5 packets of tongue-and-grooved flooring planks, but I’ve only been able to manage to find four – there’s one missing somewhere. And the result of that is that I ran out of floor with two planks to go.

GRRRRR!

So that means a trip to Montlucon and Brico Depot on Saturday, doesn’t it? I’m never going to finish this blasted flooring seeing as how all of the fates are conspiring against me.

To pass the rest of the time I started to sort out the firewood in the lean-to in order to make more space.

I could have cut it up as well but I have to do that outside and with it pouring down with rain it wasn’t much of a good plan. But there’s progress all the same.

This evening I had another meal the same as last night and it worked just as well, if not better.

Having a rip-roaring blaze at the beginning is definitely the key to cooking with the wood stove. It heats the oven up quicker and that cooks the potatoes better.

Basically, 2 hours for the spuds, 60 minutes for the sprouts and 90 minutes for the rest of the veg. The veggie-burger takes about 20 minutes or so.

I had a few phone calls too. Cécile called me twice and spoke to me for hours. She’s giving a dinner party tomorrow night and wants to know if I can help her tomorrow afternoon to prepare.

Seeing as I don’t have the wood to finish the floor, that seems like a good plan.

Marianne also rang up for a long chat and to tell me about her adventures at Riom hunting down old historical documents. One of these days when I’m not busy, whenever that might be, I’ll have to go with her.

As for me, this afternoon I telephoned the hospital at Montlucon to enquire about Bill.

The receptionist wasn’t all that forthcoming. After much verbal fencing, she expressed an interest in knowing who I was, and so I explained that I was neither family nor close friend but just an everyday run-of-the-mill friend of no particular significance.

She then said that she couldn’t give me any more information, but would I care to leave my phone number so that she can pass it on the Bill’s daughter – his next of kin

I don’t like the sound of that one little bit

-2

Sunday 30th December 2012 – IT’S SUNDAY …

… and it’s also the day before a Bank Holiday too, so this gives me a double reason to sit around and do nothing.

Well, actually, tomorrow isn’t really a Bank Holiday at all, but when I look back over the year and see just how many Bank Holidays that I missed, with having to work and all of that, then tomorrow flaming well is going to be a Bank Holiday and I intend to enjoy every minute of it.

So I started as I meant to go on – which was to lie on my palliasse until something ludicrous and then have a late breakfast.

Followed by … errr … nothing at all.

We did manage lunch, and I even cooked a pizza for tea but that was about the limit of my strenuous activities for today.

And I can’t say that I’m sorry about that either. High time that I took care of myself.

Wednesday 26th December 2012 – Happy Boxing Day.

02:45 it was that Cecile left last night – nothing like a good evening with pleasant company – and by that time I was well ready for bed.

And so this morning, having remembered to switch off the alarm, I managed a lie-in until all of 09:45.

After breakfast, part II of the DVD marathon continued, and continued for most of the day too.

Lunch was the usual salad butties, and the Boxing Day dinner was the reheated leftover veg from yesterday, fried in an olive oil and mustard sauce of my own making (delicious, even though I say it myself) with a vegan burger.

Pudding was, as you might expect, more Christmas pudding and the left-over vegan cream.

How about that fr a nice, lazy Bank Holiday? High time that I had a lazy day like that. Does me the world of good.

But tomorrow I suppose that I had better start back to work. No peace for the wicked.

-3

Sunday 18th November 2012 – I WAS GOING …

… to go to watch a football match this afternoon.

No match for FC Pionsat St Hilaire this weekend so I had had a search around on the internet.

And I came up with quite a choice too – St Avit to see Le Quartier’s 2nd XI (which apparently is many of FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 3rd XI from last year, so they say), Neuf Eglise to watch a cup match, or to Baudelaire or Chambon in the Creuse, where there were a couple of matches.

Instead, though, I stayed in, because I was busy. I have a lot to do and it won’t be done if I don’t do it.

I actually managed a lie-in until 09:45 today, although that wasn’t too much of a lie-in seeing as how I didn’t go to bed until about 02:00.

And after watching The Cannonball Run, which is definitely one of my favourite films for mindless, light-hearted entertainment, I sat down and started on a new project.

As you might (or might not) know, I present a Radio Anglais rock music programme twice a week for Radio Tartasse in Marcillat-en-Combraille.

That sounds very grand but it is in fact just a couple of programmes recycled during the month.

However, I’m playing stuff that most, if not all, my listeners have never heard, because I’m not going for mainstream music but for the more marginal stuff that never had the airplay to be a top 20 hit.

So what I’ve started to do today is to prepare a web page listing all of the albums from which I’ve been playing stuff, and arranging them by month.

It’s a long way from being finished but at least it’s started and it’s well on its way

This evening I picked up Cécile at her place and we went down to Liz and Terry’s – for me to rehearse my radio programmes with Liz and for Cécile to discuss some work with Terry.

In the end we all had a very good chat and a nice socialising evening.

And tomorrow, we’re recording our radio programmes, so I’ll be out all day.

It won’t leave me much time to do this floor.

-4

Monday 5th November 2012 – IN POSSIBLY WHAT …

… is going to be one of the shortest blog entries ever, I’m clearly not quite 100% – but then you knew that anyway.

The effects of my weekend away must have taken out of me more than I realised because it’s been quite difficult for me to move. Leaving my bed was quite exciting, I’ll promise you.

So today, I’ve been slowly catching up on what I should have done this weekend, including writing up yesterday’s mammoth blog entry and when I finish it (whenever that might be) I can restart work.

Always assuming of course that it stops raining sometime soon. For if not, I’ll be building myself an ark

-4

Thursday 1st November 2012 – I’M GLAD …

… that it was today that was a Bank Holiday and I decided not to work, because it has done nothing but pour down all day – at times with some really torrential rain.

And after a not-so-early night, switching off all of the alarms and so on, I managed to stay in bed until all of … errr … 08:56am. So much for that!

so after breakfast (which included coffee for the first time since when I was ill – i’ve been reintroducing foods one by one to see if there is anything that is bad) I sat down and watched Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone;

It’s a really excellent film, much better than you might expect if you can steel yourself to pass the dire 10 minutes of opening.

I had loads of other things to do as well, but I did … precisely nothing. Sat and vegetated for all of the day. I didn’t even go downstairs to make any food – just nibbled on bits and pieces (but I did make a second coffee though).

Still, as Joy said, I deserve a day off every now and again where I shouldn’t feel guilty about doing nothing.

But if it’s as bad as this tomorrow I’ll crack on with the shelving in the cupboard. I really want that to be finished.

-1

Thursday 25th October 2012 – A BIG THANK-YOU …

… to everyone who thought about me while I was ill. I appreciated it very much.

A couple of you have suggested taking it easy for a while – sentiments with which I totally agree. Accordingly when the alarm clocks went off, I turned over and went back to sleep for a while.

Most of the day has been spent with paperwork – or rather, fiddling about with the printer so that I could print off a pile of paperwork.

It didn’t print in black last month and so I did everything in blue, but today I spent ages cleaning the heads and managed to get half a black printout.

One of the nozzles is blocked, and so I went to clean the heads again, and it ran out of black ink. I changed the black ink, but it still wasn’t printing properly and so I cleaned the heads again.

This time it ran out of blue ink.

I changed the blue ink, cleaned the heads, and it’s still not printing properly in black.

This means that for the foreseeable future I’m back to printing everything in blue again. I never seem to have any luck with printers.

This afternoon, I selected all of the music for the rock programmes but this evening was something exciting and unusual – Nan was having a little do and I was invited, as were Cécile, Gilles and Zoe.

We had a snack and played charades and so on for a few hours. It’s not like me to be sociable, is it?< Tomorrow is recording the Radio Anglais rock programmes for Radio Tartasse and so I won't be doing too much tomorrow morning either.

-5

Saturday 20th October 2012 – I’M ALL ICKY-POOHS

I started to feel ill on Friday night and I wasn’t feeling so good this morning either and so I decided to stay in bed to sleep through it.

Or, at least that was the plan.

But it didn’t quite work out quite like that as for reasons that I won’t explain because you are probably eating your lunch right now, I couldn’t stay in bed for longer than 10 minutes at a time.

Consequently I reckon that I’ve eaten something that disagrees with me – but what, I do not know.

On the basis that if nothing goes in, then nothing can come out, I decided not to eat or drink anything until the crisis passed but nevertheless I nipped into St Eloy-les-Mines (and wasn’t that an exciting adventure?) to do some quick shopping.

Having taken a few elementary precautions, I went down to watch the football, including watching FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 2nd XI win their first game of the season against the Goatslayers. but that was really too much.

Back home, I retired to bed and that was that.

Thursday 6th September 2012 – I DIDN’T GET MUCH …

… done on the wall today either. This deadline of next weekend is looking less and less likely

The effects of all these early mornings proved too much for me today. I vaguely heard the alarm clock go off, but it was 09:10 when I set foot out of bed.

Had It not been for the fact that I needed to go for a ride on the porcelain horse (or what passes for a porcelain horse around here) I would probably still be in bed right now

A good few hours on the website and then outside at 12:30 and I managed to bung two really good bucket-loads into the wall.

Even better – after lunch, even with rearranging some of the stones, I still heaved a couple of bucket loads in by 16:30. However, such is the condition of the wall that all of that chalk mortar isn’t advancing me very much.

And 16:30 though saw me come to a rather shuddering stop.

According to my weather reporting, weather comes in five grades

overcast
cloudy
clouds
scattered clouds
cloudless

We started to day with scattered clouds but by 16:30 we had progressed to a cloudless day. The water temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load was 63°C, the batteries in the barn were fully-charged and there was a good wind blowing.

There was also a big pile of dirty clothes to be washed up here in the attic and the bedding needed changing – the kind of things that need doing no matter what other plans you have, and so I stopped work on the wall and dealt with the washing.

Put all of that out of the way.

While this was going on, I did a few odd jobs around here, like changing plugs on appliances and so on.

As you know, I don’t use Continental plugs and sockets here but British ones, for the simple reason that the plugs themselves are fused and so any issues with my system won’t damage the appliances.

‘ve also wired in the new media trolley that I assembled on Sunday. It now has a 4-way 230-volt socket that plugs into the wall – I can plug all of the external drives and so on into it, and it also has 3 x 12-volt DC sockets for things like the DVD player, the video player and so on.

Finally, even though the water in the solar shower was quite cold, I bunged 5 litres of hot water out of the dump load into it and had a shower myself – clean myself up.

And so now there are clean sheets, clean pillowcases, a clean quilt cover, and a clean me. I’m quite looking forward to that and it won’t be long before I’m in it either.

And then tomorrow I really must get cracking and no mistake.

-3

Sunday 2nd September 2012 – ONE THING THAT MAKES ME …

… appreciate how lucky I am with my friends is that they appreciate and respect my little foibles and peccadilloes.

Of course these days, nobody respects my little foibles quite like Percy Penguin, and then nothing like half as often as I would like, and as for my little peccadilloes, I bet that you didn’t even know that armadilloes and peccaries could mate

But back to the plot – having rung me at 09:00 a couple of Sundays ago, someone must have had a quiet word with Rosemary because it was at 12:30 this afternoon that she phoned me.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t matter how you wrap it up, it still comes as a hell of a surprise, if not a disappointment, when you yourself are still wrapped up in the arms of Morpheus in your comfy little bed at the time.

So after my rude awakening and my breakfast, I turned out a corner of my room here – the corner which was the likeliest to be the hiding place of my mobile phone.

No such luck with the phone, as I was half-expecting, but I did find another pile of missing stuff – something that always happens and something that is always a great comfort to me.

I’ve also rearranged a few things over there, put the printer in a more-permanent home, and sorted out all of the stationery too

After lunch, by which time I mean about 17:30, I assembled the desk-on-wheels thing that I bought the other day at Centrakor in Commentry, and that was no mean feat as the instructions for that were wrong too and I had to work it out myself.

It’s quite a nice piece of furniture, excellent value for €19:99. I’m well-happy with this for a purchase. I’ve loaded everything onto it now and it works quite well.

The downside of it all is that I seem now to have lost the remote control to the AKAI 12-volt DVD player.

So that’s the sum total of my day. I’m off now to have an early night to catch up my beauty sleep. I need an enormous amount of that.

But before I go off to sleep, let me just confirm something that you might already have gathered from a couple of comments that I’ve already made.

When I went off to Canada at the end of April I planned to go back again this autumn. Especially so, seeing that I left all of my winter clothes there when I came back.

But I’m making rapid progress with this lean-to as you know. I’ve accomplished so much since I came back from Canada last October and the end is in sight. I’m still all-fired up to carry on and if I stop, I might not have the momentum, the motivation and the weather to be able to continue.

It’s a shame to stop now when I can finish it off in a couple of weeks, and so Canada is now officially cancelled and I’m going up the wall.

-2

Tuesday 28th August 2012 – DESPITE MY …

… early night last night, I somehow managed to sleep right through the alarms this morning.

It was 09:22 when I finally heaved myself out of my stinking pit. It’s been quite a while since I’ve done that, hasn’t it

It was raining too – which makes a nice change. It’s been a while since I’ve had any. But it didn’t rain for long, but long enough to put 100 litres or so into the water butts and I am grateful for that.

The garden and my water butts needed it.

Despite this being a day where I was at home, I didn’t do any pointing at all.

I have done 75% of the painting of the woodwork for the window frames though – two coats on one side and one on the other – I’ll have to do the second one on there before I fit it all in

And while I was waiting for the coats of paint to dry, I was doing other things.

One of the things that I did do was to dig up some carrots and pull some beans. Proof, if any were needed, that thanks to all of Rosemary’s help my garden is coming up with the goods..

Add them to the new potatoes that I uprooted the other day, and then some cauliflower that I bought on Saturday, a veggie-burger fried with onion and then some vegan cheese sauce, it was absolutely gorgeous.

What a wonderful tea it all was too!

Another thing that I did was to empty Caliburn out. His load bed is now empty. I’m taking Rosemary to Brico Depot tomorrow and also to Lapeyre so I may well need the space.

I need some more guttering and also some more glass to replace that which … errr … met with an accident, and I need a very narrow springy trowel to replace the one that I broke here on the wall.

Finally, I’ve been tidying up downstairs too looking for my mobile phone which I appear to have mislaid somewhere. I didn’t find that but I did find the missing LED light strips, which pleased me greatly.

I’ve also thrown away about 1 big bin-liner full of rubbish – and there’s plenty more to go at too.

That took me to 19:00 and then I knocked off.

Montlucon tomorrow and then Thursday I can get cracking again.

-2

Sunday 5th August 2012 – THIS WATER ISSUE …

… that I mentioned yesterday seems to have resolved itself.

When I checked the statistics earlier, we had had 5.5mm of rain up to that point. and it’s still teeming down outside.

All the plants will be having a good watering anyway, and you can’t say that they don’t need it – a few of them were really gasping a bit.

I worked out that the catchment area of the water is about 30m². Therefore 1/30 of a metre of rain – about 34mm – will give me 1 cubic metre, or 1000 litres, of water.

So 5.5 mm of water will give me 5.5/34 x 1000 = about 160 litres of rain. I won’t have any issues about using that lot.

It started to rain while I was at the Pionsat brocante this afternoon. And it served me right because I didn’t arrive there until about 14:30.

Mind you, I don’t think that I missed very much because it was mostly awful as you can see.

But I did have the most extraordinary stroke of luck.

I use kee klamps to make the mounting frames for my solar panels and they are expensive. But there was a Dutch guy here with a box-full for sale for all of €5:00 – you can’t even buy one for that – and so I duly knocked him down to €4:00.

I had a very good reason for my somewhat-delayed start to the morning. Brain of Britain here forgot to cancel his early morning alarm and so at 07:45 I had an unexpected cacophony.

Anyway, badger that for a game of soldiers. I tuned off the alarm and went back to bed until 10:45, and that, dear reader, was that.

Marianne was there of course with one of her sons, in her role as active member of the Amis du Chateau de Pionsat and we had quite a lengthy chat.

Marianne was actually in charge of the caleche, the horse and carriage that had ben hired to give sightseeing trips around the town, and I was even invited aboard for a free lap of honour.

It goes without saying that if it’s free, I’ll have ten of those.

That was it really – a really lazy day. But I’m entitled to one every week. A day where you do nothing and don’t feel guilty about it is really important.

-4

Saturday 14th July 2012 – IT’S ONLY 23:15 …

… and I’m thoroughly whacked.

I’m also extremely tired, but that’s another story. Anyone would think that I’ve had a really hard day, but in fact I’ve done probably not much more than nothing.

I didn’t even have an early start either – it was 09:30 when I crawled out of Quatermass’s Pit.

And on that subject, I wish that the weather would improve so that I could do some washing. We’ve had more torrential rain again to day and if it carries on I’ll be uprooting my vegetables and planting rice instead.

After a leisurely morning’s breakfast I started on the radio programmes but it wasn’t long before I was sidetracked.

The Music folders on my external hard drive are in a mess and having sorted out the photos last weekend, I decided to organise the music. Strangely enough, that freed off a couple of gigabytes of space on my hard drive and there’s room to move about now.

And that wasn’t all either.

In 2002 I was in Utah and spent a very pleasant half a day prowling around the Escalante (or Escalente) Desert in Utah. Today though, it’s in the news.

All over the American newspapers today though was an article about someone else who had been prowling around the Escalante (or Escalente) Desert for three weeks totally lost and being found in the nick of time by some searchers.

I had a look at my web page, and realised that it was one that had only received the briefest of updating when I did a major update of my website in February 2007.

Sensing that the page would receive a few hits today (and I wasn’t wrong either) I spent the afternoon rewriting it and bringing it right up to date.

So much for the radio.

Anyway, I’m off to bed. I’m out with Marianne tomorrow and I need to be on form. I’ve no idea why I’m so tired right now.

-2

EPIC HALL

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