Tag Archives: eric hall

Thursday 27th February 2014 – THIS IS WHERE …

… I spent the night. The “Grain de Sable” in Ares. So called because all of the walls are lined with bottle containing sand from different beaches throughout the world.

A little on the expensive side, but you would be surprised how difficult it is to find any hotel here in this tourist area, never mind one that is open. Camping and chalets and flats seem to be the order of the day.

But you can see what the weather was doing. Cold, wet and miserable. It caught me up during the night. But not as cold, wet and miserable as last night in the mountains of Nova Scotia where I wqs picking up bits of the Swissair flight that blew up over the Atlantic just offshore from Halifax. Must have been a strong jetstream to get aircraft parts onto the mainland, that’s all I can say.

I had a slow, leisurely drive all the way around the bay and to the town of Arcachon. There I was disappointed as it really is a “twee” place. No chance to park as firstly the weather was so bad and secondly, parking is very strictly controlled and it wasn’t easy to see a space, let alone reverse into it seeing as how the streets were so narrow (well, they weren’t – it was just that the roadway was deliberately narrowed so that pedestrians would have more room to walk about, not that it stopped them stepping off the road in front of the traffic without even looking or caring whenever the fancy took them. How was it who once famously said “There are two types of pedestrian – the quick and the dead”?)

I did stop a few miles out of Arcachon because I reckoned that from there I would be able to see the Cap Ferret lighthouse across on the other side of the bay.

So there you are – that’s where I was yesterday afternoon. Round by the lighthouse across the bay.

And you might have noticed that the weather has improved sightly too.

As you come out of the bay and hit the Atlantic coast, the effects of the currents going in one direction and the wind blowing in the opposite direction has created some immense sand dunes, such as this monster dune near Pyla sur Mer. It’s enormous.

I was going to have a close look at it but it’s all fenced off until you come to the car park, which is a “pay to leave” car park with ticket control, automatic barriers and the like. I did a U-turn and drove out of the entrance – I’m not being caught for parking like that.

Next stop was Biscarrosse Plage in Les Landes. Odds-on there being loads of hotels here seeing that this is one of France’s major unsung holiday resorts.

But why it is unsung is that there are in fact only 5 here (and a couple of enormous camp sites) but none is open. And not only that, there isn’t a single open boulangerie in the whole town.

The beach is closed too, but there’s a reason for that. There’s been a howling gale blowing here for the last month with enormous waves. This area is the neck of the funnel that is the Bay of Biscay and the whole of the Atlantic Ocean is trying to fit into this little coastal strip. There’s nothing out there until the south-eastern seaboard of the USA. IMpressive, what?

So with no hotels, no bakery, no nothing, I drove on and on and now I’m in Mimizan Plage where not only is there a little democratically-priced hotel but also a Morroccan restaurant that has made me a delicious vegan couscous.

-2

Wednesday 26th February 2014 – THIS IS WHERE …

… Caliburn, Strawberry Moose and Yours Truly stopped for lunch this afternoon.

I’m at Le Cap Ferret, which is on the French South-Western Atlantic coast not too far from Bordeaux. There is an errand and some Pionsat-based research to be undertaken in this neck of the woods and when I woke up this morning at Brive-La-Gaillarde to another round of miserable driving rain and the only spot of clear weather on the whole of today’s map of France seemed to be around here, I thought “sod this for a game of soldiers” and I’ve gone West.

“Not before time” I hear you say, but anyway, as Marshall MacMahon once famously said, “here I am and here I’ll stay”

One reason for coming here is that there is a big lighthouse on the Cape and as many long-term readers of this rubbish will recall, I have quite a thing about lighthouses.

But this one wasn’t what I was expecting to see for rather than being isolated on some kind of sandspit somewhere, it’s right in the middle of a built-up area. Access is very difficult and also it’s not easy to find a good spot to take a photograph. Still, one does the best one can.

I went for a good long walk for a couple of hours along the beach. Part of the beach is actually an enormous sandspit that stretches for a good mile, if not more, just offshore and it’s a wonderful place to go for a stroll.

There was practically no-one about which was surprising given how qwarm it was this afternoon. But I bet that it wouldn’t be like this in July and August, not by any means

We’d had a few sudden, short storms during the day, some of them quite heavy, and while I was out on my sandspit we had another one.

Come and gone in a flash, but we had the most astonishing rainbow and I’ve never seen one quite like this before. It came out really well on the photo which was something of a surprise as it doesn’t usually happen like this either.

But on the debit side, dunno if you remember me fixing the auxilliary charging circuit on Caliburn on Monday. Since then, there has always been an occasional little whiff of Sulphuric gas from the battery – no surprise as the battery is goosed and it’s only there to make a circuit. But this evening there was a different smell. The second battery is behind the driver’s seat so while I was driving, I put my hand down to feel if anything was out of the ordinary happening to the battery – and promptly burnt my hand.

The battery was more-than-red hot and so I think that it’s gone totally o/c. And so hot that I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had burst into flames either.

I’ve disconnected it anyway and I’ll have another look at it tomorrow. Or sometime. Maybe.

But now I’m in a little seaside hotel just down the road from Le Cap Ferret. No idea where I’ll go tomorrow, but I don’t feel like going home.

And last night?

I was with Nerina and we went to the Victoria Hall in Hanley to see Neil Young. We were very early and caught him on stage setting up and checking his equipment. There were about 20 early birds in total and he invited us all on stage for a chat, and asked us if we had any questions.

I asked him about his songwriting – I reckoned that the songs that he wrote when he had the Black Dog looking over his shoulder were by far and away the best. Did he agree? And how did he cope with Depression affecting his songwriting.

He replied that he was so accustomed to it that he had learned to live with it and what he wrote, as long as it was technically competent, he had no qualms whatever about recording. Songwriting is all about expressing the writer’s moods and there is good and bad, just like in life.

He then asked for a volunteer todo something and, to my surprise, Nerina volunteered. Not like her – she always had very firm preiciples. But nevertheless she left her position of crouched on the floor at Neil Young’s feet and went off to do this task.

-3

Tuesday 25th February 2014 – I’M NOT HERE

Well, not ALL here anyway. But you knew that already, didn’t you?

I’m not there either – although I was earlier this evening. This is the Viaduc de la Roche-Taillende, colloquially known as the Viaduc des Rochers Noirs, and it’s near the town of Lapleau in the Corrèze.

You may not think it looking at that tight curve to enter the viaduct, but I’m actually standing on the bed of a disaffected railway line. It’s another one of these metre-gauge tacots, or “rattletraps”, a narrow-gauge railway line similar to the one that we’ve seen at Marcillat-en-Combraille in the Allier, but this one ran between Ussel and Tulle in the Corrèze.

There was a speed limit of 15kph on the line which is hardly surprising given the tightness of the curve, and also the fact that we have a suspension bridge which is quite a rare type of construction for a railway bridge.

Just like chez Liz and Terry, the railway disappears off into a tunnel on the other side of the river, but that is all fenced off.

Until 2006 you could actually drive through there in a car but unfortunately the Conseil Départementale has put a stop to all of that.

I merely contented myself with taking a few pictures – there wasn’t anything more that I could do unfortunately.

I did however go for a little bit of a climb and I was glad that I did, because the view from up on a rocky outcrop towering a couple of hundred feet above the viaduct was stunning, to say the least, even if it did wear me out climbing up to here.

This photo does show you the lengths that they had to go in order to build the viaduct and it’s hard to think that this line didn’t open until 1913, by which time it had effectively already outlived its effectiveness with the coming of the motor-bus but nevertheless it struggled on until as recently as 1960, which is quite an achievement for a metre-gauge tacot.

While I was up here I took a few photos of the stunning scenery.

The viaduct spans the Gorge de la Luzège at a height of 92 metres, or 126 metres if you count the pylons, so I’m quite high up and the view of the gorge is amazing.

It’s a shame that the weather was so dreadful though – it’s been raining non-stop and I’ve forgotten to bring a raincoat with me.

Serves me right.

Coming here brought me (via the Pionsat Post Office to post Cécile’s letters) over the Plateau de Millevaches on the border between the Creuze and Corrèze.

Apart from the snow that I encountered, the plateau is famous in that it was effectively a “Free French” area during World War II. There is a great deal of resistance souvenirs in the area, including this plaque to commemorate the parachuting-in of members of the 3rd Regiment SAS who organised the French Resistance in the turbulent times after D-Day.

There are poignant souvenirs too – memorials to victims of the occasional sweeps by the Gestapo and also the town of Tulle itself just a short drive away, where the Das Reich Panzer Division of the SS strung up almost 100 locals from lamp-posts in the centre of the town as a form of reprisal for terrorist attacks.

And that’s not all either.

I saw a sign that said Ruines les Cars and with Cars being French for the kind of coaches that I drove when I worked for Shearings, I went for a look to see what it was all about, but instead I found myself in the middle of a Roman villa and huge Temple from the 2nd Century AD.

Of course, you are not allowed to say “Roman Remains” here in France. Everything has to be “Gallo-Roman” because the French don’t accept (rightly or wrongly, I dunno) that the French civilisation of the turn of the Common Era was any less inferior than the Roman civilisation, and I’ve seen some healthy fights at some of these archaeological meetings that I sometimes go to.

Talking of ruins of cars, another thing that caught my eye was this. The remains of an old car abandoned in a forest.

No maker’s plate or anything like that on it, so no idea what it might be, but it has a wooden chassis sheathed in steel, and it’s clearly the type of car that had real wings and a lift-off body. With its steel wheels, all of that dates it to the early 1930s I reckon.

If you have any ideas what it might be, let me know. But there isn’t much to go on, I know.

From here I headed off down the hill and towards civilisation. I ended up in the town of Tulle where I planned to find a hotel but was singularly unsuccessful.

And to my own surprise, I didn’t take a single photo of the place and I ought to have done, because Tulle is one of the saddest places in French modern history.

Following the Normandy Landings, the local Resistance troops had risen up and seized control of the town from the Germans. Just as they were preparing to deal with the final German holdouts, the 2nd Waffen-SS Panzer Division Das Reich appeared on the scene on its way north.

The result was that 99 civilians, many of whom had no connection with the armed uprising, were strung up from lamp-posts in the main street and a considerable number of others were brutally tortured

So with no hotel that I could find in Tulle, I’ve moved on to Brive la Gaillard where I’ll be spending the night.. I’ve no idea where I’ll be tomorrow.

-2

Monday 24th February 2014 – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!

Yes, here I am – another year older and deeper in debt. And having reached a ripe old age, getting riper as I get older, I suppose that I ought to think about growing up.

So having had another late night last night, I woke up and hung around in bed for ages until I reckoned that “if I don’t get up now then I never will”, only to find that it was 08:45. So much for my body clock!

But last night I was in Crewe with my taxi business and I was round at the house of one of my regular passengers up on Bradfield Road, a woman who always had a cab to go to one of the pubs down West Street. She had a friend around, a woman who was a widow whose husband had died 9 years ago in a pub in West Street, having been sloshed about the head with a house brick. This woman had fallen victim to a scam whereby some mad had come from either Alfreton or Ilkeston to seel joints of mmeat “like this one here” – taking the money on the promise of delivery the next day but of course no-one would ever see again. Another adventure had befallen this woman at the hands of this meat salesman, but this is neither the time nor the place to discuss it.

So after breakfast, it was to work, even though it is my birthday and thus usually a day off.

I have many requests from my friends, some of which are phyxically impossible of course, but others which require an element of work. This one today was “for God’s sake, have a shower”. But if anyone thinks that I was going to stand outside in this wind in nothing but my birthday suit they are mistaken but it was 23°C in the verandah and that called for positive thought.

I threw out the old woodstove that Claude gave me – and it went out in several pieces and a pile of dust in fact. Then a load of other bits and pieces followed, many of which went straight in the bin. And by the time that I had finished sweeping up and tidying up, there was a space about 2mx1m at the far end of the verandah that was clear. I ran up a rope and then hung a shower curtain to it.

After lunch I found the wooden rails that I stand on when I have a shower outside and put them in the verandah, mixed up a bucket of warm water from the home-made 12-volt immersion heater (which was on 66°C) and cold water out of the water butt, and … I had a shower.

Nice and warm it was too, especially as it was in the verandah and it would have been perfect had I had a low-debit 12-volt pump in working order. I ended up using a jug to pour the water over me, but nevertheless a shower it was, the first of the year at home, and I feel so much better for it too.

Cécile sent me a present of sweeties (thanks very much) and an envelope to send her any post that she has received, so I went round to her house to see if there was anything (and I made use of the washing machine too – so clean bedding tonight as well!)

I’d been invited round to Liz and Terry’s for tea (thank you very much) but stopped off at the site ornithologique as there was a magnificent view of the Puy de Sancy and the Mont Dore covered in snow and with clouds reflecting the profile of the skyline.

Liz had cooked a curry with trimmings, followed by chocolate and avocado mousse which was delicious.

And then back home via picking up the washing, which is now hanging up outside as we are having another day of no rain so far (i’m the eternal optimist of course). But Sunday was the first day without rain since, would you believe, 9th January – 6 weeks ago!

Qo now I’m off to bed after my exertions of today. I wonder where I’ll end up tonight!

-6

Sunday 23rd February 2014 – PHEW!

No wonder I’m so flaming tired all the time, if last night is anything to go by.

There I was in South-West London, renting a room in a house and to reach the area of London where the house was, there was a zig-zag climb up to a plateau rather like the way in to Marcillat from the Montlucon road only, of course, all built-up and urbanised.

I was talking to a girl who was something to do with a business, down at the business premises at the foot of the climb, talking about the house in which I was living, and she was expressing her astonishment that here in the inner suburbs of London there was a house that had three wind turbines powering all of the electricity (I do actually have three wind turbines here).

The conversation was interrupted as I needed to go to Brussels in Belgium. There, I met Anne-Marie in a café half-way up the Boulevard Léopold II near to the Simonis transport hub. She was wanting to see more of the parts of Brussels that she didn’t know, and the area of Molenbeek and Koekelberg (served by the Simonis hub) is an area that I know quite well.

But Anne-Marie. She joined the EU at about the same time that I did and was part of this little group of us that went around together. I had quite a soft spot for her and we went on a couple of skiing trips together. She would have been a good partner for me, I always reckoned, as she had a knack of bringing my feet back firmly to the floor whenever I went off on one of my regular flights of fancy. But as is usual, though, I would have been far too much hard work for someone “normal” and so nothing ever happened. Another “one that got away”, the lucky girl.

But let’s return to the issue at hand. Despite all of the contemporary stuff that was going on in the Boulevard Leopold II, it was in fact early 1914 and the eve of World War I. Some German notable, von Something zu Somewhat, was there trying to negotiate something with some Belgian politicians and my task, if I chose to accept it, was to find out who he was and what he was doing and who he was negotiating with and why. On the eve of World War I, everyone in Europe was nervous.

So once I had ascertained his name, I contacted MI6 to see if he was “known” to the British authorities. I didn’t receive a reply but it turned out that the principal reason why he was there was that he (only a young guy) had made a young girl pregnant because he needed a child in order to inherit something. But this girl was not ready to have herself “announced” to all the world. Therefore there was some machination about producing the baby, with a spurious mother, and producing the real mother at a later date.

I suggested that he should have produced a spurious baby as well and saved all of this pantomime, but this didn’t go down too well at all.

After all of that running around Northern Europe for 100 years when I should have been sleeping, I didn’t feel too bad about staying in bed until 10:10 this morning. And after breakfast I just mooched around for a while.

There should have been some footy this afternoon – I had a choice of the 1st XI at Lempdes – about a 90-minute drive away – or the 2nd XI at home against the Goatslayers, both kick-offs at 13:00. Of course, I chose the Goatslayers at home, and so of course the match was postponed, as I found out when I arrived at the ground.

But with the glorious summer weather today (180.1 amp-hours of surplus solar energy, 66°C in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load), firstly I aired all of the bedding that I use in Caliburn – it’s been in its suitcase in the barn since early November, and secondly, I had a look at Caliburn’s auxilliary electrical circuits.

The solar panel on Caliburn’s roof rack hasn’t been charging up the second battery for a while and neither has the split-charging relay that works off the main battery. It turns out that the cheap charge controller that I bought years ago in the UK has burnt itself out. Luckily, in one of these solar briefcase kits that I bought years ago and which broke when it fell off the LDV’s roof, there was a charge controller that was now sitting around doing nothing. Consequently, that’s now wired in the circuit and seems to be working.

As for the split charger, after much furkling arouns and bad temper and cursing, I found that there was a poor earth connection. Once that was all cleaned up and greased and sanded, that now works as it should.

But with having almost dismantled the auxilliary electric circuit, I decided to tidy it all up. It really was such a mess. Now it’s all shipshape and Bristol-fashion, bolted to the bulkhead as it should be, and out of the way of where I’m likely to trip over it. But I’m still not all that happy – I can do much better than this and I will do too.

But me? Working on a Sunday? Things are getting to me, aren’t they?

And this evening, no pizza. Not that I can’t make one, but that the temperature up here is 18.4°C, and that’s with no heating on either. If I light the fire I’d be melted out long before the pizza would be cooked.

This winter is thoroughly crazy.

-6

Saturday 22nd February 2014 – THERE’S NO FOOTY TONIGHT …

… either and so you can imagine just how p155ed off I am today. The season is miles behind already and it doesn’t look as if we’ll ever catch up. We’ll still be playing this season’s matches at rhe start of next season.

With having my little hour or two yesterday at the end of the afternoon, it was again gone 03:00 before I went to sleep. Therefore a 07:30 start this morning was … errr … facultatif, as the French say. But once I did rejoin the land of the living and had eaten my breakfast, I sat down and did the next Rock programmes and the Additional Notes for the next set of information programmes. If I can make good progress then so much the better.

With having been to the Intermarché at Pionsat yesterday there was no need for me to go to the shops today and so I stayed in. I’ve been running an Anti-virus scan on the computer seeing as how it seems that for some reason the program was switched off for a while. And so far, after 13 hours and 7 minutes, it’s done about 55%. That’s depressing, right enough.

I actually went out of the house three times today. Twice to fill the kettle for coffee and once to take the stats. Apart from that, I haven’t moved from in front of here. And I don’t intend to either.

I will however have to take the stats downstairs, which I shall do in about 10 minutes. And then I’m off to bed. An early night for a change – or, at least, what passes for an early night for me.

-3

Thursday 20th February 2014 – I THOUGHT FOR A MINUTE THIS MORNING …

… that we were going to have a nice day. And so while I was in the verandah making coffee I hung the washing outside to dry in the wind (it’s still not dry since Monday evening).

However … you’ve guessed it. That was the Kiss Of Death and within 15 minutes it was teeming down with rain again, just like always.

So where did I get up to today?

All of the plasterboard is on the outer wall, and I’ve also fitted it at the head of the stairs. That meant cutting and fitting a set of counter-battens of course, as well as putting a second layer of that space-blanket insulation on the outer wall. This house will be the best-insulated in the whole of the world – and quite right too. No money ever spent on insulation is wasted, as I have said before. And that’s even more relevant as fuel bills rocket up to the roof.

Once that was out of the way, I trimmed off the floor in the attic so that it’s now flush with the beam that I fitted in 2009 (and I can’t think why I didn’t do that years ago) and I’ve faced off the beam with some of the pine shelving that I’ve been using to make the risers for the staircase. And in fact it looks quite neat.

I wish that I could say the same about the plasterboarding though. It’s a total mess and there are at least two pieces that need to be taken off to find out what on earth is going on underneath them. Both of them 10mm; both of them screwed to the same counter-batten – so why is the top one about 5mm proud of the bottom one?

Apart from seeing loads of places where I really should have done so much better with these stairs, I won’t ever build another staircase on outiggers and cantilevers like this one. Itwas by far and away the quickest way to build it when I was in a desperate hurry to move into this room back in late autumn 2009, but fitting the insulation, the counter-battens and the plasterboard has been an absolute nightmare. If I had realised that it was going to be as difficult as this, I would have ripped out the staircase last week, plasterboarded the walls in one go (probably have taken me an hour) and done the stairs another way.

But still, you live and learn.

-4

Wednesday 19th February 2014 – I THOUGHT THAT I WOULD SHOW YOU …

… a photo of the staircase as far as I have got today, because for the next couple of weeks this is as far as I am going.

There are 8 stairs in position as you can see – that is, 8 treads and 7 risers, and all are properly battened. For the first time in this house, it’s felt as if the stairs really are secure and solid.

I had to move the light that illuminates the stairs down to the ground floor, and then I had to carry out another major task. If you look to the right you’ll see where the plasterboard stops a huge beam bolted to the side wall of the house. I fitted that in 2009 and you’ll notice that the bolt heads are proud of the beam. They need to be set in flush and the easiest way is to use a hole cutter over the heads, make a recess, and then tighten up the bolts further. But do I have a heck as like hole cutter that fits over the bolt head that doesn’t have a spindle-centring drill? So after much ado about nothing, I had to unbolt the nuts, drill pilot holes all round, chisel out a recess, refit the nuts and then grind off the surplus lengths with the angle grinder.

No wonder it took me ages.

But anyway, Now I have one of the plasterboard pieces on the wall to the right, and I can do the rest tomorrow and see how far I can reach.

Terry rang me up and wanted me to contact Lieneke. Much to my surprise, she’s here right now and so we had quite a chat to catch up on what we missed. And then later on I made one of my legendary lentil-and-green-pepper curries and that will see me through to the weekend. No point in working if I don’t have to.

-4

Tuesday 18th February 2014 – I HAD AN AFTERNOON OUT …

… this afternoon. This involved moving a pile of stuff with Caliburn and so first job this morning was to empty Caliburn and then to put away everything that I had been storing in him. And that took a while, I can tell you.

I then swept him out too, and repaired one or two electrical bits and pieces that needed fixing. So at least he’s now clean and tidy in the back.

Next on the list was hanging out the washing, and then to clear out a space at the side of the existing compost bin and put there the one that I bought last year in this Government composting scheme. ONce I had done that, I could empty the beichstuhl, such pleasant jobs that I have around here.

So I picked up Marianne and then we went round to Bill’s to load up Caliburn and then went off to Montlucon and the salerooms. On the way we called at LIDL as they were having another LED light sale. This time it was the 1-watt lights that I use, and at €2:99 each now. They had 6 in stock, and now they have none at all.

We went to Brico Depot too where I bought some more wood and some heavy duty varnish for the stairs. You can tell that this is now becoming really serious.

Anyway, we ended up in the cafe at Leclerc having a coffee and a chat and then it was back home via the fresh veg shop. And I had to take in the washing as by now it had started to rain.

Yes, it’s all happening here now.

-5

Monday 17th February 2014 – I SEEM TO BE COLLECTING …

… photographs of cars in ditches these days. On my way to Liz and Terry’s this evening, there was another one on its side in a ditch just outside St Gervais d’Auvergne. And judging by the state of it, it had slid along the ground on the other side for quite some distance too. No idea what had happened there.

But yes, we’re in the studios on Friday recording the bext instalments of Radio Anglais and so we were rehearsing this evening. A little later than usual as I had to show someone around Cécile’s house at 17:30. And if any proof were needed of how small the world is these days, then this will surely count for something. As soon as the guy stepped out of the car, I said “But I know you, don’t I?” And indeed I did as well – he’s a footballer from Miremont, a club that plays in Division 3 of the Puy-de-Dome league and a regular opponent of Pionsat’s 2nd XI up to last season.

I picked up Cécile’s post too (she had 2 letters) and while I was there I took advantage of her washing machine.

But as for today – totally astonishing. Up until about 15:00 there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and I had an excess of 184 amp-hours, pretty much a record for all time, never mind just February. It took the water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater to 61°C which, from a standing start, is pretty impressive too. In fact, if I had had the shower cabinet which I keep on meaning to build, I would have gone for a shower this afternoon.

As for the work on the house, there is nothing more soul-destroying to be working on a plank of a stair tread for an hour, cutting it in 11 different ways so that it fits to perfection exactly where it’s supposed to go, and then finding that you’ve cut it upside-down. Doing that once, the other day, was bad enough. But doing it a second time, like this morning, well, that’s just inexcusable.

But now I have 6 treads and 5 risers installed, and just one more of each will be enough for now as that brings me round to the bottom corner. From here downwards involves heavy engineering such as replacing the floor, but what I need to do, the whole purpose of this, is to put the plasterboard onto the wall of the sairwell, and I can do that when I’ve done my final step.

-8

Sunday 16th February 2014 – SUNDAY AGAIN …

… and so in accordance with principles laid down for a long time, I had a nice lie-in (until 09:45) and since then I haven’t done a tap of work.

That is, I finished the radio programmes that I started yesterday, and then carried on rearranging my file storage system, and you’ll be amazed at how much room I’ve freed off on the external drives and there’s still plenty to go at yet.

Apart from that, I left the house just three times – twice to fetch water and once to fetch some wood. And that was that.

It wasn’t like that during the night though.

I was on the western seaboard of the USA and I got to hear about a safe that was being installed in a house so that the owner could put all of his valuables in there. I waited just until the safe was inaugurated and then went round there armed with a 3-metre length of 27mmx27mm lath (I’ve a few of those here as it happens). I attacked the safe installer with the piece of wood and I shot the householder, then made my escape with the loot.

Outside the house was a car with three people – 2 women and one man – who were waiting for me. I hopped into the car and said “where to?”, to which one of the women replied “Green Bay, Wisconsin” (home of the Packers as it happens).

Howeverwe were being picked off one by one by the Police and eventually there was just me, on foot, at the border between the USA and Mexico. I crossed into Mexico, and as I walked through the little fenced alley in no-man’s land (or “no-person’s land” as the legendary Turdi de Hatred once called it) I was admiring a llama grazing in a field. At the Mexican border I was admitted but the young Border Immigration officer wouldn’t stamp my passport. He said that just for a day visit it wasn’t necesary. However I insisted, saying that it would be a useful indication of my presence as well as being a nice souvenir of my visit and eventually he agreed to stamp it.

But why does all of the excitement happen through the night?

-3

Saturday 15th February 2014 – I SHOULD HAVE BEEN …

… at Marcillat tonight for the football. However, the ground is situated right on the crest of a scarp slope about 6 miles from here and the floodlights are clearly visible from the end of the lane, and when I reached the end of the lane, I could see nothing.

I drove as far as Virlet from where the ground is even more visible just across the valley, but there was no change – still total darkness – and so I turned round and came home.

Mind you, it doesn’t surprise me. We had torrential rain again today and it’s probably about 6 weeks since we last had a day of no rain at all. I’m up to my knees in mud around here and so I imagine that it’s just like this at the football ground at Marcillat.

Even more intriguing – when I went out to take the stats just before going to bed last night the temperature was an astonishing 13.5°C. Mid-February too! It was more like mid-April outside last night. This “winter” that we are having is totally crazy.

Today, I wasn’t in a hurry to leave my stinking pit, and after breakfast I made a start on what was left of the rdio programme that needs writing. However, I lost interest halfway through and ended up carrying on the sorting out of all the files on the various external hard drives hee, punctuated by a bried visit to the Intermarché at Pionsat for supplies for the weekend – I’m going to Montlucon on Tuesday so I’ll do a major shop there for the rest of the week.

But it was exciting through the night, I’ll tell you. It was my turn to be in a wheelchair and I was racing through the streets of Halifax (Yorkshire, not Nova Scotia) in the snow at speeds of up to 45mph through the traffic, allowing for the momentum of the downward slopes to carry me back up the steep hills. Excitement wasn’t in it! If I could maeket a game like that, you can forget your amusement parks!

-4

Friday 14th February 2014 – NOT ONLY DID I …

… finish the stair tread that I started last night, I’ve fitted a couple of risers and fitted the battens for a third one.

First job, though, was to re-route a couple more electrical cables and the telephone cable that were in the way, and that wasn’t a job of five minutes either. They were one of the first cables that I fitted and so, as you would expect, in the following 4 years all kinds of cables have been threaded in over the top of them.

But with the new treads, and the risers in at the top two stairs now, they are about 100 times stiffer than they were before when I just had scrap off-cuts of wood as treads, and no risers at all. It’s all looking quite good and I can’t wait to restart work on Monday, and I bet it’s been a good few years since I said anything like that.

But I shan’t be doing too much on Monday as someone is coming to view Cécile’s house in the late afternoon. And on Tuesday I’m taking a pile of stuff to Montlucon for the sale room there (nothing of mine, of course. I don’t have anything worth selling) so it’s going to be something of a short week.

-3

Thursday 13th February 2014 – IT TOOK ME MOST OF THE BLASTED DAY …

… to fit one tread of the stairs.

But then again there are several good reasons for that.

Firstly, it’s one of the larger stair treads and is on an angle. Furthermore, access is difficult and the tongue needed to be cut off the first piece and then sanded down to give it a professional appearance. I’m not going for half-measures here. And not only that, it needed to be cut in 7 different ways, with the use of a floating T-square and other geometric instruments.

The result wasn’t perfect, but where it missed, it would be covered over by plasterboard so it didn’t make much difference.

Next I cut the second piece, and that was an excellent job but … hang on … the levels are out. And it’s from the same plank of wood. But the tongue is off-centre and so I must have cut the second piece upside-down.

And so I recut a second piece and made sure that it was the right way up before I shaped it. And then took it upstairs and … hang on … the levels are still out. Dammit dammit dammit! It’s the first piece that I’ve cut upside down after all of the work that went into it and the time that it took!

And so I recut a first piece and learning from the errors of the first attempt, this one ended up pretty near perfect and it’s ever so impressive, even if by now it was lunchtime.

After lunch I cut the third piece, which was another good measure, and then for the fourth and final piece I had an offcut from the bathroom that was the correct basic length before shaping.

And having done that, this was when I realised that despite the wood of the bathroom being exactly the same as the rest of the wood, the tongue was too long. That therefore had to be cut down and filed.

Once all of that had been done, the whole tread needed to be properly aligned, screwed to a batten to keep it all in position, lifted off, taken to the workbench for trimming with the circular saw.

It was at this point that the battery in the circular saw went flat.

Once the battery was recharged and the tread trimmed off, I could put it back in position and nail it down, finally removing the batten.

So now you can see why it took most of the day to do all of that.

With 40 minutes left, I measured up and cut the first piece for the upper stair on the reverse angle. That involved nine cuts with all kinds of geometric equipment and also a hand-drawn angle as I couldn’t fit the floating T-square into the gap. And to the surprise of not only Yours Truly but everyone else reading these pages, that ended up millimetre-perfect. And the correct way up too. I just had to trim a little off so that I could swing it round the corner and into position, but the plasterboard will cover that gap.

So what’s going to hold me up tomorrow then?

In other news – we had one of those days where we had everything – except the Plague of Locusts. Wind gusting up to 67km/h, torrential rain, hailstorms. You name it, we had it. It’s like Passendaele 1917 outside here right now – most unpleasant.

And tonight, just as I was about to start eating my tea, Trixie phoned for a chat. I ended up with cold pasta and aubergine casserole, but as I have said so often before … "and you’ll say it so often again" – ed … what’s a little inconvenience when it comes to your friends? I value my friends higher than my stomach. But it’s amazing how often it happens, isn’t it?

-2

Wednesday 12th February 2014 – NOW IF ONLY …

… every othee tiling job that I have to do would come out as well as this one, I would be as happy as Larry.

They set really nicely into the tiling cement yesterday and so this morning, first thing that I did was to grout the joints. And as you can see, it seems to have come out very well and I’m really pleased with this.

It looked even better at the end of the day when It had thoroughly dried and i brushed off all of the loose grouting and wiped it down with a damp cloth. As I said, I wish that all of my tiling would look like this when it’s finished.

So once that was out of the way I returned to the stairs. And now I have three treads all properly fitted and nailed in place. It took ages too as every length needs to be cut and shaped individually and some of these treads have 6 or 7 lengths in them, the ones that are going to be used as shelving. And a couple of lengths had to be cut lengthways too, one of them only 1.5 cms wide. but the circular saw saw to those. They needed filing and sanding down afterwards to make some nice smooth, straight edges.

I had to change a couple of rails too. I’m reshaping all of these to fit under the profile of the plasterboarding but with the chevrons, they are too deep and so foul the insulation. I’ve changed them for demi-chevrons.

So you see, I’ve not been idle at all today, even though I don’t have too much to show for it.

-1

EPIC HALL

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