Tag Archives: eric hall

Friday 13th December 2013 – DO YOU REMEMBER …

… yesterday when I was talking about the stone wall here?

The old woodshed was on those pallets just there and the wood was stacked up against the wall. The wall is honeycombed with all kinds of things growing in it but that part there, where the wood has been for about 3 years or more, nothing at all has been able to grow in that.

Consequently, it’s perfectly clean and weed-free and I want to keep it like that. Hence my decision to mortar the joints, even though it’s supposed to be a dry stone wall.

Not only does it look much prettier like that, then nothing will grow in it either, I hope, and that will be one less thing to have to worry about.

It took me most of the day to do that as I had to clean off all of the moss and the like, and in a few places I had to build parts of it back up again. There were also a few weeds growing in the top and so I had to pull them out. But here we are anyway, one wall about a third done.

This evening I went round to Marianne’s as she was having computer issues. And after I had sorted those out, Marianne cooked some food which was really nice of her.

And it’s rained this evening. First time in well over a week.

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Thursday 12th December 2013 – I CRAWLED OUT …

… of bed at such an unearthly hour that it was still dark outside. Not like me of course, but then again, I had things to do today as you know.

But with it being dark outside, I hadn’t realised how difficult it was to go a-riding the porcelain horse without any lighting. The sooner I deal with this issue the better, I think. But I digress.

At 08:30 I was on the Intermarché car park, and so was Terry. He piled into Caliburn and off we went to Limoges and the airport. I’ve never been there before but luckily The Lady Who Lives In The Sat-Nav knew the way and so we didn’t get lost at all.

Leaving the airport, I came home a different way. The way that we went was via Marcillat, Evaux, Guéret and the autoroute, and that is one big curving road. There’s a direct route back via Limoges, Bourganeuf, Aubusson and Auzances and so that was the way I came back. Despite being on more difficult roads, it’s a good way shorter and so it took me exactly (because I times it) the same time to come home, as well as being a much more interesting and beautiful route.

It wasn’t just the ecenery that was exciting either. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that when we were in Piraeus a few weeks ago I was certain that I saw a trolley bus, but I wasn’t quick enough with the camera and in any case I had Trixi with me and who cares about trolley buses when one has a very attractive woman at one’s side?

Anyway, here I am going around the inner ring road at Limoges and what do I encounter but a modern 21st-Century Trolleybus of all things.

And so I wasn’t dreaming in Piraeus the other wekk. Trolley buses are back on the roads, and not before time too. Nice, clean and efficient, it will be interesting to see how well they do over the next decade or so and see how many other towns and cities follow suit.

This afternoon, back at the ranch, I wrote the additional notes for our next series of radio programmes. That kept me out of mischief for a good few hours.

The plan of acrion for tomorrow depends upon the weather. If this Indian summer keeps up I’ll be pointing the stone wall. Failing that, I’ll be working in the garden, tidying up the yard or else making shelves for the lean-to. There’s plenty of work on here and, for a change, I have all that I need to do it.

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Wednesday 11th December 2013 – THIS HEATWAVE …

… is still continuing. It’s been five days since I’ve seen a cloud and for the last 3 days I’ve had almost 100 amps of surplus electrical energy – unheard-of in December, and I’ve about 63°C of hot water in the dump load.

There was 15°C of water in the solar water tank too – imagine that in December too. I was almost ready for a solar shower this afternoon, although 15°C is not really what I would be comfortable with.

Today I did indeed demolish the old wood sheds and now there’s space to move around in front of the house. But where the wood had been piled up against the stone wall, there’s not a trace of weeds or moss and that has got me thinking, which I know is dangerous. I’m not here tomorrow but if the weather holds out for Friday, I might mix up some lime mortar and point the wall. Strike while the iron is hot, as it were.

I didn’t put up the scaffolding though. Instead, I emptied Caliburn and finally put away everything that I had brought back from Marianne’s old apartment in Brussels. Loads of stuff has made it up here, especially the bits that will improve my standard of living up here in the attic.

There was also a big bag of biscuits and so on that Rosemary broght back from the UK in the Spring and which I had put in Caliburn, dropped off in Brussels and then promptly forgot about.

Tomorrow I’m taxiing, which might come as something of a surprise to long-term readers of this rubbish. I’m taking a passenger to Limoges Airport.hea

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Tuesday 10th December 2013 – AFTER THE PREVIOUS NIGHT’S PERAMBULATIONS …

… I didn’t wander very far during the night, which was a shame because it’s far, far better than just sleeping.

But anyway, having left my stinking pit at something like an early hour, and having had breakfast, I set about the woodshed.

And here’s the definitive version of the woodshed, all completed. You can see that I’ve put all of the siding on now, which is just as well because wil all of the cut wood, it’s looking rather full.

Yes, that’s all the cut wood that’s gone in there, but of course that’s not all of the wood. There’s still tons of the stuff lying around here that needs to be cut up and at least, now I have somewhere to put it all, provided that there’s room for it.

Tomorrow I can dismantle the old woodshed and then think about putting up the scaffolding

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Monday 9th December 2013 – HERE’S SOMETHING THAT I BET THAT YOU DIDN’T

Yes, not many people know this, but it seems that the mother of singer Neil Young lives in Crewe – on the Badger Avenue council estate in fact. There I was, driving around Crewe in my taxi last night and Neil Young hopped in and asked to be taken down there to see his mother, who lives in one of the small two-bedroomed houses in the crummy part of the estate round by Foulkes Avenue.

Mrs Young was quite pleasant and we had a very good chat, and I ended up going back home to pick up my bass for a jam session with Neil.

Yes, I was having so much fun with all of this that I was really sorry to wake up. If only I could live out even half of whatever goes on in my dreams I really would live the most exciting life, that’s for sure.

It was warm here today too when I woke up – 15.9°C. That is something to do with the fact that I had the room stinking hot last night to cook my pizza. I’ve found the secret of getting this oven to cook – I have to start it up and get it really hot as quickly as possible.

Anyway, after breakfast I carried on in the glorious weather loading up the new woodshed, and I was at it until it went dark. it’s almost all done now – to such an extent that I had to stop and hunt down another pile of pallets to build up the rest of the sides. Half of them are on and the other half will be on first thing tomorrow, which means that I can take the final dozen or so barrow-loads over to the new woodshed.

Once that has been done, I can dismantle to woodsheds that are by the house, and then put up the scaffolding at the front of the house to redo the guttering and fix the wiring under the eves.

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Sunday 8th December 2013 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I saw Pionsat’s 2nd XI go a goal down early in a game (that’s not really a change), but come back strongly and score three times in the second half to win 3-1 to get their show back on the road.

But never mind that for a moment – this morning started as I meant to go on, by dropping my breakfast tray and all its contents all over the floor downstairs. I’d had a nice sleep too – an early night, a lie-in until 10:30 without any inerruption through the night, a good dream, and then the bright burning sun shining in through the windows. And then of course the breakfast all over the floor.

I managed an hour or two catching up on some recording that I needed to do, and then in the glorious sunshine off to Charensat to see the footy at 13:00.

Pionsat had 11 players, but no more, and it was a fair team too, and as I said, they ran out winners 3-1 after being down 1-0 for a long period in the game.

It was particularly important for young Vincent. He came up from the juniors last year and he’s finding it something of a big step up, but he’s doing what he can and he showed that if you have a genuine striker’s instinct, then nothing much else really matters all that much.

Here, a high ball into the area had the keeper stretching and … he dropped it. It’s not easy hanging on to a ball in this cold weather with the sun streaming into your eyes.

And there was Vincent, following the ball in like every good striker should, whether he thinks he’s going to get it or not, and when the keeper fumbles the ball, it lands right at Vincent’s feet and that was 3-1 to Pionsat.

Back here, I finished off the recording and then watched the Packers against the Falcons. The Packers came back to scrape a dour win, having fallen behind to the most bizarre touchdown that I have ever seen. The Pachers’ quarterback overthrows, a Falcons defender sticks out a hopeful foot, and kicks it right into the hands of a colleague wide open on the left wing, who, totally unmarked, runs it back 72 yards for a touchdown. The Falcons won’t ever do that again, that’s for sure.

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Saturday 7th December 2013 – I FINALLY MADE IT …

… to the shops in Montlucon today – first time in ages. And I spent a pile of money too, which is not at all like me, of course.

Mind you, it was an effort to get out of bed which was hardly surprising seeing as it was absolutely taters outside. And scraping the ice off Caliburn’s windscreen didn’t improve things either. But in Montlucon I did the usual round of the usual shops.

Just for a change, LIDL turned up nothing exciting apart from a big box of clementines (yes, it’s nearly Christmas) but everywhere else did me proud. At Noz, the cheapo shop, I bought a full set of the Piorot Series I DVDs and also some of the home-made fizzy lemonade that they have. Three bottles of that, for me over the Christmas / New Year festivity period, and not only that, the bottles with the drink inside are those with the wired stoppers and cost less than just the bottle alone at IKEA.

In Brico Depot, I bought 24 planks of shuttering board – €3:95 a plank and three joined together widthways makes a decent 50cm shelf 3 metres long. I can crack on and build my shelving now, once the rain restarts. But it didn’t restart today – we had another one of these glorious Alpine winter days.

Before leaving Montlucon I went to the Centre Aqualudique, which is the posh way of saying “swimming baths”. It was cold in there, but not as cold as it would have been at Neris les Bains, and I made history by not only forgetting to take my clean undies with me but also my soap and shampoo. Something of a wash-out, if you pardon the expression.

This evening I froze to death on the terraces (well, terrace) at Marcillat as the home side’s 1st XI took on Varennes in a squalid bottom-of-the-table match.

Two worse attacks I have never ever seen in my life. Varennes never even tested the Marcillat keeper once during the entire match and while Marcillat had plenty of opportunities, they couldn’t hit the nether regions of a bovine animal with a stringed musical instrument. They could still be playing when the winter break is over in February and the score would still be 0-0.

That is – except for a very dubious penalty and a woeful calamity of a mix-up between the Varennes n°3 and his goalkeeper. And tule n°1 of any defence is and always has been “when making a backpass to the keeper, always send it wide of the posts”.

Are you reading this, Varennes n°3?

But it was a niggly, argumentative match – a typical foot-of-the-table affair, and when the referee finally did have enough and brandished the first yellow cards, I would have had half the teams in the dressing room a long while previous to that.

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Friday 6th December 2013 – I REALLY DIDN’t WANT …

… to leave my bed this morning. We’ve had dry weather for the last couple of days but this morning it was absolutely teeming down, just for a change.

So after breakfast I attacked the upstairs of the “downhill” lean-to, the one on which I fixed the roof two years ago. It was still like a building site up there and so I set about cleaning it out. After all, I have some demi-chevrons now and if things go according to plan I’ll have some shuttering planks tomorrow and they make really good shelves.

But I didn’t stay long up there as I had a phone call. A damsel in distress needed rescuing in Montlucon, and you know how Strawberry Moose is when it comes to damsels in distress.

However, as I said a couple of years ago, being a superhero today isn’t easy. The rise of mobile phones has meant the decline in telephone boxes, so where now does a superhero go when he needs to put his underpants on over the top of his trousers?

That was a few hours lost today anyway, and another 30 minutes soon followed that as Rosemary rang up for a chat. Not that I resent rescuing damsels in distress or talking to my friends, not in the least, but I have so much to do here. Anyway, I didn’t do much more cleaning, even if inbewteen the rainshowers I moved a little bit more wood.

Anyway, let’s see what tomorrow might bring.

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Thursday 5th December 2013 – WHY WOULD ANYONE …

… want to sit down and read all 383 or so pages of my travel website? I know that it’s all good stuff but nevertheless that is rather extreme.

However thank you anyway.

Apart from that, this morning I found one more pallet and stripped it down, and now it’s screwed to the side of the woodshed. And so that’s finished – at least, all I’m going to do of it.

It’s somewhat Heath – Robinson, but as I said before, everything except the screws and a metal bracket is from salvaged materials. There are even some second-hand nails in there holding a few things together.

This afternoon I started to fill it, and I have to say that I didn’t realise just how much wood I have, because I was at it for a couple of hours and I’ve hardly made any impression at all in there. It’s going to be a much longer job than I anticipated moving the wood about.

This evening, I crashed out at about 23:00. I can’t think why. It’s not as if I’ve been working flat out.

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Wednesday 4th December 2013 – I’VE ALMOST FINISHED …

… this woodshed. In fact I might have actually completed it had it not been for a “supply” issue.

This morning, anyway, I finished putting the roof on – that is, all for a small piece for which I need to find the offcuts from when we roofed the barn in 2011. They are about somewhere but heaven alone knows where right now. The roof is not on as I would like, because I really wanted to pass at least one screw through where all of the four sheets of corrugated iron meet up. However, I broke two metalworking drill bits in quick succession and so I had to give up that idea.

I’ve put some diagonal bracing in the back wall too. I noticed when I was up on the roof that the shed had a tendency to “rack” while I was moving about. The bracing has stiffened that up considerably now.

The shed is to be clad with old pallets, of which I have a large supply. but here’s the rub, they were amongst the first things to go into the barn after I fixed the suspended flooring, and so they have had ever so many years of stuff piled on top of them. It took most of the afternoon to pull out a dozen, and then most of those were not the ones that I wanted.

To cut a long story short, I now have 6 pallets stripped down and fixed to the framework and tomorrow I’ll need to fix another 8 to complete that. Then, there needs to be the pallets that I’ll be using for the shelving. Once all of that is organised, I can start to load it with all of the wood that is in the temporary woodshed.

It goes dark at about 17:30 in the evening and I don’t finish work until 18:00 so I usually look for things to do where there is artificial light. This evening I stripped out the food cupboard and sorted out all of the tins and jars.Before I started, the food was rather overflowing, but now it’s all stacked neatly and there’s room for half as much again.

Anyway, tomorrow hopefully I’ll be able to finish this woodshed. I’ve plenty of other things to be doing.

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Tuesday 3rd December 2013 – THIS WOODSHED …

… is coming along in leaps and bounds, and might even be finished tomorrow.

All of the horizontals had their joints cut and then they were screwed to the uprights. That involved a little bit of acrobatics and also a really good search for the LIDL portable work platform-ladder which was lost in the undergrowth.

And once more, I’m impressed with this Ryobi Plus One Impact Bit driver – almost as much as I am impressed with my galvanised steel dustbin.

This afternoon I found some old bits of floorboard and cut them to a length of 1m40. These were screwed aross the top of the uppermost horizontals, and once they were in the correct position I went in search of four decent sheets of corrugated iron that were formerly on the roof of the lean-to.

So having located them, I managed to screw (using the metal-cutting screws that we had for the barn roof) two of them to the bits of floorboard across the top, and there’s half the roof. And had I not lost the light, the roof would have been on today. That will have to wait for tomorrow morning now.

What’s exciting about this woodshed is that apart from the screws, absolutely everything else is “recup” – he French name for “salvaged materials”. There’s not a piece of wood or metal or plastic that hasn’t been used previously in a construction.

And what a day too. Another alpine arctic day, clear blue skies and not a cloud in the sky until the evening. 61 amp-hours in the electricity dump load and water at 40°C. Temperature outside reached 13.5°C too – the highest for a month.

This can’t last though. We’ll be back in the rain by the weekend, just you wait and see.

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Monday 2nd December 2013 – SO FOLLOWING MY DAY OF REST …

… yesterday, it was on with the motley.

I managed something of an early start too, which took me by surprise, and I’d finished digging the holes for the remaining side of the woodshed before I’d even woken up.

It took ages (so it was just as well that I started early) to position the uprights where I wanted them to be and for them to be perfectly vertical on all four aspects, but now they are in place and properly cemented in. It looks rather weird, my woodshed, but then it’s supposed to practical, not aesthetic.

This afternoon, I cut all of the horizontals. The top two overhang by about 1.250 metres, reaching the wall of the barn. The reason for this is that I need to park the cement mixer somewhere out of the weather as the tarpaulin that is covering it keeps on blowing off. This little overhang will be just perfect for that, and keep the cement mixer out of mischief until the summer.

We had the reappearance of that strange golden object in the sky later in the evening, but that wasn’t the most astonishing part about the weather today. I suspect (and I’ll check later) that records might have tumbled as far as wind energy goes today. It’s gusted quite strongly and the three wind turbines here have been turning around constantly. It was nice to see that, that’s for sure, even if the wind situation here is rather less than I was hoping.

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Sunday 1st December 2013 – SUNDAY IS A DAY OF REST …

… and so I rested. In fact I didn’t even get out of bed until 10:30, and that was only because I needed to visit the beichstuhl.

I didn’t do any housework either. I had a nice relaxing morning reading a book. As you know, I’m fully of the opinion that everyone should have the right to have one day per week where they can sit and do nothing at all if they so choose, and not feel guilty about it.

I didn’t even set foot outside my house until 14:30 – not because there was nothing to set foot outside for, but merely because it was so perishing cold.

However at 14:30 I set out, for Terjat as it happens. No footy again in the Puy-de-Dome today but Terjat’s 2nd XI had a rearranged match against Quinssaines and so I reckoned that I would toddle off over there to see whether we were going to have a repeat of the humiliation of a couple of weeks ago when, even playing with 11 men against the 10 of Premilhat, they still managed to be well-and-truly stuffed 7-0.

Well, Quinssaines were pretty poor, although quite well-organised, and Terjat were even worse. But somehow Terjat managed to win. And not by just one goal, but by an astonishing 5-2 scoreline.

The big difference was that while both goalkeepers were, shall we say, guardiens de fortune and so couldn’t really be expected to do too much, Terjat actually put the Quinssaines keeper under quite a lot of pressure, shooting from just about everywhere there was a sight of goal. And of course, it paid off in spades.

On the other hand, even though the Terjat keeper never made a clean catch during the entire 90 minutes, no-one followed up the balls into the area to pounce upon the dropped balls, or even had a serious attempt at trying to beat him. In fact, when finally Quinssaines did have a go at really testing him, a free kick blasted over the wall into the goalmouth from about 25 yards out, it went clean through the keeper’s hands into the net.

Ohhh what might have been!

No gridiron tonight either. The internet connection isplaying up and I was seeing nothing but a stop-start freeze-frame slideshow. That was a shame as we were to be treated to a bottom-of-the-table grudge match between the Falcons and the Bills. It doesn’t get more desperate than that.

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Saturday 30th November 2013 – IT WAS THE DRIVING RAIN …

… that woke me up early this morning and as I was lying there in my stinking pit I was thinking that if this keeps up for the rest of the day it’s going to be quite amusing in Pionsat this morning for this little open-air celebration.

But never mind. By the time I plucked up the courage to tear myself away from my stinking pit it had stopped raining and there were even a few little streaks of blue in the sky. Only a couple, mind you, and they didn’t last for very long, but they were indeed there for a moment and that was encouraging as I hurtled off to Pionsat.

Here in Pionsat, at the Old People’s Home, we were treated to the spectacle of a couple of ex-celebrities doing the old book-signing bit. Nearest the camera we have a certain Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, a name that might mean nothing to anyone reading this rubbish, that’s for sure, but in fact formerly a well-known French TV presenter and author, one of whose books we found in this house when I bought it.

Standing at the table, further away from the camera, is his brother Olivier who is also a well-known author (however, not well-known to me, I have to admit) and who is also supposed to be signing copies of his books, not that there were so many of his on display.

The book-signing isn’t actually the main reason for the presence here in Pionsat of the brothers Poivre d’Arvor – it’s a mere opportunism.

The real reason for their presence is that if you have been following these pages over their many reincarnations, you’ll be aware of the story of the “Maison Ducros Maymat”. A fine Art-Deco house of the late 20s and early 30s left to abandon and bought by the town of Pionsat simply to demolish it and to use its enormous gardens for building housing, a new medical centre and a new salle de fetes

This necessitates the construction of a new road through the site and it was decided to name the road after the famous early 20th Century French poet Jean Jeuge dit d’Arvor who was born in Pionsat back in 1883.

The town asked Patrick Poivre d’Arvor and his brother if they would perform the opening ceremony and now that Patrick has “retired” from the silver screen he could spare the time to come down to the birthplace of his maternal grandad and do the honours, and at the same time do some rehearsing for the local gurning championships. The brothers were born with the simple surname “Poivre” – meaning “pepper” – but Patrick, at least, added his grandfather’s pseudonym to his own surname upon the death of the latter in 1970.

We were also highly-honoured by the presence of all kinds of dignitaries here at Pionsat for the ceremony.

The well-built man standing to the right of the image is Laurent Dumas, mayor of St Magnier and the representative of the Canton de Pionsat at the Conseil General of the Puy de Dome. To his right, cropped unfortunately from the image, is Pierrette Ray, mayor of Youx and Vice President (yes, they cater for all kinds of things) of the Conseil Regional.

Patrick Poivre d’Arvor is there of course in his raincoat, and to his right (and our left) in the expensive suit in centre-shot is Brice Hortefeux, the area’s Member of the European Parliament and with whom I later had a very friendly chat about Brussels.

There followed the usual round of speeches and presentations, under cover back at the Old People’s Home. Hardly the many millions of telespectateurs to which Patrick Poivre d’Arvor is accustomed, of course, but a crowd is a crowd is a crowd, as any celebrity will tell you.

The mayor treated us to his vision of the Pionsat of the future, which includes some kind of shopping mall at the Intermarche supermarket. And while I for one applaud his vision – he is quite right in saying that we need to progress in order to survive – but
firstly, I’ve seen the shopping mall at the Intermarche at Commentry, a town 10 times bigger than Pionsat, and that can’t sustain half a dozen independent retain outlets

secondly, there are enough empty shops already in the town, with several businesses having closed down since I’ve been here. If exisiting businesses with exisiting clients can’t sustain, what hope for any new ones? And what hope for the ones that remain when the new shops open? It reminds me of the situation when the main-line standard-gauge railway arrived just up the road in Marcillat in 1932. They had closed the narrow-gauge tacot that had run into the town for years, and built the new line right through all of the old earthworks, totally destroying them. However the new railway never made a bean and closed in 1939, but because the tacot had been destroyed, the town was left without any rail connection at all even though the rest of the tacot system was running quite happily everywhere else. I can see this happening in Pionsat with the shops. And we’ve also seen, for those of you who were with me in Labrador in 2010
that while the town of L’Anse au Loup may well be growing in importance due to the concentration of coastal Labrador’s services there, that has led to the collapse of the infrastructure of all of the other towns along the Labrador coast. I can see this happening in the Combrailles. Other towns will be forced to compete with Pionsat to keep themselves afloat, we’ll have a spending war, and it will all end in tears.
thirdly Pionsat is one of the communes of France with the largest per-capita indebtedness. So where is all of this money going to come from?

This evening, Pionsat’s match against the Goatslayers was postponed – a waterlogged pitch which is hardly surprising as everywhere is waterlogged around here right now. There was footy at Marcillat though – the 2nd XI taking on Montmarault and so in the freezing cold and frost I went to see the worst football match that I have seen for some time. Marcillat were awful, Montmarault were even worse but were better-organised and from a 3-2 lead, Marcillat suddenly found themselves 3-6 down. They clawed their way back to 6-5 before the final whistle, but I can’t say that they deserved to.

As a matter of interest we had a female referee this evening – that’s quite a rare event here. And I’ve seen worse referees too.

And my chips, beans and burger for tea were absolutely gorgeous. A good investment, this woodstove.

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Friday 29th November 2013 – I MADE IT OUT THIS MORNING …

… but it was rather touch and go as it as another one of those cold clammy mornings where I didn’t really feel too much like crawling out of my stinking pit.

But anyway after breakfast I had to unload Caliburn of all the wood that I had bought the other day and that’s all now in the barn. Then round to Marianne’s and then on to St Maurice.

First thing that was happening there was a meeting of the officials of the Canton of Pionsat and for the first time that I can ever recall, we had all 10 mayors present at the same time.

And not only that, we had Laurent Dumas, the canton’s delegate to the Departmental Conseil-General and also Jean-Yves Gouttebel, the President of the Conseil-General, in attendance. We were really honoured and it seems that I am once more moving in exalted circles.

The purpose of being at St Maurice was for the formal opening of a road. Not a new road, but a realignment of an existing highway that has just had a great deal of money spent on it.

Someone produced a tricolour ribbon and so we had Dumas and Gouttebel standing in the middle of the road cutting the ribbon – something that would have been quite exciting had there been a truck or something coming the other way.

Long-term followers of this rubbish know that St Maurice is famous for its exotic cars – there are a few crazy mechanics here and on one occasion they had an exhibition of their output.

One such vehicle is “La Jonquille” – claimed by its builder to be the longest car in the world, and St Maurice is where it lives.

It’s rather loosely based on a Peugeot 403 estate as you can see – well, several Peugeot 403s in fact.

Later that afternoon I went to pick up Marianne again this time for Riom for the annual meeting of journalists of La Montagne – the local newspaper. Where the meeting was to be held was only a mile or so from the big LeClerc hypermarket at Mozac and so we went an hour or so early so that I could do my next week’s shopping. No sense in missing an opportunity for that and it saves me going to St Eloy tomorrow.

Back here later it was taters upstairs and so I had the biggest fire I’ve ever had. That increased the room temperature 15°C in an hour or so and that’s some going, and it cooked my tea in record time.

So now I’m off to bed – I’m doing “minding” duties tomorrow.

Now I

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EPIC HALL

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