Tag Archives: caliburn

Friday 21st June – ADIEU, L’ILE D’YEU

At 10:30 am Cécile and I stepped onto the catamaran to take us back to the mainland – 30 minutes of high-speed sailing across the Bay of Biscay.

And I still can’t understand why they don’t have a coffee machine or something on board. Not only are they missing a major income-generating opportunity (which is not to be missed in these days of economic restraint), how am I supposed to go for 30 minutes without one.

ilr d'yeu france>With Cecile being here, I didn’t manage to re-read my A Night to Remember – the story of the sinking of the Titanic.

I did however manage to retake the photos that I took on the way out to the island when it was obscured by clouds or something such, because the weather on the way back across was so much better.

You wouldn’t have thought so, though, if you had seen this morning.

At 07:30 it was miserable, grey, depressing and drizzling – a typical summer day of course, but slowly it managed to brighten up as we packed.

By the time Cécile’s mother’s next-door neighbour Catherine dropped us off on the quayside it was turning into quite a pleasant morning and we were looking forward to the journey home.

pont de noirmoutier franceAs the catamaran (which I forgot to photograph yet again) pulled closer to th mainland, it gave me an opportunity to take a photograph of the Pont de Noirmoutier.

Noirmoutier is an island and before the bridge was built, there was a ferry that set out from Fromentine. The bridge put an end to the ferry when it was opened in 1971.

What the locals considered to be “excessive” tolls led to all kinds of demonstrations, one of which was suppressed by a famous baton-charge of the CRS in 1977.

The tolls were removed in 1994 following a series of accidents to travellers who knew of the existence of a sunken road between the mainland and the island, but not exactly WHERE it was

Having paid a fortune to a licensed bandit to retrieve Caliburn, we set out through the sun for the journey home, but caught up with the rain at La Roche sur Yon.

By the time we reached Chantonnay it was a howling gale and tropical rainstorm and I felt quite sorry for Cécile who I had packed off to buy the food for lunch while I fuelled up Caliburn underneath an overhead canopy.

At least we managed to avoid being hit by a falling meteorite, a fate that befell the town 200 years ago, but nothing would surprise me in this weather.

After Poitiers though we drove into the sun and the rest of the route was in quite nice weather, which made a welcome change.

In Pionsat, Marianne filled us in with the latest gossip and there was also a music concert going on in the square. Had I not been so whacked, I would have stayed on for the entertainment.

Anyway, I didn’t need much rocking last night, that’s for sure.

-4

Monday 10th June 2013 – IF YOU PEER …

port joinville ile d'yeu france… through the doom and gloom and the fog and mist you can just about make out the town of Port Joinville on the Ile d’Yeu.

I’ve managed to struggle across the Bay of Biscay. Strawberry Moose was smuggled aboard as a stowaway in a suitcase along with the usual bottle of the hard stuff.

As a result we were treated to strains of “It Was On The Good Ship Venus” all the way across.

After all, you can all remember him rehearsing for the chant de marins competition in Saint-Jean-Port-Joli, Quebec, Canada last year.

caliburn overnight parking fromentine ile d'yeu franceHere’s my spec from last night though. Tucked out of the way down a dead-end road near a sailing school kind of place.

That was another comfortable night spent here – as you know, I’ve stayed here before and I had no complaints that time either.

I was up and about quite early too, and took Caliburn to the garage where he’ll be staying for the next week or two.

The owner is a big fan of old cars and we had quite a chat – so much so that I almost missed the navette that would take me to the ferry.

Luckily though I managed to leap aboard – well, with such leaping as I do these days – I’m not as young as I was and we headed off into the briny.

fort boyard fromentine ile d'yeu franceIt’s been a long time since we’ve had a ship of the day and there isn’t a great deal of choice here in Fromentine.

This little offshore supply vessel will have to do for now. She’s the Fort Boyard, built in 2002 (although you would never think so to look at her) and just 472 tonnes.

She takes her name from the Napoleon-era island fortress just down the coast near Rochefort.

Our boat, which I forgot to photograph by the way, is just a simple jetfoil thing.

It’s the kind of ship that people as old as me would remember that used to do the express connection between Dover and Oostende back in the 1970s and, looking closely at it, it was probably the same boat.

And not a coffee machine in sight. What a waste of time this is.

And so I passed the time on the way across by reading one of the books that I had bought at the bookshop yesterday.

port joinville ile d'yeu france And it wasn’t until I was half-way across that I realised the significance of the book that I had chosen. Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember – probably the most-famous (and most-likely the most accurate) story of the sinking of the Titanic.

How appropriate was that?

Cécile met me at the terminal at Port Joinville and took me for a ride around the island to show me everything.

And one thing that I do like about island life is that the Controle Technique – or MoT regulations to the British – are somewhat relaxed if you have no intention of ever taking your vehicle to the mainland.

plateau peugeot 203 pick-up ile d'yeu franceAnd so here’s a vehicle that I would absolutely die for.

A Peugeot 203 plateau, or pick-up. I would pay a King’s ramsom to have one of these, that’s for sure.

It’s been my dream to own one of these for almost 40 years, ever since I first encountered one on my walking tour of Finisterre in the mid-70s

plateau peugeot 203 pick-up ile d'yeu franceI’ve seen a few since then, and more than just the odd one for sale, but none that was worth having.

They had rather the unfortunate habit of bending in the middle due to rot round about where the rear of the cab joined up with the pick-up bed and that’s not a do-it-yourself repair by any means.

But this one looks pretty sound underneath, due not least to the amount of oil that has been thrown up out of the rear seal of the gearbox

Apart from that, I’ve had the guided tour of the cote sauvage – the wild part of the island, and it really does live up to everything that I was told that it would.

Mind you, it’s only early June and the tourists haven’t yet arrived.

I bet that it will be nothing like this in August.

-2

Sunday 9th June 2013 – HERE’S MY SPEC ….

caliburn autoroute rouen france… from Saturday night’s sleepover.

Leaving Calais I drove for a couple of hours and parked up at about 03:00 just short of Rouen on a motorway rest area.

And probably one of the best nights’ sleeps I have ever had. Totally painless and I’ll stop here again!

From here it was straight down the motorway through the depressing weather all the way to near Nantes and from there down to Fromentine.

Not a hiccup along the way (I hope that I was sticking to the limit when I drove past the Kojak with a Kodak) except at Rouen where I ended up in some kind of mayhem around the old harbour

We had marching bands, tall ships and all that kind of rubbish and it took hours to extract myself from the chaos.

When are they going to build a flaming by-pass around that blasted place?

At Frometine I arrived, would you believe, in the middle of a brocante.

And what a brocante it was – there wasn’t anything for sale under about €100. I really do think that some people have taken leave of their senses when it comes to valuing their possessions.

A bit of good luck, though – the second-hand bookshop was open so I bought a few more history books.

That’s one thing that I’m finding with raiding a few of these bookshops – that there are huge gaps in the British version of European history that can only be filled by a French perspective on things.

So far, I’ve bought a huge volume on the Hundred Years War, a couple of books on The Battle of the Rail – the fight of the French cheminots against the SS during the crucial 10 days after D-Day and today, a book on the Allied invasion of Provence.

These are all events that British historians simply gloss over, and it’s nice to read about these events from another point of view.

There’s a pizza place in Fromentine, run by a woman who comes from Morlaix, a town in Finisterre where I spent a few relaxing weeks back in 1976 or something.

She made me a nice vegan pizza (good job that I was prepared with my vegan cheese) – after all, it is Sunday – and then I went off to my spec from the other week to pass the night.

I’ve an early sail in the morning.

-2

Wednesday 5th June 2013 – HELLO AGAIN.

I thought that I would have a nice interesting introduction this evening, because in all probability it will be more exciting that the rest of the post.

Basically, nothing much has changed since yesterday. I’m still up to my ears in papers. Mind you, the wardrobes and wall unit in the main bedroom have been emptied and most of the stuff has been packed away.

I suppose that that is progress.

There are three large sacks full of clothes and one of shoes (Marianne seemed to like shoes) and they will all be headed for a clothing bank next time I take Caliburn for a joy ride. Someone else may as well have use of it all.

So apart from that, what else?

Ahhh yes – Julie went into St Eloy-les-Mines today which was quite lucky because today was the day that the compost bins that we ordered from the VALTOM were to be collected. So thanks for that, Julie.

And in other news, I’m going to the UK – to Dymchurch in fact – for a day quite soon.

Just as I was wondering where I can get boxes and packing tape from in bulk and regretting that there was no Screwfix nearer than Dover, and how I was feeling like a day out by the seaside, Terry rang me up. He’s just won a job lot of 400 slates on eBay and they are in Dymchurch, down on the edge of Romney March about 10 miles from Dover. Fuel and ferry fare offered, and you can’t say fairer than that.

It’s a region that I know quite well of course, and if you were following my adventures in March 2009 you will know that I spent a pleasant few days just down the road at Dungeness.

Yes, a nice day out this weekend would just suit me fine. I hope that the weather stays fine.

-2

Saturday 25th May 2013 – There’s a strange round object …

… out there in the sky. It’s a golden orange colour and it hurts my eyes when I look at it. Also, the sky is a funny colour. There are parts of it that are a strange blue colour, not the usual grey that I am used to. It’s absolutely weird.

Not like yesterday, though. Fighting the snow and the rain, I emptied Caliburn. And while there wasn’t a great deal of stuff that I threw away, the fact that it is all tidied up inside means that there is tons of space inside. And that’s good news.

After that, I went off to Pooh Corner and sorted out Caliburn’s summer tyres ready for changing. He has his MoT on Monday morning and then I’ll be changing them over and putting the winter tyres in store. I found the mountain bike that needs to be taken over to Rosemary’s, and I also sorted out my CDs and started to fit the CD racks that I had bought in IKEA in Brussels. The first time I’ve seen some CD racks that actually do what I think that they ought to do.

Back here though, a bit of bad news. Cécile’s mother has had another funny turn and so after Caliburn’s MoT we are hitting the road, but to Fromentines, not to Brussels. I’ll have to drop Cécile off to catch the ferry out to her mother’s island and then I’ll have to head off to Brussels from there – a mere 880kms again.

It’s all happening here.

-1

Thursday 27th December 2012 – WELL, I WAS …

… going to start back to work today.

Honestly.

I admit that I had had something of a leisurely morning in a kind-of half-hearted working on my Quebec web pages and that I was gradually winding myself up to the idea of making a start – and then the telephone rang, and that was that.

Apparently, Cecile had just won a set of gates on eBay but on going to pick them up, she discovered that were too big to go in her car.

It’s a good job that I had spent half an hour or so emptying out Caliburn the other day, so like the true superheroes that we are, Caliburn, Strawberry Moose and I dashed into the nearest telephone box to put our underpants on outside our trousers.

Having done that, we dashed to the rescue.

Perhaps it’s here that I should interject that my brother always used to wear his underpants outside his trousers. But that wasn’t because he was a superhero, it was because he was two sandwiches short of a picnic.

A drive out to Doyet (way the other side of Commentry) was reimbursed by the offer of an evening meal, for which I’m always grateful as you know.

And then, after another marathon session lighting her stove we ended up watching episodes of “The Twilight Zone” until quite late.

I shall just have to start work tomorrow now.

Won’t I?

0

Sunday 16th December 2012 – I’VE SPENT TODAY …

… not DOING very much at all – some tidying up … "THUD" – ed … and arranging some papers, which makes a change.

Later on, I went down to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse the radio programmes. On the way I stopped to pick up Cécile who had been invited.

It’s a mammoth radio programme as I told you, and I doubted very much that we’ll finish it – after all, 35 pages of A4 is some going. But at least it’s broken the back of the radio programme for next Christmas too, if anything else survives after Friday.

I also received my Christmas prezzie from Liz – a vegan Christmas cake – and I’ll post a photo of it as soon as I can find a fork lift truck to lift it out of the back of Caliburn because it’s enormous.

Cécile was having further trouble with this new wood stove that she’s been given and so I stopped off there to have a good look at it.

It took me a while to figure it out but once that was resolved and it had had a good cleaning it burnt like a good’un.

But it took ages, hence the late return home. Good job that Caliburn knows the way on his own.

0

Thursday 13th December 2012 – I wish I could remember …

… who it was who rang me at 17:00 today. I would give them a big round of applause. For at 17:00 I should have been at Marianne’s helping her move a bed, but instead I was totally flat out – crashed out on the sofa. I do remember having the most vague and incomprehensible discussion with someone while I was trying my very best to wake up. I wonder what the other party must have made of it.

This morning I had the usual couple of hours on the radio programme that I’m trying to write, and then I went out to empty Caliburn seeing as I had this bed to move. But tidying up isn’t my strongpoint as you know and it didn’t quite work out how it should have done. I ended up leaving the false floor in the van and putting a pile of stuff underneath it.

Pascal, Marianne’s son, and I dropped off a few things around Pionsat and then went to the Chateau to pick up this bed. We were also treated to some exciting news – while the Water Board was digging in the chateau yard to lay a new water pipe, part of the yard collapsed and some of their equipment fell into a long-lost subterranean crypt of some description. Of course, Marianne is in her element, or she would be if she were feeling better, because she’s been ill too.

While I was there, I told her the news about Bill, and seeing as how she knows her way around French administration and isn’t easily cowed, I set her a task to prove that she is worthy – namely, to make the necessary enquiries.

A brief stop at the Intermarché came next. While I was emptying Caliburn, the black cat came around again. Once more, it let me stroke it and pick it up. Clearly starving, the poor thing, and so I bought a box of Munchies and next time I see it I shall give it a handful. That’s me well and truly hooked, isn’t it?

We had our little social night this evening too, and having made a lucky find in a Charity Shop in Stockton Heath when I was in the UK, I taught a group of French citizens how to play Snakes and Ladders.

Yes  French people playing Snakes and Ladders. There’s nothing like a bit of globalisation, is there? Whatever next? Cricket, maybe.

0

Wednesday 12th December 2012 – Winter is back.

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

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

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

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

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

0

Monday 10th December 2012 – And there I was …

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

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

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

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

0

Monday 15th October 2012 – I HAD AN …

… exciting, if unexpected afternoon out today.

Not this morning though.

I put in a good stint on the computer and wrote the match report for yesterday’s game at Pionsat, which is now on line.

It makes rather depressing reading but nevertheless it needed to be done.

And it took me all the way through to 14:30 – there was a lot to write.

Meantime, I had had a phone call. It seems that the window that Rosemarie had bought had turned out to be the wrong size – Terry had given her the dimensions of the hole, not the window.

It meant that the window needed to be taken back and exchanged – involving some fairly hefty negotiation and it seemed that I was required for that.

And so rather like Janet in Tam Lin, round I went to Rosemary’s I duly went this afternoon, “as fast as go can me” and we loaded up the window.

Being somewhat … errr … financially-challenged at the moment (I can’t get to my Belgian bank’s Montlucon branch right now and remember, I wasn’t anticipating being here at the moment), Rosemary very kindly put some diesel in Caliburn, and off we went.

Changing the window was no problem (except that they didn’t have one in and so it needed to be ordered) but no refund of any difference.

I don’t suppose anyone could complain too much about that – Rosemarie was half-expecting an argument.

Never being backwards at coming forward, I took advantage of Rosemary’s presence and we went off to Brico Depot where I loaded up Caliburn with a pile of grillage – the mesh mats that you use when you are laying concrete onto a hard surface without any hardcore.

I also bought 4 pylons – the steel mesh reinforcing that you put inside hollow breeze blocks to support the walls so that they don’t fall down on passing children.

These come in 6-metre lengths and so we cut them down to 8×3-metre lengths that I can use inside these hollow blocks that I have here to make pillars and so on.

Nothing like having a handy volunteer, is there?

After a coffee and a chat, I came home. It’s cold and damp despite the beautiful day that we had, so I’m not going out again. I’ll save my strength for tomorrow.

0

Saturday 29th September 2012 – I SAW SOMETHING …

… this evening that I have never seen before.

I was at St Eloy-les-Mines watching Nord Combraille play Beauregard-Vendon in the league cup, and halfway through the match the home supporters started to hurl abuse at the visiting linesman.

The Miners’ captain ran across the field to his supporters and told them to “fermez la geule” – or “shut your gobs”. And how I wish that more captains of more football clubs would take the initiative like that.

It was an exciting match too – with 10 minutes to go Beauregard-Vendon were comfortably winning 3-1 but then the Miners scored a goal right out of nothing to bring it back to 3-2.

Then, with the last kick of the match, they scored an equaliser from a corner.

Extra-time followed, and the Miners ran rampant, winning 5-3, including as the 4th goal one of the best that I have ever seen at this level of football.

That led to me doing something that I have never done before in all the time that I’ve been here. By the time the match had finished, what with extra time and everything, it was 10:45 and so I wouldn’t be home for another 20 minutes.

Far too late to cook tea, but the kebab house was still open and so I bought a large portion of chips to eat in Caliburn on the way home.

No vinegar, of course, but they were pretty good chips and I’ll go there again if ever I’m out late at weekend.

So what about today then?

I nearly missed my shopping slot at Commentry today as well. But there was a good reason for this.

Just as I was closing down to go to bed (at a comparatively early 02:30) I had a message to ring Rachel in Canada urgently. And so I did, and it turned out that at the garage in Centreville they had mislaid a box which included, inter alia, my bank card that they keep for me.

It’s surprising, if not amazing, that you can spend over 90 minutes talking to people whom you like, about a subject as simple as that (and it was all a false alarm anyway as they found it this morning)

The result of that was that it was gone 04:00 when I finished and then I couldn’t sleep – still awake again at 05:30. and so it’s just as well that the guy up the road started up his chainsaw at 11:00 otherwise I’d still be asleep now.

So what with one thing and another it was gone 14:00 when I set out for Commentry. One of the things that I needed to do was to buy even more tool handles as I’d broken one or two more during the week, and so I needed to strip out the old broken bits before I could go.

At Mr Bricolage I managed to sort everything out (at a price) but the handle for the pickaxe. They didn’t have a wooden handle and so he sold me a fibre one.
“This is unbreakable” said the salesman
“Leave that to me” I replied. “I’ll see to that”.

I also bought the bits I need to do some work for a client with a solar hot water system, and at LIDL they still had a couple of packets of those LED light strips and so I liberated them.

Makes me wonder how many I might have liberated had I managed to make it there last week.

No swimming baths though – far too late to go there, and so I came back here and crashed out for a couple of hours instead after my bad night.

Tomorrow I’m off to the Mont Dore – FC Pionsat St Hilaire are playing Briffons-Perpezat in the cup.

-1

Thursday 27th September 2012 – TODAY WAS A DAY …

… of finding things.

We started off, quite dramatically, by finding the missing mobile phone.

The good news is that the SIM card might actually still work.

The bad news is that the phone won’t, which is hardly surprising seeing as it’s been outside in the rain for the last 6 weeks and I found it in a puddle right where a load of water would regularly drop on it.

What’s surprising about this is that it was just outside the barn door, right where I walk at least twice every day without fail, and how I haven’t seen it before today is a total mystery.

Even more surprising is that if I heard it “bleep” 5 weeks ago up here in the attic – which I’m sure that I did – then there’s nothing wrong with my hearing, I’ll say.

Back in 2006 my dear departed friend Liz gave me an old Nokia ‘phone. It never worked properly and despite buying a couple of new batteries, the battery life worked out to be about 18 hours on stand-by.

For that reason I never really used it, and went to all kinds of lengths to replace it.

However I did lose count of the number of times it’s been pressed into service in an emergency and as I found it in Caliburn the other day when I was a-hunting the dictaphone, it’s now currently back in service.

At least until the new phone arrives.

I wanted an unblocked Samsung (so I just have one set of leads) tri-band (to use in North America) with bluetooth (for the hands-free kit in Caliburn), camera (so I don’t have to keep carrying the Nikon on odd little trips out) and memory slot (so I can use it as a walkman).

But I quickly abandoned that idea. The prices are unbelievable.

In the end I settled for another Nokia – a factory-refurbished 6230 for just £22 seeing as there are no chargers with it – and I have all of that anyway.

So in the mood for finding things, I then found the missing timer switch off the tabletop washing machine – just as I was fitting the machine with a plug with a built-in switch, of course.

The plug off there I fitted on the chop-saw that I bought ages ago and that works a treat too.

I also uncovered three battery chargers – two of them being the 7-Day Shop ones that I use for charging up AA and AAA batteries. And not just the chargers either – a further mega-search turned up some power cables for them.

So they are now fitted with North American 110-volt plugs – I use them for my 12-volt DC domestic circuit because they can handle high amperage and they are sufficiently different not to be confused with 230 volt stuff – and they are ready for action.

The third battery charger that I found is also for AA and AAA batteries, and why this is so interesting is that it has screw-holes on the back so that you can fix it to the wall.

This is quite an ancient machine too and I was pleased to see because I have a cunning plan for it. It was that I intended to screw it into the back of Caliburn and wire it into the ignition system so that there will always be some batteries on charge there.

No power cable, though.

But seeing as I was in the mood I turned out the barn and actually managed to find it, which astonished me.

While I had the ignition system dismantled, I took the opportunity of dismantling the power lead for the coolbox that I installed in Caliburn. I threw away the cigarette lighter plug (I hate those) and wired that directly into the ignition circuit.

And so we’ll have cold drinks wherever we go too.

I also unearthed a pile of connectors that I’d been looking for for ages, and a few other exciting bits and pieces as well. And I did a few other things, but I can’t rightly remember now what they were.

But I shan’t know myself at this rate, will I?

On the subject of finding things, by the way, I know that this might not be relevant but Heather came round this afternoon.

She has just come back from the UK and had brought me my order of porridge oats as well as some Rich Tea biscuits for Rosemary.

It’s the first time that Heather has been round, so she had to call at the doctor’s on the way for the Yellow Fever and Plague vaccinations before she arrived.

But at least I can now make some more muesli.

-2

Wednesday 26th September 2012 – IT WAS ANOTHER …

… day today where I heard the alarm go off properly but the accompanying cloudburst made me turn back over and … errr … wait for a while before arising.

So after the usual while on the computer I went outside and started work.

And in another major change to my usual lifestyle, I was still out there at 20:00.

First plan was to fit the new handles that I had bought the other day to the gardening tools that were lying around. The rake and the binette worked fine but this sledgehammer handle won’t work at all.

But anyway, using the newly-repaired tools, I hacked my way through a huge pile of undergrowth, ripped up piles of nettle and bramble roots, and laid a big tarpaulin on the floor.

Onto this tarpaulin I collected up all of the scaffolding that I’ve been using and laid it out on there. That was followed by all of the leftover plastic slates, and then I cleaned out all of the wood and the breeze blocks from where I had been working.

That gave me some more room to move around there and I could then hack out another pile of brambles.

There’s probably only about 30m² of land to clear back there and I reckoned that it wouldn’t take long, but I’m being rather optimistic about that. It’s going to take a while.

But it needs to be done because the next phase is to clear all of the stuff from where I park Caliburn and it’s there that I want to put it.

That took me up to about 19:00 and there was still a little job that I needed to do. The charge controller for one of the banks in the barn packed up ages ago and so I’ve been wiring the panels directly to the solar bank – not that there’s enough energy produced over there to worry the batteries too much.

But I need to measure the energy that’s going in, and so I disconnected the remote ammeter off the other bank and wired that to it.

Not so easy as it’s pretty cramped in there so I hope that it’ll work okay.

Still, we’ll find out tomorrow, won’t we?

-2

Tuesday 25th September 2012 – WELL …

… I did hear the alarm clock go off this morning.

But I also heard the rain teeming down on the roof and on the windows and so I thought “badger that for a game of cowboys” and stuck my head back down under the quilt.

I did eventually rise up out of my stinking pit – and what a beautiful night’s sleep that was – and after breakfast attacked the footy website until 12:30.

By then the rain had subsided and so the first job was to repair the wheelbarrow that had been out of commission since 2008. A new inner tube that I had bought in Cheze the other weeek and, much to my surprise, I could lay my hands on my tyre levers straight away without even having to look for them.

The Ryobi One-plus air compressor that I bought in Detroit in 2010 did the business and with a length of stud-iron I rigged up an impromptu axle and that was that all fixed up.

While I was having lunch the heavens opened and so, for the first time in probably 6 months or something, I worked inside, in the little cupboard that I’m making at the back of the stairs.

I gave the plastering over the joints of the plasterboard a good sanding down and they are ready to paint now.

wood store les guis virlet puy de dome france>But then the rain stopped again and so back outside,

I ripped up the terracing that I had laid out a couple of months ago using a couple of old pallets, and I used those pallets as a base for the extension to the woodshed.

And from then (about 16:00 until all of 19:30) I unloaded Caliburn of all of the wood.

There’s about 4m² of wood altogether in the pile, and I bet that Aunt Ada Doom could find something narsty in that lot.

But the woodshed isn’t half impressive and there’s room for plenty more under there if I put my mind to it.

At least, under normal circumstances, there’s enough wood here keep me warm for a couple of winters. And if this rain keeps up, because it’s pelting down again, I’ll be needing it sooner than I might think. 

Yes, it’s amazing what you can make out of old pallets and a few sheets of corrugated iron

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