Tag Archives: http://www.lesguis.com

Thursday 15th August 2013 – I KNOW THAT I PROMISED YOU …

…that I wouldn’t discuss the question of parking any more, but I’m a bigger liar than Barack Obama when he promised to close the Concentration Camp at Guantanamo Bay.

I have in fact been obliged to continue my discussion and to post a photograph, because here is someone who actually did it properly.

I can certainly say that there was nothing in front of him – he could have advanced another 3 or 4 metres if he had so desired, and not only that, he actually looked out of his car door, saw where the line was and reversed back another foot or so to make sure that he was on the limit.

It goes without saying that the driver wasn’t a Belgian. He was of oriental extraction – East Asian or something like that. But anyway he did it properly.

So this morning I was up again early and while Cécile and her mum were sleeping I dashed off a huge pile of amendments to my web site, adding the “like” and “share” buttons, correcting the layout of a few headings, and also adding on some stuff about cookies. In case you are wondering, I haven’t coded any cookies knowingly into my website. The only ones that you might find are those embedded into third-party plug-ins;

Eventually Cécile and her mum were ready and so I sent them off out to the shops but they were back inside half an hour. It’s “Ascension”, isn’t it? And Belgians don’t need too many excuses for having a day off.

This afternoon we attacked the cellar and I can’t blame Cécile for losing interest half-way through because it’s a desperate job. I’ve no idea why Marianne tore up so much paper – letters and stuff – as she did and then put it all down in her cellar. I’ve sorted out most of that stuff but we’ll need to finish it off tomorrow if Cécile can pluck up the courage;

There’s much more stuff photographed and I’ve put a good pile of iton the web page as well as on the Deuxième main web site. There’s already someone in after the washing machine and I hope that the rest goes soon. Another day on this and everything should be on it, I hope.

But sorry about the parking again.

-10

Sunday 11th August 2013 – “WELL I’LL BE …

… a suck-egg mule”, as the legendary Arthur Hunnicutt said to John Wayne, Robert Mitchum and James Caan in the magnificent El Dorado.

As you all know by now, I used to work for a major pan-National organisation and I used to keep my finger on the pulse of what was going on.

As many of my former “workmates” are constantly in the news and as I know their fashion of thinking, I can usually have a pretty shrewd guess of which way the wind is going to blow.

Many of my predictions on these pages (although not all of them, I have to say) have been proved right and have truly come to pass.

And as you know, I’m going back through my blog right to the very beginning in order to tidy it up, and I discovered that back on January 1st I had made the prediction that you see about three quarters of the way down this page.

What price my predictions now, heh?

Anyway, I’m glad that I had to get up and go to ride the porcelain horse this morning, otherwise I would still be in bed even now.

Mind you, 10:45 am is a decent time to heave myself out of my stinking pit. However, I haven’t done a tap today, except to work on bringing another few early pages of my blog up to current standards and to correct the shortcomings in the importation.

I have however had to amend yesterday’s blog entry.

Annie, who lurks in the background, finally burst into the public eye today (hello, Annie!) to point out that Edith Cavell is actually buried at Norwich Cathedral. Yes, it was only the funeral service that took place at Westminster Abbey.

And so for tea, I had the usual Sunday offering of pizza and garlic bread, followed by humble pie for dessert (and we aren’t talking about Steve Marriott and Peter Frampton either).

In other news, Cécile and her mum might be coming to visit.

There’s tons of small stuff littering the apartment that is too time-consuming to sell and much too good to throw away.

It’s basically free to anyone who wants to come here and pick it up as long as they give me a hand to move stuff and load Caliburn with what’s coming back to the Auvergne.

Cécile’s mum has never been to Brussels and so it seems like a good idea for them to come, take away what they want, and give me a little hand too.

And in other other news, last night’s dream has mostly flowed away out of my memory but I do remember someone stealing the washing machine in mid-wash with all my clothes in it.

That prompted me this afternoon to have a shower and do a machine load of washing. That needs to be up-to-date too if people are coming.

-16

Thursday 8th August 2013 – I HAVEN’T FINISHED …

…my magnum opus for “Radio Anglais” as I had hoped.

I’m not too disappointed though – because I haven’t by any means been idle. The notes that I had prepared from last time ran to something like 15kb.

By the close of play today I’ve more than doubled that to 32kb, which is he equivalent of about 800 lines of text and over 5770 words.

Usually a radio programme’s “technical notes” bit runs to about 3.5kb so I’m looking at an equivalent of 10 programmes and maybe more (because I’ve still plenty of stuff to go at) and that will suit me fine.

Yes, 5 weeks to record just before I go and 5 weeks to record as soon as I come back.

Some more furniture might be going too. Someone has been round to look at the big wardrobe and made an offer.

I was hoping for more but I want to empty the place as quickly as possible so I shall gnash my teeth and let it go. She’s coming back for it on Tuesday – I hope she won’t have changed her mind.

Apart from that we had a pile of visits of people to look at the apartment. Some are clearly timewasters, of course, but one or two look more interested. We shall have to see.

I’m not too discouraged, though. In order to find a prince you need to kiss a lot of frogs.

I had another good dream too. I was at a product fair somewhere in the UK selling stuff related to my business but throughout all of the day I didn’t sell a tap, which was disappointing. A short while later I was wandering around Wistaston Road in Crewe near where the old timber yard was, which by now was all closed up and weed-infested, and I was following a couple of girls who were looking for old cars – Morris Oxford MO-type and pre-Farina Austin A50s and the like. And as I came to the bottom of Delamere Street where it joins Flag Lane round by the Old Vine, a pre-Farina A50 estate turned up into the street in front of me. I remember thinking to myself “how lucky – the only abandoned cars you see around here these days are old Morris Minors”

Yes, nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, is it?

-12

Monday 5th August 2013 – I’VE BEEN HAVING …

… a bad day today.

Yes, I do have them every now and again. even though I had a restful day yesterday and a decent night’s sleep, I just couldn’t get going today and I’ve no idea why.

Not only did I not do the things that I was going to do, I didn’t do any of the optional stuff either.

I really need to get a grip and sort myself out otherwise I’m going to be here for ever at this rate.

However, my adverts all over cyberspace are coming up trumps and I’m fielding loads of enquiries about the apartment and the stuff that I have to sell, although I’ve yet to have any visits, let alone any sales.

Hopefully this might improve as time goes on, especially as the agent immobilier wants to bring people round on Wednesday.

I’ve also been thinking more about my mega-voyage in … gulp … just 3 weeks time. I have to sort that out too.

In other news, a Press Release from the Metropolitan Police says that they have accepted responsibility for the death of Ian Tomlinson, the newspaper vendor attacked by a policeman with previous convictions for violence.

“I apologise unreservedly for Simon Harwood’s use of excessive and unlawful force which caused Mr Tomlinson’s death, and for the suffering and distress caused to his family as a result.” says the Deputy Assistant Commissioner (not the Assistant Commissioner and not the Commissioner either) of the Metropolitan Police Force.

Harwood, by the way, was found not guilty of Manslaughter.

Meanwhile, in other news, a nightclub bouncer who saw an off-duty policeman hit a woman and so pushed him to the ground – hitting his head and killing him, and who was told by a Judge that “I am absolutely certain that you meant no serious harm to (the victim)” – he’s just received three and a half years for Manslaughter.

“One law for the rich, and one for the poor …”

-5

Wednesday 31st July 2013 – TODAY’S SUBJECT IS …

… parking

And how Belgian drivers don’t have a clue. If you look very carefully at the two cars in this photograph, you’ll see that the nearer one has under-run the parking line by a good 4 feet, encroaching upon all of the vehicles further down the street.

Consequently, when the vehicles in front of him change during the course of the day, someone will find himself 4 feet short of a parking space, in a street that already has quite a bit of pressure on parking.

As for the car in the distance, he’s encroaching by half a car’s length and you can see already that there’s a space in front of him that no car could ever hope to fill. The words “stupid” and “selfish” spring immediately to mind.

The outcome of this is inevitable and I didn’t have to wait too long.

Some other motorist in a hurry to go to the boulangerie or the newspaper shop across the road can’t find a parking place handy and so takes a risk by parking behind the other car, encroaching upon the zebra crossing.

And here’s a nice photograph of the driver having a “frank exchange of views” with the Council employee who has just given him a €15 fixed penalty ticket.

Yes, Belgians just don’t “get it”, do they?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, after a disturbed night’s sleep during which I had a bad attack of cramp and also had to go for a ride on the porcelain horse a couple of times, I struggled out of bed this morning and wasn’t feeling much like it for a while.

However, I eventually came round and then attacked this web page that I have been promising myself. And here it is, in all its glory and all nicely finished off.

All I need to do now is instead of advertising each individual item of furniture etc, I just advertise the web page.

The prices are really all “best guess” because I don’t have much of a clue. If anyone has any suggestions, don’t hesitate to make them.

However, there’s no urgency. This place won’t be sold in a week. Despite telling the Agent Immobilier yesterday that he can ring me next week for visits (when this place ought to be tidied), his oppo rang me today insisting on bringing someone round on Friday.

So after I gave her a piece of my mind … “do you have that much to spare?” – ed … the conversation went something like this …
Estate agent “is it okay to bring someone round on Friday afternoon then?”
Our hero “yes, I’ll be here”
EA “what time?”
OH “whenever’s convenient. I’m not going anywhere”
EA “is 4pm okay then?”
OH “yes, fine”
EA “or what about 5pm then?”
OH “whatever suits you best”
EA “well, how about 4:45 then?”

Well, quite! No wonder that they are struggling.

The place will be a tip because I won’t have finished, but whoever will be coming will just have to make the best of it.

-3

Sunday 28th July 2013 – I HAVEN’T DONE …

… a tap today!

Well, not quite true, but I certainly haven’t done anything exciting, and the only time I left the apartment was to go to buy a baguette.

I had a lie-in (well it IS Sunday, a day of rest) which was just as well, as I was having an exciting dream. I was up a mountain heading for some ski slopes and I took a different route and ended up higher in the mountains than usual watching the people skiing down a different slope about 200 feet below where I was standing. I’ve been on this ski slope in another dream quite a while ago. That time I was in my red Cortina parked up on the side of the road on a sharp hairpin bend in all of the snow and I do remember in that dream that I was in the mountains, more or less in the same place, and there was no snow and I was taking a different route to somewhere that I knew well but wanted to avoid the masses. But back to this dream – I had to go out of somewhere and I had no shoes so I was busily trying to fasten some thick triangular slices of fruit bread or cake to my feet with thick lumps of butter.

Yes, I’m definitely cracking up.

Anyway, today, I’ve starting a new project.

When I transferred this blog onto my site here the other week, the images and tags didn’t come through correctly. There are piles of images that didn’t show up, and the tags have come through any old how.

One thing that I used to do was to prepare monthly pages of photographs and also monthly pages of what I was up to on the farm.

I let all of that go as a result of my visit to Labrador in 2010 when I became snowed under with work,

But now that my blog is in-house, I can use it to fulfil both of those purposes with not much effort.

Consequently I’m having a go at updating the images and linking the tags correctly. It’ll take me a bit of time but it’s much more preferable than doing it twice again for the same result.

I also spoke to my niece’s youngest daughter in Canada – little Amber (isn’t Skype wonderful?). She’s heard that I’m coming over at the end of August and so she’s given me a little shopping list. I just hope that I’ll be able to pick up the stuff for her;

And as well as going to Canada, I’m also pushing to boat out – quite literally – to Agistri.

That’s a small island off the coast of Piraeus in Greece and Trixi is holding a singing and yoga course out there in October.

I need to work on my singing if I’m ever going to be any good and as it all sounds quite intimate and relaxing, I’ve booked myself a place out there. It’ll be good to have a break like that and I’m quite looking forward to it.

Believe it or not, I have never been to Greece before.

-6

Friday 19th July 2013 – I HAD A QUIET …

… day today.

And although it might not look at first glance that I’ve done much, first thing that I did was to deal with a huge amount of correspondence.

I’ve done most of it (still a few bits and pieces left), especially the important stuff, and I feel rather better about it now.

Amongst the piles of mail was one from Trixi. The house that she was buying has … errr … fallen through and so now she’s hot-foot after another one. That’s in the same neck of the woods as where Nina lives and they’ll get on like a house on fire.

This project of a woodburning stove with back boiler, and solar tubes for hot water in the summer, exactly like what I’ll be doing here, is still on though and so my usual late-autumn voyage to the UK might have a purpose just for a change.

It was nice to see her last year when I was in the UK – doesn’t Facebook have a lot to answer for?

Apart from the post, I finished up tidying up in the bedroom.

All of the plasterboard is now flat on the floor where it’s supposed to be, the rest of the floor is comparatively empty, and I have also fitted a work bench.

It even has power – mains AND 12 volt. Luxury indeed! You won’t recognise it in there.

That took me until 19:20 – yes, POETS DAY indeed – but I would have finished earlier except that I had a mid-afternoon interruption.

It seems that there’s a project to photograph everyone in the village (all 280 of us) and they wanted to know when it might be convenient. So tomorrow at 11:00 it is. I shall have to smarten myself up.

In other news, the city of Detroit has gone bust. That’ll teach the Septics to laugh when an EU country goes bust.

But, interestingly, when an EU country goes bust, the other members rally round to help the country out. I haven’t seen a single offer of assistance from any other American city for Detroit. Serve them right.

But Detroit is a depressing place.

In the 1950s it had almost 2,000,000 people. Now it’s down to just 660,00 and consequently huge areas of the city are abandoned, derelict and decaying.

I was there in early October 2010 on my way to the Trans-Labrador Highway and the place looked appalling.

They have serious trouble in that city, that’s for sure, with the dereliction, decay, murder and violent crime, and having no money to pay for support isn’t going to help them.

I’ve seen some poor neighbourhoods on my travels but Detroit beats them all.

-5

Tuesday 16th July 2013 – EVEN MORE WHACKED!

And that’s hardly surprising either.

Despite yesterday’s Herculean efforts I was wide-awake and up and about long before the alarm went off and after breakfast I finished all of the notes for the rock music programme for the forthcoming month;

In the shower room quite early too, and I discovered to my dismay that I hadn’t fitted the bracing on the wall at the head of the stairs. That needed doing before I could fit the plasterboard.

But that was all done, the cables re-routed and the plasterboard fitted, and all before lunch too – mind you it was 15:00 when I stopped for I wasn’t going to let anything get in my way of doing what I need to do;

Into Pionsat to buy some bread and there in the Intermarche was Rick the Trailer Guy. Seeing as it’s harvest time I greeted him with a “hey, Rick” but, being Dutch, it went clean over his head.

Keen readers of this rubbish will remember back in August last year that Rick’s cello was blown away in a freak gust of wind and badly damaged, but he has it back now, “Playing even better”, so he says and I’m glad about that.

It was a real tragedy.

Just half an hour for lunch and then I attacked the next stage of the shower room – the false wall.

And in a fit of reckless extravagence that’s installed now. It just needs one more horizontal brace fitting ad then the shower side can be cladded with a sheet of plasterboard.

All that then remains is the false wall for the composting toilet and that, dear reader, will be that.

The plasterboard around the windows is not all that important – it doesn’t need to be fitted in order to be measured up for tiles.

If I can finish the second false wall, then i’ll be two days ahead of my schedule, which is impressive enough.

And so it ought to be too because if you think that 20:35 was late for knocking off last night, this evening we finished work at 20:50, which has to be something of a record, I reckon.

But I’m too tired to cook and I’m too tired to eat. I’m going to bed and I’ll sleep for a week I reckon..

-3

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.

Tuesday 6th November 2012 – HORRIBLE, GREY, WET AND MISERABLE.

But that’s enough about me – let’s talk about the weather.

That was miserable, dark and overcast, and it has done nothing but pour down with rain all day.

This morning I finally finished off putting the data logger statistics onto the computer. It’s taken me ages to do that and it would have been so much easier to have done it day by day.

I’ve also finished off writing the web pages for the Pionsat football matches at the weekend. You can see them here if you like.

That took me up to lunchtime, and this afternoon I carried on with the shelving.

Now, both the rails are now finished and assembled, and I’ve started to cut and shape the shelves. And that’s not the work of 5 minutes to cut them precisely to shape either.

And that’s it, really. Nothing else. It’s not been the right kind of weather to do much or to go far.

-2

Monday 5th November 2012 – IN POSSIBLY WHAT …

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

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

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

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

-4

Saturday 27th October 2012 – WHO WAS IT …

… who laughed when I said the other day that winter was on its way here and that it would be snowing before much longer?

Well, there you are. This was what greeted me this morning.

It’s the first snow of the year and it’s still October and we’re still on summer time here here.

I was up nice and early with every intention of going to Montlucon as I told you yesterday. But the main reason for going was to go finish off the day with a swim in the pool at Neris-les-Bains;

But if anyone thinks that I am getting into a swimming pool anywhere in weather like this, they are mistaken.

Instead, I stayed in this morning and did some more paperwork.

This afternoon the weather changed slightly and we had an hour or two of glorious weather – hardly a cloud in the sky – and so I nipped into St Eloy-les-Mines.

In this weather you have to go and do the shopping when you can, so there I was, doing a quicka dash around LIDL and Carrefour, spending a grand total of €18 on the weekly food shopping bill

The other day coming back from Nan’s, I noticed that Caliburn seemed to have his brake lights stuck on.

An investigation revealed that it was the driver’s side bulb showing both filaments at night, so I went to have a closer look.

I took out the light units and saw that the nearside lights worked as they should. On the offside though, a close examination of the bulb revealed that the bulb’s shaft had fractured.

As a result, the two internal wires were twisting and the current for the rear light was passing through the touching wires, lighting up the brake light as well.

Pressing the brakes, the current for the brake light was simply running to earth down the fractured shaft of the bulb.

Anyway, a new bulb has resolved that problem and we now have rear lights and brake lights like we are supposed to. My first guess of an earthing fault wasn’t so far out.

This afternoon I watched some footy on the computer and then prepared myself to go to Marcillat en Combraille to watch the footy. It’s cup weekend in the Puy-de-Dome and as you know, FC Pionsat St Hilaire were eliminated a couple of weeks ago by Clermont Foot Auvergne.

But to cut a long story short … “hooray” – ed … there was an inch of snow on the ground and it was falling thick and fast.

That put an end to the plans for going out, and I shan’t be moving now until it warms up again.

See you in April.

-3

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.

Monday 1st October 2012 – BY THE TIME …

… that you read this I shall be well tucked up in the Land of Nod. I’m thoroughly exhausted.

This morning nothing much happened but with a good run at the website I managed to do all of the photos and write the text for FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s famous victory yesterday against Briffons-Perpezat.

You can read the text here if you like.

Rosemary came round at lunchtime.

So while I moved the scaffolding and cleared out the weeds, brambles and small trees from around the Mercedes, she dug up the onions and garlic and pulled some dried beans off the plants.

Tons of all of that stuff she harvested too – a good fruitful exercise

But doing this garden is driving me nuts. The brambles have torn lumps out of me, the nettles have stung me to death and so on and some of the tree roots took ages to dig up

But it’s looking all quite good there now. Just that one big tree to cut down and rip up.

Tomorrow I’m off to Montlucon with Rosemary to Lapeyre to buy her window and a few other bits and pieces that I need, and then I’ll be carrying on in this patch of land, sorting out the stones and levelling everywhere off.

Then I can bring everything round there from off the hardstanding.

At the Anglo-French Group this evening we had the biggest crowd for ages with two new attendees. Nice to see some new faces.

Anyway, that’s it. Off to bed before I fall asleep.

-1

Wednesday 19th September 2012 – I TOOK DOWN …

… the scaffolding at lunchtime.

Yes, the first time in over 10 years that there has been no scaffolding of one kind or another out there at the back.

I was working out there all afternoon but I’ve not made much progress because this isn’t as easy as it looks. The concrete mortar that they used to cover the gaps between the stones is taking ages to come off.

Usually, if the mortar is in good condition I’ll leave it on and put the chalk over the top, but what is happening here is that water has infiltrated down the back of the concrete mortar when there was no roof on the lean-to.

This has washed away all of the original sand-and-clay mortar, so that it’s hollow behind.

The concrete mortar needs to be hacked off, the joints raked out, stones hammered in to keep the existing stones in position and in tension, and then the whole lot mortared in with chalk.

Of course, sometimes 3 or 4 stones fall out, and so I have to find an oversize one to knock into the gap with a sledgehammer. This is important to lock the remaining original stones in their position so that the stresses are spread horizontally and not vertically.

This morning though I had a good session on the website dealing with the footy match on Sunday.

It’s not quite finished yet but round about 11:30 I had a go experimenting with my old digital dictaphone to see if I could make it work like I wanted. No such luck and so I decided I would have a good search around for the one I lost on Sunday.

In the end I found it – fallen out of my pocket and down the back of Caliburn’s driving seat.

But no phone though – I must have been mistaken about hearing it bleep as it doesn’t seem to be anywhere in hearing distance.

I’ve also had an angry phone call with one of these rip-off solar panel merchants.

Apparently if I have his system fitted, it will pay for itself in 10 years.
“How is that?”
“Well, it costs €19,000 (three times what it would cost me to supply the stuff incidentally) and the Electricity Board will pay you €1,800 per year for 10 years
“That makes €18,000 doesn’t it?”
“Yes”
“So how will if pay for itself in 10 years?”
“Because the Electricity Board will pay you €1,800 per year for 10 years”

So after much arguing and shouting, he slammed the phone down. Serve him right. Nothing but a rip-off

But I’m glad that I got my wood in anyway. In the short space of time that it took to make tea tonight the temperature fell from 12.1°C to 8.0°C – on course to be the coldest night of this end of the year.

That’s also why I’m glad that I stayed here to do this wall and not go gallivanting off to Canada just now. Finish this before the end of autumn and it will last for ever.

-2

EPIC HALL

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