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Friday 11th November 2011 – I COMPLETELY FORGOT …

… about a sack of sand that I had in the barn. I’d bought it to use for storing the carrots and so I had put it on one side. But the carrots aren’t up yet and I can always buy another sack of sand another time.

I hadn’t forgotten that it was a bank holiday today, but when I finally crawled out from underneath the quilt and saw what a gorgeous day it was (23°C in November?) then I changed the habits of a lifetime and decided to put in a day’s work on the wall.

This was too good an opportunity to miss, especially as I had remembered about the sack of sand.

And I’m glad I did as well because even though I was still working outside when the light went, I managed to finish the wall as far as I could reach and I’m ever so impressed by that. All that remains of the wall is the bit that I can’t reach from the scaffolding, and for that I can put a ladder up on Monday and quickly do that if I get a move on, and then that will be that.

Just the wind turbine to mount after that (I have some funny … "you said that the other day" – ed …), and to anchor it to the wall, and then I can get on with putting the roof on the lean-to. I’ll be really pleased if I can get that far this year.

I took the camera up the scaffolding just in case we had Part Two of Wild Boar Wars but of course, with the camera on hand, they were conspicuous by their absence. No surprise there, then.

Tomorrow I’m off on a photo safari around the local area, and then shopping in St Eloy. Tomorrow night it’s Pionsat’s 1st XI against Methanol and the 3rd XI against Blot l’Eglise.

Ohh the joys of footy!

Talking of which, you can see last week’s matches which I have now put on line.

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 – NEVER MIND …

… the Towering Inferno – and never mind the legendary Tower of Power either. This is what I’ve been doing today.

Well, not all today. The first thing was to give the downstairs part of the lean-to a good clean-out so that I could fetch the scaffolding inside, and then I had to sweep up the floor of the first floor so that I could erect the scaffolding.

It was half-way through that part of the exercise that I realised that maybe it was not such a good idea to put the framework of the washroom in position yesterday. It’s bad enough trying to negotiate the small hatch in the floor without having to negotiate a gratuitous upright as well.

But I tell you what – you know these tournaments where the military have to dismantle a field gun, pass it over a wall and through a hoop and then re-assemble it? I’m entering for that next year. Putting this scaffolding up onto the first floor of the lean-to is good training for that.

And so the scaffolding was erected and that took quite a while to do – mainly because it’s the first time I’ve put the scaffolding up on my own, and I’m not as young as I used to be.

But there it is – all in place and 8 metres high. In fact it’s so high that my ladder won’t reach the top. I’ve had to put that on planks 1 metre off the ground and shin up there like a monkey.

What has impressed me is that the floor of the first floor, that I fitted last summer, is perfectly level. I proved that by setting the adjustable feet of the scaffolding to the same height before I began the assembly,and when I checked the first row of scaffolding with a spirit level, it was absolutely level.

The floor is also extremely strong as well. Not only does it take the weight of the scaffolding, it can withstand the shock of a scaffolding plank (and these are heavy) being dropped onto it from 8 metres up. That is definitely impressive.

Mind you, never mind the answer blowing in the wind, my friend, the scaffolding at 8 metres high is swaying about too and not surprising – we’ve had gusts today of over 25mph.

You might be thinking to yourself that tomorrow I’ll be attacking the wind turbine, but not a bit of it, and that’s all Terry’s fault.

Normally I’d fasten the wind turbine pole with anchor bolts drilled into the wall but the problem with them is that they are never a very good fit in stone and work loose after a while – you need to be constantly tightening them up. But when we were doing the windows Terry showed me a kind of mastic that you squirt into holes and which sets like concrete.

And that gave me an idea.

Drill the holes about 1cm deeper than necessary, squirt a pile of stuff into the hole, ram the anchor into the hole, fit the mounting bracket and tighten up. The force and pressure will force the mastic everywhere into the hole, the crevices, the screw threads and so on, and then set like concrete and (hopefully) you won’t ever be able to move it.

I need to wait until Saturday and shopping so that I can get a tube or two of it. It’s expensive but if it does the job it will be well worth it.

And so until the weekend I’ll be pointing the wall, and in the comparative luxury of a scaffolding too. It makes a change from shinning up ladders with a bucket of stones, a bucket of water and paintbrush, a loose-handled brush, a hammer and chisel, some mortar and a trowel.

-1

Monday 31st October 2011 – REGULAR READERS …

… of this rubbish will recall that the front of the house was looking just as it does in this photo.

But not any more it doesn’t.

Ohh no.

In fact this evening it looks like it does in the photo just here. And if you look very carefully and compare the two images, you might notice that the windows are different.

What has happened is that this morning Terry and I fitted the new windows that you will remember me buying in the spring.

It all stemmed from Terry saying when I was round chez them the other day that he is going to change a door and a window in his house in a couple of weeks time and how it needs two people to do it.

Liz is a busy woman these days (I don’t think that I mentioned that Liz has passed a Diploma or something in teaching English as a Second Language and is now gone back to teaching but in the French educational system) and so he will be stuck for a hand.

Obviously this called for a “well, I’ll give you a hand willingly and you can help me with my windows some time”, and that brought the reply “we can do your windows on Monday”. And here we are.

The old windows came out bit by bit as you might expect, and once we had cemented in where the frames had been,the new windows went in pretty straightforwardly, and that was impressive.

I have to go into Montlucon on Wednesday and so what I’ll do when I’m there is to order the one for the ground floor. And if Julie can cut the shaped glass for the front door, I can fit that as well and it will all be a vast improvement if I can fit those before it all goes cold around here.

The weather is still holding up by the way – a beautiful day in fact.

After lunch we struggled into the attic with the new woodstove. It had to come up bit by bit. It’s quite big and heavy for its size, clearly solidly built and Terry reckons that it will burn me out of here if I load it right up.

So it’s now fitted in place of the old pot-bellied stove, and you can see the oven bit on the top – the lift-up lid and the bit that goes down to the crease just above the window. That will be plenty big enough for pizza, rice pudding, baked potato and the like, and I hope that it works as well as it looks.

I did mention the other day the “cunning plan” about tidying up, didn’t I?

Terry also helped me get the hydro plasterboard upstairs to the first floor as well. It’s of heavy fabrication and it’s also 13mm instead of the standard 10mm that I use. I can manhandle … "PERSONhandle" – ed … standard 10mm plasterboard upstairs on my own just about but there was no way I could have done it with this stuff.

Terry also brought some of our scaffolding around and left it here for me. I’ll put that up tomorrow in the lean-to and once it’s up it will speed up the work pointing the wall. I bet that it’s much easier doing that from a decent and comfortable position.

We shall see.

-3

Sunday 30th October 2011 – THE CLOCKS …

… went back today and so I was looking for a good long lie in.

But the best-made plans of mice and men and all of that, for the rodent who lives in the roof started doing his clog dance at 07:00 and that was that.

Mind you, it’s an ill-wind that doesn’t blow anybody any good, because I had a good morning on the computer. I’ve uploaded the match report for the football last night, and I’ve also brought the Radio Anglais website up-to-date, and I’m pleased with all of that.

This afternoon I went to the brocante at St Gervais d’Auvergne but I won’t be going there again. It was mostly rubbish, and way over-priced as well. I shan’t waste my time again. I don’t know what gets into the heads of some of these people.

Afterwards I went round to Liz and Terry’s to help Terry load his van, and Liz had made tea again. I’m really getting spoilt these days.

And that reminds me of the two women arguing
“your son is spoilt”
“no he isn’t”
“yes he is”
“no he isn’t”
“well, please yourself then, but go and see what that steam roller has done to him”.

-2

Tuesday 25th October 2011 – AFTER LAST NIGHT’S …

… early retirement, this morning I was up with the cock.

But that’s more than enough about my personal habits.

I was up quite early and when Liz phoned me to make sure that I was awake, I was already tucking into breakfast.

At Radio Tartasse in Marcillat we did our programmes for the month of November and after a coffee together I came back home.

Working on the website again followed by lunch, and then I took some more roofing sheets off the lean-to and replaced them with a tarp. I also put something underneath the floor of the upper part of the lean-to to prevent any water that might infiltrate from falling on the washing machine that’s underneath.

After all of that I put up the ladder and started on chiselling out the old mortar at the top of the house wall.

However I wasn’t up there for too long. The wind sprang up again quite violently and then we had a huge black weather front that dumped 5 mms of rain everywhere. That wasn’t very good, and I left the wall to itself with all of that, thinking to myself what a good idea it was to protect the washing machine like that.

What I did instead was to go inside the lean-to and point some more of the inside of the wall that I had built up a short while ago.

It needs to be done some time or other and there’s no time like the present. Having something to do under cover when the weather is bad outside is always handy.

If you’ve looked at some of the earlier photos, like this one for example you’ll see the difference in this pic, particularly on the left side of the wall. You might have also noticed a hole in the wall as well in the left side of the back wall. That’s gone too now, all filled up with stones and properly cemented in.

And that was something that I was keen to do, especially with winter on the way. I don’t want the frost to get into it any more than it already has done

Tonight I finished off Liz’s vegan casserole and had some of her vegan chocolate cake. Isn’t it nice to have good friends?

-3

Monday 24th October 2011 – AND JUST WHAT ON EARTH …

…is happening here?

Yes, it’s absolutely ages before midnight and here I am blogging already.

What on earth is going on?

The fact is that I’m absolutely whacked. Three nights without much sleep have finished me off and I shall be in the arms of Morpheus before much longer.

But I dunno why I’m having these sleep issues. I know that I habitually keep late hours but what has been going on just recently is absurd.

This afternoon I carried on with moving the cattle trough in the lean-to. Here is a photo of how it looked after I’d been bashing away at it for an hour or two the other week.

What it looks like now is something else completely thanks to Terry lending me a concrete cutting disk and a huge sledgehammer yesterday.

They made quite short work of the bit that I can get to, and the rest of it will have to be done when I can get to it.

I did say that once I’d done that I would be starting on the pointing of the wall. However we’ve had a howling gale here today with winds gusting up to 20mph. I know that that isn’t particularly fast but if anyone thinks that I’ll be standing on top of a ladder 10 metres or so above ground in a wind like that then they are mistaken.

According to one of the litttle-used functions on the anemometer, we had 20:42 hours of wind in the last 24 hours and that is quite phenomenal. The wind turbines have been earning their keep today.

What I did do instead was to make a start on the framework that I’ll be using to make the dividing wall in there. That involved cutting up a few chevrons and shaping them,and cutting lets into the rafters of the ceiling in the lean-to.

And while I was doing that, the wind dramatically dropped. “Time for me to go and get the ladder out and make a start on the wall” you are probably thinking. But “not bloody likely”, as Eliza Doolittle once famously said, because we had a torrential downpour and it’s still raining now.

Instead, I did some tidying up and sorting out until knocking off time at 19:00 (I’m still on summer hours).

Seeing as I’m still on summer hours, this morning I was working on the website and I’ve put on line the reports for the 1st XI and 2nd XI matches from this weekend.

But Saturday night’s photos haven’t worked at all and I’m going to have to spend money on a decent lens to take better photos in the dark.

Tomorrow Liz and I are radioing, at Radio Tartasse. I wonder if I will have woken up by then.

Good night, everybody.

-3

Thursday 20th October 2011 – I THOUGHT …

… that you might like to see like to see a photo of inside the lean-to now that the wall is finished for now. As I have said before,I’m quite impressed with it.

The part that I have built up is the part that has been pointed. The unpointed part is what remained after it fell down, and that will be pointed in early course. It depends how the weather holds out after I finish the house wall (yes, that’s the next task).

In fact, it occurs to me that the best way to judge how much work that I’ve done on the wall is to look at this photo to see what it looked like last year before I started in earnest.

So this morning I started on the web site again but not for long as Terry came round. He’d been working at Lieneke’s. It’s nice to see good friends and have a good chat about this and that, for a change.

This afternoon, I packed up an export order of bits and pieces – yes folks, my first export order. How about that? We are making progress all the time, which is very nice to see, and very welcome too. and once that was dealt with, seeing as how the weather wasn’t so good, I’ve started breaking the concrete food trough in the ground floor of the lean-to, as that’s where the wall that will support the steps will be.

Mind you, the steps won’t be there for long as I have a cunning plan about that.

But the concrete is tough there – it’s reinforced and armour-plated by the looks of things. I’ve broken the shafts on two sledgehammers, flattened two batteries on the SDS drill, and chipped about a hatful off with the pick-axe. I’m on the lookout for some dynamite now.

As for the frog that I told you about the other night, well thanks to Krys (and how nice it is to see you again), the frog now has steps in and out of the plant trough. He’ll probably fall in somewhere else now.

And the temperature? 1.8°C at the moment. Winter is acumen in. Lhude sing Rudolph

-1

Sunday 16th October 2011 – IT’S A MYSTERY TO ME …

… how it is that Pionsat can play so dismally against mid-table opposition in their own division in the league and yet totally demolish a team two divisions higher up when they play in the cup.

Today it was the turn of Nord Combraille to come to Pionsat for a cup match and with the Miners being two divisions higher up, we were expecting something of a struggle.

But not so. Pionsat were all over a poor Nord Combraille side and demolished them completely, winning 3-1 at something of a canter.

You can read the match report here if you like.

The thing that is probably even more bizarre is that once again in a cup match, Thomas takes the opposition by the scruff of the neck and while his display isn’t quite as scintillating as two weeks ago (but then not by all that much either), it was streets ahead of his performance for the 2nd XI (4 divisions below Nord Combraille) last week when it took me almost an hour to realise that he was on the pitch.

And we had a gorgeous day for it as well. Here I was complaining the other day about the weather and yet for the last two days we’ve had proper summer days, the kind that you would be pleased to see in August. This weather is certainly bizarre.

Tomorrow I’m furniture removing and then going to the Anglo-French group. But I can’t wait to carry on with the house here. I’m getting all keen and enthusiastic and that’s not like me at all these days, is it?

-1

Tuesday 11th October 2011 – AND JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I was up with the cock this morning.

But that’s enough about my disgusting personal habits, an early start meant a good morning on the computer and what with the glorious day that we had (summer is back) I put on line the Radio Anglais
website and also the updated footy website with the matches from the weekend. That’s a huge job finished, and finished quite early too.

I’ve even made a start on the Canada 2011 web pages, and that’s enthusiasm, isn’t it?

>This afternoon I went and attacked the wall. The breeze block that I had put in the other day had set nicely so I scavenged around for some decent square-faced stones from where the wall collapsed in 2002. It took ages but I found some really good ones and I slowly started to rebuild the corner. It’s a case of cementing two large stones carefully in place at the corner, and

then infilling behind them with several layers of stones and liquid lime mortar – building up little by little. Once the infill reaches the height of the corner stones, I can put another layer of corner stones in place and then infill behind them.
rebuilding lean to les guis virlet puy de dome france While it’s all setting and I’m waiting for it to be dry enough I did some more pointing of the wall.

Anyway, I’ve now two rows of corner stones in place above the breeze block and if you think that this is slow progress, then you are right but it needs to be slow and precise.

The large cross beam that you can see will be sitting on that corner and will be taking the weight of the roof, and also the two sides that meet there will be passing their weight onto it as well. There’s not much room for error

-2

Wednesday 5th October 2011 – I DIDN’T QUITE MANAGE …

… the early start this morning.

It was in fact 10:20 when I roused myself from the heaving pit but then again, I was still up working last night at 02:30. No danger of that tonight though – I’ve already crashed out twice and I’ll be off to bed in a second.

So having breakfasted, I carried on with the match report from Sunday and that’s now on line. All 48mb of it – I can’t half write some rubbish when I’m in the mood. But I’m going to have to make much more of an effort to keep it all up-to-date this season and not let it slide like I have been doing when I’ve been overtaken by events.

After lunch, I attacked the second part of the wall on the lean-to. And I’ve cheated as well while building it up. It looks like a stone wall, that’s for sure. But it’s only the outer surfaces that are in stone, and then not very much of it either.

I’m just building up the front and the back of the wall with large flat stones laid on their edges, and then pouring a weak lightweight concrete mixture down in between them as a filler. That way, it can be done quickly, simply and effectively.

In fact I’ve made quite a bit of progress – much more than I thought that I would. And I would have made even more had I not leant a little too far over and knocked a large part of my wall into the next field.

What was surprising though was how carried away I was by it all. The only reason that I stopped was that it went dark – 19:25 when I finished and it’s a long time since I’ve been so enthusiastic about what I’ve been doing.

Other exciting developments today were that I had no less than FIVE phone calls in the period between 10:30 and 12:00. The result of some of those is that I have not one but TWO companies sending representatives to see me – and at the same time too – to convince me to have solar panels on my roof.

That will serve tham right. I can’t be doing with these cold-calling canvassers

But it does mean that I have to spend tomorrow morning tidying up for a change. Neitzsche famously said that “out of chaos comes order” – but of course Neitzsche had been and gone long before I was ever about.

-1

Tuesday 4th October 2011 – I’VE BEEN DOING …

… real work today.

I’ve been working on the back wall – the one adjacent to the farmer’s field – of the downhill-side lean-to this afternoon.

As you know, some of it fell down ages ago and last summer when Terry and I were doing the work at Lieneke’s, I used the leftover cement and concrete in the cement mixer to start to build it up again.

Today though, I built up the remainder of the rear half of the wall and now that’s more-or-less finished.

Not without some issues though – not the least of which was trying to find the outer demi-chevron, that had fallen off the wall sometime while I was in Canada. That eventually came to light in a pile of brambles in the farmer’s field.

I’ve even pointed part of the inner side of the wall to use up all of the mortar that was left. That means that tomorrow afternoon I can make a start on the front half of the wall and that’s not going to be easy because there is quite a bit of that missing. That’s going to need quite a bit of work to put that right.

This morning,I was up at some kind of respectable hour which was just as well as Liz and I were a-radioing at Marcillat for Radio Tartasse. We’re still doing “autoentrepreneurs” with them but we shall be moving on shortly to talk about other things.

I’ve also almost-finished my match report for the footy on Sunday and I hope that I’ll have that on-line tomorrow.

As an aside, we had storm clouds gathering today over here – first clouds I’ve seen for ages. It almost rained as well and that would have been a surprise – I can’t remember the last time it rained here. What an Indian summer!

-2

Monday 3rd October 2011 – WELL, IT’S BACK …

… to the daily grind now. Or, at least, it should have been, except that at instead of the early night that I had promised myself,I was still wide awake at 05:00. Sleep issues again – it must be my guilty conscience.

Obviously, 08:15 never happened and it was about 10:50 when I heaved myself out of my stinking pit ready to face the world.

This morning I spent writing up my notes for the match yesterday. I’m amazed about how much I wrote and it’s probably going to take me all week to do the web page for it. But I need to exert myself and not let things drag around like I have been doing.

This afternoon I moved a few things around on the car park and managed to get at the immersion heaters under the tarpaulin. There’s a newish 50-litre tank there that Bill gave me because it has a leak in it somewhere so I’ve connected it all up to all kinds of pipes so that I can fill it with water and then close it off. I’ll leave it like that for a day or so to see if I can see where it’s leaking from. Then I can fix the leak, fit a 12-volt element in it and then use it in the lean-to as the new dump load.

>A pleasant surprise at the Anglo-French Group tonight where we had two new members. Peter brought his ladyfriend along to take part, and Nan turned up, seeing as she has now moved to la Cellette. we had a really good time as well and we were all quite animated. It’s nice to see that kind of thing happening.

But that’s it basically and I really am going to be going to bed in a minute. These late nights are catching up on me and I need to be up early tomorrow.

-2

Monday 26th September 2011 – I REMEMBER YESTERDAY …

… saying that I didn’t want to come home.

And had I known what the flight was going to be like, I wouldn’t have done.

I’m not the best air traveller in the world, but I’m much better than some of the people on board who spent almost the entire flight screaming as we were tossed from one patch of turbulence to another all the way across the Atlantic.

The worst part about the flight though was that I didn’t receive my vegan breakfast – and how upset was I about that? That was a huge disappointment, although no complaints about the chick pea curry the night before.

Passing through the Immigration was fairly painless for a change. But the armed soldiers patrolling the airport wasn’t very pleasant to see. We all know about soldiers and their accurate rate of fire. A suicide-bomber pops up his head and 50 civilians are killed in a spray of inaccurate machine-gunning.

And it seems that they can’t spell “AREA” either. We all have to go to the “Baggage AERA” for our luggage.

The airport might have been fairly painless but the journey through Paris to the Gare de Lyon wasn’t. I’m really going to have to find an alternative to this route. Dragging my huge suitcase through the crowds and through the metro and the RER is no pleasure, believe me.

Nothing exciting happened on the train back – which makes quite a change after last year’s adventures and Terry met me at the railway station at Riom.

I fuelled up Terry’s car and then he took me back to his place, where Liz very kindly offered me a bed for the night, for which I was extremely grateful.

Saturday 3rd September 2011 – CHARLEVOIX

This is my spec from last night – the big Tourist Office on the slope down from Cap Tourmente into the Charlevoix. And it was just like home too with a huge hanging cloud hovering over me.

And while parking up at a place like this might be a good idea in theory, it falls down in reality because there is no coffee machine, and that is unthinkable. What kind of welcome is this for tourists?

By the time that I had driven down the hill, through the town of Baie St Paul and up the hill on the other side, the hanging cloud had gone.

There’s a big parking place just along there with a magnificent view of the bay, the interior and also the town, and anyone standing on this point for more than 30 seconds will immediately understand why it is that the Charlevoix is the most beautiful place in the world.

A beautiful drive along the coast brought me to the town of La Malbaie. I came past here on my first journey to Canada but I was in a little hurry and so never stopped. However, today I took the opportunity to stop and go for a wander around.

It’s a really nice town, quite pretty too, and its claim to fame is that it was here that I handed out my first business card to a potential client.

As the mid morning sun cleared away the fog in the river, the views became spectacular. especially across the St Lawrence River.

And there is the distance is the St Lawrence Ferry that crosses between St Simeon and Riviere du Loup. We sailed on that on my first trip here too, smashing through the ice on the way across. But this year, I have another ferry crossing planned.

And I don’t mean this ferry either.

We’ve been on this ferry quite a few times and we are going on it again. It’s the Saguenay Ferry that crosses the mouth of the Saguenay River on the north bank of the St Lawrence at Tadoussac. It’s a symbolic ferry in that the river formerly marked the unofficial dividing line between “civilisation” and the backwoods.

It’s symbolic for other reasons, because look what else I’ve found here.

This is called a T-Rex and it’s a car, believe it or not, made in Quebec. About 50 of these are produced every year and if I lived here in Canada I would be the first in the queue for one of these. And of course, it would have to be called “The White Swan”, for the most obvious of reasons.

And that’s not all of the excitement either. There was a mobile home and caravan on board the ferry and you will notice the number plates. It’s come all of the way from Munich in Germany.

I went over to interrogate the owners and it appears that they have crossed the Atlantic with a company called Seabridge, the vehicle being shipped by Atlantic Containers in a service that runs from Hamburg and a few other places over to Halifax and Montreal.

I shall have to look into this.

This rusting hulk that has come sailing into Les Escoumins is the boat that is taking me over to Trois Pistoles on the south bank of the St Lawrence.

It’s quite an interesting ferry. Tickets are sold in the petrol station in the town, check-in is done by a man who drives up in a car, uses the inside of his hatchback as a desk, and then drives off again afterwards

As for the ship – well, she’s seen better days, and that’s what makes this crossing really interesting. Anyway, I pick up my oar, I’m chained to my seat and off we go.

Just by way of a change, there were all kinds of exciting people on the ferry and I fell in with this American couple from Massachusetts.

Strawberry Moose won some new admirers of course, because he is such a gregarious moose, and the feeling was mutual.

We had a lengthy chat, during the course of which they mentioned that they just driven the Trans-Labrador Highway. They had done the trip in reverse, so they said, which made me think that they must have had a really good pair of rear-view mirrors, because there was no obvious crick in the guy’s neck.

As the sun goes down on the St Lawrence River, Strawberry Moose surveys the scene.

Trois Pistoles is getting closer and closer and night is drawing in, so I won’t have much chance of finding a home fortonight. What I’ll have to do is to drive over the mountains tonight to the other side of Quebec on the New Brunswick frontier and see what presents itself.

I’m full of optimism, so all is well.

This is just a short account of everything that happened today. I took tons of photos and wrote loads of notes, so if you want to see it all, you need to go to this page and follow the account from there.

Thursday 25th August 2011 – Well, what a day!

And I had so much to do as well and I’ve ended up not doing very much.

Working unti 04:30 was one thing but another thing was being dragged out of the bed almost at the crack of dawn (well, 9:50, anyway) by the phone. Of all people, it wss the bank. Could I go down there?

That was eerie but what followed was certainly different. It appears that there has been some confusion at the bank, a sum of money hadn’t been paid, and a girl due to fly out to Canada on Saturday didn’t have any of the paperwork necessary. And so until about 12:45 I was engaged in negotiations down in Pionsat and then out at St Maurice pres Pionsat, which despite its name is nowhere near Pionsat.

Back at the ranch, I then had to make a few telephone calls to Canada, and thanks to Katherine for giving me some help as to who to call. All in all, I was involved in this for hours.

Having said that, though, I was flattered that the bank had called me in to help. It’s definitely a sign of progress.

And what else? I now have some web pages in French for my business web site, thanks to Marianne who made a few corrections to my text, I’ve almost finished this battery box idea thing, I’ve a proof of no-claims bonus for my Canadian car insurance, I’ve my train tickets, I’ve booked a motel in Montreal for the first night, I’ve rented some storage space in Montreal – ooooh, lots of things.

What with the late finish, the early start and all of the excitement I’m whacked so I’m off to bed. To listen to the wind in the trees as a strong wind has started up. It’s a beautiful breeze blowing through here.

-2

EPIC HALL

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