Tag Archives: lie in

Saturday 28th May 2011 – The first thing …

… that I remembered this morning was the usual cacophony of bells and whistles and the like. Second thing was the boulangère outside. And I hadn’t left her any money and I wanted to see her to cancel the bread while I’m away. Ahhh well.

And so after a leisurely morning of not doing much it was off to Commentry. And no OSB in the DiY place either. That’s a blow. I’ll have to use one piece of anything that I’ve got around here and then get the rest in the UK. But they did have a bundle of coving stuff there – end of series and the like – all for €3:00 and so that ended up in the back of Caliburn.

At the Bonnes Affaires I bought another one of the huge casseroles with lids, and that will be the beichstuhl for outside, when I come back.

And at the swimming baths at Neris something quite unusual happened. I was there before it opened and in the queue in front of me was a young kid. When she got to the ticket office to pay, the attendant asked her how old she was.

She was 11, so she said, and the age limit for an unaccompanied child is 12, so the attendant turfed her out. The kid burst into tears and so, feeling quite sorry for her, I found myself saying to the attendant “that’s ok – I’ll keep an eye on her”

When I was the stepfather to Roxanne we used to go to the swimming baths every week. I taught her to swim and to do lots of other aquatic things too and we used to have a great time there. It was something that I really missed after I split up with her mother – I was such a good dad to her, I reckon – and so with this girl we had the same kind of fun in the swimming baths. I taught her to do somersaults underwater, to swim on her back, and then we did a quick 12 lengths of the pool, and it’s quite a long one too and I was shattered. I have to say that I haven’t had so much fun for ages. It’s what I really miss, doing something useful and productive.

But just imagine that in the UK!

And while I was at Neris-les-Bains I encoutered another old car from the early 1960s parked up outside the swimming baths. The Simca Aronde was one of the most popular cars of its size in France during the 50s and early 60s, selling almost one and a half million examples, and there are still quite a few about here and there.

This is a P60 model, launched in 1959 and manufactured up until 1964. This one here is in surprisingly good condition for its age and looked really nice.

Tomorrow it’s the final matches of the season. We have Pionsat’s 1st XI, having blown their season last week, playing against Manzat who are already relegated. That’s at 15:00. That clashes with Marcillat’s 1st XI playing Commentry, but Marcillat’s 2nd XI are playing at 13:00, also at home, and so I reckon I’ll go there first and make a good day of it.

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Monday 23rd May 2011 – I’ve found a new spot …

… from where I can take a good photograph of the Puy-de-Dome, my favourite photo object. It’s from the old road from St Gervais to Chateauneuf les Bains.

I was in Chateauneuf this evening as it was the opening of the Tourist season there and they were talking about all of the events that they will be doing. In my capacity as radio presenter I was invited. We were treated to some Gospel singers too, which made quite a change. Not my cup of tea at all but at least it shows initiative.

On the way back I took the old road and it was from there that I had the view. It’s a beautiful road, that one, but totally impractical if you are in a hurry.

And that was it, really. The internet is back and so after my long lie-in this morning (I had a Day of Rest today to make up for my long working weekend but someone still managed to wake me on the phone at 08:45) I caught up on the outstanding correspondence and the like.

Nice hot water outside and so a solar shower was called for. And quite right too – it’s really nice being clean. I should do it more often.

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Wednesday 18th May 2011- All I can say …

… is that if the sat-nav is still in Caliburn, then it is doing a pretty good impersonation of another piece of Caliburn’s equipment because all that there is in Caliburn’s cab right now is the passenger seat. Everything else is out.

I suppose that I shall have to write this one off to experience, I reckon. But it’s given me an opportunity to clear out the cab and I’m in the course of cleaning all of the plastic and the fascia and so on – or, at least, I was but I happened to notice the time – 19:24, long after knocking-off time, and so I’ll have to finish tomorrow.

Mind you, there’s a reason why I was still working at 19:24, and that was due in some small measure to the fact that I started at … errr … 11:05 this morning. Yes, I slept through all of the alarms again, but then again it was 03:45 when I went to bed – carried away on the web site again, that’s my excuse. Mind you, the night before it was 04:15 when I went to bed and so maybe that has something to do with it too.

And so tomorrow, assumimg that I wake up, I’ll finish off cleaning and reassembling Caliburn and then I need to check my auxiliary electrical system as that’s not working properly and I want to sort that out before I go to the UK.

I also have to find all the bits for the false floor and I’ve no idea where they might be. A lot has happened in the 2 years since I last went to the UK (apart from the day trip the other week of course).

Thursday 28th April 2011 – Well, today didn’t get off to a very good start.

No indeed. I heard all of the alarms go off at 08:00, but then the next thing that I remembered was looking at the time on the clock and it was 10:35. Ahh well.

But I didn’t miss anything though. We are back in the hanging clouds again and it’s just like winter with low clouds and damp and so on everywhere. It’s perked up the rainwater but that’s about all. I even had to turn the fridge off.

And due to the miserable wet weather I was back in the barn again after lunch. I’ve almost finished tidying up the parking place in there and I reckon that with about another hour’s work I could drag the caravan body out. But it won’t be moving soon as I need to move the Ford Cortina 2000E estate and to do that I need to move the trailer. But it’s nice to think that I can now see the wood rather than the trees.

It’s also nice to be able to get at my huge toolbox and find all my mechanics’ tools. Just like old friends they are. I’m looking forward to getting the Cortina into the barn so that I can make a start on it.

What was surprising though was the things that I found – loads of things I’d forgotten about, including the drawers with all the important Cortina bits – and I’ve not seen that since I dismantled my workshop in Crewe in April 1989. There was also an electric screwdriver from that era or maybe a little later – and it was still holding a charge, which astonished me.

I’m slowly making progress, slowly being the operative word. But I’ll get there in the end. Tomorrow it’s the Royal Wedding and so in keeping with the general contents of the event I’ve set aside the day to deal with the contents of the composting toilet. I think that it’s quite appropriate.

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Friday 22nd April 2011 – I haven’t done a tap today.

Well, it’s Easter (Good Friday to be precise) and I don’t work on Bank Holidays, as you know. I’m entitled to some time off anyway.

And so a lie-in until 10:00, a leisurely breakfast, watching a couple of films, working on my voyage around Newfoundland (I’ve arrived at Cape Race just now) and that’s my lot. I’ve not even cooked tea tonight and I’m off to bed in a minute.

We’ve not had any rain today either – that shower we were promised never arrived. And so I’m off to Montlucon tomorrow to buy the bits to redo these water butts. I may as well make the most of this good weather.

But there’s no footy this weekend – nowhere in fact. Whatever am I going to do?

-3

Tuesday 5th April 2011 – I’m not going to be awake much longer

I’m absolutely whacked, even though I have done nothing today.

As I worked a decent shift on Sunday I decided that I would have a jour de recuperation, as they call it around here, to make up for my Sunday. And so when I woke up at about 08:30 I simply turned over and went back to sleep.

When I did wake up at 10:00 I had breakfast and started to tidy up in here. But my heart isn’t into tidying up – I don’t know how to do it anyway. And so I did a couple of pieces of really important correspondence but then a major snag – my printer wouldn’t print them. I was there for ages and even changing the ink cartridge didn’t work – in fact it comes up with an “I don’t recognise this cartridge” message. And so after badgering around with that for ages, luckily Clare’s husband Keith came to the rescue and printed them out for me.

So they are now sent off and I’ve done some shopping too. I’ve also changed the number plates on the Minerva and put mine on (Belgian numberplates belong to the owner, not the car) and that, dear reader, is that.

Well, not quite everything. I’ve also bought a trailer today, as I said I would yesterday, and I’ve also been taking steps so that my property empire can go west.

As I said, I have cunning plans. But right now, I’m going to bed.

-2

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 – I knocked off early today …

… which might come as a surprise to many, seeing as it was probably the nicest day of the year and that I didn’t wake up this morning until … errr …. 10:20 and so I owe myself a couple of hours.

But once I was up and about I started on the vegetable plots, and not before time either. I cleared away some more of the jungle and that will be where I’ll be putting in another line of raised beds – the spuds will be going in there this year to start them off. You’ll remember that I have about 10 raised beds, in 5 rows of 2. I’ll be putting in a sixth row and also a third bed in that row – the extra bed going behind the compost bins. Ultimately there will be three beds in each row, but that won’t be this year.

I needed the pickaxe to pull up a few tree stumps too – there were in somewhat deep. It’s harder work the further down the slope I go because the further down, the longer the ground has remained undisturbed and the ground alder has got a severe hold down there.

Mark, who comes to the Anglo-French Group, gave me an idea too. He doesn’t use a chainsaw for chopping wood (neither do I) and while I’ve been struggling with all kinds of methods to cut wood, he says he uses an ordinary saw but one with huge teeth. A while ago I was in Brico Depot and saw exactly what he meant – a scie de coffreur – or joiner’s rough-cut saw. I bought one back then, and today I tried it out and I’ll tell you that there’s some mileage in this. It did an excellent job of cutting down overhanging branches.

And so why did I knock off early? Well with it being so nice just now (3 days that I’ve had the fridge running and 2 days that I’ve had no heating) I happened to look at the water in the solar shower tank at 17:00. 28°C. And seeing as there was no wind, it was 15°C outside and bright sunlight, I filled a kettle, boiled it up, made myself a coffee and tipped the rest of the hot water into the solar tank. That brought the temperature up to 42°C and I had an impromptu, unexpected but most welcome solar shower. In March as well. That’s a new all-time record.

And with the water temperature in the home-made immersion heater reaching 59.5°C today, I’m going to keep my eye on it. And if it gets up to that tomorrow, I’m going to do a load of washing using the home-made immersion heater to fill the machine.

That will be exciting.

-3

Sunday 27th February 2011 – Sunday today.

And I woke up at the comparatively early time of … errrr … 10:30. Definitely feeling the pressure, I am. I shall be glad when all of this is finished.

And so apart from helping Terry for 10 minutes with some wiring I’ve done nothing else of note.

I say nothing else but that’s not really true. One of the things that I have been doing while I’ve been in Belgium is to write up the story of my stay in Canada. There won’t be enough time for that and so I’ve restricted myself to the Trans-Labrador Highway. Over the past 5 weeks I’ve been doing this and at the moment I’m just pulling into Mary’s Harbour on the Labrador coast. Here I’ll be staying for my final night in Labrador prior to taking the ferry from Blanc Sablon over to Newfoundland.

There are lots more interesting things to encounter on the journey and I’m quite looking forward to finishing it and seeing it all in glorious technicolour. But it won’t be for a while though. Tomorrow night I’m off on my marathon drive back home.

-3

Sunday 6th February 2011 – Sunday is a day of rest …

… as I have said many times before. And so with no alarm clock and no nothing at all I managed to stay in bed until as late as 09:15 which is something of a record.

With a leisurely morning, I carried on working on my website and in particular the pages on the Trans-Labrador Highway. And I’ve now managed to reach Mount Sterling, which is about 20 miles from Goose Bay. That means I’m almost half-way around on my travels. It’s quite a long road, you know.

After lunch, Liz and I decided to change my habits of a lifetime and work in the afternoon. After all, the quicker you start, the quicker you finish. And so now the bedroom door and ceiling are finished. Tomorrow we can put the first coat of paint on the walls.

Tonight though has been something of a major disappointment. It’s the Superbowl and the Packers, who I have followed faithfully for the last 20 years, have made it. But the US Government has gone berserk and every internet channel that I have found that might be carrying the game has either been suspended, usurped by, of all people, the Department of Homeland Security, or absorbed by the NFL.

But its the usurpation by the DHS that is the most frightening. Big business has all the legal guns at its disposal everywhere in the world, but as well as that, in Great Satan it can summon up the Government to do its dirty work for it at the taxpayers’ expense. Even websites in other countries have had their domain names taken over and closed down, with ICANN meekly folding up at the merest suggestion of US Government pressure. It seems that no-one is safe from the domination of Great Satan, no matter where they are. Free speech is an illusion these days.

I did manage to catch 5 minutes of the warm up, where they were interviewing a member of Great Satan’s Armed Farces. He said that they were in Afghanistan “to keep our country (that is – Great Satan) free”. He’s living under an illusion as well.

-3

Thursday 27th January 2011 – We didn’t quite manage the shops today.

And if we had woken up at a respectable time, we still wouldn’t have made it.

The fact is that we had run out of space to put things, and if we had bought more stuff there would have been even less space for the. As a result, we decided on having a packing day. Tons of stuff made it into the trailer for taking down to the dump, and even more stuff made it into the pile for Oxfam. Whatever was I doing with all those clothes? Worse than a woman, I can tell you. And there were even a few things that made it into the pile to take home, much to everyone’s surprise.

When we had a van-load of rubbish for the tip we took it along. We arrived there at 15:46 only to find that the tip closed at 15:45 and they refused to take the stuff. That was rather sad.

Anyway the place looks a lot different now – you can actually move around in here after a fashion. Tomorrow is going to be a day of taking things to the dump and if we aren’t careful we might even manage the shops.

-4

Wednesday 26th January 2011 – So what did we do today then?

Another not-so-early morning and breakfast, and then Terry did some plastering underneath the kitchen window where the old tiles had been. I had to go to the bank and so I took Liz and showed her where the shops are. We also met one of my neighbours and her daughter and stopped for a good chat. She is thinking about having some tiling done sometime soon and so she’ll be coming round to weigh up Terry’s attributes.

Liz has carried on with painting the WC and I’ve been tidying up the 3rd bedroom, emptying the cupboard under the stairs and taking the tiles off the wall in the bathroom. I’ve been able to take of quite a few in one piece and these I will be using in the Auvergne in what will be my washroom. Waste not, want not.

We hit a little snag though. In the kitchen some of the wiring to the bathroom needs to be buried underneath the tiling and it’s not connected up. And furthermore, it’s not so easy to see how it should be connected up. So that used up a few hours of work, trying to sort that lot out.

Tomorrow it’s shopping again. We need to find some tiles for the bathroom and for the balcony, and I have a couple more bills to pay.

-2

Sunday 9th January 2011 – What a miserable day.

Well, at least, the afternoon was. I … errr … don’t know what the morning was like. And having gone to bed quite early (well, for me anyway) last night, all I can say is that I must have been tired. All of this hard work and the early start yesterday have been taking it out of me.

So with the grey clouds and all of the rain that I awoke to, I was surprised to see how warm it was in here. Hot stuff indeed I must be, for when I went to bed last night it was 13.4°C in here, and when I awoke it was 15.4°C. But it didn’t stay like that for long as a huge grey hanging cloud appeared and brought a cold snap with it.

We had a footy match this afternoon – Pionsat’s 1st XI against Cellule. And while Pionsat’s team was well ahead of the opposition on possession and play they couldn’t do it on goals and lost 2-1, and the two goals that Cellule scored were surrounded in controversy. Pionsat are rather naive when it comes to playing the referee and were well outmatched in this department.

The 2nd XI were at Miremont – a team that was in Division 1 last season and who where crushed 12-1 by the Pionsat’s 1st XI last season in one match. I would have liked to have gone to see that match but “a man cannot be in two places at once, unless he were a bird” as the legendary Sir Boyle Roche once said. And so I came home and tidied up a pile of papers.

In other news, if you have been following my comments for a few years now you will know that I have been making a series of predictions, many of which are coming to fruition. One of the things that I have been prophesying is that with Great Satan deposing a pro-western Sunni dictator in Iraq and paving the way for an anti-Western Shia dictator, there will soon be such an anti-western dictator that Great Satan will wish that it had never ever deposed Saddam Hussein.

And so we learn that Moqtada Sadr, he who led the Mehdi Army against the Septics in some fierce fighting in Iraq a couple of years ago, has returned to Iraq and accepted a post in the Iraq government, seeing as his party won 38 seats in the recent elections there.

Watch this space.

-2

Sunday 2nd January 2011 – AFTER YESTERDAY …

… where I didn’t do very much at all, it is my pleasure to announce that today I did even less.

Sundays on or near Bank Holidays give me even less of an incentive to do anything – apart from having a lie-in of course, and that kind of thing goes without saying.

Still, plenty of stuff to nibble on up here, some good DVDs and that kind of thing.

And did I go outside?

Ahh yes – I must have done. otherwise I would not have been able to take the stats, would I? But that’s about the only time, I reckon. It certainly isn’t any more than that.

So tomorrow my holidays will be over and I’ll need to get a wiggle on and start working again.

It’s not going to do itself, is it?

Saturday 1st January 2011 – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

And quite right too!

Wishing everyone the compliments of the season, and me too because regular readers of this rubbish will realise that it’s been a long time since I’ve had any.

it’s a Bank Holiday today and so that means a lie-in, and then a day of leisure where I do as little as possible.

Not quite though, because François was having a get-together and because regular readers of this rubbish tell me that I need to get out more often, I decided to go. It never does anyone any harm to socialise – including me.

The usual crowd was there of course – not very inspiring unfortunately. But nevertheless I’m glad that I went because Bill was there and at least I can have a good chat or two with him.

The good news to come out of that is that Bill has offered me an immersion heater – 100 litres – that he’s just taken out of his house. I’ve been looking for a small one like this for quite a while.

If I can change the element from 230 volt to 12 volt then this will go nicely in the barn to use as a dump load for the excess solar energy, assuming that we ever get any more decent sunshine.

Not sure when that might be.

Monday 20th December 2010 – I MADE A LITTLE PROGRESS TODAY.

Yes, I now have the first sheet of plasterboard on the wall in the bedroom.

Mind you, it wasn’t until late afternoon that I got as far as doing that.

This morning was … errr … rather a late start and after breakfast I went and cut up a huge pile of wood. The deeper I dig into the lean-to the worse the quality of wood seems to be and it’s taking ages for it to catch light, so I cut a huge pile of the old laths that were on the barn roof. They should burn like Billio. I want to empty the lean-to as you know so I reckon I’ll use a half-load of that with a half-load of old laths each time I fill up the woodstove.

I was just about to cut my hair, seeing as it’s all nice and clean, but Terry turned up. He’d been hedge-trimming at The Beguiled and so he came round to look at the bedroom. While he was here we measured up the windows for the bedroom and the bathroom and one day this week when Terry and Liz are going to Montlucon I’ll tag a ride and go and buy the windows.

After that, the hair-cutting recommenced but A DISASTER. I somehow managed to walk on my no1 fitting. And so after many hours of messing around with that I ended up … errr … shaving my head with the thing and that was that.

Lunch at 15:30 (I was rather carried away, wasn’t I?) followed by finishing the odds and ends of insulation in the bedroom, and then fitting the first sheet of plasterboard. And then I lost the light.

But with the meeting of the Anglo-French group being in St Eloy and me needing some shopping, I went early into there and took the opportunity of doing a load of washing in the launderette. It’s going to be ages before I’ll have the weather conditions suitable to do any washing here.

And now it’s gone cold again. And they are talking of snow for Thursday. But at least I’ve now restocked with food, I’ve plenty of wood and gas, so what more do I need?

A few days of bright brilliant sunshine would be nice.

EPIC HALL

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