Tag Archives: eric hall

Thursday 6th October 2011 – THIS CONFRONTATIONAL THING …

… didn’t quite come off. One of the guys was over half an hour late, but that was nothing. The others were 2:40 late!

The first guy has been working for the company since 2008. Before that he was making jewellery with his father for tourists on a beach in the Caribbean. He very kindly explained how this project works, and this has explained absolutely everything to me about how this scam works.

For scam it is, make no mistake.

For installing solar panels on my roof, The charge is €24000!!!!!!! However I’m entitled to a government grant of 27% (about €6400) and this I have to pay to the company. And so I asked the salesman what I got for my money and so he told me, and I did a quick costing on this and the sum came to …. errrrr …. €6400 give or take a little.

For the rest, you pay €180 per month until the balance is paid off, which according to my calculations was just under 7.5 years even though they insisted that it was nearer 8.5 years.

Apparently you pay the €180 from your income from the Electricity Board’s payment to you, and so I asked what would happen if there was a shortfall. The answer for that, dear reader, was not forthcoming.

Anyway, he was turfed out and I had to wait around until 16:40 for the other people who were supposed to be here at 14:00

They turned up eventually and told me “sorry we are late but we had to go round to see farmer someone and he needs 7Kw of panels”. Following on from that, they tried to insist that my barn orients towards the south east (it’s actually about 5 degrees south of east) and how good it would be for solar panels – which is nonsense because the sun goes off there at about 14:30.

Anyway they were sent packing as well and I could carry on with my wall. But not for long though as it started to rain. That meant working inside and there’s plenty to do. I actually did some tidying up in the lean-to underneath where I’m working. And it needs it too.

Anyway the day wasn’t wasted what with these persons coming round. It got me to tidy up my room and also to tidy up the lean-to.

And the summer has gone too, just as I said the other day that it would. I have all the windows closed and a jumper on. I don’t like this at all.

-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

Sunday 2nd October 2011 – AT LAST ….

.. we managed to get some football in today. My withdrawal symptoms are over.

It’s League Cup week – round three as it happens – and this is why matches have been few and far between this weekend.

Pionsat has made it through the first two rounds without my help and today they were up against it – in the shape of Les Ancizes who play three divisions higher up the pyramid and who included two players who played in CFA2 (the 4th level of the French pyramid) last season.

>And what didn’t help matters was that they gave away three silly goals of the type that I have spent the last three seasons trying to get them out of – a lazy defence that won’t talk to each other, won’t track back as soon as they lose possession and no-one who will really dominate the bak line.

They also conceded a fourth goal that was quite a good effort, and not only that, Les Ancizes hit the woodwork twice when I’m sure that it would have been easier to score.

With Cedric working hard up front supported by Nico they huffed and puffed but they never threatened to blow Les Ancizes’ house down, but then Thomas came on as a substitute for Jojo, who was clearly not having the best of games.

I first saw Thomas play three seasons ago as a new kid on the block and how promising did he look in those days. But the last two seasons he never seemed to fulfill what he showed back in those days.

Today, though, he came on clearly with a point to prove and from that moment onwwards the match changed in character. Cedric and Nico scored a goal between them and Thomas ran riot down the inside right position and scored two magnificent goals to pull FC Pionsat St Hilaire up to within touching distance.
Pick of the pair from Thomas has to be this brilliant diving header, and that would not have been out of place on the telly in any league you might care to name.

Highlight though was definitely Pionsat’s equaliser. The two players that had been playing higher up the pyramid spent much of the time showing off on the ball and it was odds-on that it was going to end in tears.

One of them had already had a narrow excape when he tried to dribble around Cedric on the edge of the penalty area and although he eventually managed to keep the ball, his pass out rebounded off a Pionsat player and could have gone anywhere.

But his colleague was not so lucky. His effort with just 10 seconds to go rebounded off the referee of all people and fell to Cedric totally unmarked in front of an empty net and Cedric doesn’t miss those. Thank you very much.

And so we had penalties – and cool heads at Pionsat saw them through by 5 penalties to 4 and an extremely lucky victory that it was too.

It’s not often that Lady Luck smiles on Pionsat but she did today and the team can bask in their success here for the rest of the week.

It was also probably the hottest October day I have ever known. Absolutely beautiful. We are having most unseason-like weather just now and I expect that we will end up paying for this in a couple of weeks time.

-3

Saturday 1st October 2011 – ONE OF THE LOCAL SHOPS …

… burnt down last night. And good and proper too! It’s the one in Ronnet, just a few kilometres from here and is one of those little shops that does a little of everything.

I was on my way back from swimming at Neris-les-Bains and I noticed it. So I made a few enquiries and was told that it happened at 22:00 Friday evening and there is nothing at all left.That is really sad because there aren’t really all that many shops in the vicinity these days and local shops need as much encouragement as they can get

Yes, I’ve been swimming today. It was another gorgeous day and so I worked on the computer until lunchtime and then went to Commentry. There, LIDL came up trumps with boxes of metal joints for carpentry, a radio-controlled clock with the laser alarm, and a pile of max-min external-internal thermometers that I have been trying to find for ages.

Swimming was fun because even though it was a glorious day, with it being October there were few people in the pool. However there was some Grandad there who had shown his chubby 4-year old grand-daughter how to jump in the deep end of the pool. So we were treated to a non-stop session of the running patter of tiny feet, a loud squeal of delight and then an enormous splash, all the way through the afternoon. Clearly someone was having a whale of a time.

And no footy tonight – nowhere within a reasonable distance. It’s the beginning of October too. Whatever is the world coming to?

-1

Friday 30th September 2011 – YOU ARE PROBABLY WONDERING …

… why I didn’t blog last night before I went to bed. The truth is that in fact I didn’t go to bed.

Dunno if it was with crashing out the day before, or all the coffee that I drank, but I was still up at 08:00 and wide awake. So much so that I made myself an early breakfast.

I did crash out on the sofa at about 10:00 but not for long as the phone rang just before midday and it’s been ringing for most of the day on and off ever since.

This afternoon after I was roused by the telephone I did some more transcribing of my holiday notes and then I went outside and dug up my onions.

Well, such as they are because the crop is something of a disappointment. In fact I have more rogue potatoes than I do onions, and that’s sad.

And so I’m off to bed now to catch up on my beauty sleep. It’s shopping tomorrow and I’ve let the stocks run down a little just recently.

Thursday 29th September 2011 – THE PHONE RANG …

… at 10:00 this morning. And it’s a good job that it did too otherwise I would be still asleep even now.

So much for that early night!

It was Liz on the phone, reminding me about our recording session later doday. And had she not done so I would have gone there for 16:30 and not 14:30. No idea how come that time had entered itself into my head.

But anyway I was in plenty of time to pick her up and we made it to Gerzat with plenty of time to spare. And it’s a good job that we did too because my first task on arriving was to fix their computer which had stopped working. .

Once I’d organised that we could record our next four programmes.

We are using a different format from now on, though. We have 15 minutes rather than 10, and the programmes are divided up into four segments

there are the events
we have the supplementary information – for one week Liz does a recipe, a second week I do a gardening bit, and for the other weeks we discuss useful French phrases.
we have music – English-speaking songs and such-like
we have the legislation bit

And it was hot there too – the temperature displayed on the wall on the pharmacy round the corner was off the scale – more than 40 degrees and I could believe that too. We were sweltering. Late September too!

Liz cooked tea as well which was nice – it’snice being waited on hand and foot every now and again, especially with the delicious food that Liz produces.

Yes, as Golden Earring so famously said that beautiful evening on the beach in Scheveningen in the early 90s – “There’s one thing I want to tell you man – it’s good to be back home”.

-3

Wednesday 28th September 2011 – SO WHAT HAPPENED …

… today then?

The rather prosaic answer is “I don’t know”.

But I’ll tell you something, and that is that I know what didn’t happen. You were all expecting me to leap out of my bed at the crack of dawn all fired up with a new enthusiasm after all of this time in North America, weren’t you?

But really – as if there was ever any likelihood of that happening.

So I had a leisurely day, slowly unpacking the stuff that I had brought back with me, and also doing a few desultory bits and pieces with the photos that I had taken. Not that it was an awful lot, I hasten to add.

The day ended with me going to bed to have an early night. This jet-lag thing is difficult to overcome as you can imagine and my body-clock is all shaken about.

It’ll take me a day or two to get back into my old routine.

Tuesday 27th September 2011 – AFTER ALL OF THAT …

… I’m back home.

At least I think I am, but I’m not sure because I can’t actually see anything. I’m rather overgrown with weeds as it happens.

It’s not just the corn that is as high as an elephant’s eye.

Not only that, while I was away my famous home-made 12-volt immersion heater seems to have corroded itself through. It seems that this 50-litre drum which had been used for storing liquids isn’t rust-proofed after all, which s a surprise.

When I returned, all of the water had leaked away through the hole and as a result the electrical contacts have overheated and shorted out. That’s not done the element too much good either.

Still, it was a nice idea. Live and learn, say I. My next one is going to be a plastic one, I reckon. I hope that that will do better if it can withstand the heat.

Clearing away the cobwebs and the dust, I fought my way up into the attic. I suppose that I really ought to unpack, but I think that that will have to wait until I feel more like it.

I’ve had a tough couple of days and I need to recharge my batteries before I tackle anything else.

And thanks to Liz and Terry for lodging me last night.

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.

Sunday 25th September 2011 – I’M OFF …

… but then you all knew that anyway.

And this is the plane that is taking me home.

But the airport wasn’t so bad for a change, even if I was abandoned at the check-in for a good 10 minutes.

And despite what I’ve left behind me in my storage locker, my luggage weighs exactly the same as it did when I arrived. Has Strawberry Moose put on that much weight?

Talk about leaving stuff behind me – I had a good tidying up session first thing this morning, sorted out a pile of stuff and stuck it in the little storage unit that I’ve rented and then gone off to have a look around Montreal.

The Dodge is almost empty except for my suitcase, and you can see why I chose this vehicle for my excursion around Canada – with all of the seats flattened, they make a really good camper.

The view of the city from up on Mount Royal is stunning, to say the least. I took dozens of photos from up here and I’ll put them all on line in due course.

But one thing that did stun me was that there was a “security guard” on the car park here and as I pulled up, he tried to peer into my car to see what I had. This aroused my ire, as you might expect, and I had words with him. And had I had a blunt instrument handy, he would have been stunned too.

My road down into the city took me past this nice Plymouth pick-up. 1930s, by the looks of things, and it was in quite good condition all things being considered.

It’s quite appropriate that I’ve found an old car to photograph on my last day here in Canada. North America is a paradise for old-car hunters, but even I’m noticing that there are fewer and fewer of them lying about.

I took about a hundred photos of Montreal in just a couple of hours (free parking for two hours on Sunday) and I am having difficulty choosing what to post.

This is the Chateau Ramezay, built 1705 by Pierre Coutourier as a residence for Claude de Ramezay, the Governor of Montreal. Between 1745 and 1793 it belonged to the Compagnie des Indes 1745-1793, and it’s one of the buildings to be amongst the earliest classified as a Historical Monument

You can’t visit Montreal without going to see the cathedral. It’s the Basilique de Sacré Coeur and situated right in the heart of Old Montreal.

I say “see it” because we aren’t going to visit it. I’ve just seen the price of admission, so that is that. Someone should tell the church that the love of money is the root of all evil

Most (but not by any means all) of the docks in the centre of Montreal have been swept away and there’s now a very pleasant grassed area right on the banks of the St Lawrence.

This is just the kind of place to come with a good book, a cold drink and a comfortable chair on a nice summer day, and I’ve made up my mind that I’m going to come here again and spend a good few days here wandering around, because it really is a nice city.

One final thing to do before I head off to the airport, and that’s to look for Draper Avenue.

My ancestors spent 20 years or so living in Montreal in the early years of the 20th Century, and Draper Avenue was where they hung out. I tracked it down – in the Cote des Neiges region, but there was no trace of number 300, which was their address. Still, I’m impressed with the street and it must have been a really nice place to live.

It still bewilders me why it is that they decided to return to the UK after having experienced Canada.

Saturday 24th September 2011 – GOING TO MONTREAL

I was aching a bit when I woke up this morning – and no idea why. I’d had a good sleep for 6 hours or so on here, despite being woken up a couple of times by lorries starting up and heading off.

I stopped for fuel and coffee once I was over the border in Quebec and then headed of directly to Montreal non-stop, making a note of things that I saw so that I could make further enquiries at another time.

I reached Montreal well in advance of myself, having gone on the cruise control all the way. This had had the dramatic effect of dropping the fuel consumption to an astonishing 7.4/100. I’ll certainly try the cruise control again.

Here at Canadian Tires, there were some kids having a charity car wash so while I was in there having a wander around, I let them give the Dodge a really good once-over.

With plenty of time to spare before I need to sort out my accommodation, I went for a drive along the St Lawrence. I have to say goodbye.

Last year when I came down here I drove past the nuclear power station on the outskirts of Sorel-Tracy, but I was on the south bank of the river so I couldn’t take a good photo of it.

There’s a much better view of it from the north bank, but I’m not sure why that’s a good thing. And I’m not sure why it is that it’s a good idea to have a nuclear reactor in a built-up area like this.

I also mentioned a huge refining plant in Sorel Tracy. It’s a Rio Tinto smelting plant for iron and titanium that comes from the company’s own mine right down the Gulf of St Lawrence, and that’s where the ships come from that are unloading here.

It’s a big, noisy smelly place with an impressive flare at night but I suppose there’s no alternative to having it in a place like this where a workforce can be recruited.

Those people over there are mushroom hunters – I know because I asked them. The guy in the red shirt is the mushroom identifier and he’s telling them which they can eat or not, because they are all going to someone’s house afterwards and having a nosh-up of what they have found.

I asked them if they were worried, and the leader of the part said “no”. Apparently, the secret is not to worry and just eat what you have in front of you, and then go to bed without a care.

If you wake up next morning, then they were edible. And if you don’t wake up, you wouldn’t care anyway.

There’s a lot more to my drive than just that, and you can read it all yourselves at your leisure. I’m off to bed and that is that. My last day tomorrow.

Friday 23rd September 2011 – I DON’T REMEMBER …

… switching off the car engine last night. I crashed out completely almost as soon as I pulled up on this service area at exit 253 on the Trans Canada Highway, just up the road from King’s Landing.

It was cold when I woke up, with a light drizzle coming down. But a cup of coffee soon warmed me up and I carried on northwards towards Rachel’s to say goodbye.

There’s an old abandoned railway line that runs from Woodstock to St Andrews, and these railway wagons over there might give me a clue as to where the tracks might have been – it’s not easy trying to trace abandoned railway lines in Canada, unlike in the UK where every last metre has been recorded.

The wagons here are for sale so that’s interesting, but I wonder if the railway line is included in the deal.

My road round to Rachel’s took me past the Presque Isle stream. We saw that a few days ago at the other end of Centreville near the USA border, and here is where it flows into the Saint John River just a couple of miles below the town of Florenceville.

It’s quite a surprise not to see an kind of settlement around the confluence of a couple of rivers.

After all of the goodbyes and so on, I left Centreville at 21:30 to break the back of the journey to Montreal, but I didn’t make much ground. The nearer I came to Edmundston, the more my eyes started to close, and when I reached the big Irvings truckstop on the Quebec border I called it a night.

Thursday 22nd September 2011 – I HAVE A MEETING …

… with someone in Fredericton this afternoon so I need to have a drive down there this morning and I can’t hang about to take photos along the road.

It doesn’t stop me observing things though, and I’ve just seen a lorry heading north along the Trans Canada Highway with some freight containers with the word “TROPICAL” written on them. And that reminds me – when I was in Saint John the other day I saw a ship in the harbour there unloading a pile of “TROPICAL” containers. Maybe they are the same.

Having had my meeting, I can go for a good wander around the city and see the bits of the city that I haven’t managed to see so far.

And there are plenty of things to see here. It must have been a wealthy place in the past.

This is St Paul’s United Church, and that sounds too much like a church for the local football club if you ask me. However it refers to the 1925 merger between the Methodist, Congregational and Presbyterian congregations who now all worship here.

The building itself dates from 1886 and has one of the most impressive spires that I have ever seen.

According to the sign at the side of this property, this is the York House Parking, so one assumes that this building is York House.

There is a plaque telling us that it was formerly the site of the New Brunswick Baptist Seminary from 1836 to 1872, the first Institute of Higher Education to admit males and females on an equal footing.

And if a beautiful building like this is so anonymous and the only plaque relates to a previous building, then that previous building must really have been something.

I hadn’t managed to take a decent photo of the Governor’s Palace in Fredericton when I’d been here before, and as I went past it this evening it was all floodlit and looked absolutely splendid, so this was clearly the moment.

It was built in 1823 for the Governor of new Brunswick and after 1893 became the headquarters of the New Brunswick Mounties

From here I headed up the Trans Canada Highway and made it as far as Kings Landing when I was obliged to pull over for a kip.

EPIC HALL

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