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

Saturday 4th September 2010 – We are back where we left off in May.

But never mind the footy for the moment – just look at the picture.

It’s not just streets ahead of what the old Pentax K100D could do – it’s on a totally different planet. ISO 3200 setting on RAW data with a shutter speed of 400 and automatic exposure and then the image reduced from 4200×3000 to 800×533 and it can churn out stuff like this.

This is definitely the way forward and as I said the other day, a decent (read “expensive”) lens makes a whole new world of difference. I’ll settle for this quality.

Remember that the floodlights are only cheap basic stuff, probably not even 250LUX. A proper professional football ground has a light output of 750LUX and that would give almost daylight-quality.

As for the match itself, this is Pionsat’s 3rd XI playing St Angel, and they started off the season with a 2-1 win. There were a couple of new lads playing for the side and they looked the business.

But before anyone gets too excited, the 2nd XI don’t have a game this weekend. Next weekend when all three teams are out you’ll see a different 3rd XI on the field and we’ll be back to the motley. But get the points in while you can.

At the moment the 3rd XI are top of the league, and that really is a moment to savour.

Today I’ve been working – in the morning on my Virlet website and later pointing the eastern wall. Three buckets of mortar went into it today. And I now know which are the animals that live in the holes in that wall. I threw a paintbrush full of water into one of the holes to flush out some loose sand and I flushed out a rather indignant bat. I’m not sure who was more surprised, me or him, but I threw another brush-load of water at him, he took the hint and piddled off, and I quickly filled in the hole before he came back.

But this pointing is ever so slow – it’s going to take me for ever.

Does anyone remember those green fruits on the tree in my garden – I posted an image of them a few months back. They are in fact damsons and so seeing as I didn’t have any strawberries to eat with my plain soya dessert this evening, I grabbed a handful and boiled them in some sugar and water and made a kind of syrup. I added some of that to the soya and it tasted really good. I like this idea of profiting as much as possible from what is available to eat here.

And in other news, talking football again, I see that next Sunday afternoon the referee for the 2nd Division match between Pontaumur and Chapdes Beaufort is a Mr E Hall of Pionsat.

God help them!

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Friday 3rd September 2010 – In a change to the advertised programme ….

…. I had a day off today. Totally unplanned but somehow things just seem to work out that way. But first, just have a look at this picture. And what do you make of it? You might need to enlarge it first.

The giveaway clues are in between the two rails in centre pic and also in the top left corner.

What has happened is that at some time or other some kind of railway conveyance has come off the rails at the points just here and ridden along the sleepers for a long way. And no-one has bothered to repair the damage.

Where I am in fact is at the old Les Ancizes-St Georges de Mons railway station, where I have been for a prowl around this evening. This is on the abandoned railway line between Lapeyrouse and Volvic – the one that crosses over the Viaduc des Fades and which was closed in dramatic fashion a couple of years ago when they “suddenly discovered” that the viaduct was unsafe. But you know me and my conspiracy theories – I reckon that the closure was planned for years and the lack of maintenance along the line merely proves it. And not replacing these clearly-badly-damaged sleepers just adds more fuel to the fire.

So how come I had a day off when it wasn’t planned?

This morning I went to the doctor’s to have my football medical signed off – if I want to play I need a certificate. As it happened, it cost me nothing as all my details of the medical I had for my referee’s test were on file.

So that was good.

Then I decided that seeing as I was in St Eloy I would do my shopping. and LIDL was good too.

I needed some more identity photos so I went to Carrefour where I planned to finish my shopping. But no photo booth!
“We don’t have one” they said.
“So where do people go for their identity photos?”
“The professional photographer” she said – and watched me splutter.
“Anyway” she added “he’s closed until 15:00”
Sod this for a game of soldiers – a 50-mile round trip where I drove to the Intermarche at Commentry – I know that they have one. Mind you, I half-expected it to be closed for lunch or the machine out of order but no – it worked, and that must be a first.

They aren’t have having their money’s worth out of me, running around to collect all this paperwork.

On the way back and passing through Marcillat en Combraille I went to look at a building that I noticed when I was with Liz the other evening. Now is this a former railway station or is it a former railway station? You can even see the platform.

In fact what we here was the terminus of the Ligne Economique, – the narrow-gauge railway that ran between Marcillat en Combraille and Commentry.

Commentry is a steel-making town and there was a huge lime furnace just a mile or so away from here, so it’s no surprise that there was a railway line between the two towns. The station building here is in a direct line with the old lime furnaces, but modern building has obscured whatever track there might have been in between the two.

The narrow gauge track was ploughed up in 1930 when they built the standard gauge line over its track bed, so when the main line service was suspended in 1939, Marcillat en Combraille lost its passenger service completely, even though the rest of the tacot system staggered on into the 1950s

So while I was here in Marcillat en Combraille I went to the local Mairie and the secretary agreed to talk to the people who know, to see what help might be given for my proposed research

At Pionsat I dropped off my forms at the Football Club, only to find that I can’t find the receipt for the referee’s stuff, and I’ll need that if I want the club to pay it. I remember seeing it floating around the van so I picked it up to put somewhere safe. That says it all really.

So after a solar shower I went to St George for my HGV medical, and here’s another doctor who tells me that there is nothing dropping off quite yet. Mind you, he had me doing some funny things like standing on one leg with my eyes closed and all of that. And as I’m after a change of licence and an International licence he gave me my file back and told me to take it myself to Clermont Ferrand on Monday.

On the way back I went for a prowl around the deserted and abandoned railway station at Les Ancizes and took a pile of photos, a couple of of which you have seen above. In his book First and Last Loves” John Betjeman wrote that “Nothing is more empty than a deserted fairground”. But that was because in his day there weren’t any deserted railway stations. He’d change his tune if he were alive today.

And after coffee at Liz and Terry’s I came home just in time for tea at 21:00. And now you see what I mean. Tomorrow I shall have to work to catch up.

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Thursday 2nd September 2010 – I had a little fun today …

… with the Nikon. As you know, I’ve started to work on a little website about Virlet, and the major claim to fame of the village is the Dominican Abbey of Bellaigue.

You can see it from the end of my lane, way down in the valley below and so I took a pic of it. And considering that it’s about 6 km away it’s come out rather well.

The camera by the way is set to images of 4200×3000 or something like that, and the quality of the image is set to HIGH.

What I have done with it though is to reduce it to 800×533 and set the quality to 42% – what I always do for images that I’m posting to the web.

The next bit was the exciting part. What I have done is cropped out a section that is just 350 x 220 or thereabouts and blown it up to 800×533. I had to sharpen the image a little but I reckon that this has come out superbly.

Like I said, it’s 6 kilometres away from where I took the pic. Spending that money on that 105mm (3xzoom) lens has been well-spent if you ask me.

>Now despite what I said yesterday, I didn’t go to Clermont Ferrand today. I made it as far as the mairie but the secretary was involved with some complicated with someone and it took 40 minutes while I was there! So by the time I had my paperwork and had reached Clermont Ferrand, it would have been lunchtime and I would have been hanging around for a couple of hours.

But she had given me a list of doctors authorised to give medicals for truck and bus drivers, so I rang them to see about an appointment for me. The first one said “mid-October” – the second one said the same. And none of this surprised me. Long-term followers of my outpourings will remember all of this from before.

The next doctor I tried said “Friday 18:00”.
“Like tomorrow?” I asked with disbelief
“Yes, tomorrow” he confirmed.

So badger going to Clermont Ferrand this afternoon and trying to blag my way around getting my commercial licenses somehow. I can go on Monday with all of the paperwork properly complete. I worked hard to get my commercial licenses so I’m not going to surrender them lightly, that’s for sure.

So this afternoon I added a couple more buckets of mortar to the wall. And ended the day with a solar shower. Only 35.5°C so it was rather cool, but welcome nevertheless.

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Sunday 29th August 2010 – It was the Virlet brocante today

Virlet, the village where I live (well, where I don’t live – it’s about 4kms from where I live but it’s my postal address as there isn’t another village any nearer) is the last outcrop of the Combrailles.

We’re looking north-east here right along the scarp slope that forms the edge of the Monts de la Combraille (the pinky orange scar right on the upper-right edge of the photo is the quarry where our sand and gravel comes from). The view is, of course, quite impressive from here as the village is situated on an outcrop – a kind-of finger that points north-eastward across the valley and the plains.

This spot where they are preparing the pig roast is the kind of place that any half-decent and self-respecting baron would have thrown up a castle back in the dim and distant dark ages because it’s just like this on two sides.

The third side is something of a similar ilk but not so steep, and the fourth side is a ridge-top that brings the main road up from Pionsat and part of which was the old Pilgrims’ Way that runs to Santiago De Compostela.

The Pilgrims would spend the night at the Abbaye de Bellaigues down there. The Abbey is a Benedictine Abbey founded in the 11th Century and situated down the steep slope to the north-west of the village.

The Pilgrims would leave the Abbey next morning and then they would climb up here and walk along the old ridgeway through Les Coursieres and through the forest path that passes about 200 metres from my house on the way to the next stop at La Cellette and the refuge at St Hilaire la Croix.

So that’s the exciting bits over. And I’m glad that there was something exciting because the brocante certainly wasn’t, unfortunately.

Dozens of stalls, dozens of vendors, a huge crowd of people (including some from the Footy Club with whom I had a good chat) and loads of interesting objects.

But the prices!!!!!

Someone wanted 40 Euros for a milk churn. Someone else wanted 30 Euros for a 1930s handpump. And 25 Euros for a manual coffee grinder. And 15 Euros for a car CD player etc etc. It’s a far cry from when I bought a chest of drawers for 7 Euros, a table-top washing machine for 10 Euros, a table-top saw without motor for 5 Euros etc.

The Virlet brocante used to be one of the best around but these prices will just scare everyone off. Some people have a very exaggerated idea of values, that’s all that I can say. The only think that I bought was a 1960s Michelin “Green Guide” of the Auvergne – tatty and falling apart but a respectable one Euro.

At least we had some entertainment, and that wasn’t too bad. There was a brass band – a fanfare as they are called in French – playing on a temporary stage by the village hall and they weren’t all that bad. I’ve seen much worse than these.

As well as that, there was the optional lunchtime meal and also a buvette – the beer tent. You can’t have a public gathering anywhere in France without having a buvette.

The most exciting thing at the brocante was parked up in the car park. A superficially-nice but underneath-the-paint-really-quite-tatty Citroen type “H” van that had been transformed into a mobile home was parked up not too far from Caliburn.

Now I have always liked these vans and have been looking around for one in something of a desultory fashion for many years.

And if I did find one, turning it into a caravanette would be quite interesting. They are mostly petrol but some were fitted with an old Perkins diesel engine and that would be quite interesting. A nice low-pressure pump that would run on vegetable oil would suit me fine.

Thinking about things, apart from Caliburn of course it’s been ages since I bought a car – 4.5 years in fact. A nice old collectors’ car or van would suit me fine, now that I’m starting to make some space for myself at home.

So apart from the brocan’t, I spent the rest of the day bringing my website up-to-date. All the photos since July 2009 are now on line and the monthly photo pages up to July this year are now on-line too. I can now start catching up on a few other things.

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Friday 6th August 2010 – I had a bit of a day out today.

One of the places that I visited was the Meandre de Queuille – where the River Sioule makes an incredibly tight turn around a promontory of hard rock (yes, we ought to put a cafe on it – I know).

I’ve never been here before, even though it is something of a local tourist attraction that brings the crowds a-flocking. But maybe that’s the reason – having spent as long as I did working in the tourism industry my cynicism has made me immune to all this kind of thing.

That’s not the only thing that’s interesting about this place – at least, from my point of view. There’s also a dam – or barrage – across the Gorge de la Sioule just here and a very early hydro-electric generating plant.

Following the success of the hydro plant across the Sioule at the Viaduc des Fades, they built this one here in 1905. There’s a drop of 24 metres that powers 6 turbines that have an output of something like 20,000 volts and the power was supplied to the city of Clermont Ferrand.

I had set out originally to go to see these Health Assurance people. As I’m now a French businessman the health cover that I have is deemed insufficient. I’m required to take out a complementary assurance. But as luck would have it, the cover that I do have is recognised by the French government so I only needed to take out a top-up cover that makes up the difference between the total cost of any treatment and the amount that I would be reimbursed.

It isn’t cheap but in actual fact it is cheaper than the insurance I could take out in Belgium.

After that I hit the shops – Carrefour, LIDL and Bricomarche in Riom and the Auchan in Clermont Ferrand. And nothing of any real excitement except a USB fan for €3:00 – I’ll install that in Caliburn.

Outside the Bricomarche I saw the absolute ideal trailer. It’s 4 metres long, takes 2 tonnes in weight and has a double-axle with 13-inch wheels. It’s a bit knocked about but it’s not all that bad. It belongs to a company that is rebuilding part of the Bricomarche and the manager says that they haven’t used it in years. “So is it for sale then?” I asked optimistically. “Dunno” replied the manager “but I can find out”. So now that he has my phone numder we will have to wait and see.

But the most interesting part of the day was just outside Chatelguyon this morning. You’ve all heard of staff-and-ticket single line railway working. On single track railways there’s a danger that if two trains are heading towards each other they will have a collision. So what they do is to divide the line up into lengths with a signalman at each end and a passing place. These sections are called blocks.

Each block has its distinct staff – a brightly coloured stick – and no train can proceed into the block unless the signalman can give it the staff. If he cant give it the staff, because it is with the signalman at the other end, the train has to wait in the passing place until a train coming the other way brings back the staff. With only one staff then of course there can only be one train in the block at any one time and hence the risk of collision is nil.

Of course it may be a while before the staff comes back to our signalman from the signalman at the other end of the block and if two trains are following each other this could be inconvenient. What our signalman would do then is to show the staff to the first driver who would then sign a movement book in the signalbox to say that he had seen the staff, and he would be given a ticket to proceed, which he would hand to the signalman at the other end of the block in lieu of the staff – effectively reminding the second signalman that the staff is still at the other end of the block and that another train is following.

And so today they were resurfacing the road in the hills outside Chatelguyon. The road was cut down to single-track and there were no traffic lights but a man was there stopping the traffic. There was a stream of cars coming the other way and the last car stopped and handed the workman a brightly-coloured object. Once that car had gone the workman waved us forward and showed us all the object – his authority to allow us to proceed and which he would presumably give to the last car in the queue to take to the other end.

I’ve never seen this done before on the public highway. I was impressed!

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Monday 12th July 2010 – No solar shower tonight!

And so the run stops at 8 consecutive evenings. But then again I’m not complaining because today it rained. The first time for what seems like ever and we had 8.5mm of the stuff. My plants needed that, and so did my water butts. Things are getting a little low here.

So this morning after a lie-in I was catching up on my websites until lunchtime. And then Terry came round to see Lieneke about this work that needed doing and so I took the opportunity of him moving his tractor to another place on the hardstanding, dragging out the trailer and loading all of the kwikstage scaffolding onto it.

And that really was my day. Nothing exciting at all. But tomorrow I have to help Terry with a barn door which means a start at … gulp … 08:00. Does that time actually exist anywhere?

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Saturday 12th June 2010 – Long Distance Runaround

Well … errr … Yes. No wonder I’m feeling Fragile “That’s quite enough of that” – ed.

And I bet you never ever imagined that there would be a steam locomotive involved in today’s rubbish either. Especially not a North American “Mikado” 2-8-2, but nevertheless, here you are.

And in case you are wondering all about it, I’ll tell you more of this anon.

Just for a change for a Saturday I woke up early “lucky Early” – ed and after breakfast I went to fetch the two spare wheels for the caravans.

And I know that they are here in my barn. I remember very well having a blow-out on each of the two caravans when I brought them down here and changing the wheels at the side of the road. And I know exactly where I put the wheels with flat tyres when I arrived here too.

But the way things are around here, if they aren’t in their proper place then I’m well and truly snookered.

In the end I turned over the four piles of tyres but they weren’t in any of them and that has really got me puzzled now. But no matter – off to Liz and Terry’s to get the two off the trailer. And I really didn’t want to do that as I need those two to stay inflated so that I can move the other caravan chassis around but it really can’t be helped.

The trailer wasn’t there of course, it was out on a chantier with the scaffolding and so I had to go around there to liberate the wheels.

This chantier is taking place at the old railway house at the Viaduc des Fades, about which I have written a great deal in the past and there’s an excellent view of the Viaduc from there. As you might expect, his calls for a photo.

So having liberated the wheels, it was off to Commentry to the tyre place. And it was indeed the guy who I had met at the autocross back in 2008 and who reckons he can source all kinds of unusual tyres. So having posed the question, he replied “well, I’ve switched the computer off now. Come back Monday afternoon and I’ll order them. We might have them by Tuesday night”.

But Tuesday morning the tractor needs to be on site so that’s no good. Off to St Eloy les Mines to the new tyre place. And the only 13-inch tyres that he had were “reinforced” – not even “commercial van”. And there he was, insisting that they would be good enough. I don’t like the guy at that place and I never did and I’m not putting any old tyres on that trailer just for the sake of it.

So off to Pionsat to referee this challenge match. And the pitch all overgrown and full of weeds and two players practising their golf on it.
“When’s this match taking place then?”
“September” Matthieu replied.

Ahhh well.

But in for a penny, in for a pound. I had an unexpected couple of hours of freedom and an urgent task to undertake so I went chaud-pied to Montlucon to the tyre place at the back of Carrefour – he who had done me proud with tyres for Caliburn in December.
“What’s it for?” he asked
“A caravan chassis that I’ve converted into a trailer for carrying heavy loads. The existing tyres just collapsed under the load”
“What kind of load will it be carrying? A tonne?”
“At the very least” I replied

So a rummage down at the back of his storeroom produced three 10-ply steel radial commercial van tyres. “These will do you fine” he replied.

Downside is that I can’t have them fitted until Monday as he is full to the brim. But that gives us Monday afternoon to play about with them.

He is also having a sale on tyres for Caliburn – buy two and get the second half-price. And I need two to go on the front as I don’t want to wear out my snow tyres. These will set me back €216 which is a far cry from the €272 that I was quoted back in December. All of this is working out expensive.

So then I realised that I hadn’t done all my shopping (I’d bumped into Bill in Carrefour and while we were waiting for the tyre place in St Eloy les Mines to open, we went for a coffee) so off I popped to the Intermarche at the back of LIDL.

The parking borders on to the railway line and there was a crowd of people gathered around the fence peering through it. It seems that it’s some kind of Open Day at the railway roundhouse and there were several old and interesting objects on view.

One of the things that caught my eye was this delightful rotary snowplough. It’s not a patch on the rotary snowplough that I saw at Chama in the Rocky Mountains in 2002 of course, but it’s quite impressive for around here.

France’s railway – the SNCF, or Société Nationale des Chemins-de-Fer Français – underwent a huge modernisation programme in the 1950s and 1960s just the same as most Western countries. Steam locomotives were retired from service and diesels took over.

Everyone who travelled around France in the 1960s and 1970s will remember the typical red-and-cream diesel multiple-units and railcars that replaced the steam shuttles and it was nice to see a couple of them on display here.

Pride of place, however, has to go to the Mikado. It’s a 2-8-2 in Anglophone notification, although the French, who count the axles not the wheels, would call it a 1-4-1.

It’s one of the R class – number 420 in fact, and was built by Baldwins in the USA just after the war as part of the “Marshall Plan” to re-equip the European rail network after the ravages of World War II. France ordered 1340 of these (to give you an idea of how much of the French railway network was destroyed during the war) but only received 1323.

The other 17 are lying at the bottom of the sea off the coast of Newfoundland, due to the ship that was transporting them – the Belpamela from Norway, sinking in a heavy storm on April 11, 1947.

The type remained in service with the SNCF until as late as October 19th 1975 when R.1187 performed its last duty.

R.420 had been stored by the SNCF but was put up for sale in June 1976. Luckily it fell into the hands of a preservation group in Clermont Ferrand.

It is one of the 12 survivors of the class, although the fate of three of these is hanging in the balance since the company that was restoring them went bankrupt.

It underwent a full restoration and was passed fit for rail service in March 1982. Today, it’s the equivalent of the British “Flying Scotsman”, performing steam excursions.

As an interesting aside, in July 1987 the locomotive was officially classed as a French Historic Monument.

Tonight was the cheerleaders or majorettes competition in St Eloy les Mines and I was planning on attending. Piles of girls in skimpy costumes chucking sticks about and sometimes even catching them – but after today’s exertions I don’t think that I could stand the strain.

I hope Terry is grateful for all the sacrifices that I’m making on his behalf so that we can get his show on the road! Missing out on a display of girls in skimpy clothing is not something I would do lightly.

And in other more depressing news, here, in the comfort and safety of my own attic, I have been flaming well stung on the leg by a perishing blasted wasp!

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Monday 3rd May 2010 – Winter has returned.

Yes, blasted weather! Outside 2 hours ago it was just 4.2 degrees and threatening to go even colder. The sky is full of damp and there’s a mist rising from the ground, getting ready (I shouldn’t wonder) to combine with the cloud that is rolling up the hill. I hate this weather!

This morning I had to ring up the British Embassy in Paris and also the Chambre de Metiers in Chamalieres but of course, with them being civil servants they are closed today. So if they are having a bank holiday then so am I, and I stayed in.

I wasn’t idle though. I’d been letting the footy website slip a little just recently so today I edited and uploaded all of the photos, wrote all of the outstanding commentaries that I could find and then uploaded them too. So all you need to do is to follow the links from this page and you will see the history of FC Pionsat St Hilaire this season in technicolour glory.

There are still some reports missing but I reckon that they are on the digital dictaphone, wherever that may be. Whenever I find it, I’ll do them as well.

At the Anglo-French group tonight in Pionsat something happened that has p155ed me off completely and I’m going to have to do something about it before it escalates out of control. After all the work that we put into running it I’m not going to stand by and watch someone wreck it out of sheer bloody-mindedness and behaviour that would be unacceptable in a three-year-old.

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Sunday 2nd May 2010 – As you may well have noticed by now …

… I spend an awful lot of my time on these pages bemoaning the “great clear-up” of French hedgerows and fields in the 1990s that saw thousands and thousands of interesting old French cars depart for the smelter – a national tragedy.

If I were still with Nerina, she would be quite pleased because our summer holidays in the 1980s consisted of us going to France and me abandoning her in a country lane while I leapt over a hedgerow armed with my old Cosina to snap something interesting that I had found.

So today was just like old times as I travelled along a road down which I have travelled hundreds of times before, did a quick double-take over something that I have never noticed before, did a u-turn through the traffic and disappeared over a hedge into a field, armed this time with my Pentax.

I’ve no idea what it is as I couldn’t get close enough but the long bonnet, wings and running boards puts it at the late 1950s at the latest. It’s restored a little bit of my faith in rural France anyway – I don’t know how I could have missed this vehicle considering all the times that I’ve driven down here.

Strangely enough, I was on my way back from an agricultural machinery surplus sale at St Gervais d’Auvergne. I’d been to see if there was anything worthwhile for me to buy for here but it was a waste of time. Just probably 20 items for sale, most of which was heavy stuff. There was a tractor for sale – a huge thing – made in 2006 and the price they wanted for it was €46000. God alone knows how much it must have cost when new. Who says farmers are poor and impoverished?

At the same time as the agricultural machinery sale, there was also a vintage vehicle exhibition. That was really the main reason why I’d come out this morning.

However, it wasn’t all that impressive. There were all of about 10 vehicles on display, most of which I have seen at other shows in the neighbourhood. This is a Renault lorry of the early 1950s and I think that it might be a Type R2161, the famous 2.5T

I bumped into Liz and Terry too – they were fuelling up at the petrol station across the road. That was the highlight of the visit to St Gervais d’Auvergne.

Back at the footy, Pionsat’s 3rd XI were playing Effiat. Effiat are propping up the division and so this was a match that Pionsat couldn’t afford to lose. The game was arranged for two weeks hence but Effiat asked if it could be moved forward, to which Pionsat agreed. Of course this weekend is a blank weekend in the calendar (it’s a bank holiday) and so no other matches are being played. And cynics might think that in this desperate struggle at the foot of the table Effiat have decided to play today so that they can reinforce their team with players from their 1st and 2nd XI.

Indeed, the team that took the field bore no resemblance at all to the team that Pionsat beat back in December. The players were younger, fitter and keener.

But once again, Pionsat not only had a full team out (including one player from the 2nd XI who needed some match practice), they could afford the luxury of Eric, Jerome and Marc on the bench – 3 stalwarts of the team.

Another regular from the team couldn’t get a game and Thomas of the 1st XI and one or two others had turned up “just in case” the 3rd XI was short-handed, but they weren’t needed.

And they weren’t needed indeed.

Pionsat matched them ball-for-ball and with the luxury of 3 keen players on the bench giving the tired legs of the defence a rest every so often Pionsat prevailed by 2 goals to 0. And quite right too – they really did play well.

The season is over for them now and they ended up finishing 6th out of 10 – a far cry from where they were at the end of November anchored at the bottom of the table. They’ve struggled along in fits and starts but kept on going when things were against them. And a couple of unlikely results have helped them, as well as a good goal difference. Strange as it is to say it, losing 6-1 to Manzat was something of a triumph as 2 weeks ago Manzat beat another team at the foot of the table by a whopping 19-0.

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Friday 9th April 2010 – This morning …

… there was a thick hanging stationary cloud over the mountain (as predicted last night) – the first one for ages. It was grey and drizzly so after breakfast I came up here and carried on with updating the footy website.

Once the cloud lifted a little (and I mean a little) I went outside to start on the megacloche. This involved rooting around in the barn for the wood and this led on to searching through the old clothes and rescuing a few that are too good to chuck in the bin. Once that was all out of the way and I’d found the wood I cut it all to shape ready for after lunch.

So now the base has been made and laid in position, I’ve built the two sides, and I’ve got the wood ready to make the back so with a bit of luck it will be ready on Monday. It’s 1m60 wide by 1m15 deep by 1m20 high at the back and 15 cms at the front – so it will be a veritable sun-trap (assuming that we get more sun). Fenestration for the moment will be by somoe of the old caravan windows that are lying around here – a useful quarry of all kinds of spare parts is an old caravan.

The trip to Clermont Ferrand and back was uneventful but we finished early so coming through Pionsat I noticed that the floodlights were on at the ground. They are training, maybe. I hope so as they need some good results this weekend and all three matches are derbies against hated local rivals where considerable bragging rights are at stake.

In other news, there is to be a meeting shortly of nuclear powers and a motion has been tabled to quiz the Zionists about their possession of nuclear weapons. As a result, the leader of the Zionists has pulled out and instead is sending a minion who will doubtless reply “I know nothing”.

Although the Zionists refuse to comment, it is a rather open secret that they possess nuclear armaments – they had a secret arrangement with another pariah state – White South Africa – back in the 1960s and 1970s where nuclear technology leaked from the USA by Zionist and White Supremacist nuclear scientists, with the covert agreement of the USA Government, was put to use by those two groups. In the 1970s Jimmy Carter estimated that the Zionists had about 150 nuclear weapons. How many they have now is of course anyone’s guess.

Mordechai Vanunu, a Zionist “scientist”, was imprisoned for many years for trying to leak to sympathetic newspapers details of the Zionist nuclear arsenal, and the terms of his release forbid him to talk to any foreigners or any journalists and every time one of them hovers around his place of abode Vanunu is whisked off back to prison. Yet despite the furore about Aung San Sun Kyi in Burma (whose father as we all know was the person who “invited the Japanese liberators” into Burma in 1942 and co-operated (at least in the early stages) in the wholesale massacre of tens if not hundreds of thousands of innocent Burmese civilians, many of whom were women and children), no-one ever tries to rally round Vanunu.

There are just four states in the entire world who have refused to sign up to the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty – Pakistan and India (who would wipe each other off the face of the earth in the twinkling of an eye given half a chance and never mind the consequences), North Korea (which has an American nuclear arsenal right on its doorstep) and …. errrrr …. the Zionists if I break my usual convention and accord them – for the purposes of this discussion and no other – some kind of de-facto statehood.

So if the Zionists have nuclear weapons and refuse to be called to account over them, would someone mind explaining to me what exactly is the issue that the west has about Iran and North Korea having them?

Nothing but rank hypocrisy.

If the Septics were to come to some kind of realism and tell the Iranians that they can have nuclear weapons as long as they point them at Tel Aviv, it might knock some sense into the Zionists. But as if that will ever happen!

-2

Thursday 1st April 2010 – We’re cracking on in the garden!

You can see the seventh raised bed – it’s the one on the extreme right at centre-height in the photo. Having dug over everywhere yesterday I made the raised bed – out of Brico Depot Bargain Basement shuttering board, of which I have a considerable amount as it is very handy stuff to have

The older raised beds were made out of board and were 1.40m square, but this board comes in 3m length so I have done this one 1.40 x 1.60.

Once I organised that, I started on digging over where the 8th raised bed will be – behind bed no7. This took ages to dig over – in fact it’s only had its first digging – on the grounds that there are tree roots everywhere and they all need to be hauled out. Mind you I might have made much more progress had I left my bed this morning long before … errr … 10:40. I dunno what’s happening to me about this.

After breakfast I did a couple of hours up here and I’ve put two of the footy web pages on line – this one and this one. Only another 12 to do.

This evening I went round to Michael’s and we had a bit of a jamming session. Because he’s not been playing guitar long I had to teach him some music theory, which is quite difficult as I don’t know it myself. He’s off to the UK in a couple of days time but we resolved that when he came back we would try to get together maybe once a week and see what we shall see. In the meantime I’ll have a rummage through my record collection and look for some 12-bar blues stuff (some Flying Aces stuff or JJ Cale – that kind of thing) and make up a disk of stuff to have a play with.

And all day we had intermittent showers, hailstorms, heavy rain – you name it, we had it. And last night the temperature dropped below freezing.

-6

Wednesday 31st March 2010 – Yeeuucchhh

A couple of weeks ago I made a comment something along the lines that summer had finally arrived because over the previous 7 days the minimum temperature had risen from minus 9 to plus 9.

Well, a week ago we had just had a 7-day period of extremely minimal rainfall. This last 7 days though we have had a grand total of 54mm. 7 days ago I did a load of washing and noticed that the water butts were running really low. Tonight they are overflowing.

Terry and I went down to football training but there was no chance of any football tonight. Those girls from Saturday could have held their swimming gala on there, there was that much standing water.

But the plants seem now to be bursting into life. The herb trays are bursting forth, the radishes have gone berserk and now the carrots, spinach and beetroot have come to life. They are obviously enjoying this weather. I’m glad someone is.

This morning I did two hours work upstairs. I’ve transcribed all of my outstanding footy notes and I can bring the football website up-to-date. But while I was transcribing the footy notes I came across some notes that I had dictated on a journey to Hamburg back in early 2007. I’d forgotten all about those.

After that I carried on laying the paths around the raised beds and I’ve done as much as I can. That’s another pile of builders’ rubble and old slate accounted for. So bearing in mind the garden springing to life I’ve started to dig over where the last (for now) of the raised beds will be. And while I was digging up tree roots and the like I noticed that one of the apple trees I planted all those years ago seems to be coming to life, even though it is thoroughly overgrown by rampant ground alder. I reckon I ought to have a go at clearing some of that rubbish away from it to give it some room.

But back at the football there was only a handful who had turned out for training and someone suggested we practised dribbling around some old bollards that they have for training purposes. But I cautioned against it. It recalled too many memories of when this kind of training became a la mode back in the late 1960s. Crewe Alexandra, my home team, was one of the first to try it back in 1967 and during one of the very first training sessions the sports editor of the Crewe Chronicle rang up the club
“How’s this new training session going?” he asked.
“Dreadful” replied Ernie Tagg, the club manager. “The bollards are winning 2-0“.

-6

Saturday 20th March 2010 – One thing about the warm weather that we are having…

… is that the footy can recommence. And in the balmy spring weather we had two matches tonight. The 2nd XI played Neuf-Eglise and ground out a 0-0 draw. The second half particularly seemed to go on on for ever and I think that most of the supporters had fallen asleep by the final whistle – I know that I had

The second match was against Artonne and keen followers of my blog may recall the away match back in November which was controversial in the extreme, to say the least. It was refereed by the ref who had the attack of the hysterics against the Miners back in October so fireworks would be guaranteed, one would have thought.

But instead we had a lamb-like performance from everyone(except the Pionsat no14 who was sent off for two yellow cards) and Pionsat ran out 2-0 winners. I don’t think anyone was expecting that.

For the rest of today, nothing much happened. I did my shopping in St Eloy and didn’t get anything out of the ordinary, except for the seeds I was missing. I went round to see Claude and Francoise but they weren’t there. According to the neighbour they’d gone down to the South of France for a week to see Sandrine, their daughter. Hmmmm.

I did encounter Bob from Montaigut. He’s a Brit and managed to get a job with a French company as an employee. I managed to persuade him to come onto our radio programme some time and talk to us about the French working environment.

And that was that, really.

+11

-6

Sunday 14th March 2010 – I had coffee in bed this morning!

Those of you with long memories will recall that about 2 years ago I bought a 12-volt coffee machine – the kind that truckers have in their cabs. I discovered it the other day while tidying up (I do that every now and again) and so last night I filled it full of water, put a filter and some coffee in, and left it by my bed. When I woke up I switched it on and stayed lying in bed smelling the aroma for a while.

It wasn’t very satisfactory and it needs some fine tuning. And it doesn’t half sup the juice but nevertheless it was very nice to be lying there having coffee in bed. Last time that happened was when I stayed at Liz and Terry’s in the summer, and I can’t remember when it was before that.

So having drunk coffee and had breakfast, today I did … nothing at all. I’ve been up here all day either reading or working on my website. I noticed that the last time I updated it was in June 2009 and a lot has happened since then! I need to extricate my digit a little bit.

There will be a lot happening tomorrow too. If the weather stays fine I’m going to be burning the leftovers from the garden-tidying and then digging up tree stumps. Luckily the weather has warmed up a bit so the soil might be workable.

-4

Sunday 7th March 2010 – I think that the Pentax has finally died

I went out this afternoon to see FC Pionsat St Hilaire play Montel-Villosanges at Villosanges. I took three sets of fully-charged batteries, one of which was brand-new, and all charged up on different chargers, and I couldn’t get a shot. The batteries “depleted” while I was poised for action. I know that it was bad before but the voyage to Trappes and back seems to have made it worse.

So that’s that!

Mind you, it was perishing cold – minus 5 out there. With a howling wind and driving snow it was uncomfortable even watching the match. Heaven knows what it was like on the pitch playing. The game was difficult which was no surprise given the conditions, and ended up 1-1. The Chimps are a naggy, aggravating side as I have said elsewhere and the ref had his work cut out what with the players and a crowd (for it was a crowd, to be sure) whose passion quite often went beyond the bounds of what might be called “reasonable”. We had a “fight” between two players – and I use the word with inverted commas because had the two players have come up against a couple of British Brownies en route for a Sunday School outing my money would have been on the Brownies.

After that it was round to see Liz and Terry to discuss our radio programme next week. It’s keeping me busy, all of this.

-8

EPIC HALL

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