Tag Archives: eric hall

Tuesday 25th January 2011 – We’re cracking on in this apartment.

After a leisurely start Terry and I went down to the garage and brought up the kitchen tiles. And then Terry set off and tiled one of the walls in the kitchen. Just like that! There’s another few places on the other walls to tile, and then it will all need to be grouted, but it was impressive all the same.

Liz bravely attacked the big bedroom and gave it a thorough cleaning and polishing. I can’t believe how dirty that had become and how much dust there was since I relaid the floor back in 2001.

Me, I emptied the 3rd bedroom of all of the rubbish so that there’s now room to move about in there. That needs some polyfilla in the walls and then a thorough clean before Liz and I can start to decorate it. I’ve also been dismantling the furniture in the hall and I made a start on the cupboard under the stairs.

Another huge pile of rubbish found its way into the skips today. I can’t believe how much stuff has accumulated here since I moved in, in May 2000. I do recall that I moved here with a half-empty Luton Transit. I reckon I’ve thrown that much out in the last couple of days and there is still more to go. But I’m impressed with all of the work so far.

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Monday 24th January 2011 – It’s a shame about the forest.

And I should know. I served on 5 Open University Students Association committees (OUSA Belgium, NERF, the SRG, the Region 9 Regional Committee and the OUSA EC) for about 3 years and I have just thrown all my papers away. And it took three huge Royal Mail sacks to take it all down to the skip here. Heaven knows how many trees that represents but if you calculate the number of people who actually serve on these committees it must be at least something the equivalent of the New Forest.

Yes, the European Paper Mountain indeed.

But at least I can get into my office now which is just as well, for that’s where I’ve been sleeping and so I’ll have room to spread out tonight.

We also have an electric oven and grill. Terry helped me fight my way into the garage that I rent downstairs and we pulled out the fitted oven that I bought a few years ago in a sale. A slightly shopsoiled display unit it was and so reduced from £769 to £307 and so in keeping with my idea of going for quality at a reduced price rather than full-price rubbish, I bought it and stored it in the garage until I was ready for it.

It seems too that the rewiring that I did in the kitchen was rather … errr ….unorthodox and with Terry being a fully-qualified time-served electrician he put that right in no time at all – well, geologically speaking that is.

The cleaning and throwing away of stuff is also continuing and at this rate we’ll have a place to sit down by the weekend.

I’m hoping that we can have the place finished off in a couple of weeks so that I can sell it and have another weight off my shoulders but in a certain respect I shall be sorry to leave here permanently even though it’s been almost four years since I paid it any more than a flying visit.

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Sunday 23rd January 2011 – Today is Sunday of course

… and that is of course a day of rest. And in our case, a day of sightseeing, as Liz and Terry have never visited Brussels before.

And so after a leisurely morning which actually involved a shower for yours truly, and a light lunch, we hit the streets.

First stop was the Basilique de Sacre Coeur at Koekelberg, the huge church on the heights to the North-West of the city that you can see clearly from my apartment.

Mind you, you couldn’t see it very well today because of the muggy weather. The view from here down to the city, usually quite spectacular, was a bit miserable today.

It’s been a while since I came to the Basilique though. The last time that I was there it was for a religious service with Marianne, and I took the collection. Since then, they have been waiting for me to bring it back. I did however manage to avoid being struck by a thunderbolt or whatever and that was something.

Following on from there I took Terry and Liz on the tourist route that I used to follow when I did coach tours all around the sights. First stop has to be the Atomium, up at the top end of the Parc Roi Badouin.

From there, we even managed to go down the narrow street behind the railway station where all the railway workers’ wives wait in the window to spot their husbands finishing work, so that they can quickly put on the supper before they arrive home. But Liz and Terry were staggered by the cost of living here in Brussels, and so were not really surprised that the poor women could not afford to buy many clothes to wear and that what clothing they were wearing, they had grown out of a while back and couldn’t afford to replace with a larger size.

So tomorrow we are back at work. First job is to empty the rubbish and then clear out the third bedroom so that we can make a start on that. This will involve a trip to the shops (the first of a great many, I shouldn’t wonder) to buy one or two things that we forgot yesterday.

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Saturday 22nd January 2011 – My first day back in Brussels …

… and it’s really difficult to adapt to the new conditions. Running water, proper bathroom and kitchen, central heating, a comfortable bed. How can I possibly survive?

We have a proper bathroom and kitchen thanks to Liz who has performed heroics today in making this place fit for heroes. And I also have room to sleep properly, a dining table and chairs and a comfortable sofa thanks to some rather thorough sifting of a huge pile of old and manky paperwork from heaven alone knows when. Terry has been making plans and projects for the work that will be needed, and that resulted in a trip to the shops.

The traffic was difficult to adapt to as well – there isn’t traffic like this in the Auvergne. And there aren’t the queues in the carparks either. And neither are the ridiculous prices. No wonder I moved down there when my income dried up. I could never have survived here.

The tidying has come to something of a halt though – we have filled up all of the containers in the waste room. We shall have to wait for the concierge to start back to work on Monday before we can take any more rubbish downstairs. But not to worry. There’s plenty of other things to be going on with.

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Friday 21st January 2011 – I was right …

.. about blogging from another country. We are actually back in Belgium. In Brussels in fact, and in my apartment here. It’s been sitting doing nothing for a couple of years so we’ve decided that it’s high time we attacked it and got it done.

I say “we” because Liz and Terry are with me. We are going to have a work-in and not leave until the place is finished and up for sale. Liz has already attacked the fridge, and managed to avoid being grabbed by whatever it was that was living in the freezer compartment. She’s also been into the bathroom, which I told her was a silly thing to do just before going to bed. She’ll be having nightmares all night now.

I won’t say it’s warm in here but considering I haven’t been here since September and then for only a day I was expecting it to be much colder than it was. But tomorrow I’ll switch on the heating. That might help. And also tomorrow we’ll have a good look round and make a plan of attack and see where we go from here. I mean – regardless of whatever I could raise by selling it, it’s costing me €200 or so each month to keep it up with the communal charges, electricity and rates and so on and I have much better uses for that money.

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Thursday 20th January 2011 – Winter is back.

I woke up this morning to discover a smattering of snow, sub-zero temperatures and a hanging cloud. Just like it ought to be in January, methinks, although you would never have guessed if from the last few days when we’ve been having May-type weather.

First task was to clean out Caliburn and check him over as tomorrow we are going on a long journey. everything needs to be ship-shape inside. And while I was waiting for the man from Viking to come with a pile of cardboard boxes I packed a few tools and other bits and pieces that might come in handy, as well as some paperwork that I need.

After lunch I packed the computer bits and pieces that I want and some clothes and bedding and that kind of stuff. Not to mention some food. My long driving journeys include nibbling snacks all the way on the journey.

I’ve also been tidying up in the barn and in the lean-to where the wood is. I need to make quite a bit of space (which is always at a premium around here) for when I come back.

And that is that. I’m having an early night due to the fact that I’ll be making an early start tomorrow. And the next time I blog, I’ll be in another country, assuming that the snow lets me leave. How about that?

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Wednesday 19th January 2011 – Just by way of a change …

… I was awake before the alarm clock this morning. Surprising too, because it was after 03:00 when I went to bed – rather busy on the computer was I last night.

And this non-seasonal weather is still here – light cloudy skies and plenty of solar energy, and thus electrically-heated water too, but the temperature has dropped. At 21:00 it was -2°C and falling, so winter is still with us.

I’ve had another good day working on the bedroom roof and that is making progress. Slowly, it has to be said, but at least it’s one of those tasks where you can actually see how you are getting on. I’ve probably done about a third of it and it seems to be making something of a difference up here with all of the extra insulation and then the tongue-and-grooving on the bedroom ceiling, which is of course the floor in here.

But I think that I have made something of an error in that I started with the tongue-and-grooving by the window, which means that I am having to do all kinds of contortions around the framework of the fitted wardrobe. It would have been easier to start at the wall by the fitted wardrobe and then continued out to the window. However, where you start is much neater than where you finish and by finishing over the top of the wardrobe, no-one is going to see how it all ended up.

The days are lengthening too. It was 17:48 when I finished work in the bedroom due to fading light, and I went outside to do some more but the drop in temperature drove me in at 18:10 when it was still light . enough to carry on for a short while. Give it another month and I’ll be outside working at 19:00. I’ll need to be too, as I have this greenhouse to build and some new plots and raised beds to deal with. Wherever does the time go to?

And in other news, CREFAD – this Government-sponsored business networking thing that gives lectures and advice to small businesspeople in the Auvergne – rang me up. There’s a meeting on 1st March at St Gervais on the subject of auto-entrpreneurs – this new system of taxation for small informal businesses – and they need a speaker for it. would I be free by any chance that evening? Magali (the girl who runs it) clearly remembers me from 9 months ago when I did a talk on eco-construction.

As it happens I am free that evening and even if I wasn’t, I would be. There’s no payment or anything involved of course which is a shame, but it gives me a chance to meet some more potential clients and talk about my business. An opportunity not to be missed. And they must clearly be impressed with my command of the French language otherwise they wouldn’t keep on asking me to speak at these public meetings, and that is something that pleases me greatly.

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Tuesday 18th January 2011 – We were recording again today

This time it was for the programmes for Radio Tartasse – the next lot of four-weekly programmes to take them up to the end of February. Luckily I don’t have too far to travel because it’s an early start in the morning, like … errrr … 10:00.

This time we were allowed to do the programmes how we wanted to do them, and it went much better. Liz and I have a very good rapport and much of our stuff is done as ad-libs and you can’t do that if you are having to concentrate on pages of script. And they have also agreed to let us have copies of the recorded programmes so that I can stick them on our blog when I have the time and I’m not so tired. But that will come – you can be assured of that.

And so back here, and carrying on with my ceiling. and that’s what I did for most of the rest of the day such as it was. And I’m making good progress too. It won’t be all that long before it’s done. BUt it went dark at about 17:00 – at least too dark to work on the ceiling, and so I had an hour or so outside doing a little more clearing up. And slowly but surely it’s looking a little (but only a little) more respectable out here. But the weather has turned. It clouded right over and it’s gone cold. I even have had the heating on a little earlier this evening. But not that that worries me. Now that the weeds and brambles are dying down I’m uncovering a few of the old chevrons that we ripped off the barn roof and threw down to the floor. It’s all more firewood for the stove.

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Monday 17th January 2011 – It was Monday today …

… believe it or not, and this afternoon we went to the recording studio to record our radio programmes for the month of February. And no offer of transport from our sponsors either. It seems that whatever budget that was available was only for 12 months and that has now expired.

Anyway, with a view to not taking this lying down, I have taken some positive action. I’ve created a blog for the radio programmes that we do and the intention is that I will stream the radio programmes on there for the benefit of those who can’t receive them or who forgot to listen to them. And in addition to that I will be offering advertising space, at a very democratic €30 per annum for those who run a business or have a service to offer, or €3 per 15 words per month for small ads and the like, people buying and selling articles and so on. And with the money that we raise, we can pay our own travelling expenses to the studio.

So I need help in spreading the word about the radio blog, and I also need customers to buy the advertising space. If you can do your bit to spread the word it would be a great help.

This morning I was up early (just for a change) and with the new insulation that I bought on Saturday I was able to have a profitable couple of hours doing the bedroom ceiling. And it’s advancing pretty well in there. I’m quite happy with that. This evening though we were in St Eloy for the Anglo-French group and we were so carried away with the discussions that instead of finishing at 21:00 as is our wont, it was almost 22:00 when someone noticed the time.

Tomorrow we are recording again – at Radio Tartasse. I need to encourage them to let me have the radio programmes from their end so that we can put them up on the blog too.

I hope it all works!

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Sunday, 16th January 2011 – What a beautiful day.

Definitely the best of the summ… errrr … winter so far. Not only did we have the hottest temperatures of the winter, we had the sunniest too. Not a cloud in the sky all day. My batteries in the house are all fully-charged and the water heater (that uses up the excess electricity) ran for 2.5 hours and warmed up the water to 32°C. Not quite shower-warm but we are getting there.

But how ridiculous is this though, when just 12 days ago we had -8.4°C? It could only happen here in the Combrailles.

Today I finished off “holiday lettings” ready for recording tomorrow, and then I worked on a blog for the radio programmes – an important thing that needs doing seeing as we seem to be going nationwide (well – alright, into the Allier and the Creuse). The aim is of course to stream out programmes so that people who miss them or live outside the reception areas can pick them up.

So after that it was off to St Bonnet to watch Pionsat’s 1st XI give them a good spannering. and I arrived 10 minutes late to find that they were already ahead 2-0. They won 4-0 in the end and that included missing a penalty, thanks to an excellent double-save by the St Bonnet keeper.

But this match was well-planned to be played in mid-winter. The heat that was generated on the field both on and off the ball would have certainly melted any ice that might otherwise have formed in any traditional kind of winter weather.

And so round to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse our radio programmes this week. We are recording at Radio Arverne tomorrow and Radio Tartasse on Tuesday.

And now I’m back home in my warm unheated attic – two consecutive days that I haven’t had the heating on here – watching the Jets and the Patriots. And listening to the adverts – including one for Viagra “seek medical attention immediately if you have an erection that lasts for four hours”. At my age, it wouldn’t be medical attention that I would be seeking, I could tell you. It reminds me of the time that a new machine tools factory opened up in Crewe, and the proud owner put up his sign “O’Malley’s Tool Works”. So I rang him up and told him “so does mine, but I haven’t put up a sign about it”.

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Saturday 15th January 2011 – It’s been another day …

where things might have been better.
Not the weather, though. we had a beautiful day today. The solar panels on the house roof generated almost 200 amp-hours today and the batteries in the house are now almost fully-charged. The batteries in the barn have been fully charged for a couple of days of course.

So up with the lark and off to Montlucon for my insulation. And they just had one pack of 20mm sheets left and so I shall have to make do with that for now. I also picked up a pile of door handles for €2:00 each and a few other bits and pieces too in the sale, but the huge disappointment was the sliding doors. They had a pile on sale at €15 each, quite reasonable light oak with inset mirrors and so I immediately went for four of them. But much to my dismay, only the first one was light oak and all of the others were a dark gloomy colour that won’t match the drawers and won’t match the worktop either. So back to square one with that.

I was back home before midday too, despite fitting in a trip to the Auchan, and I did some more on the Holiday Lettings thingy that we are talking about on the radio just now.

At 17:55 I nipped down into Pionsat to watch the 3rd XI play Montfermy, a match specially arranged at that time at the request of the visitors. Not many matches at all on tonight so they had even, for the first time that I can remember, been able to find an official referee for a 4th Division match and so we had the ref, we had 14 Pionsat players – and no opposition.

They simply didn’t turn up.

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Friday 14th January 2011 – Ouch!

It’s been an expensive day today – and I didn’t go shopping either. GRRRR What did happen was that the postie came by today bearing some major bad news.

Firstly, when the solicitor charged with handling the sale of Reyers was asked to settle all of the outstanding Brussels taxation issues, well, indeed he did. But he did that on the 29th of September, the day that the cheque for the sale was cleared, and of course the property taxes on Expo were due on October 1st. And so I had a red reminder today for €1200 that I had not taken into account in my budget.

Secondly, a couple of years ago I went into the taxation office here and asked that the taxes that I am to pay on Les Guis and on Montaigut should be paid by direct debit instead of by demand. I told the tax office that I travel around a great deal and was afraid of missing a payment or two, and the tax office very kindly helped me to complete the forms.

And when I went into the tax office that time, I was brandishing around a tax d’habitation form. And so you can guess what has happened. Just how many brain cells do you need to have, to work out that if someone tells you that he travels around a great deal and is afraid of missing a payment or two, he means ALL HIS TAXES? And so that was another €733 that bit the dust.

While I was out, I reckoned that I may as well go and buy the plank that I need for making my false beam, the one that the electric cables will be running behind. So to St Gervais and the sawmill. And he will cut me a plank of the required width and thickness, but to a maximum of 4.15 metres. That’s no good. The room is 4.47 metres and the plank of course needs to be in one piece – it will look silly as a beam if it is in two pieces.

And so I shot off through the wilds to Montel-de-Gelat and the huge sawmill there. And I arrived about half an hour before closing time. They have planks in stock – 4.50 metres long by 18mm thick. Absolutely ideal for what I want. But the width – 150mm whereas I want 120mm ideally.
“Can you trim one down for me?”
“No”
“No? Why not?”
“Because this is the week when the cutting mill is closed for machine maintenance.We can do it for you next Friday”.

I’m clearly having no luck at all today.

I said the other day that I would take a photo of the lean-to with all of the wood. It looked like this in November last year, and all through the following 12 months the pile increased in size as I flung more and more bits of wood in there.At one stage in the summer I couldn’t even get into the place. But anyway, you can see that it’s emptying out quite nicely.

The wall on the left is the eastern wall of the house and the kitchen will be built against this wall. The dark grey cylinder is the large gas bottle that will power the gas cooker. I’ll anchor it to the wall and drill through the wall in order to pass a gas pipe through. The other cylindrical object is an old immersion heater that Claude gave me to play with.

In the bedroom I did some more of the tongue-and-grooving but that came to a dead stop too as I ran out of 20mm insulation. I’ll have to go to Brico Depot tomorrow and buy a load of that so that I can carry on next week. There’s not much else I can be doing until I buy my plank.

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Thursday 13th January 2011 – Oh look at that!

Yes, doesn’t this look gorgeous?

It’s a home-made vegan Christmas cake specially made for me by Liz, whose culinary talents know no bounds and whose husband, Terry, is the luckiest man on earth. Liz made this for me for Christmas and now that I’ve finished everything else that was hanging around here, I can make a start on it.

So before I did anything else, I had to photograph it for posterity, and then I cut myself a slice.

And believe me – it really is as nice as it looks and I am ever so grateful to Liz for making it for me. It’s really nice to have good friends. This cake should keep me going until my birthday if I am lucky (said he, dropping a huge hint).

But back to the story.

With the weather being as it is right now, I’ve not been burning so much wood. But I’ve still been spending half an hour each morning in the woodshed, dragging out suitable wood and stacking it outside under the sheeting ready to burn. It’s keeping quite dry out there and the wind is helping to condition it for burning. And I’ve also been able to start to move things around a little so that there’s more space in there to move around. If I remember, I’ll post a pic of the place because I do remember taking one when I piled everything in there and there wasn’t room to swing a cat.

And up in the bedroom I’ve made a start on the ceiling.

You can see what I’m trying to do – put strips of tongue-and-grooving over the polystyrene insulation in the ceiling (which is actually the floor of my attic of course).

It’s slow work as each piece has to be cut separately as the beams are twisted and so the gap is never the same size. And then I have to wedge some more polystyrene in between the mounting rails and then nail the T&G over the top.

I’ve cut a hole in one of the pieces for the light fitting. There will be four lights, two by the window and two by the fitted wardrobe. Recessed MR16 12-volt fittings to take the LIDL LED bulbs that I can get.

What makes a difference of course is having music while I work. And I’m currently on the “W” and that can only mean “The Who” – followed tomorrow by “Wishbone Ash”. First album up was probably The Who’s second-best-ever album – Who’s Next. Every single one of the tracks on it is on my current playlist and rightly so – it’a an album full of classic Who music. And after a few other albums we came to what is probably the best rock album that has ever been recorded and which has never been off the top of my personal list since 1973, and that is of course Quadrophenia . That particular album is on a completely different plane than anything else that has ever been recorded and if you have never ever heard it then you really don’t know what you are missing. And at £3:99 for a copy of 1 hour 40 minutes worth of thumoing rock muisic, you can’t say that you can’t afford it.

Of course, there’s only one way to lsisten to Who’s Next and Quadrophenia, and that is why I have bought a house down the end of a dirt track miles from anywhere. And even old solidly-built stone houses can really rock with the volume turned full up.

That cheered me up as well, and I have four or five classic Wishbone Ash albums to listen to soon.

Wednesday 12th January 2011 – Well, we are still progressing …

… slow as it might be. You can see in the pic that I’ve fitted 2 of the strips to the front wall, all with the castellations nicely cut out, and the joints all properly filled in. It took me hours, as you might expect, as I don’t really do finicky, as I said yesterday.

I haven’t fitted the third strip as this depends on the 4500 x 100 plank that is to go as the false beam on the right-hand wall. I really need to go to the sawmill and sort that out, as well as picking up a pile of 40×27 laths.

What the plan is for tomorrow is to make a start on the ceiling – cutting some tongue-and-grooving to fit between the beams. I won’t be able to do much as I don’t have any 20mm insulation sheets. I forgot to get some last weekend at Brico Depot, but whatever I do will at least give you an idea of how it’s all going to work. As I say, slow progress but it’s progress all the same and It’s looking a little more optimistic here. I might even have a bedroom for the summer!

That is, of course, if we ever get any summer. For the last 2 days it’s poured down with rain more-or-less non-stop and working outside for the last half-hour before I knock off (the days are lengthening) is getting me soaked to the skin. But at least you can see a little improvement at the outside of the house – the place is slowly starting to look a little tidier. And there’s more space in the lean-to since I’ve been burning the wood in there. All in all, I’m feeling a little more optimistic.

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Tuesday 11th January 2011 – I made some slow progress today

The plasterboarding on the two outside walls in the bedroom is only up to 2.50 metres whereas the room itself is about 2.78. What I’ve done in the gaps is to run all of the conduit and trunking for the electric cables, as you may have already seen. For the side wall, I can make up the difference by building up with some plasterboard strips and then put a plank of 4.50 x 10 over the trunking so that it looks like a beam (the real outer beam is of course hidden in the 80mm of insulation on the wall).

But a big hunt around didn’t uncover a suitable plank and so I need to go to the sawmill, unless anyone has a suitable beam lying around anywhere. Of course I could use two smaller planks but it would look silly. Whoever heard of a beam with a join in it?

For the front wall I’ll be using plasterboard with 20mm of insulation behind it and cut to a castellated shape to fit between the beams. And so today I’ve been fitting the longitudinal laths between the beams so that I can infill between the beams with tongue-and-grooving to hide the 60mm of insulation there, and then I fitted some stand-off brackets on the front wall to take the plasterboard. This is all very finicky work and as you know I don’t do finicky and so it’s really slowwwwww. But it’s progress all the same

I’ve also made a change at the top of the stairs just here. I had a huge old cardboard box that I had opened out and used as an insulated wall covering, to cover over the back of the plasterboarding into my attic (I can’t cover it properly as I’ll be running the water pipes down there in due course). But a bit of measuring up revealed that the offcuts of the space-blanket insulation from when I did the walls of the bedroom – they would be a perfect fit and so I took the box off and redid it. And it’s cut down all the draughts that came in through there. But the firewood doesn’t like it and just now one of the boxes of firewood went crashing down the stairs decanting its contents all over the place.

This afternoon I braved the Hound of the Baskervilles and went round to Bill’s. He had a 100-litre immersion heater that was fairly new and which he was giving away to a good home. It has a slight leak around the electriclty plate, but that’s no problem for me as I’ll be taking it off anyway and fitting my own with one of my 12-volt elements.

He also had a small 50-litre immersion heater as well that was looking for a good home. And that got me thinking. Heater elements are what is known as “resistance elements” and so will work with any kind of voltage. And so with 50 litres, which isn’t a lot of water but more than I ever need, I could use it as the dump load for the set-up in the barn and run my 12-volt surplus current into it directly. With the element rated at 220 volts and with me putting 13.4 volts through it, I’d be getting only 0.06 of the power output (if the element is rated at 1200 watts I’d be getting about 75 watts – if it’s rated at an unlikely 3kw I would be getting about 180 watts) but 50 litres in a proper insulated tank won’t need all that much power to warm up. What I will need to do is to find a way of fitting a temperature sensor in there so that I can keep an eye on the temperature.

Of course, it might not work. But the whole idea is that it’s an experiment and we can see what happens.

But I had a bad night last night. I woke up at about 04:00 with a nightmare (a long time since I’ve had one of those) and I couldn’t go back to sleep afterwards. I’ll be having an early night.

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EPIC HALL

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