Tag Archives: eric hall

Sunday 26th December 2010 – AT LONG LAST …

we’ve had a gorgeous Alpine day – not a cloud in the sky, not even for a minute. And my batteries now have some charge in them – although not a lot.

Mind you, we earned this day today, for last night the temperature fell to the lowest ever figure that I have ever recorded – an unbelievable MINUS 13.5°C and my water butts are frozen absolutely solid.

But I’m glad I decided to sort out a pile of really dry wood from out of the barn. That’s been burning for all of the day and the temperature has been hovering around the 18-19 degree mark which, given the temperature outside, has been pretty impressive and I’m pleased that I have this little stove.

So it’s still holiday time so all I’ve done is to watch some DVDs and to watch some sport on the computer – Boxing Day is all about sport after all. But I didn’t manage an evening meal yet again as it’s absolutely taters in the verandah.

But I’m not complaining as I don’t mind the temperature dropping to -20°C mark as long as I get some sun for my batteries.

So when I’ve finished watching the Houston Texans play the Denver Broncos I’m off to bed. Tomorrow is also a day of rest as I catch up on my Sunday day of rest which I missed due to Boxing Day intervening.

-3

Saturday 25th December 2010 – I WAS WOKEN UP THIS MORNING …

… by Enoch Powell singing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas”. And if ever his dreams were to come true it was today as we have indeed had a White Christmas. And no wonder I didn’t really want to get out of bed.

And when I did get out of bed eventually – well I’ve done nothing at all today. Nothing at all. In fact the most strenuous thing that I have done is to make a butty for lunch.

So why no tea? I hear you ask. That’s because I froze to death making my lunch and when I went downstairs at 21:00 to make tea it was -6.5°C IN THE VERANDAH – and -10.2°C outside. And I was not going to hang around in those conditions.

I came back up here and nibbled on a few things, played my Christmas CDs, and watched my Christmas DVDs

But I did have a phone call from a friend of mine. He went out to a party last night and then spent three hours digging himself out of the ditch he had slid into on the way home.
“What? After all those years and all that experience you have had driving on ice?”
“Yes, but as it wasn’t so bad I suppose I was over-confident. Feeling a little cocky I suppose”
“Well you shouldn’t be doing that while you are driving. And anyway it will make you go blind”

-4

Friday 24th December 2010 – MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

And hasn’t the year passed quickly? It hardly seems like a moment since I rushed over the finishing of the stairs up to my attic and then locked myself in.

So this morning was another late start, due in the main by my being confused about the time. And the darkness of the room was due to the skylights being covered in snow. 24 hours late, yes indeed, but it got here in the end.

And once I was up and about I did a little more in my bedroom with putting up some more framework.

But I didn’t stick at it long and after lunch and a wash and shave it was picking my way gingerly through the snow and ice to Terry and Liz’s for Christmas Eve, which was very nice of them. Liz cooked a gorgeous Indian meal and then we had a listen to our radio programme.

And even though it’s me who says it, we sounded really good on the broadcast – exactly how I wanted it to be – all nice and informal and happy and partying.

At 22:30 I came home and it took me over 45 minutes – the roads were dreadful. But I was armed with a Christmas cake and a prezzy – it’s really nice having friends like Terry and Liz.

But if you are reading this before Christmas Day evening, you might want to listen to our radio programme as it’s being streamed at 23:00 Europe, 22:00 UK and 17:00 EST – go to
http://www.radioarverne.com
and click on the link “Arverne en Ligne”

-20

Thursday 23rd December 2010 – IT WAS HARD TO GET UP …

… this morning with the buckets of rain that were crashing down on the roof. Not a very pleasant start to the day. But the rainsoon stopped and was replaced by a hanging cloud and that was that. The temperature fell significantly but as yet that snow that we were promised – it isn’t here yet even though it’s flaming cold.

I’ve hardly been outside today – I stayed in to work and as you can see I’ve finished off the major part of the wall that I’ve been plasterboarding.

I had to refit part of the floor where the previous occupiers had fitted a concrete pad for the stove that was here. What I did was to pull up some of the existing floor in the corridor outside and fit it in the bedroom. I’ll be fitting all new flooring out there so it won’t make any difference but at the moment it’s quite eventful walking out there.

After finishing off there I went to make a start on putting the studding on the wall by the window but what with the weather it was hopeless – couldn’t see a thing. And it was too wet and miserable to go outside and so at 17:25 I knocked off and came up here to do some tidying. And the place needs it – I’ve been letting it slip just recently.

-3

Wednesday 22nd December 2010 – WHAT A SHAMBLES!

This recording session at Radio Tartasse was nothing but a shambles – it really was.

I can understand why it is that performers and other thespians and the like throw tantrums and have hysterics if they have studio staff like this to deal with.

Despite having told them on several occasions how the programme ought to be run they did it completely differently. They had us read out THE WHOLE of “Buying and Selling Property” in one swell foop with the idea that they would edit it into segments. 40-odd minutes of typed text!

Now it might seem logical to do that but there are several major disadvantages.

you can’t physically read 40 minutes of documentation out loud without wanting to stop for breath, to clear your throat, to gather your wits (such as they are) and so on and so forth.
after the first 15 minutes you become bored, your attention starts to wander, you miss your cues and the reading deteriorates rapidly
Liz and I keep up a constant patter of repartee and ad-lib our way through much of our chats. And if I dare to say it, we do it very well. But after 15 minutes or so we are tired and confused and we don’t have the same spark or interaction and it spoils the show
when it comes to ending our programme we finish off with a little impromptu chat. But they just want to cut it dead and it won’t work like that
most importantly – if they want our topics “en bloc” and to cut them into segments themselves, how will we know when the topic is finished? How will we know when to prepare fresh stuff? I don’t intend to sit around on Sunday mornings writing stuff that won’t ever be used – I’ve enough to do. So suppose I decide not to do anything for a week or two and then find out that they’ve used up all the material?

No, it won’t work like that and I told them so, and I didn’t mince my words either.

It’s nothing but totally shambolic. The woman that does the technical stuff is a sham, and the old guy that does the organising – he’s a load of … errrr … rubbish.

So off to Montlucon to order my windows only to find that I’d forgotten the to bring the paper with the dimensions. And Terry, who had measured up “in case you forget” had also forgotten the measurements too. But I did buy the last 30 Brussels sprouts in the whole of France (a Christmas without sprouts is unthinkable) and in Brico Depot I had a most astonishing find – a beautiful faded-oak effect parquet flooring on special offer of about €8:00 per square metre. It’s gorgeous and just the thing for my bedroom, so I now have 18 metres of that downstairs and I wish that I had bought some more.

But an astonishing thing happened here while I was away. all day we had nothing but overcast gloomy foggy clouds that followed us around. Back in Pionsat this evening when we returned there was a clearish sky. But the statistics here – 100 amp-hours of solar energy, temperatures of 13 degrees, 12 degrees in my attic – told me that here while we had been away we had been bathed in glorious sunshine for much of the afternoon. And that is just so surprising.

But tomorrow, snow is forecast so we shall see.

-2

Tuesday 21st December 2010 – IT WAS A BUSY DAY TODAY.

It started after the usual fire-cleaning and breakfast by chopping another huge pile of wood ready for the next bout of winter – due on Thursday, so we are told. Now there’s four bucketsfull outside together with a huge pile heaped up against the wall in here – good plan it was to tile the wall behind the fireplace.

Then it was checking over the documents for the radio recording this afternoon – a total of 31 pages! That is a record by anyone’s standard. And it’s a good job I bought that new printer a couple of months ago so I could print it all out. Bye-bye another rain forest.

Next stop was down to see Liz as our chauffeur has abandoned us and we worked out a few more things, and then down to Gerzat. We recorded 4 programmes of the traditional type that will see us through to the 25th of January (back in the studio on the 18th) and then we did the Christmas Special.

1 hour we were allowed, and on the Sunday rehearsal we did the play in 58 minutes (add another Carol to make up the time) but today we had to crop a huge chunk out as we overran by miles. No idea how that happened.

The Christmas Special is going out on Christmas Eve at 19:00 and being repeated a couple of times. You can hear it on Radio Arverne (89.8mhz) but if you can’t get the reception then I have the programme saved to disk and I’ll be uploading it to the internet once the broadcast has passed and you can hear us on the internet.

Tomorrow we are recording for Radio Tartasse – the first radio station to want to syndicate us. Then it’s off to Montlucon with Terry and Liz to do our last-minute shopping before the weather closes in again.

-3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A few days of bright brilliant sunshine would be nice.

Sunday 19th December 2010 – THE WEATHER IMPROVED THIS AFTERNOON.

And that was just as well because I was getting rather fed up of being stuck down here.

But today got off to a bad start with someone ringing me up at 09:00 – and on a Sunday too! So they were told to sod off and I went back to bed – but it was hard to go back to sleep once I was awake. So after a while I sorted out the fire and got a nice little blaze going and settled down to finish off the Christmas Special.

The sun came out again after a while and the temperature slowly began to rise – not that you could tell too much in here of course, but I noticed it when I went outside and was digging Caliburn out of a snowbank.

After lunch I set off for Liz and Terry’s for our rehearsal, and fitted in a stop at my favourite photography point, the ornithological centre at St Gervais.

The bit on Holiday lettings – that seems to go on for ages but I was told to do an hour for the Christmas Special and that has, believe it or not, turned out to be 58 minutes. No problems there – bung another Christmas Carol on the end and that sorted that out.

Liz made a nice tea and I got a doggy bag, and I also had a nice shower, seeing as how I didn’t manage to make it to the swimming baths yesterday.

On the way home it started to rain and that is washing the snow away. So I’m just hoping that it doesn’t freeze or we really will be in difficulties with that lot.

And tomorrow is back to work again. I’m plasterboarding.

-1

Saturday 18th December 2010 – MY PREDICTION ABOUT THE WEATHER …

… was pretty well near correct. At about 08:00 there was some sun but by the time I was up and about it had long since gone following a change of direction of the wind veering round from the west again, and we had clouds.

“Ahhh well” I sighed, and went out to chop a huge pile of wood.

The snow that I predicted arrived at round about 11:30 and it didn’t last long for – astonishingly – the wind veered round to a southerly and that pushed a Mediterranean weather front up. Not an Alpine afternoon like I would have liked, but a blue kind of hazy afternoon with a fair amount of sun – once I’d cleaned off all of the solar panels.

No point in going shopping – I’m well-snowed in here – and so I took the cue and went off to do the notes for our radio programme. Holiday lettings is January’s topic and there’s enough here to rival War and Peace.

So that’s where I’ve been all afternoon and evening – up here translating and transcribing notes and then writing the dialogue. It takes ages to do as well but I suppose it keeps me out of mischief.

Tomorrow morning I need to finish off the Christmas Special and then somehow work out how I can dig Caliburn up the hill. I need to go to Liz and Terry’s for our rehearsal. But unless we have a dramatic change to the weather I can see it being a long afternoon with a shovel and a pile of sand.

-2

Friday 17th December 2010 – FIRST JOB THIS MORNING …

… after making up the fire for this evening of course, was to shovel a foot of snow off the solar panels on the roof. Yes, we’ve had another pasting again through the night and isn’t this becoming monotonous?

And after breakfast it was more wood-cutting for the fire and I can see me needing tons of this as the cold weather and snow continues. I now have 5 buckets lined up in the queue and I’ll be cutting some more. I’ve also built a kind-of lean-to out of two old pallets and some offcuts of plastic roofing from when I made the verandah, and I’ve been slowly collecting the wood that’s been lying around outside and heaving it under there out of the weather.

Next task was to sweep the floor and clear a big space in the bedroom to lay down the plasterboarding for cutting. That seemed to take ages and I ended up with a huge pile of rubbish in the middle of the floor.

Going through it a few times with a magnet pulled out tons of screws and nails and the like and I need to sift that properly as I was finding all kinds of things that I had lost.

During this time the heavens opened again and we were treated to a thorough downpour of the white stuff – an incredible snowstorm. And I felt sorry for this guy who turned up – his company is a bigger liar than he is and he was not in the area at all – he had driven 260 kms from Lyon in the worst snowstorm of the year and his face was a picture when he saw my panels. 14:00 he arrived and despite this 90-minute presentation I was to have, he had gone by 14:15. And in all that snow as well.

But tonight the temperature plummeted all in a space of about an hour. From -2°C to -7.5°C and we have a brilliant clear sky with so much moonlight that you don’t need a torch down the garden. If this keeps up tomorrow I could have a record solar energy day and by heavens I need it, but I’m not holding my breath. We’ll have one quick promise, a change of wind back to the westerlies and then another shed-load of snow, all by 10:00.

I’m getting fed up of this.

Thursday 16th December 2010 – I WONDER IF YOU CAN GUESS …

… whereabouts in the verandah the cooker is situated?

Yes, the weather has warmed up slightly today – it even managed to struggle up above freezing inside the verandah and so the heat that the cooker gave off while heating up my lunchtime coffee managed to thaw away some of the snow on the roof.

But of course, as you know, it isn’t snow at all but just several inches of severe frost.

And this evening we’ve had a dramatic change in the direction – and the speed – of the wind. We are now having a howling westerly gale blowing in that’s keeping the temperature up a little (not like the 11°C that we had the other day) but blowing all the smoke back down my chimney and suffocating the fire (and me as it blows all of the smoke back into my room).

Nevertheless I wonder if this might bring me some sunshine. It’s been ages since I’ve had any.

Things are progressing in the bedroom as well. all of the long wall has been insulated and I could have done even more had I not … errrr … slept through the alarm and had I woken up before … errrr … 10:26.

It’s not quite how it ought to be though because with my wall being 2.65 metres high and the plasterboard being 2.50 metres high, I need to let in another horizontal batten in the appropriate place to support the join between the boards. But that’s tomorrow’s task as I ran out of time today.

I’m not going to have too much time tomorrow either. I had a telephone call from some society asking me if I would like to become an energy producer and sell my excess output to the Electricity Board. By pure coincidence they “just happen” to have a salesman in Virlet tomorrow and he will be delighted to talk to me about how I can become rich, at no obligation, and he will even give me a free estimate for the supply and fitting of some solar panels.

Of course this is a far too good an opportunity to miss and I’m eager to see exactly what he proposes with regard to selling me a solar panel system. He’ll be here at 14:00 so he says, and I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

-1

Wednesday 15th December 2010 – AWWWWW – BAMBI

I can’t remember now what it was that I came up to my room for this afternoon but a quick look out of the window revealed Bambi in all her glory, foraging for food in the field next door

You have to feel sorry for the wildlife just now in this kind of weather. Absolutely perishing, well under zero, and not a chance of getting anything out of the garden unless you use dynamite.

I’m struggling for water now. Today I had to undo the top of one of the water butts (luckily I expected this kind of weather and so I fastened the tops on with wing nuts) and smash my way in through God knows how much ice on the top of the water. I filled 4 kettles like this but of course at tea time they had all frozen up in the verandah because it’s well below zero in there too and has been for all of the day.

It’s almost impossible to go outside in this. Luckily I threw all of the wood into the lean-to in the summer so at least I’m out of the wind in there while I cut up the supplies for the evening.

And it’s emptying out quite well in there and when the weather eases I can definitely build the stairs that I promised so that I can climb up to the next level in comparative ease.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, I didn’t manage to finish the wall. Nothing like, in fact.

In between the phone calls I had to deal with the wiring for the second set of plugs and that took quite a while – most of the day in fact Threading it through the conduit is … errr … exciting and of course whenever I do anything involving electrical wiring there’s always a pause after each connection while I go round to see if anything has been set on fire. Not my strong point as you know.

>But at least the wiring on that side of the room now is all done and I can press on tomorrow assuming that I don’t have any more interruptions.

But this cold weather is starting to drag now. I’ve never known it as cold as this in December. Who said “Global Warming”?

-3

Tuesday 14th December 2010 – GOD IT WAS HARD THIS MORNING …

… to get out of bed. Not surprising really, as in my little room up here the temperature had fallen to 7.8°C and it was taters.

But that was nothing.

My hunch about the temperature last night was correct – and correct in spades as the temperature had dropped right through the floor to an incredible -10.5°C outside through the night.

That’s not just the lowest temperature this winter so far, it’s also the lowest temperature of the year. And it’s also the second-lowest temperature that I have ever recorded.

The heat exchanger recorded a temperature of -14.8°C, and that is pretty good going too.

Tonight the temperature outside was even lower at teatime than it was yesterday so I don’t know if that is significant, but I’ll tell you tomorrow.

Mind you, up here this evening after I knocked off work it was a mere 4.8°C in my room. But a huge blaze in the little fire sorted that out (although not as much as I would have liked). And as a side effect the little coffee maker thing that I bought – it managed to conjure up a cup of coffee, so intense was the heat in the fire.

Work carried on apace in the bedroom – there was no way that I was going to work outside in the ridiculous daytime temperature of -5.4°C.

I fitted all of the battens to the long wall in the bedroom, fitted the space-blanket insulation and then put on the counter-battens. The first part of the wiring has been done as you know, and I’ve started to fit the polystyrene tiles over the top. If I put my back into it tomorrow I could have that wall finished.

What helped with the work was the set of overalls that I was wearing. They were on sale in LIDL last winter – a pair of XL-size quilted winter overalls rather like a huge ski-suit. They were expensive but today they were worth every penny and I would recommend a pair of them to anyone who intends to work around here in this weather. I could feel the heat as soon as I put them on and I was comfortable for all of the day. What I call an impressive piece of kit.

And I’m not going to hang around tonight either. it’s still cold and so I’m going to retreat underneath the covers and have an early night. I reckon that tomorrow is going to be even colder.

-2

Monday 13th December 2010 – AND AFTER A DAY …

… where I did nothing at all (and I mean nothing at all) it was back to work today.

First job was of course the fire and the wood but by way of a change I rearranged it all today as I was fed up of the heap collapsing every five minutes. it’s now in a bigger, deeper box so there’s more room for it to spread out and the place looks a little neater up here.

There’s another load of wood cut up for the next few days and the lean-to is looking emptier and emptier. If I put my mind to it I could do the stairs in there this week but the weather will have to warm up quite a bit before I venture outside for a long period.

Emptying Caliburn took a while too. The wood and the breeze blocks are still in there but everything else is out and put away as far as is possible, and so I was finally ready to start work.

Not quite though, because there was still some slate in the way. 9 bucket-loads went downstairs onto the pile and that was that. There’s some room to move about in there now although I still have much more stuff to sort out in there. Nevertheless I’ve managed to put all of the framework onto the long wall in the bedroom and I followed that up with another length of insulation.

But that was all, though, because due to my Sunday inactivity I had things to do – like make a start on the Christmas Special. That took a couple of hours and I reckon I’ve done about a third of it. At the moment I’m just writing down whatever comes into my head and I can edit it once I’ve got to the end of my ideas. But it’s coming together nicely and I reckon that I may well be on to something with this.

Tomorrow I’ll do some more work in the bedroom and a bit more on the Christmas Special unless the weather warms up dramatically and I can work outside. But not much hope of that as we are on course for another candidate for the coldest night of the winter. When I came home tonight after my Monday night conviviality it was -3.9°C outside. In the 45 minutes it took to make a quick tea and wash up it had plummeted to -5.1°C. Heaven alone knows what it is right now.

Sunday 12th December 2010 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I did absolutely nothing today.

Not a tap.

It is Sunday of course and I’m still suffering from jet-lag and it’s cold outside too, so it was one of those days where I didn’t stray very far from my warm, comfortable attic.

A pile of books, some DVDS and some music, with a bit of desultory surfing on the internet – and a trip down to cook the Sunday pizza. That was about it, really.

But I reckon that everyone should have one day a week where he can sit around all day and do nothing at all without ever feeling guilty about it.

I mean – it’s not as if I don’t do anything for the rest of the week, is it?

EPIC HALL

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