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

Wednesday 3rd March 2010 – I didn’t get as much done today …

… as I was planning to. First thing I did was to put the battery on charge for the Escort and while that was brewing away I carried on down in the field where my garden will be.

It was quite a reasonable day this morning and so I cracked on, and I managed to uncover the scrap Cortina and the W123 Merc. Of course, the Cortina will never go anywhere much under its own steam. It was built in 1980 and spent its entire working life on a salt mine and by the time it was scrapped in 1994 it was rotten in places that Cortinas don’t even have places. It was driven through the night from Middlewich to Brussels in 1995 and since then it’s been moved around Europe on a towing dolly or an A frame, finally coming to rest down my field in 2000.

Its purpose is the provide spare parts for XCL – the Cortina Mark V estate that was my pride and joy for many years and which is languishing in a lockup garage in Montaigut. XCL has many happy memories for me – that was the car in which I came over to Belgium from the UK in 1993 with all my worldy goods in the back and for a few years we drove for tens of thousands of trouble-free miles all over Europe.

The Merc on the other hand has another significant memory for me. I was stuck without a reliable car after the Senator and I parted company in 1997 and I had to go to the UK to pick up a caravan for down here (the one that I lived in and was trashed by rats). A lovely girl called Annette from Guyana or Trinidad or somewhere like that and worked in the Guyanan or Trinidad embassy in Brussels wanted to go to visit the UK for a while too on a kind-of conducted tour so a decent car was essential if I were to take her. So I mentioned to a friend that I was looking for something respectable and he produced the Merc. And I had a lovely week in the company of Annette all around the UK. She really was a lovely girl and I was quite upset when she was transferred back home to the Caribbean.

We had a torrential rainstorm this afternoon so I decided to take the towing dolly (which you can see in this photo with the Subaru that Ric and Julie gave me being towed by the old LDV back in 2001) round to Bill’s. He has an old car he needs to remove from off the public highway. I got round there and asked him when he planned to move the car, to which his response was “well we could do it now if you’re free“. No straps, no chains, no anything, but so what?

We winched the Rover on board and with nothing to hold it on I set off to turn round. First bump in the road the Rover bounced out of the wheel traps and the car’s towing eye wedged up against the dolly’s mounting bracket. So when we finally got everything into position where Bill wanted the Rover to be, I had to jack the car out of its position with a trolley jack, two axle stands and a huge pile of blocks of wood. And all the time it was teeming down with rain.

It was just like old times when I had my taxi business back in the 1980s, doing crazy things with old cars in torrential downpours. I was soaked to the skin and I took ages to dry out afterwards. I’m trying my best to get warm now before I go down with pleurisy or something.

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Wednesday 13th January 2010 – It’s back up again.

Well, erichall.eu is, anyway. Lesguis.com is going to have to wait a while longer. So anyone who sent me a mail that bounced – you can resend it now and I’m sorry for the inconvenience.

Mind you, once more, my address book, research subfolder and the like have disappeared into the ether. That’s a real pain in the aspidistra and what’s worse, it’s not the first time that this has happened either. You’d think that I would learn.

In other news, that weatherman we have is still up to his tricks, having wild and unpredictable guesses that fall hopelessly short of the mark. He promised us overcast and cloudy conditions with rainfall, but yon golden object was in the sky for the whole day more-or-less and I’ve had another reasonable solar day. Still not earth-shatteringly marvellous but it’ll do for now. I’ve also been cracking on with the insulation but I’ve come to a stop, on the grounds that I’ve now run out of insulation. But at least I can move. I dug Caliburn out of a snowdrift and went for a run up the lane so I reckon that this weekend I’ll go and do a mega-shop in Montlucon and have a shower at Neris.

Talking of showers, I hear that the OUSA Executive committee are to go “on the road” and “visit the regions”. The East Midlands is the first port of call and the Derby/Nottingham area has been suggested for the location. Of course, someone has suggested that they stay in the town of Clowne – after all, it’s midway between the two and somehow quite appropriate.

This afternoon I cut my hair, had a wash and shave, and changed my clothes. Well, it was 8 degrees in the verandah. In fact it was quite a major operation and I hed to tell the water board that it was on its way. But I must admit – I am looking forward to a good swim and a good shower, and I’m not talki …. “you’ve done that” … ed.

I’ve also been in great demand today. Firstly, the girl who came round here with Francois the other day – she phoned me up to talk about this and that. There’s an eco-fair in Clermont Ferrand next weekend and she’s going with Francois. There’s a spare seat in the car and she asked me if I wanted to go. Most people who read this blog are of the opinion that I ought to get out more often and so I’ve decided to go. It’ll do me good.

Next it was the turn of Terry who wanted a chat about one of our long-term projects. It’s nice to hear from him and Liz and have a good natter.

Thirdly, the guy from SMADC (the Society for the Mutual Aid and Development of the Combrailles) called. We are supposed to be having a meeting with a producer from a French radio station, and it’s now been arranged for Monday afternoon. This is looking uncomfortably like it might happen, this idea of an English-language radio programme on French radio.

Finally (at least up to now) Antoine called. He has an idea for a business opportunity for himself now that he’s taken early retirement and wanted a chat about it.

Meanwhile, in other other news, the McCann Media Circus is back on the road, suing anyone and everyone who says naughty things about them. It’s becoming a right money-spinner for someone – this disappearing daughter – and it’s spawned countless imitations right across the globe with kids hidden in settees, kids being dragged away by weather balloons and the like. But the McCanns are really starting to take the mickey now. Over a million quid they want now for their hurt feelings. The money will of course be paid to the “Find Madeleine” campaign, which might well fund further trips to exotic corners of the globe to visit more law courts to sue more people to get more money to pay to the “Find Madeleine” campaign that might well fund further …. “that’s enough of that” – ed.

What the McCanns don’t realise is just how lucky they are. If Mrs McCann had been a single mother and black-skinned, leaving a baby home alone to face a tragedy would have got her 7 and a half years in prison without any trips to any exotic corners of the globe – let alone any charitable funds and any sympathy from a gullible public.

It’s high time someone put a stop to all of this.

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Sunday 27th December 2009 – How about this …

… for sheer utter laziness? The farthest I have been today is to walk across the courtyard to the barn to check the solar energy being received over there (10.4 amp-hours). Apart from that, a couple of times up and down the stairs and that is basically that.

But as it’s the last day of my holiday until Thursday I reckoned I deserved it. I start work again tomorrow. There’s a couple of little jobs I need to fix and then it depends what the weather is doing. If it’s raining I’ll be starting on the kitchen. If it’s fine I’ll be dragging the two halves of old Ford Transit, the old Cortina and the Mercedes out of the hedge and beginning on the site of the new vegetable plot. If you have a look at image 25 on this page you’ll see the Cortina and the Merc. That’s where I’ll be putting my plots.

Mind you, I reckon it will be “working inside”. The long-range forecast for the seven days is that for six of them there is a risque de pluie. The only day that is any different is Saturday when there is a risque de neige. Who says that the weather round here isn’t reliable?

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Monday 14th December – It’s gone flaming cold now

Yes, outside it is minus 4 and I shudder to think what it might have been if we didn’t have this thick cloud cover. Yes, another thick cloudy day which means that I’ve had no solar charge yet again. I wonder when the sun is going to come out. According to the weather forecast banner on my website we are promised a clear sunny day tomorrow but knowing the weather and the weather forecasting around here I’ll believe that when I see it. It also promises me minus 9 as well tomorrow and I’ll believe that – one day last January we had minus 15.

This morning I wasn’t in a hurry to wake up but once I was up and about I discovered that all of my water has frozen up. That’s the trouble with storing the rainwater above ground. It was a bit icy yesterday and I was going to defrost it after the football and fill all of the kettles but with the match being delayed it was too late when I got home. Luckily I have a couple of litres that I’ve filtered and that will keep me going.

And so I started cutting the lets on two more pillars but Claude came round for a natter instead. And then it was round to Liz and Terry’s to give them a hand followed by the Anglo French group in St Gervais. When I got back home, it was just 4.5 degrees up here in my room. But it’s amazing just how quickly the place warms up with a bit of heat.

And I’ll be going to bed soon. Terry is on his travels tomorrow morning and I have an old stone sink to give him. While he’s here he’s going to help me lift some plasterboard upstairs to the first floor and carry my gas bottle round to the side of the house. He reckons it’s going to be an early start. I don’t much like the sound of that.

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Thursday 10th December 2009 – Now if I could cut joints as well …

…as this every time, I wouldn’t have to do it any more as I would have made so much money that I would be paying people to do them for me.

It’s a three-way joint as you can see and it’s come out perfectly. Even more impressive is the fact that I cut it by hand with not a power tool in sight. In fact I’m working entirely by hand and battery power at the moment. It’s not that I’m running out of battery charge on the solar panels but today was another miserable day for electricity generation with a low cloud hovering over here all day and there’s no point in wasting the current on electric saws when a hand saw, a mallet and chisel and a battery-powered drill can do everything that I need.

In fact I’ve not had a decent amount of solar energy since 26th November. What wouldn’t I give now for some of that current that I couldn’t accept in the summer? It’s clear skies and thousands of stars outside right now but of course it’s night-time. As soon as the sun rises, you just watch the clouds gather.

But back to the plot. About 5 minutes after I had fitted that joint, I took it out and replaced it with something else due to a slight change of plan. And that joint wasn’t anything like as good. Much more to my usual standard.

And I now have two stairs fitted anyway, thanks to a discovery of a large offcut from when I did the flooring in the barn. I’ve taken down the ladder and I’m now using a stepladder and the two stairs to get into here. It’s a climb though – about 3 feet off the top of the ladder and we were discussing this on Facebook, a few of us and I reckoned that I could put an intermediary step by way of a couple of cantilever outriggers.

And then it hit me! “Good!” – ed. As soon as I said “cantilever”, I worked out exactly how I am going to build my stairs and it’s so simple that I’m surprised that I haven’t thought of it before. And I can use up tons of the scrap wood that’s lying around here too. Getting my stairs in for Christmas might not be as far out as you might think. Yes, if the French can build a cantilever viaduct not 30kms from here and I’m already planning on building a flying staircase for the ground floor on the “suspension” principle, then there’s no reason why I can’t build a staircase on the cantilever principle up here.

I made a major discovery too. A few weeks ago I bought a job lot of screws from LIDL. They are good value and the boxes are very handy. And it just so happened that I needed to use some of them today. And blow me up if they aren’t torx drive – and the box came with a couple of torx bits inside too. And I tell you what – I’m well-impressed with how easily they screw in and out with not a hint of a slipping driver. I could be sold on this idea.

So tomorrow I’m going to fit the third step here and then start on the uprights that I need to fit so that I can crack on with the stairs. Things are looking up LOL.

In other news, this is the page that has been attracting hits to my site. The other day the hits went up from the 180s or so to 302 and judging by the page counters, it was this page that they were visiting. There’s no evidence that they came from a search engine or a link – it seemed to be all “direct hits” so someone has circulated the page around. I’m intrigued as to who it is and what it is that has caught their eye and whether there will be a follow-up.

We shall see.

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Tuesday 17th November 2009 – Today I’ve been fighting …

… my way into the lean-to at the other side of the house. It was full of bricks and wood that I threw in there when I had a tidy-up a couple of years ago. The plan is to put my plant-pot beichstuhl on the inside to the left of the door, put all my gardening tools to the right, and fill up the rest with wood that I’ll be cutting through the winter and of course all of the scrap wood from the roof that is too bad to reuse. There’s tons of that.

It’s not quite working out like this though as the best-laid plans of mice, men and yours truly have a habit of going gang awa’, but at least I’m making slow progress.

If you have been following my website over the years you will maybe remember that it was into here that I was planning to move when the idea of coming here full-time was first discussed. But a casual survey of the roof showed that two of the beams had rotted and when I came to replace them it turned out that seven needed to be replaced and while I was taking some of them out part of the wall collapsed. And it was just after having rebuilt the wall that I was taken ill, and that was that.

In other news, following the collapse of the English-language newspaper, the SMADC – the French Government body charged with regenerating the Combrailles – has been looking at other ways to communicate with the English-speaking community over here and one idea currently being batted around is to have a 15-minute English-speaking spot every Sunday on the local radio station. They are looking for a radio presenter for the programme (if it goes ahead) and it seems that someone has thrown my hat into the ring.

In other other news, it’s been announced that a 90 year-old German is to be tried for a war crime dating back over 60 years. This follows the trial of an 88 year-old the other day. Can you imagine the scene in the court …
“How do you plead?”
“Not Guilty“
“What evidence do you have to disprove the accusations?”
“Well none, actually. The last of my defence witnesses died in 1972“
So what chance of a fair trial are these people going to get? It’s like the case of Demianjuk – even the Zionists found him Not Guilty of war crimes but he’s being hawked around country after country until someone can find a crime to pin on him. It’s a total disgrace.

These two guys are being tried for a handful of civilian deaths, yet night after night after night members of Bomber Command of the British Royal Air Farce flew over Germany deliberately targeting innocent civilians and massacred them by their hundreds of thousands. When is someone going to round them up and put them on trial for the horrific war crimes that they committed? And how many Russian soldiers were prosecuted for the atrocious war crimes that they committed against the German civilian population as they overran the Eastern provinces of Germany?

History is indeed written by the victors and never by the victims. Bah! Humbug!

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Sunday 15th November 2009 – I had a few surprises today.

Firstly, on my way to the footy I came across a car stuck halfway down an embankment at the side of the road. And if there hadn’t have been a sapling in the way it would have been all the way down the embankment.

Now it’s true that where this incident took place is on a sharp bend, but the road between Teilhet and Menat is full of sharp bends and this one is no sharper than any of the others. So how come it was this particular bend at which it left the road?

Mind you, if it was going to leave the road, this is the best place to do it. The next sharp bend has a vertical drop of about 60 feet to the bottom.

I went down to look to make sure that there wasn’t anyone trapped in it – I mean, you never know. As it happened, it was empty but there was a lovely head-shaped impression on the windscreen just above the steering wheel. I bet someone has a headache today.

Secondly. Pionsat’s third XI not only had 11 players including a real goalkeeper, they had 3 replacements and two others who didn’t make the team. Not only that, the two officials who had been sulking over something that was said to them in a moment of depression, they had patched up their differences with the others and so we also had a trainer and a linesman! Not that it did them any good though – they still lost!

Thirdly, I’ve bought myself a bass amp and speaker – a Carlsbro 45-watt combo. It’s not in particularly good nick – there’s a loose connection at the input leads, one of the speaker wires isn’t soldered properly and a couple of the potentiometers (volume and tone controls) need changing, but it’s only a fiver or so for the bits and half an hour’s work. It looks like it’s been left for years in the damp and then taken outside where the condensation has got at it. It still managed to rock the house though when I plugged the Gibbon into it.

It wasn’t cheap – €90 in fact, but it was the cheapest combo that I’ve seen in this area. And believe me, there isn’t a great deal of choice. I still have my stack (a 200-watt custom-built transistorised amp, a 200-watt Marshall valve amp and a 1×18 and a 2×12 cabinets) back in Brussels that I never thought I’d ever use again.

The other surprise is something that I found quite touching. As you know, I follow the local football team and take pics and write match reports of the games. Some of them are being used on a calendar for fund-raising purposes for the club but what is really nice is that they took a photo of me today as they want to put that on the calendar too. There’s also a chatroom on the internet for French local football and it seems that I am mentioned quite a bit with regard to the website. It’s nice to know that people appreciate so much what I’ve been doing. But now that I’ve finished my attic I need to bring the site up-to-date.

In other news, Liz, Terry and I had quite a chat about this digger. We’ve decided that discretion is the better part of valour and I’m going to write to this guy in Benin, thank him for his efforts, but tell him that we fixed ourselves up locally with a digger so we won’t ba able to complete the purchase.

And tomorrow, I’m back at work. My holiday is over.

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Thursday 22nd October 2009 – FIAT LUX!

And we aren’t talking about Italian cars and washing powder either.

This photo here was taken at about 20:00 this evening and the reason that you can see inside the room here is that I now have four lights all properly connected and switched!

They are in fact four of those 12-volt LED lights that I bought from LIDL a few weeks ago and while they may not look very bright; that’s just 4 watts of lighting in there.

Dunno about you, but I think that’s quite impressive.< And that's not all. I now have 12-volt power all around the room, and also mains power too. My electrical day was quite profitable and, much to my surprise, everything worked straight away. I didn't need to make any adjustments at all.

I’ve not done the 6-volt circuit yet though because I ran out of time doing the 230-volt lighting so I’ll do that tomorrow morning. And neither have I done the telephone. In fact, I dunno how to wire up the telephone plug so I’ll have to do some research into that.

Liz and Terry are coming round to pick up some stuff so I told them that if they can’t find me anywhere, look to see if there’s anything black and shrivelled stuck to the ceiling. That’ll be me having made a false move with the mains wiring.

But talking of Lux, the washing powder, do you remember the advert from the 1960s?
“If it’s safe in water it’s safe in Lux<" I wrote to them at the time "Now, about my goldfish ....”

In other news, I’ve been spending more money that I don’t have.

I’ve effectively abandoned night action photography because the lens on my camera won’t stop down far enough to let in enough light to take effective photos. And when I crop them they are far too grainy, as you will have noticed.

But that’s the problem with budget lenses – and by that I mean anything under about 500 quid and I don’t have that kind of money.

Rhys and I were discussing that last night and he found a second-hand lens, a Pentax 100mm f2.8 telephoto on the internet . If you don’t know much about photography, basically it’s one and a half times as long as the maximum on my zoom lens (which is a 17mm-70mm) so it needs less cropping, and it only needs about 2/3rds of the light that mine uses. It’s an old lens but they had a very good write-up and were much in demand by action and portrait photographers back in the old days.

And the price? Well, only $129 (plus $40 postage from the USA). I’m not going to get anything better than that on my limited budget so I’ve bitten the bullet and it’s on its way to here. I hope it works properly and does the business for me, as I’m not going to get anything better without spending a real shed-load of money.

And in other other news, this blog attracts quite a wide audience. It has its regular followers and contributors, but it also has a considerable number of lurkers who just quietly read it. I was talking on a messenger program last night to one of the aforementioned lurkers – Sheila – who I haven’t seen around for some time. It appears that Sheila’s mother has suffered an aneurysm – the same that did for poor Liz back in March – and while she has had the operation the prognosis is not too optimistic.

So what would be nice would be that we all find a quiet minute or two and think about Sheila and her mum and send them both some positive vibes. They could do with some right now.

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Friday 25th September 2009 – AND JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… today’s pic is taken from almost the same spot as the previous two.

You can’t see the battens that I affixed to the wall but you can see the insulation that I attached. That is on the rear wall to the left of the wooden framing, and in the apex above the door. There’s even a shelf up there now – that’s where I’ll be fitting the water tank.

You may be wondering why it is that I haven’t fitted the insulation to the rest of the wall. Two reasons really –

it is outside the limits of my room so I don’t need to do it just now. I’d rather concentrate my efforts inside my room
I ran out of insulation

I’ve also fitted all of the rest of the flooring – one piece of which was not without some considerable effort.

The orange cable that you see is an American 110-volt extension cable, bought in Farmington, New Mexico, in September 2002 and brought back to Europe in my hand luggage. I use American 110-volt fittings for my 12-volt circuit on the farm as it’s capable of handling a much heavier current than European fittings. And I needed the extension cable because with fitting the flooring I’ve had to take out the temporary circuit that I installed the other week.

And of course I clean forgot that I had moved the cassette player across the room. Consequently, in a moment of inattention, I kicked it down through the hole in the stairs all the way down to ground level. I bet that’s done it a world of good.

But cassettes are so depassé these days and CDs are in and as I don’t have a 12-volt CD player I will have to see if I can’t liberate one from a brocante some time and make a more modern 12-volt hi-fi.

Terry and Liz came round again too. They had been to get more sand and came round to see if I had any cement. There were three bags in Caliburn and as they are temporarily in the way I donated them to the cause.

Tomorrow, no Brico Depot. Caliburn is still choc-a-bloc of stuff so I’ve plenty to be going on with. I may well have a run around Commentry tomorrow – it’s quite a while since I’ve been shopping there and there are an Aldi, a Lidl, a good DiY place and a couple of cruddy cheapo shops that are sometimes worth a poke around.

And in other exciting news I’ve had an e-mail from Simon. He wasn’t able to pick up a cheap woodstove for me from Machine Mart as he was leaving last night and delivery wasn’t until today. But a change of plan means that he isn’t leaving until Monday so he’s picking up a stove for me. Many thanks to Krys and Terry for teaming up to work that out for me, and for Simon for putting it into operation.

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Friday 21st August 2009 – YOU CAN SEE IN THIS PHOTO …

… why it is that I need to move the batteries. They are blocking up the front door. And if I’m going to start some kind of serious work inside, I need the front door off so that I can bring messy stuff in that way rather than in through my little room.

Today, I put a row of breeze blocks down on the concrete base that I laid yesterday. I can’t build it right up as just right now I don’t know how high the suspended floor is going to be. But tomorrow I’ll be putting a layer of 40mm polystyrene on the base and around the sides, and dropping 10 batteries (thats 920 amp-hours in total) in there.

I’ve also started building the control panel as you can see. There are three charge controllers on there right now. From right to left, we have the charge controller for the 2nd bank of solar panels (the one for the first bank is currently nailed to the front door and will be moved onto the control panel in early course), then in the centre is the charge controller for the wind turbine, and on the left is the charge controller for the overload.

In case you don’t know, when the batteries are fully-charged the charge controllers shut down the charging circuit. And that’s a waste of energy. So what I’m doing is having an overload controller that will divert the surplus current into a “dump load” – in this case a 12 volt water heater element. So that way I’ll have plenty of hot water.

There’s also a bus bar or two on there. These are for connecting loads of heavy duty wires and cables together. Bus bars range from sophisticated professional jobs down to flattened copper pipe and self-tapping screws, but for many years now I’ve been developing the “ring terminal onto long bolt with butterfly nut” and it works just fine, so there’s no reason to change.

There will be a few other things on there too, like a mains inverter, a couple of clocks, some circuit breakers, a fuse box and all that kind of thing. Here is one I made earlier, but that has undergone considerable … er … modification since then.

And what do you think about the wallpaper in the house? The house as you know is built of stone and they plastered over it on the inside, and then put up some wallpaper of … er … stone. Why didn’t they just knock the plaster off?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Claude’s son came round this afternoon. he’d been rummaging around in one of his dad’s many sheds and came across a trailer board.

Well, a sort-of trailer board. The lenses on the lights were smashed and all the cable was missing but I cleaned it up, cleaned all the contacts and rewired it, and now there is in theory a working trailer board. I say “in theory” because there are no bulbs either but I have a 12-volt piazzo tester and when I connected it up to the contacts for the bulbs it did what it was supposed to do at the time it was supposed to do it.

So all Pascal needs to do now is to buy some lenses (they are “standard trailer – small” and some bulbs, attach it properly to the rear of the caravan, and there you are.

I checked and adjusted the brakes on the caravan too and during the course of the evening I learnt that
1) The caravan is over 40 years old
2) Pascal has never towed a trailer (or indeed anything, for that matter) before.
All I can say is “good luck” to him, taking that over the “Cote de Maille” between Puy-en-Velay and Montelimar at night.

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Friday 24th July 2009 – WE WERE LUCKY WITH THE WEATHER TODAY

Mostly cool and overcast, with just the occasional passing shower. A good day for working on the roof and so with no misadventures and without any excitement we finished the slating of the back of the roof.

By 16:00 it was all done and as it wasn’t worth starting anything fresh we called it a night.

We had plenty of visitors though. Liz passed by to check up on us, followed by Claude and then by Dave (or Mr Blobby as those of you who followed this blog over from its previous home will remember) who drove over from La Chatre to check up on us, and finally by Tijas.

Despite my reference earlier to “a passing shower”, no-one from the Open University Students Association Executive Committee came here.

Dave acompanied us, not to the police station but to Terry and Liz’s where he was introduced to Liz’s cooking and was then given a guided tour over the Viaduc des Fades.

I’m back at home for now as I have so much to do and in any case Terry and Liz deserve some peace and quiet.

Tomorrow we are starting on the front of the roof. This will be easier to do but we have to fit the two windows and the brackets for the solar panels so I doubt if it will be quicker.

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EPIC HALL

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