Tag Archives: eric hall

Sunday 12th September 2010 – I made my refereeing debut today …

… but here is not the place to talk about it. It was just one of those days. Even the batteries in my new watch went flat.

The observer was quite friendly and helpful though – he made the point that I did well to turn my back and walk away from the inevitable moaning and criticism.
“How were you able to do that?” he asked. “Have you refereed before?”
“No” I replied “but I have been married”.
He noticed that Caliburn was parked right near the gate with the nose pointing outwards.
“Ready for a quick getaway” I explained.
“Aren’t you worried that someone might heave a brick through your window?” he asked
“Bricks haven’t been discovered yet in the Combrailles” I explained. “We’re still struggling to come to terms with the Stone Age”.

So I went round to Terry and Liz’s to give them their printer, and they very kindly fed me, which was nice of them. It was nice to see some friendly faces, but then I said that when I met the guys that I knew in Pontaumur. It’s amazing how quickly things can change.

I spoke to Bernard, the President of Pionsat Football Club, on the phone afterwards and told him about the game. He reckons that I ought to focus on the positives. He said he would have a word with the observer and call me back. “Focus on the positives” – well, it didn’t take us long.

There are many ways of earning a living than standing in the middle of a field while 100 people hurl abuse at you, but I wish I knew what they were. Craig Bellamy complained about the abuse that he received at West Ham United a year or so ago. He’s on about £50,000 a week at least. How would he like to do it for just €28, travelling expenses and a free shower?

-6

Saturday 11th September 2010 – AND SO AFTER BREAKFAST …

… I went to part II of this meeting. It was still just as interesting – except that they didn’t get me a meal. Apparently my special diet is too much effort for them. Well, never mind. They will be hearing more about this because I was quite fed up, especially as the Sports Centre across the road closed just as I was about to investigate if it had any food.

And this afternoon, we went off to a Sports Stadium on the south side of the city to watch a referee and to criticise his refereeing. He made a few deliberate mistakes to see if we would spot them, and we also spotted a few unintentional errors too.

Once the match was over we had our debriefing and then it was back to Head Office. I didn’t know the way so the guy in charge shouted “follow me” – and then piddled off before Caliburn and I were ready.

Nevertheless we worked out our way through Clermont Ferrand all on our own and came back all the way to Pionsat like the wind as I had promised to photograph the entire Pionsat football club for the new calendar, and I was running for time.

For the football itself, Pionsat’s 2nd XI lost 2-1 to hated local rivals St Gervais d’Auvergne while the 1st XI spannered Menat 4-0. A couple of exciting matches, even though they were a little bad-tempered.

Franck has forgotten my shorts and so I had to scrounge a pair for making my debut with the whistle tomorrow. Such is life. But the good news is that the club has made me a little “gesture” towards my expenses of travelling back and to to Clermont Ferrand. That was nice of them and it is much appreciated, as I’m a bit down on my uppers right now.

And so tomorrow I make my debut in centre-field.

-1

Friday 10th September 2010 – I found a hotel with free wi-fi …

… a Première Classe on the edge of the city near the motorway, but when I returned from this meeting on Friday night, I … errrr … crashed out! Mind you it had been a long day. I had to get up early to open up Lieneke’s for Simon – but he never showed up. Mind you I took advantage by catching up with some more web stuff. I’m really pressing on with that

And after lunch I went to Bill’s and fixed his computer as much as I could , but I couldn’t do it all as we need some new drivers and then after that I went to Clermont Ferrand for this meeting. And as luck should have it I fell into Auchan just as they were having a huge €1:00 sale – and there was also a printer for Liz and Terry too.

The meeting was the Annual General Meeting of the referees of the Puy de Dome where they discuss problems that have arisen during the past season and new proceedings for the forthcoming season. It was quite interesting, but not half as interesting as the “attitudes” of a few of the people in charge of the meeting. I wouldn’t have called them particularly friendly – not in the least.

I picked up something to eat on the way back and after that I crashed right out.

i’m clearly working far too hard these days.

Thursday 9th September 2010 – Here’s a pic …

… of our latest toy.

I told you a little while ago that Terry and I had bought a trailer between us – and here’s a picture.

It isn’t half a mega-beast, an Ifor Williams Trailer with a carrying capacity of 2.5 tonnes. Terry’s tractor and broyer went onto this and the thing didn’t even bat an eyelid. It’s a 4-wheeler with 12″ wheels, detachable sides and back, and a pair of ramps that would be the envy of anyone.

I have the Minerva and the 2000E estate to collect to Brussels some time when I have the room , and this will do all of that without any effort at all. I’m impressed.

So this morning I went down to Liz and Terry’s where we put one of the old caravan chassis on top of the other one and then put them both on the trailer.

Guillaume and his mate and then Simon came round in mi-chemin and once they had been sorted out Terry brought the load around here. We took off the two old trailers and dumped them round the side of the barn and then Terry loaded up his tractor and set off for home.

I put a couple of buckets of mortar onto the wall and it’s starting to look much better.

Tomorrow I have to go to Bill’s to fix his computer and then I’m off to Clermont Ferrand for a meeting that starts tomorrow evening and finishes on Saturday late afternoon.

If I don’t blog tomorrow night it will because I won’t have been able to find a wi-fi point.

-1

Wednesday 8th September 2010 – It finally stopped raining …

… sometime about midday. Which was just as well as we were being thoroughly drowned out again. As the battery was then flat on the computer I nipped out and did two more bucket-loads of mortar on the wall. I reckon I’ve not done about one-sixth of it, so this time next year I might be halfway round.

That took me until about 15:00 when I knocked off for a late lunch. And just as well because it started to rain again just about then.

So this afternoon I’ve moved the old computer into the barn where I’ll be using it for more technical applications and so on, taking advantage of the bad weather to clean up the hard drive and remove all kinds of unwanted files that were hanging around on there. I have one of these portable hard drives and I’ll be using that to transport files back and to – no sense in having two copies saved at different dates on two computers – I’ll only over-write the more recent one with the older version or do something silly like that.

At about 17:15 the rain stopped so I put yet another bucket of mortar onto the wall and then went and picked my veg for tea until the rain drove me back inside again.

So what have I been doing on the computer these last few mornings? Well, I’ve written a few web pages about Virlet, the village that is my postal address, and I’ve put them on line today. Now you can see all about the village and read about its history.

Talking of history, the Americans’ much-vaunted retreat from Iraq at the end of August is now history. It lasted all of 5 days before the much-prophesied Civil War that erupted grew so far out of control that the troops were sent back in, and only a day or so later that they suffered their first casualties. As I (and many others, it is only fair to say) prophesied, the Anglo-American tactic of invading a country that was the only friend of the Westerners in the Middle-East and overthrowing the only pro-Western government in the Middle East, making them hate us with an intensity that cannot be measured on any scale known to man, and replacing them with another group of Middle-Easterners that already hate the west with an intensity that cannot etc etc, was short-sighted to say the least.

And now it seems now that the Septics are stuck there for a while yet. And no surprise either, because they will probably remember what else that I said – that once the occupying farces have pulled out there will be in due course a dictator of the country that will make Saddam look like a Boy Scout leader and the west will wish that they had him back in power.

-1

Tuesday 7th September 2010 – We’ve been 8 days …

… without any measurable rainfall, so my plants would welcome something, but I think that … errrr… 43.5cms in the last 24 hours was something rather excessive. During the five hours between my being awoken by the most tremendous storm and the time I had breakfast, 30.5mm of that rainfall had fallen.

Solar energy was badger all as you might expect – we had a right proper November cloud here all day.

After working on the computer I went outside but it was far too wet to work so I spent until lunchtime sawing wood. There’s a nice neatly cut pile ready for the little stove but strangely enough the pile that’s left to be cut doesn’t look any smaller at all. And I need to reduce that as I want to put a wooden wall right where it is. I shall be here for ever doing that, I reckon.

This afternoon it stopped raining so I laid off the woodcutting and scratched out a load more loose “cement” from my wall. I then made a mix of mortar to point up, and that was the signal for the heavens to open up. I put the cement on, though, even though I ended up being soaked to the skin.

I dug up some veg for tea, and noticed while scraping caterpillars off the broccoli that they are forming some nice heads. But all of the vegetation is starting to die down, I noticed. That is rather frightening if you ask me. Winter can’t be too far away.

-1

Monday 6th September 2010 – I just KNEW …

… that it wouldn’t be THAT easy.

I’ve been all the way to Clermont Ferrand today about this perishing driving licence. And here’s a pic of part of the centre of the city with the Puy-de-Dome towering in the distance. I hope you like it.

So I got to the city early this morning (well, early for me, anyway), found a parking space, paid for three hours parking and picked up a nice thick book (on the Treaty of Yalta, in French if you must know) as I know what these Government departments are like

At the prefecture I took my ticket for the queue and was totally astonished to find that the number of people ahead of me in the queue is … errr … NONE – now that’s a first in any Civil Service department anywhere in the world. What a waste of all of this parking money that I’ve just spent!

And so the woman at the counter went through my paperwork, and suddenly came to a dead stop.

“What’s this?” she said, brandishing a document that she had found.
“It’s my medical statement that I had done on Friday” I replied
“I can see that” she said, “but why have you had it done?”
So I explained slowly and gently that it was for a PSV and HGV driving licence.
“I can see that” she replied “but who told you to do it?”
“I understood that this was the procedure and no-one has told me any different” I replied
“Well, the doctor should certainly have told you different. He ought to know that for all new French commercial driving licences, whether for a new candidate or a transfer in from abroad, the medical is done here by our official doctor!”

So I explained that I needed the licence, and an International one to boot, by the end of September. She retaliated by offering me a medical appointment in, if I heard her correctly, the year 2016.
Yes, it was too good to be true. I knew it would be.

But after a lengthy discussion she did in fact become quite helpful in her own way. She promised to do her best to have my medical certificate accepted. And if she failed, she would send my Belgian licence back to me to take to Canada, but she would “make sure” that I received an International Driving licence.

Now having had years of promises made to me by all kinds of Civil Servants the world over, my bitter experience is to reserve judgement until I have the paperwork in hand. But it was really nice to find a French Civil Servant doing her best to deal with a difficulty that is not covered by the rules and regulations, and doing her best to think around corners and find a solution.

So after that I went for a wander around. I had paid for all this parking and I wasn’t going to waste it. And in any case I hardly know Clermont Ferrand, even though it’s the “county town” of the area where I live.

The most important place to visit in Clermont Ferrand is the cathedral. I went inside and managed to take one photo, and then we had an announcement –
“it is now midday and the cathedral is closing until 14:00. Could all visitors make their way to the exits”.
Yes, even God has his two-hour lunch break here in France. Heaven help the sinners in the meantime.

I can’t be doing with this.

So had a good wander around until 13:15 and then off to the Footy offices where they gave me some log-in details for the website so that I can see my programme. And I am indeed refereeing on Sunday as announced earlier.

Then to Brico Depot for some wood for Terry, followed by a stop off at the Carrefour at Riom for some shopping. But I didn’t do much as I was waylaid at the computer counter. I have a couple of printers here – the very old first-generation printer/scanner/copier that won’t work on Windoze Vista and so I have to copy it onto the old laptop to print it, and the little DJ540 that swallows expensive ink cartridges at an alarming rate. And I need a working printer to print out my refereeing stuff and stuff for the local history group, so I was pricing up another load of cartridges for theDJ540 when I was interrupted by a pile of Epson SX115 printer/scanner/photocopiers reduced on sale to just €49. And the ink for them is the cheapest on offer. So I bit the bullet and purchased one of the aforementioned.

At Liz and Terry’s I gave Terry his wood and inspected our new toy, the Ifor Williams trailer, which isn’t half a mega-beast and well-worth the money that we paid, and then back here to pull more caterpillars off my brassica – I’m in the middle of the second round of the cabbage-white infestation.

It was my turn to animate the Anglo-French group this evening and I had everyone discussing DiY tools and words that derive from them. It went down rather well.

And in other news, terrorists have attempted to bomb a Primary School packed with children, and an 8 year old boy discovered the primed and armed bomb, picked it up and took it into the classroom to show all of his classmates. The carnage that might have been caused can only be imagined.

Now where did this outrage take place? Iraq? Afghanistan? Well actually, it was in Antrim, Northern Ireland, which for those of you who are geographically-challenged, is in the UK. Of course it is rather ironic about how the UK is going to war to deal with “terrorists” who attack armed soldiers who are trained to fight back and to kill, so I carefully scrutinised the news report for the expressions of outrage, horror and revulsion from the British Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the B liar and assorted American politicians who have criticised Scotland’s “interaction” with one of that ilk, yet do you know what? There’s not a word!

And I wonder what they would have said if it had not been the white-skinned Paddy O’Reilly who had planted this device, but the brown-skinned Abdul Mohammed?

And I’m waiting for the aforementioned Paddy O’Reilly to be uncovered and to be named as someone with an interest in the Irish Republic, because I shall be eagerly awaiting the Anglo-American invasion of that country to sort out that nest of vipers that are sending foreign fighters abroad to spread their messages of extremism and hatred amongst innocent children.

But I am not holding my breath as it isn’t going to happen. The Brits and the Americans, and the Irish, and most of the other white-skinned westerners are the biggest bunches of hypocrites I have ever encountered.

It makes me sick.

-3

Sunday 5th September 2010 – One thing that I promised never to do …

… was to criticise anyone else’s attempts at foreign language translations. And for two reasons –

people ought to be congratulated for making any attempt at doing their best to make themselves understood/li>
of course, the stuff that I do is nothing to write home about and I wouldn’t like mine to receive the same kind of criticism

But be that as it may, my imagination isn’t half working overtime about the condition third from bottom on the list on the right, and all kind of images are floating through my mind.

I had a lovely afternoon out this afternoon though, although this morning was something of a disaster. It was about 04:00 when I went to bed, I was dealing with a computer issue for all of Saturday until then – and yet at 09:00 I was up and about and breakfasted. And on a Sunday too.!

“How did you manage that?” I hear you say.
That was thanks to whoever it was who rang me at 08:10 and said “C’est toi, Albert?” And when I told him that he had a wrong number, rang me back twice more until I finally convinced him.

And so with my Sunday ruined, I did some more website stuff for the rest of the morning.

After lunch I set out for the football at Blot-l’Eglise, a nice village up in the hills at the back of Manzat and Combronde.

FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI won 1-0 in a good, enjoyable match played in a very friendly atmosphere in beautiful weather conditions, but in all honesty Blot l’Eglise could still be out there now, all on their own attacking an empty net, and they still wouldn’t have equalised.

On the way back I parked up for a while at the Moulin de Braynant (where I saw the above notice) and went for a walk along the Gorge de la Sioule, such a beautiful afternoon that it was. The weather was gorgeous, the scenery was impressive and it really was a pleasure to be out and about.

This is quite a touristy spot here and a very popular place for watersports, as Lee Potty-mouth and Rick Hollyoaks will tell you.

They also hire out kayaks (and this is what the notice above refers to, by the way) and one day I’m going to have a go at this. It’s a long time since I’ve been in a boat – I used to canoe for my school back in the late 1960s, which is just as well as there are no lessons on offer here.

I asked them how beginners manage, and the response was that they have to paddle their own canoe around here.

They need to make sure that they take all the correct equipment with them otherwise that they can find themselves right up the creek without a paddle.

The notice above, by the way, omits two of the most important rules of kayaking, and maybe I ought to repeat them here.

you are not allowed to light a fire in a canoe. After all, you cannot have your kayak and heat it
it is forbidden to make love in a canoe. After all, making love in a canoe is just the same as English beer – it’s f*cking close to water

And after all of that, I came back here and crashed out for … errrr …. four hours – now I can’t sleep.

In other news, something has happened this evening that I have been waiting 10 months to do. And just like a hurricane, you know that it is inevitably going to happen and you are totally powerless – there is nothing that you can do that will stop it.

Yes, I have finally, at long last, managed to spill a full mug of coffee all over the floor in my nice attic room 🙁

-1

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!

-2

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.

-1

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.

-4

Wednesday 1st September2010 – A couple of things have happened today …

… that have been well-worth recording.

Firstly, an event that happens so rarely that a note needs to be made of it so that it can silence my critics, and that is that I was up, washed and breakfasted this morning before the alarm went off. And how often does that happen? It must be my guilty conscience pricking me, or else I wet the bed or something.

Mind you, this back trouble that I have, with it sticking to the sheets, is something of a recent phenomenon. When I lived in Crewe, you know I was quite an early riser. For example, there were 37 magistrates that sat on the bench of the Crewe Petty Sessions and I was up before them on a regular basis.

Second thing that happened to day was that the home-made immersion heater that has been ticking along quite nicely, burst into frenzied activity today.

52 degrees it made, with an ambient temperature of just 21.5. And by the time the water had finished doing its stuff it had reached 53.5. A load of insulation wrapped round that will see that fine, I reckon.

But the sun has gone down from the solar water and it struggled up to 31 degrees, even though it was bright sunshine outside. However a bucket of water out of the small boiler settled that and I had a nice shower this evening. I’d already sampled some of the hot water for a wash and shave as I was going out. I like this boiler!

There were two reasons why I had to look pretty. Firstly I’ve been appointed to this referee’s whatsit. I’ve had my letter today, so it was off to Montlucon to buy some kit. A nice shirt, shorts, socks, whistle and red and yellow cards. What else does a man need?

The sports shop where I had to go for my kit is opposite the Auchan and so I have to go past the big traffic lights at the top of the hill. And this was the site that caught my eye this morning.

The big Saint Maclou home decoration place seems to have suffered a major catastrophe since the last time that I passed this way. This is a bit of a mess, isn’t it? I wonder what happened here.

And that’s not all that was interesting either. An ancient Peugeot 404 pick-up caught my eye while I was waiting at the traffic lights.

Back 20 years ago you would see thousands of these with their huge canvas tilts on French roads and they were the arch-typical French motor vehicle. Every farmer or rural dweller was the owner of one of these. However, today, you are very lucky if you actually see one. They are a dying breed and that’s so sad.

One thing that I learnt when I was talking to Franck in the Sports Shop is that have to go to Clermont Ferrand on Saturday 11th September for a referees’ induction meeting. It starts at 08:45 – heck, I can’t even normally make my kitchen for then!

But the second reason for going out was that Liz and I had been summoned to Marcillat en Combraille – the offices of Radio Tartasse, a small local radio station that broadcasts to the south of the Allier and the eastern Creuze as far as Gueret. They want to franchise “Radio Anglais” too. Yes our fame is spreading.

And after going to a cafe in Marcillat en Combraille, where the waiter forgot to bring us out coffees, Liz and I went for a nosey around the old station site there, now that I have been able to work out where it is.

This is the railway station of the very, very ephemeral railway line built by the Paris-Orleans railway company between Montlucon and Gouttieres

I say “ephemeral” because it really was. Although the line was agreed back in the 1880s to be of public utility, it was the “discovery” of coal at Gouttieres (about which we talked a good few weeks ago) at the turn of the 20th Century that provided the impetus for the building of the line to start.

1912 was when construction started and was stopped at the start of World War I, before any kind of real progress had been made.

By the time the War was over, it had been discovered that the Gouttieres coal seam was uneconomic and its exploitation had been abandoned, so further progress on the line was very half-hearted indeed.

It wasn’t until 1932 that the line was finally opened, and the passenger service lasted just 7 years. At the outbreak of World War II it was suspended “for the duration” and was never seriously restarted – certainly this far down the line.

Although a goods service continued on the line as far as Pionsat until the 1960s, the last passenger train on any part of the line was a weekly service between Paris and Neris-les-Bains which ceased operation in 1957.

Sticking our heads to the window of the railway station though, we could see in what was the public waiting room some really wonderful railway posters from the 1930s advertising all kinds of railway excursions.

So there you are then – wasn’t that an exciting day out?

Phew!

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Tuesday 31st August 2010 – I’ve been out and about …

… for part of the day today.

One of the places that I visited today was Virlet, the village that is my postal address. And while I was there I went to take a few photographs.

Now that my website is practically up-to-date I’ve started on doing some new stuff and one of the things I’m working on is a page about the village. There’s nothing at all in English about it.

While I was there for the brocante I took a few pics but I really wanted one of the church. There has never been a decent one because it’s surrounded by clutter – a stone wall, trees, the village hall etc.

So I had this idea of driving right across to the other side of the valley, using the 105mm (3x) zoom, doing a nice long-hop (it’s over a mile away across there) and then cropping the church out of the photo.

And do you know, it’s come out rather well. It really is the only position where you can see it to its best advantage , and in fact I’ve never seen a photo of the church taken from this position. I’m well-pleased with this.

So why was I in Virlet today?

Two reasons really. Firstly to obtain an attestation that I am a resident in the area and secondly to have a copy of the list that gives the names and addresses of doctors who are authorised to give medical examinations for commercial driving licences. If I’m changing my driving licence for a new one I may as well change my truck and bus (and taxi) licences too while I’m at it. You never know what might happen.

But of course, as you would expect, it wasn’t all plain sailing. The mayor’s secretary is away today and he doesn’t have a clue what to do. So I’ll have to go back on Thursday. You’ve never ever seen anything like this place for chaos. But at least the guy at the Driving Licence centre answered his phone this morning and he was even helpful. I don’t have much time to apply for this licence so I need to put my skates on. I’ll go down to Clermont Ferrand on Thursday when I have my attestation.

So this afternoon I carried on with the pointing and it doesn’t half take ages to do. You can see just how far I’ve done today – the grey-mortared bit at the lower edge of the wall. That’s about one-sixteenth of the wall done. At this rate it will take for ever but I’ll keep on plugging away at it as long as the weather lets me.

And that might not be for long – last night the temperature fell to 7.2°C, the lowest so far. I ahve all the windows closed up here and I’m wearing a jacket – in August.

And in other news, Terry and I are now the owners of an Ifor Williams 2.5-tonne trailer. Fed-up of messing about with old trailers that won’t even carry a set of scaffolding when they are working properly, we have bitten the bullet and paid up. It’ll move the scaffolding and Terry’s tractor quite nicely, help me fetch all my cars down here, and we can hire it out as well to make a little bit on the side, like we do with the scaffolding.

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Monday 30th August 2010 – No photo tonight people.

That’s because I forgot to take one, and probably there wasn’t anything worth photographing anyway. But what a day it was!

This morning started with the website. I’m trying to bring August 2010 right up to date and then that will be all the arrears sorted out and I can move on to doing some new stuff. I’ve not had the opportunity to do anything to it properly for over a year.

So when the battery went flat I went outside to try to sort myself out a wheelbarrow. The Caliburn-coloured one won’t be going anywhere for a bit. It was okay until a huge pile of slates from the house roof landed in it from a great height last year and that blew the tubeless tyre off the beading and try as I might I can’t get it to go back. So into the barn to look for the B&Q wheelbarrow that is in pieces and I eventually tracked all of the pieces down, despite doing a good deal of tidying up … “Aren’t you feeling well?” – ed … and discovering more things I never even knew that I had.

That inner tube is perished and the two tubes that Claude gave me – so are they and so that was that. I’ll have to bite the bullet and get some wheels or tubes the next time the lorry comes round, or see what there is on ebay.

This afternoon I played a round of the French national sport of “here we go round the mulberry bush” trying to get a Social Security number. Seven different numbers I was given, and seven different people I spoke to until I finally found someone who could help me with this. Apparently I need to produce a birth certificate giving not only the details about myself but also the details about my parents.

Now many people reading this blog, especially Turdi de Hatred and everyone else from OUSA, will be wondering how I will be able to find out the details of my father, and they would be surprised at how close they might be to the truth.

But having said all of this I can understand why it is that so many people in France work on the Black Economy. It’s not that they have any lack of goodwill, it’s just that they get totally fed up of this absurd and relentless paper chase and I can’t say I blame them as I was pretty fed up by this time too and ready to renounce my registration and do it all stumeling, as they say in Flanders.

And the best is yet to come. I need to change my driving licence over to a French one so I rang the sous-prefecture. They told me that I can’t do it there but at the prefecture in Clermont Ferrand. They gave me the number but told me not to ring as apparently the guy doesn’t answer his phone in the afternoon. And do you know what? They were dead right too.

It’s not surprising that no-one ever does any business around here.

I mentioned Turdi de Hatred just now, and that reminded me. When I was at the brocante yesterday I came across a video entitled Return Of The Living Dead. You know, I had no idea that anyone had filmed her reading out the Open University Students Association election results.

So after my marathon session on the phone I went into the garden and sorted out the veg for tea – a veggie burger with onions and garlic, and with spuds, carrots, beans, spinach, sage, rosemary and mint from my garden. Beautiful it was too.

But the meal is in the future. While the veg was soaking itself I mixed a bucket of mortar and started on the pointing of the house wall in the lean-to. High time I did that so I can put the lean-to roof on again. But it’s going to take me forever I reckon. It doesn’t go as quick as you like it and you might remember what happens if you take the cheating way out and just crepi it to hide the gaps. There’s a pic of the results of that on this blog from a few weeks ago.

When the bucket was empty and it was 17:40 – not worth mixing another – I went to chop some wood. An after a little while I rediscovered the branch cutter that had seized up and stopped working. Now that I have a workbench and a place to work I stripped it down to look at it and sure enough there was a bolt that was badly worn that was distorting the cutting angle. So I swapped it round with a less-important bolt from another part of the machine, cleaned and greased it, and now that’s that fixed.

My day isn’t finished yet either! Bernard from the footy club rang up. Apparently my name is now on the referees’ list for the forthcoming season and so he gave me the telephone number of the sports outfitters who supply the club, and told me to order what I need in the way of referee’s clobber.

No wonder I’m knackered after all of this!

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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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EPIC HALL

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