Tag Archives: hospital

Monday 10th December 2012 – And there I was …

… lying in bed going through in my mind the things that I should (and shouldn’t) have done during the day, and it was then that I remembered that I hadn’t written up the blog for today. Mind you, it was about 03:00 (I had a late night) and I wasn’t going to get up and do it at that time. Hence the reason that you’ve all had to wait for it.

It had been a comparatively busy day too for round here. An early start saw me bash on with the Christmas special and I made huge strides in putting down what I need to say. In the best traditions of the Open University, I just write stuff down as it occurs to me, and then go through and edit it later. Ohhh, the joys of “cut and paste”.

A break at lunchtime though because Terry came round to pick up his orders from the UK. Piles of stuff there was too. We agreed that, seeing as he knows all of the best contacts, he’ll order on my behalf the new winter tyres for Caliburn off the internet. Caliburn won’t know himself, what with all of these new tyres just now. He’s certainly having a good Christmas, even if no-one else is.

At the Anglo-French group, at first there was just me. Terry came in later and explained that he had had to fight a major blizzard round by St Gervais d’Auvergne, which explained why no-one from that neck of the woods appeared. Jex told me that Marianne was in hospital (she hadn’t been looking too well last time I saw her) and so that explained that. I’ll have to get on to her and see how she is.

Friday 25th November 2011 – YOU WOULD HAVE BEEN IN STITCHES …

CUTTING DOWN CONIFER TREES les guid virlet puy de dome france… watching me cut down the conifers at the front of the barn this afternoon.

But I’m not in stitches – I’m in staoles.

6 of them!

All across the top of my head.

I did something today that I vowed that I would never do – and that is to use a power tool to cut down a tree. When you are sawing away by hand, you can feel the tree start to give and you have plenty of time to move out of the way as it slowly keels over.

But with a power tool you can’t feel it and it takes you by surprise. And that’s not good if you are 3 metres up a ladder.

So it caught me under the chin, lifted me off the ladder and dropped me on the floor where my head struck the trailer with a glancing blow.

But I’m inpressed with that Ryobi 18-volt saw that I bought in the USA last year (almost as impressed, Rhys, as I am with my galvanised steel dustbin). It didn’t take long at all to go through this tree.

So let’s look on the positive side.

I was bleeding everywhere and so I went to Rob and Nicolette’s to get Nicolette to look at it as I couldn’t see anything of course. One look from her and Rob was detailed to drive me to Montlucon.

We waited for a couple of hours there (and I chatted to the father of one of the FC Pionsat St Hilaire footballers who had been admitted following a car accident) and then I was examined and stapled up.

What a waste of time that was, though. I have a stapler at home and Rob could have done that without having to waste 4 hours of his time. But I was grateful for his help – it’s nice to have good neighbours.

Of course we had all of the old jokes – “the Doctor examined your head but found nothing” and all that kind of thing.

But one piece of optimism is that many things work better if you give them a kick or if you bang them. I wonder if that will work for me now.

puy de dome franceWhat makes it worse was that I was only cutting down the trees for something to do while I was waiting for some paint to dry. It was so nice again today that I gathered up all of the pieces of wood from the greenhouse and I’ve painted them with a couple of coats of wood treatment and the first coat of the wood staining.

And I was only doing that because I can’t do the roof on the lean-to yet – the scaffolding is in the way.

I was going to give it all a second coat this evening and then start to assemble it tomorrow but badger that. I’m going to have a day off tomorrow.