Tag Archives: eric hall

Friday 30th April 2010 – Well I was wrong about the rain.

We didn’t get 10mm at all. In fact we had a mere 9.5mm, most of which came around midday. So I nipped downstairs and uncovered everything so that everywhere can get wet. I uncovered the cloche but forgot to cover up the thermometer in there and now that’s wet too – I’ll have to see about drying it oit.

I stayed in, did some work on the computer in the morning and then started the unpacking. I’ve managed to put it (or most of it, anyway) away and I can actually see the floor no without walking on anything.

With the weather having cooled down I went to training tonight and had a good run around for an hour and 15 minutes. It’s totally worn me out, which is a good sign. It shows that things are doing something. And I managed to have a shower too, which is another good reason for going. Clean bedding tonight!

But no footy on Saturday – it’s Labour Day! They don’t even think that the shops will be open either. That will be an inconvenience. On Sunday the 3rd XI are playing Effiat in a right bottom-of-the-table encounter.

But right now, I’m off to bed before I fall asleeep.

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Thursday 29th April 2010 – It’s just been raining.

The first time for about three weeks. And I can’t say I’m sorry as the soil is bone-dry and it’ll be playing havoc with my plants. Mind you, I bet we haven’t had even 1mm because it didn’t sound like much. 10mm would nicely water the garden and refill all of the water containers. That would be quite useful.

In fact today has been a gardening day. I planted all of the beans that have been germinating and set some more for planting in a few weeks time and then transplanted the carrots. That took me nicely until lunch and after that I started on sowing the seeds for the May planting, sorting out the remainder of the germinating seeds and then catching up on whatever from the March sowing that hadn’t taken. There’s tons of stuff now but I am concerned that quite a lot of whatever I sowed back in March doesn’t seem to have sprung up. I do remember some things being slow but I’m sure they weren’t this slow!

I’ve also run out of potting soil so I hope LIDL still has plenty left. I’ve used 5 sacks this last couple of weeks. It’s actually stuff that’s been composted commercially elsewhere – every so often I pull out a lump of plastic and the other day an entire Snickers wrapper. So at least it’s all ecologically-friendly. But someone seems to thing that at the dechetterie at St Eloy les Mines you can help yourself to the composting that they do there. That has to be worth an investigation. I’ll take an empty dustbin with me next time I go shopping.

Back at the ranch my little 3d animation has come to a halt as I plumb the depths of a free tutorial I have found – “Make Interesting Objects From Combinations of Base Shapes” – like circles, spheres, tubes, flat surfaces and the like.
Lesson n°1 is “Make A Set Of Barbells For Your ….. errrrr ….. Strongperson”. Pass the bucket, please.

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Wednesday 28th April 2010 – Today was busy.

This morning first thing I had to go round to Michael’s. He’d just come back from the UK and bought me 10 kilos of oats. And as he was off again this afternoon I needed to rescue them (and pay him) before he went.

Back home I had time to plant some of the seeds that Clare had given me before leaping aboard Caliburn, my trusty steed, and heading off to St Gervais d’Auvergne to meet Liz and go on to Gerzat to record our radio programme. And of course to meet this photographer guy who wanted not just to photograph us but to interview us too. It seems that in the Combrailles we are becoming major news and our publicity is reaching its height. Yes, we are going to be the feature article in … errrr …. a free advert-type newspaper in the Combrailles with a circulation of about 350.

Not quite Le Monde or Paris Match I know, but we remain confident that one day we will be there. I’m eagerly awaiting the day that we will be asked to open our first brocante or be the guests of honour at a concours de belote.

Back at St Gervais d’Auvergne Liz and I went for a coffee or two and discussed our plans for next week. We are going to hit the Chambre de Metiers et de l’Artisanat in Chamailles and get all our business affairs in order. Neither of us has received our formal inscription of our business registrations despite having had an acknowledgement almost a year ago. High time we did something about it.

Back here I planted all of my early potatoes. And I think I’m going to run out of room for the lates and so I’ll have to invent something about that. And I should have gone to football training this evening but today was the hottest day of the year and it’s still 25 degrees up here even with all of the windows open. That’s not a temperature for someone of my age and my level of fitness to be running around. But the weather is supposed to break tomorrow or Friday morning, with rain (the first since April 9th) and a major drop in temperature. If that holds, then training at the Friday night session is a distinct possibility.

Now where have I put my footy boots????

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Tuesday 27th April 2010 – Well, I finished …

… my tract on distance learning. Normally we can get through one page of dialogue in the 5 minutes that we have, and by the purest coincidence the tract that I prepared was exactly 4 pages long and with breaks in the right place at the end of each page. Now how about that?

But a depressing feature of this article was that I sent a whole heap of e-mails out to all kinds of institutions involved in distance learning, making it quite clear that I was offering some kind of free air time to those organisations concerned.

And do you know how many of these organisations took the trouble to reply? JUST ONE

And do you know what their reply actually said? “Thank you for your recent email.  I am writing to confirm that it has been passed on to xxxx, Head of Media and Public Relations and she will reply to you in due course”. And seeing as we are in the studio tomorrow recording, it will of course be far too late for her contact to do any good.

But one thing that I am learning, and learning quickly, is that there is no such thing as a recession. There are loads of customers queueing up at places with loads of the folding stuff waving around, but British (and some other) companies just can’t be bothered to get off their collective derrieres to go and get it. Employees far too busy on their Social Networks during working hours to actually do any work. And when the place goes t|ts-up as it inevitably does, then there are all the tears and the weeping and the pleading. And in the meantime the customers are fed up of waiting and have p155ed off elsewhere.

Just trawl through the pages of this blog – especially during the summer of last year when I was in the UK – and see exactly what I mean. I know that if there was the slightest possibility of getting my organisation or business some free air time to a whole host of captive customers I would drop everything to do the necessary. It really is unbelievable.

Next stop was down to Liz and Terry’s to see how the not-very-patient was doing and to plan the remainder of our radio programmes – such as the events for the month. And here was another thing – we have (as you can probably imagine) abandoned our idea of contacting the local government offices for information as they can’t be bothered to reply either and instead we have approached regional Government for their assistance. They very kindly sent us an extremely useful booklet with all kinds of helpful information. But as we were scanning through it, it didn’t look quite right. Colser examination revealed that it was the booklet for …. errrr …. 2008.

I tell you what – I am getting thoroughly sick of this. It must be dreadful trying to do this kind of a job for a living – with 90% of all enquiries going unanswered, 5% replying too late, 5% when they do reply not taking it seriously. Invited guests who promise to attend suddenly disappearing and leaving us holding the baby.

And do you know how much Liz and I get paid for doing all of this? Absolutely nothing at all. And there’s no expenses budget either. We travel at our own expense, pay for our own phone calls and the like. And last month at the studio they didn’t even offer us a cup of coffee, despite the plainest of plainest hints.

Yes, it isn’t easy being famous and my hate goes off to everyone else who has made it to the top like Liz and I are going to. They talk about dogged perseverence, sheer bloody-mindedness and all these other characteristics that are essentials for stardom and having been celebrities for just a couple of weeks, we can understand exactly what they mean.

And that reminds me, said her, abandoning yet another good rant for the moment – we have to wear our best bib and tucker tomorrow because we are going to be photographed by the press.

In other news my 3D modelling has been restarted now that I’m home. And I did manage to find a freeware canoe so that my characters stranded on the beach could paddle off to safety. Had I not managed that they would have been up the creek without a paddle. But as I was preparing their getaway I came across a freeware flying bathtub.

Now isn’t that much more exciting? it can take my characters onto a whole new plane.

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Monday 26th April 2010 – It was another good day today

And I didn’t miss any of it really seeing as how I had another early morning phone call. So having dealt with that and having breakfasted I then missed almost all of the decent weather by having to come up here to work. It seems that our guest for this month’s radio programmes has gone AWOL and it’s too late to arrange for anyone else.

So I had to have a rummage around in the darkened corners of my mind and I’ve come up with a lively topic – FURTHER EDUCATION. Liz and I can talk about that for hours as we both have experience of it. And with people desperate to fill in their spare time it seemed to be a good option.

There are four categories too, which will fit in nicely with the four weeks –

  1. GCSEs and A Levels
  2. Higher Education
  3. Vocational training
  4. Learning for Pleasure

and so I have been researching.

I had a break for a few hours and did some more unloading of Caliburn. You can’t move up here for stuff now. I had a rummage through the tools that were in the LDV and remade the toolbox contents in Caliburn with the best of the stuff. When I had my taxis 25 years ago I used my tools an awful lot – hardly surprising given the cars that I had, and many of those tools from those days had found their way into the mobile toolbox. And strange as it is to say it, just feeling those tools and feeling just how comfortably they fitted into my hands again  – it was just like meeting up with good old friends.

Normally I don’t go in for the pretentious prose and garbage and that kind of thing, but it really was something extraordinary.

But on the subject of vocational training I met Elodie at the football. She’s quite cute and I have a soft spot for her. I hadn’t seen her on the tills at Auchan for a while, and she told me she had left and was now back in full-time education. One of the courses she is taking is in shorthand-typing and having learnt of Terry’s injury, she suggested that it might be a career opportunity for him.

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Sunday 25th April 2010 – It was one of the nicest …

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire sayat argnat ligue de football league puy de dome france… days of the year so far, and we had another footfest as the season draws towards a close. We weren’t supposed to have one though – it should have been last night but Sayat refused to play at 18:30 so the match had to go on today.

It was a 2-2 draw which was something of a disappointment, especially as Sayat were awarded a penalty (from which they scored) for a handball in the area that everyone else in the ground except for the referee would have said was “involuntary”.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire sayat argnat ligue de football league puy de dome franceBut the equaliser was a superb goal. Little Matthieu playing all on his own in attack (and he’s normally a full-back) struggles with three defenders and a keeper to get into a good position. His shot is blocked and rebounds to Didier who hasn’t scored a goal in all the time I’ve been following the team, and he simply lifts the ball over everyone and into the net. He’s absolutely delighted as you can see, and who can blame him?

The keeper’s trick of lying down and hoping that the referee stops the game didn’t work, and rightly so as once the goal was awarded he was running up and down like a spring chicken.

Mind you, everything happened so quickly that I doubt that the referee would have had time to stop the game even had he wanted to.

I missed the first two goals though because I was at Chatel-Guyon watching the 3rd XI. And for once all of the chickens came home to roost and they were well and truly thumped – something that has been on the cards for a while.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire chatel guyon puy de dome ligue de football league franceDespite everything that I have said and all the “advice” that I’ve been handing out that has stiffened the defence over the last 15 months, we welcomed back into the centre of the defence Lord Lucan and Martin Bormann and they played with what I call the “Lego” formation – they all go to pieces in the box.

And if that wasn’t enough we had a chase the length of the field by one of the Pionsat players, clearly enraged by an “off-the-ball incident” and deciding to have a little friendly word with the Chatelguyon no8. And no amount of whistling by the ref was going to stop him. What is even more ironic is that the Pionsat player doing the chasing is a member of the French Police Force. How about that?

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire chatelguyon puy de dome ligue de football league franceIn between the goals, we had more entertainment too. Another one of the Pionsat players had a real go at the ref about the award of a free kick.

This went on for ages and called for some restraint, in every sense of the word. It’s nice to see the Pionsat players showing such … errr …. passion during a match. It shows that they care about the match and the performance but I wish they would reserve it for when they have possession of the ball – the round plastic thing that they kick, I mean, and not one belonging to one of their opponents.

After the 3rd XI match Chatelguyon’s 1st XI had a game. You might say that the 1st game was the “warm-up act” and you wouldn’t be wrong about that. Things certainly got heated out there in that game.

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Saturday 24th April 2010 – I’ve just watched …

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire cebazat puy de dome ligue de football league france… this ...errr....interesting football match this evening.

We had all kinds of blood, guts and thunder for 90 minutes, and played almost entirely between the two penalty areas. Matthieu in the Pionsat goal had to be at his best to claw away a free header from the corner and the Cebazat keeper had to save two weak shots, but that was the sum total of the attempts on goal.

Yes, I'm back at home after all the excitement of Friday evening in Brussels. And what with the late finish getting everything ready last night, I didn't make it home all in one go. I ended up having an overnight stop at Clamecy where I froze to death in a layby (yes, it's still perishing cold at night)

Still, the one thing about that was that it made me have an early start, and I didn't lose very much as I stopped for the weekly shopping at the Carrefour in Moulins.

I was back here by the early afternoon and promptly crashed out for two hours on my sofa. That set me up nicely for the trip down to Pionsat and the football tonight.

As Golden Earring once famously said, "it's good to be back home".

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Friday23rd April 2010 – I’ll be back …

… on the road in about 10 minutes. And I’ll be very late getting away tonight, much later than I wanted to be, but then again, a lot has happened.

Firstly we had yet another “end of an era”. Long-time followers of this organ will recall the white LDV that I bought in 2002 and which ran for ever once we put a new engine into it but which was defeated by rust and lack of spare parts. It’s been sitting outside the apartment at “Expo” for three years since Caliburn came along and everyone was moaning about it, so I had someone come along and take it away.

A vehicle dismantler in Brussels has an LDV and he can’t find spares for it either so he gave me €100 for it, which I reckoned was excellent value.

Cleaning it out discovered hordes of goodies that I had forgotten all about too as well as a full set of tools, so it was quite profitable all told.

After that I went for lunch with Mike, who is doing my old job as chair of the Open University Student Association’s North European Revolutionary Forces. And I had quite a laugh as on the way there I saw a billboard saying “You have won the lottery. Where will you be dining now?” Well, I had effectively won the lottery with disposing of the LDV and I was taking Mike to a fritkot. My generosity knows no bounds.

And so, after paying all of the bills and so forth, I cleaned up Expo just a little bit, loaded up Caliburn, and hit the road.

I also found some time to call in at the IKEA Anderlecht (where I was one of several persons involved in an argument on the car park) for one or two things that I need at home.

And so, all in all, it is going to be a very late departure and I’m not planning on making it all the way home in one go. After all, I’ve had quite a busy day.

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Thursday 22nd April 2010 – I can’t be doing …

… with this tidying up nonsense

I’ve been at it for most of the day and don’t seem to have made any progress at all. But then again I’ve taken 6 full bin liners down to the dustbins, packed up another three ready to donate to the clothes collection, and I’ve also done four washing-machine loads.

But you can’t really notice any difference and anyone who comes here and recalls this posting will wonder what on earth the place looked like before I started to tidy it up.

Having said that though, it IS three years since I’ve lived here and so there’s bound to be piles of dust and the like, and with renovations going on simultaneously in two rooms (long-term readers of this blog in its previous guises will recall all about that) it’s hardly surprising that things got just a little out of control.

Tomorrow I have some bills to pay and then I need to load up Caliburn with stuff. That’ll empty the place somewhat and it will make moving around so much easier. I still haven’t worked out where I’m going to put everything when I finally empty out the place (I’m just bringing stuff that can be left outside) so it seems to me that my priorities need to be to finish the bedroom back at the farm when I return and get that emptied out of tools and slates and the like. That’ll give me somewhere dry to keep everything while I have a good ponder.

But there’s some kind of plan simmering around underneath the surface for this place too, but more of this anon.

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Wednesday 21st April 2010 – Friends Reunited

strawberry moose tracy woghirenStrawberry Moose got to see his Auntie Tracy this evening. In fact it’s been quite some time since the two of them met – probably two years or so.

As predicted, cleaning this apartment is pretty hard work particularly when your heart isn’t in it. But at least I’ve cleared away the forest of dead plants inside the apartment, made a start on the ones on the terrace, and I began some desultory cleaning.

But then of course the rest is history.

It didn’t take me long to get discouraged so I rang up Tracy in Antwerpen to see if she fancied coming down for a coffee, but she wasn’t feeling too well and so, any excuse to stop cleaning and tidying, I went up there.

We had a good chat, mostly about what’s been happening to us since we both graduated from the Open University, and then went out for a meal. And if there’s one type of cooking that will run a good Indian close then it has to be Middle Eastern cooking and as luck would have it there is an Egyptian restaurant not too far from where she lives whose falafel and hummus is second to none. And of course there has to be a big plate of fritjes to go with it. After all, this is Belgium and they invented the French Fry. There is of course all of the old jokes about this –
“Why are there no Belgian astronauts?”
“Because there are no fritkots on the moon”
“What do you call a German living in Belgium?”
“Fritz”
“Why are there potatoes in Belgium and oil in the Middle East?”
“Because the Belgians had first choice”
Yes, we know them all.

But I like Antwerpen – it’s got much more going for it than Brussels. And had my work not have been so “irregular” I would have gladly bought a place here. In fact there is a suburb of Antwerpen specially named for me – it’s called Weerde. I would have been very happy there, almost as happy as living in that Belgian town between Enghein and Ath.

It’s called Silly.

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Tuesday 20th April 2010 – AND RIGHT NOW …

… I’m in Expo, my apartment in Brussels.

As I said yesterday (or to be more precise, first thing this morning) I’ve had to rush back here as a matter of urgency as there are a couple of things that need my urgent attention.

There are a few other things that I would like to do too. Not that these are important, but I can combine all of these things together and that’s a few more issues solved too.

But back in Brussels I was almost run down on a zebra crossing as soon as I got out of Caliburn, and then I was involved in the Great Brussels paperchase.

And that includes the fact that my Brussels id card is out of date and not accepted in the bank, but my driving licence, issued on the same day and with the same photograph, is accepted.

And then being stuck in the Brussels rush-hour traffic that I had forgotten all about for hours, watching a motorist deliberately ram her old and rusting Opel into someone’s big and spanking-new BMW.

To think that I used to work amongst this for 10 years.

And then finally getting back here (having done first everything that was important just in case I was overwhelmed by the excitement of it all) and walking right into the middle of a raging controversy.

I am not glad to be back and I can’t wait for Friday night when I can come home. I’ve only been here for a few hours and I’m fed up already.

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Monday 19th April 2010 – I BET THAT YOU ARE …

.. all wondering what happened to Monday’s blog entry when you looked last night.

The answer to that is that at the time that I would normally be on the internet, I was asleep in the back of Caliburn in a layby somewhere between Troyes and Chalons-sur-Marne.

Some kind of emergency has declared itself in Brussels. There are a couple of things that needed to be done here and so I was obliged to hit the road and head north.

Something that rather disrupted my day as you might expect. I had all kinds of plans for things that I was going to do.

But it was a good job that on Friday I had emptied out Caliburn and given him a good clean-up. It was a simple matter then to check the oil and water and sling a pile of stuff into the back.

And with a flask of coffee, a pile of butties and the usual stuff to nibble, I hit the road and that was that.

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Sunday 18th April 2010 – A record day today.

60.6 degrees in the heat exchanger – the hottest since 21st August. 44.3 degrees in the verandah – the highest since 8th September. The 15 litres of water in the black bucket with the pane of glass on top – that reached 36 degrees,hot enough to shower with. 22.3 degrees up here in the attic (it’s still 21.3 degrees in here now!). You can see what kind of a day we have had.

birdwatching centre ornithologique st gervais d'auvergne puy de sancy puy de dome franceBut if you peer carefully through the volcanic ash (or click on the image to see a full-size pic) you can make out the Puy de Sancy in the distance. 1886 metres (or about 6000 feet of it) and it’s still heavily-laden with snow. So summer hasn’t quite a-cumen in yet.

I’m in my favourite spot at the viewpoint near St Gervais d’Auvergne on the way to see the not-very-patient and to drop off some scaffolding tubes. And also to pick up some football boots that he won for me on eBay, which was very nice of him and much appreciated.

And had I had the football boots with me earlier I would even have had a game of football because something happened today that has never ever happened before and probably won’t ever happen again. Pionsat’s much-maligned 3rd XI arrived at Neuf-Eglise with not only a full complement, but also 3 substitutes and another player who didn’t make the team but came along to watch the match with his boots “just in case”, making 15 in all – and the opposition could only put out 5 players! How about that?

Now if a team cannot field a minimum of 8 players it forfeits the match, loses a point and has to pay a fine equivalent to the travelling expenses of the opposition etc etc. And believe me, there are some teams that enforce this rule to the letter. But other clubs are much more friendly about it and so it was decided that
1) everyone would pretend that the match took place with an effective complement for each team (and there was a frantic hunting around for medical certificates and official identity cards so as to make the team sheet look correct)
2) Pionsat were credited with the score that they would have had had they won the match by forfeit
3) Pionsat’s 3 substitutes plus the spectator and also a volunteer from the starting 11 were loaned to the 5 players from Neuf-Eglise so that they would have sufficient players to start the match.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire neuf eglise puy de dome football ligue de foot franceAnd as I said, had I had my boots with me I would have got a game as well, which would have been quite nice. I didn’t think until afterwards that I should have volunteered to referee the match now that I’m qualified.

We ended up having a nice leisurely friendly match of 10-a-side, which Pionsat ended up by winning 3-1. I wish more matches could be played in such a friendly atmosphere as this – especially when Pionsat’s 3rd XI can win them.

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Saturday 17th April 2010 – We had another footfest tonight.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire pontaumur puy de dome ligue football league franceWe started off at 18:30 with Pionsat’s 2nd XI playing Pontamur. They lost 3-1 but that is something of a triumph as earlier in the season Pontaumur gave them a good spanking.

And the result was something of a travesty. Pontaumur had no more than about 5 shots on target whereas Pionsat spent the whole match peppering the Pontaumur goal – with the woodwork and the Pontaumur goalkeeper working overtime, as in this photo where the keeper pushes a header from Christophe round the post.

After that, the 1st XI played Miremont, and they won 4-1. That was something of a disappointment as in the away fixture, while I was watching the match at Pontaumur, Pionsat won by an astonishing 12-1.

There was quite a big crowd too – the fine weather bringing out the supporter in their … er …. pairs. It really was a beautiful day though – the temperature in the heat exchanger reached 51.5 degrees and the 15 litres of water reached 32 degrees – almost hot enough to shower with.

I went down to the Post Office at 11:40 to post a letter, only to find that it closes at 11:30 on Saturday. And so off to St Eloy for whooping where I spent next to nothing – a record €0:00 in LIDL. I planned to look in on this new megashop that’s just opened but would you believe it – it closes between 12:00 and 14:00 ON A SATURDAY for lunch. Some people just don’t want any custom.

This afternoon I went for an hour or two and socialised with my new neighbours. Now that makes a change – me socialising. And that was the sum total of my day.

But at the football Max was there. He’s the secretary of the club as well as being captain of the 3rd XI.
He asked me “does your mate Terry fancy a game of football on Sunday? we’re short-handed.”
“Shorthanded on Sunday?” I queried. “That’s nothing. Terry has been short-handed for almost a week!”

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Friday 16th April 2010 – I must be off my head.

I bet you have been wondering what I’ve been doing going to Clermont Ferrand every Friday evening and what is the real reason behind my sudden quest for fitness. The truth is that a couple of months ago I saw a course advertised on a website and being a keen follower of further education and broadening my sphere of knowledge, I decided that I would talk my way onto it.

And sure enough I did, and I’ve been on this course for six weeks and I am now, would you believe it, a fully-qualified French football referee. I reckoned that seeing as I have more than a passing interest in football and I go to as many local matches as I can, I would take something of a more active role in the sport. If I were really honest about it I’m in no state to actually play and so refereeing would be a suitable role. And it’s also an unusual qualification to have, isn’t it?

Many people had to study hard and take this examination, but not me of course. My route to the top was somewhat easier –
1) They enquired if my parents were married at the time of my birth
and on hearing that the answer was no —
2) They gave me an eyesight test
which I promptly failed …
and so I was passed straight through and didn’t have to sit this 2-hour exam consisting of 44 video extracts of matches and asked several questions on each extract.

Today I did some work up here until about 12:30 and then I started to tidy up in the garden now that work has finished there. This afternoon I had a good go at tidying Caliburn and I have the cab quite clean and tidy.

But I still can’t find my mobile phone and I’ve no idea where it is that I have left it.

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