Tag Archives: eric hall

Wednesday 16th December 2009 – The Stairway to Heaven …

… now has five steps in it! I started this morning to fit the second upright and much to my surprise and amazement it was in in about 15 minutes. It didn’t need much shaping at all.

That made me feel so much better than I was yesterday – even more so after I’d fitted the rails for the two extra steps, and once the treads were in then it was better still.

I’ve made a start on fitting one of the uprights for the final row – the one where the turn will be in the staircase – but once again I ran out of light. If I hadn’t missed my aim when employing Ashley (my rather large wooden mallet) to fasten one of the beams and I’d have hit the beam that I was aiming for, I might have had some electric light. Guaranteed for 40,000 hours, these LED lightbulbs, but I’m sure the guarantee must exclude being wallopped to smithereens by a wooden mallet.

And I suppose that had I heard the alarm at 08:00 this morning instead of sleeping through until 10:00 I might have fitted the new uprights long before it went dark.

Mind you, a strange thing happened today. Round about 13:30 this weird golden object appeared in the sky. It only stayed around for about 15 minutes and then it started snowing again. I wonder what it was. I have vague memories of seeing something similar but it was so long ago that I can’t remember what it was.

In other news, have you seen the latest headlines? NATO has gone cap-in-hand to the Russkies to beg them to lend some helicopters to use in Afghanistan to crush the Taliban.

Of course, back in the old days those of you with long memories will recall that NATO armed the Mujahadeen (which was what the Taliban was called in those days) to attack the Russians and drive them out of Afghanistan after the Russkies had invaded that country. And now NATO, having invaded Afghanistan in its turn, is begging the Russkies to come and help them fight against the Mujahadeen (or Taliban) that is armed with the weapons that NATO gave them all those years ago.

NATO’s humiliation must now be complete. Are there any further depths that the west can plumb in this disgraceful and obscene invasion?

-1

Tuesday 15th December 2009 – Today was one of those days …

… where nothing seemed to go right. it was freezing cold this morning and I was absolutely right about the weather – totally grey and overcast and only 4.5 amp-hours in total.

I don’t know why anyone pays any attention to the weather forecast around here – it’s so easy. All you need to do is to look out of the window. If you can’t see across the valley then it’s raining. If you can see across the valley then it’s going to rain.

So Terry came and the sink wasn’t any use for him but he did help me to move the plasterboard and I forgot the gas bottle. After that I finished cutting the lets in the verticals, in the pitch dark because it’s impossible to see anything in the gloom. After lunch I fitted one of the verticals and it took me hours. It’s not very-well done but I was freezing cold and fed up. I drilled right through the join and into the wall so I could fit an anchor bolt that would tighten everything together and hold it to the wall but the bolt stuck and wouldn’t go right in – and then I couldn’t get it out either. Trying to lever it out with a crowbar and I dropped the nut and I can’t find that now.

Then I fitted the battens and the insulation but by now (like 15:10) it was far too dark to properly fit the counter-battens. Dark at 15:10 – it’s depressing – so I did a bit of tidying up and then smashed my way through the ice in the water butt to get some water.

It was 6 degrees in my attic – which might not sound a lot but it was minus 5 outside and getting colder by the minute. And it’s still grey and miserable outside. We are stuck in this deep westerly depression which is a very rare phenomenon. It’s almost as deep as the depression I am stuck in. At least if it was an easterly depression we were stuck in there would be some sunlight.

-1

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.

-4

Sunday 13th December 2009 – the secret is out!

I now know why it is that Pionsat’s 3rd XI struggle in the 4th Division of the Puy-de-Dome league. Here they all are in the pre-match warm-up!

But seriously, I battled my way across the Combrailles through the heavy snow around St Pourcain to get to Effiat in time for the 13:00 kick-off. Pionsat’s players had beaten me to it, and there we were, kicking our heels. Effiat had changed the time of the kick-off to 15:00, but had omitted to inform Pionsat. And so we all had lunch while we were waiting.

Last night, leaving Pionsat’s ground, I bumped into Gregory who was just arriving. He plays up front for the 2nd XI and sometimes for the 1st XI and he’s a pretty useful player. But he wasn’t playing last night.
“I was working 2-10” he told me when I asked.
“Will you be playing tomorrow (that is, today) then?”
“No” he said, with an air of bewilderment as if no-one had ever asked him to play for the 3rd XI before when he was unavailable for the 1st or 2nd XI.

So at Effiat, who should be in the dressing room but Gregory who, having made enquiries and discovered that the 3rd XI were struggling to raise a team as usual, had graciously offered his services.

He didn’t break much sweat, it has to be admitted, but then again he didn’t need to. He scored the first two goals in the opening couple of minutes and then concentrated on spraying the ball around to the other players to give them a chance. After Pionsat had scored their 5th goal (remember, this is the team that does a lap of honour if they ever manage to win the toss) he decided that he had done enough and went off for a shower, leaving the rest of the team to it.

I’m hoping that this might set some sort of precedent and maybe encourage a few of the other 1st and 2nd teamers to help out the 3rd XI whenever they are available. They could certainly do with a helping hand every now and again. Pionsat’s 3rd XI scoring 5 goals and winning at a canter! Who’d have thought that?

And so it was back home though the doom and gloom and snow and ice and sub-zero temperatures (it’s minus 2 outside just now) and low batteries (I’ve had no charge at all for a few days now). I’ve got the fire on and I’m not moving now!

-5

Saturday 12th December 2009 – Never mind the …

… snows of winter covering our land,, I have the first snows of winter covering my water butts. Not very much, I agree, but snow just the same. And more is forecasted for tonight and tomorrow. I’m stocked up with wood and gas and food so I don’t care.

This morning was another morning where I only vaguely heard the alarm and I woke up properly at 09:21. Mind you I was having a very exciting dream – I’d killed two people and I was having everyone in a house sleeping on Ford Cortina rear seats while I was off to Chester to look for an ex-girlfriend. I tell you what – my dreams are much more exciting than real life.

Shopping today wasn’t very exciting though and LIDL didn’t have anything special, although I bumped into Robert the drummer and his wife. I remembered to go to the library though and ascertained everything that I needed to know about joining. They have a reasonable selection of books on the area and I reckon that I might spend my Saturday afternoons after shopping in the library making notes on things in the area so I can update my website.

Rhys and I were talking about this the other nigbt – there’s tons of stuff on the web about all kinds of things but firstly much of its authenticity is sometimes doubtful, and there’s a considerable volume of knowledge that hasn’t made it to the net. I regularly search for old and obsolete history and travel books to glean facts about places that I’ve visited so I can add things to my travel web pages. For some reason there doesn’t seem to be a big market in second-hand books of that nature in France.

Tonight I was at the footy. There were two matches, the 2nd XI against Biollet St Maurice and the 1st XI against Bromont Lamothe. As well as goals we had all sorts of other things that really have no place on a football field. Both Bromont and Pionsat’s 1st XI finished with 10 on the pitch – Pionsat’s 11th player being carried off and Bromont’s 11th player being ordered off and had there been an official referee for the Biollet game, Biollet would have been lucky to have finished with anyone on the pitch.

But I’ve been invited to attend the football club’s annual dinner, which is very nice of them and I appreciate the gesture. I can bring a friend too – I just wish that I had one 🙁

-14

Friday 11th December 2009 – I now have three stairs …

…into my attic – It’s becoming a veritable Stairway to Heaven, isn’t it?

You can see the additional step and its cantilever outriggers. And seeing as there was 1m92 headroom over the head of the stairs to the ground floor once I had fitted the step, I decided to extend it so that it now makes a handy shelf for storage.

The step itself is at a nice height to step off the step ladder There’s none of the mauling and messing around like I had to do on the ladder. So I’m totally puzzled as to how I managed to spill a load of coffee on the step when I have been safely manoeuvring a full mug of coffee up a ladder for the last month or so.

So having done that, I set out to measure up for the rest of the stairs. Now I don’t know if you can recall any ancient legal documents – before the days of computers – where amendments had to be made manually. And different coloured inks were used to amend the amendments and so on. Well on the pillar where I was making the measurements I have red blue and black ink and pencil markings. But now I’ve decided on where I want everything and if my visitors don’t mind steps of 29cms then it takes just 10 steps to get into my room with a footprint (minus the angle of the turn) of just 54.5 cms, which is pretty impressive!

So this afternoon I’ve been cutting pillars and beams and on Monday I’ll be installing the first two. Well, I won’t – Terry needs a hand and I owe him plenty of favours so on Monday afternoon I’ll be tootling off there. I’ve heard a rumour that Liz might be baking.

Im other news, I had a couple of shocks this morning. Firstly I do vaguely recall hearing the alarm go off at some point but it usually does this at 5-minute intervals throughout an hour starting at 08:00 with another alarm clock joining in at certain moments. It’s not at the first crack that I haul myself out of bed – I usually have to wait for a while to wake up so I didn’t pay much attention to the alarm at first. The next thing that I remember was that it was 9:24. Did I really sleep right through 2 alarms for a whole hour?

And there was this strange golden thing in the sky and the sky around it was all blue instead of the traditional grey. That was surprising. I was disappointed that my prediction last night was all wrong. But as the morning developed I realised that it was all a question of a sense of timing and by lunchtime we were all properly overcast.

Tomorrow is St Eloy shopping. I wonder if I’ll find anything exciting there. I forgot to check the special offers at LIDL

-4

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.

-4

Wednesday 9th December 2009 – Have you ever had one of those days ….

…. where everything you do turns out really well, where it seems to last for ever and you don’t want it to stop?

Well, today was nothing like that.

I woke up to torrential rain again and even worse, it was pitch-black outside. We had a pathetic total of just over 5 amp-hours worth of power, off almost 1200 watts of panels. That gives you some indication of the weather. Back in the heady days of August I was generating 250 amp-hours per day on occasions. Wasn’t that a long time ago? I’m up to my knees in mud again and I’m wondering if this rain will ever stop. We’ve had 18 consecutive days of rain and more is forecast for tomorrow.

And the blasted baker left the lid off my bread bucket so when I went to get the bread at lunchtime it was a soggy mass and I had to dry it in the oven so I could eat it.

I didn’t take a pic today because quite frankly there isn’t much to see. I put the insulation down the stairwell (or at least the stairwell where the head of the stairs will be) and then sat down to work out how to fit the stairs. After much deliberation I’ve binned the idea of reusing the sides of the existing stairs. I’m not sure what the guy was drinking while he was cutting them but I wouldn’t mind a pint of it myself. The treads and risers aren’t equal, and they aren’t vertical and horizontal either. I’m going to fit the cheap builders’ staircase up to here and I’ll think again about the ground floor staircase – I might see if it’s possible to recut the sides of the existing stairs for that.

-5

Tuesday 8th December 2009 – I’ve put all four verticals …

… for the head of the stairs now, as you can see.

I’ve also taken out one of the original uprights so that the doorway upstairs is now totally resting on my two uprights.

You can see to the right of the photo a roll of this space-age insulation stuff. Tomorrow’s task is to line the stairwell with that stuff so that I can complete the head of the stairs on both levels.

I had a strange phone call today.
“Congratulations, Mr Hall. You have won a major prize.”
“Very good. You have my address. Post it to me”.
“Well, actually, you have to come to our meeting at Evaux to collect it”
“Not at all – you have my address. Just post it to me. I don’t understand why you are waiting.”
“We have to verify that you are retired and in receipt of a pension. That is your case, isn’t it?”
“That’s a bit forward of you. You don’t ask questions like that to someone you hardly know. When we’ve met each other a few times and we are about to get engaged then you can ask me these questions”
I can keep that up all night – but it’s sad, isn’t it? I actually look forward to the junk phone calls just so I can have someone to talk to.

In other news, 2 items have caught my eye today.

Firstly, Al-Qaida is being blamed for a bomb attack in Baghdad. That’s extremely exciting, for when Saddam Hussein was in power he refused to tolerate Al-Qaida and had expelled from Iraq anyone offering them any kind of support. It seems that the Anglo-American aggressor/invader/oppressor has allowed them back into the country.

The second bit of news is that the country that has supplied the most refugees to the EU is … err …. Iraq. 22% of all refugees in the EU last year were Iraqis. Now unless I have missed something obvious, I understood that one of the reasons for the Anglo-American aggressor/invader/oppressor invading Iraq was to promote a regime change to get rid of a tyrant/oppressor so that all of the Iraqis could live in peace and security. So now that Saddam has been gone for a few years and we have a western-style democracy, why is everyone fleeing the country? Shouldn’t they all be happy now with their Saddam-less democracy? Or is this something else that the Anglo-American aggressor/invader/oppressor has totally ballsed up?

And in other other news, I also keep statistics on visits to my website and yesterday I had over 100 more visitors that the usual daily average. I’ll have to wait til later to see what page it was that they were all visiting but it’s certainly exciting all of this.

-3

Monday 7th December 2009 – I’ve fitted one of my verticals

You can see it in the photo – dead centre of the image up against the wall. Only one vertical though.

I woke up this morning to hear the rain lashing down on the roof again just like the other day. And just like the other day, even though I’m working inside, it’s not very encouraging. I’m wondering when we might have a dry day.

So when I eventually got out of bed and had my breakfast and went up to the first floor where I’m working, it was so perishing dark that I couldn’t actually see anything.

That prompted me hurling out of the window all of the old pallets that were in the pile against the wall and which you may well have seen in other photos. Some were broken, but others survived the fall and so I extended the pallet path that I laid 2 years ago. What with the marsh that’s developing outside, it seemed like a good idea.

So that was the morning accounted for, and in the afternoon I cut and fitted the vertical. It takes hours to do them as they need to be millimetre-perfect and so that involves cutting the lets slightly undersize and then filing them out to fit.

Tonight at the Anglo-French group we had a couple of new arrivals joining in – a French woman and an Austrian woman. They are Buddhists and have come here to be close to the Buddhist monastery in the area. Those of you who remember my blog in its previous home will remember my visit there one Sunday afternoon. And Marianne, the local journalist who sometimes comes to the meetings – she liked my pic from last night and intends to use it to illustrate an article on the village. Not that there’s any dosh in it but if it’s in the paper the villagers will see it and they might be interested in having a copy for themselves. It’s worth a go.

The proprietors of the Hotel in Pionsat where we meet have announced that they are leaving imminently – where to, they don’t know. You need a special kind of mentality to run a place like that and you can’t do it if you have small children and want a family life. Someone is taking over so our continuity is assured. But not so at St Eloy. You may remember that we were locked out of our venue the other week. It seems that the tenants (they were only tenants, not owners) have fled, leaving behind something of a financial muddle. We’ll have to find somewhere else in St Eloy now. Antoine is on the case.

And tomorrow I’ll be carrying on with the verticals if I can trouble myself to climb out of bed. The weather forecast is “no change”.

-9

Sunday 6th December 2009 – Christmas is coming …

… and everywhere is starting to be decorated. This is the little village of Le Quartier not too far away from here and you can see that they are having a good go at the USA-style of house decoration.

They’ve a long way to go and a lot to learn compared with some of the houses I saw on Long Island in 1999/2000 and I’m not sure whether I ought to be pleased that they are making an attempt to brighten the place up or dismayed that they are selling out to the USA again.

But you would never guess that it’s so close to Christmas. It’s 8 degrees outside and raining. We haven’t had a dry day since the 20th November, over 2 weeks ago. It has snowed though, so I’m told. Claude mentioned it the other day and I was totally sceptical except that Terry and Liz have also mentioned it. But I’ve seen nothing at all.

I came through Le Quartier on my way back from the footy. There were 3 matches this weekend, the 1st XI away at Lapeyrouse, the 2nd XI away at Beauregard Vendon and the 3rd XI at home to Montfermy. And of the 9 points on offer they managed to get just 1 and to everyone’s surprise the team that got the point was the 3rd XI. The other 2 lost. What would have been the odds on the 3rd XI getting more points than the other two teams combined? Good for them!

Tomorrow I’m going to be fitting the verticals in the stairwell. That’s going to keep me out of mischief for a while.

-5

Saturday 5th December 2009 – I’m all nice and clean for a change.

90 minutes in the swimming baths at Neris today followed by a nice warm shower – did me the world of good and when I change the bedding in a few minutes it will be wonderful. I’m going to have a nice lie-in as well tomorrow morning and make the most of it.

Montlucon shopping this morning, and I spent a fortune. Mind you, much of that was stuff for Christmas so it’s not unexpected. But I didn’t get myself a present though. Strange as it may seem, I couldn’t think of anything that I wanted and there definitely isn’t really anything that I need. I did however find some interesting DVDs in NOZ, the cheapo rubbishy shop that sells all kinds of end-of-range stuff. Their music selection is at times pretty good. Most French people haven’t heard of many obscure British or American musicians – that’s how I managed to buy that Nice triple-album a couple of months ago. But today, in the music DVD selection they had a huge collection of DVDs of live concerts. Most were rubbish but there were concerts by Tom Petty, Steve Winwood and by Steppenwolf. So at €3:50 a time I’ll be having a megamusic session on Christmas Day.

I’ve got some better prices for my new tyres too – a saving of about €40 and that includes Michelin “Alpine” winter tyres as well. Even at … errrr …. €360 for three tyres I reckon I might go for this.

This evening I saw Pionsat’s 3rd XI draw 1-1 with Montfermy. And they will be kicking themselves for the 2 points dropped rather that the one point gained, for Montfermy were by far and away the worst side I have ever seen and Pionsat’s 3rd XI had some good players out this evening too. And for once the defence played an immaculate game with the central defenders being in position and not wandering away for the whole of the match. They should have demolished this side.

Anyway, an early night beckons. And so does my clean bedding.

-8

Friday 4th December 2009 – If you look closely at this pic …

…you will see not only the wall painted white (that I did last night) but a new vertical that I’ve fitted – where I’ve uprooted some of the floor.

Well, it isn’t exactly fitted but merely stuck in position for now.

This morning I did some tidying up and so on and had a look at the batteries in the barn. One of them is going a bit duff and although I haven’t identified which one it is yet, I’ve identified the bank that it’s in and isolated that.

I’ve also been playing “hunt the tools” and collected up a few that were hanging around.

Claude came for a chat too and was here for about an hour. As you know, he had his open heart surgery back in the summer and since then he’s been told that he needs to walk 4 miles each day. For the last couple of days he’s been in hospital having a check-up so I asked him if that was his 5000 mile service.

This afternoon I cut the lets into the new beam and then had a look at where I’ll be putting the bedroom wall. That’s important as the lower half of the “U” shape of the stairs to the attic will be fastened to the verticals that will support the new bedroom wall. So I measured up where the central pillar will be – the one that the bedroom and bathroom doors will pivot around, and that’s the one that you can see in the image. The bathroom door will be between the two new verticals and the bedroom door will be to the left of the newest vertical.

In other news, I wanted to mention something about catchy soundbites and cliches. They are quite good when used in unexpected and novel ways but quite often they become hackneyed and banal. In other cases they are used totally out of place and when they do, they become ridiculous. Just like the one used yesterday by Baroness Ashton, the EU’s new Foreign Affairs spokesman (that’s all she is – a spokesman. She won’t have any influence at all on policy).

There was a kamikaze attack on a gathering of students in Somalia and she described it as “a cowardly attack against civilians“. Now I don’t know about anyone else reading this blog, but I wouldn’t call a kamikaze attack “cowardly”. I certainly haven’t the courage to do it, and I doubt if Baroness Ashton has either. If she would volunteer to undertake one I would gladly withdraw my accusation, but in the absence of such an announcement, the only word that I can use to describe her statement is “pathetic”. If this is the best spokesman that the EU can come up with and if this is the finest example of her speeches, then I cringe for the future of the EU. How can anyone take seriously an organisation that employs someone to make such stupid statements?

I suppose she thinks that it’s really brave of someone to sit in a bunker 5000 miles away from the action and presses a button to launch a rocket that kills civilians, or flies at an altitude of 50,000 feet and presses a button that drops a bomb that kills civilians?

But on this subject I want to draw your attention to a paragraph from a book that I have recently been reading. It concerns a man who undertook to wear a greatcoat loaded with explosives and detonate it – and himself – in the middle of a meeting. The author describes him as a man of “high courage and self sacrifice”. Definitely not cowardly at all.

So who was the author and what was the book? Well, the author was, would you believe, a westerner. Now isn’t that a surprise? He is Anthony Cave Brown, a journalist and historian. And in his book Bodyguard of Lies he is actually describing an attempted suicide attack on Hitler.

So there you have it – a westerner attempting to kill someone we don’t like – “high courage and self-sacrifice” but someone with a brown skin killing people about whom we neither know nor care – “cowardly”

I don’t know if you remember the episode “General Hospital” in Blackadder Goes Forth when General Melchett talks about the leak of information from the hospital
“One of our spies (brave heroic fellow!) says that one of their spies (filthy rotten bounder!) ….“
and we all laughed at that because it was funny. But here we are 20 years later and it’s all becoming true to life. As I have said before and I’ll probably say again, the blatant hypocrisy of the western world is totally staggering. No wonder no-one in the vast majority of the world (the 80-odd percent who aren’t westerners) can’t take seriously anything that we do and doesn’t believe a word that we say.

And for Baroness Ashton as EU Foreign Affairs spokesman opening her account by saying something so stupid and ridiculous, and also so hypocritical, I really do despair for the future of the west. We don’t stand a chance.

-6

Thursday 3rd December 2009 – I put it in

position – the final beam, as you can see. And it took quite a while to do as well.

Firstly I had to position the hangers and screw them in. It’s not possible to cut lets into the transverse beam as there are other beams let into the other side and so the nails are in the way. And the hangers have to be millimetre-perfect so that the floor will be level.

Then the beam needs to be cut to size and that has to be millimetre-perfect as well.

Thirdly, once the beam has been cut to size it needs to be lowered into position and it’s quite a heavy beam so doing it on my own was complicated to say the least. I dropped it down to the ground floor twice and so I nailed some cantilever outriggers across the gap so I could slide it into position.

Once it was in, I could drill through it into the wall in order to mark where the anchor bolts need to go.

And then I had to drill out the holes in the beam to 12mm and then drill the walls for the anchor bolts

Next was to fit the anchor bolts into the beam with just a small amount of the anchor visible

And then roll the beam back into position

And then line up the protruding anchors with the holes in the wall

And then get the beam as close up to the wall as possible

And then screw the beam to the hangers so that it’s in position

And then whallop the anchors through the beam into the holes in the wall.

It’s not tightened up anywhere as yet though – that’s because I want to fit the verticals and it’s only when they are in and fastened up that I van tighten the beam fastenings – that way it will all go into tension.

That took most of the day as it happened, and I finished off by painting with white acrylic paint the part of the wall in the stairwell that doesn’t already have paint on it. I do that because with cement-rendered walls the cement flakes off and makes dust that gets everywhere. The acrylic paint binds it together.

And in other news, OUSA has made the headlines again with the latest proposals for OUSA Sutures – that nasty little stitch-up of a document that proposes that all the OUSA delegates to the Students’ Annual Conference can go socialising (read “piss-up”) at OUSA’s (read “British taxpayers'”) expense and leave the business of running the Disorganisation to the Executive Committee – some of whom received as many as 5 votes from a student body of 180,000.

OUSA Sutures is a controversial document and has ignited all kinds of debate – most of which recognises it for the crap that it is. But to become OUSA Policy it needs to receive 2/3rds of the votes at Conference. At the last Conference there were a grand total of 137 delegates so it comes as no surprise to anyone to learn that in January there will be a meeting to discuss OUSA Sutures and OUSA has set aside a budget of £9.000 for the meeting. And who is being invited to the meeting? Why, 96 delegates to Conference.

Now firstly, can anyone tell me what proportion 96 bears to 137?
And secondly, the closing date for delegates to Conference will not have passed by the time this “briefing” is to take place. So how do they know who will be the delegates to Conference? Well, there’s always a “hard core” of delegates who go every year and who have become part of the furniture. And of course, there are the delegates that the Executive Committee cam approve to fill vacant places.

And so these “delegates”, just over 2/3rds of the number likely to attend, will be invited to a “briefing” long before their names are officially announced as delegates for their branches and before the branch nominations are even closed. They will each have £95 of OUSA’s (read “British taxpayers'”) money spent on their “hospitality”.

All I can say is that if they don’t show their “gratitude” at OUSA’s Conference next April they will have Caligula and her Horse and Pol Pot’s Sibling around to kick their collective @r$e$

-7

Wednesday 2nd December 2009 – If you look very carefully …

… at today’s image you will see the horizontal beam that I fitted yesterday. That will give you some kind of indication as to how wide the stairs up to the first floor will be. They will be fitted between that beam and the wall in the background – although there will need to be an allowance for the width of some insulation and plasterboard.

You can also see that I’ve fitted an upright into position in the new beam. This is level with the door into my attic on the floor above, and is where the head of the stairs will be for the floor below. To the right of the upright is where the bathroom is to be fitted – you can see the window that will be incorporated into there.

Yes, I’ve fitted one upright. And that will be the only upright that I’ll be fitting for a while too. The uprights are called chevrons – 63mm x 75mm and they need to be at least 4m long. Although the height between floors is only about 2m90, the chevrons need to project some way below the level of the floor so that I can secure the head of the stairs to them. And search as I have done all of the afternoon, I cannot find anywhere my stock of 4m chevrons. I’ve found the 3m and 3.5m ones, but not a single 4m one and that’s a perishing nuisance. I’ll have to wait until I go to Brico Depot at the weekend.

Mind you, while I was searching for the chevrons I discovered my missing beam. It was in the barn in the stack with all of the other new, unused wood. What a silly place to put it! Who on earth put it there?

Tomorrow I’ll be fitting the beam against the wall (if I can find my anchor bolts) and cutting the lets into it to take the verticals (whenever it may be that I will find them). I’ll have to think of something else to do on Friday which is a shame – I was hoping to have all of the verticals in place for this weekend so I could make a start on the stairs on Monday.

But then again it isn’t as if I don’t have anything else to do round here, is it?

-3

EPIC HALL

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