Tag Archives: eric hall

Sunday 1st November 2009 – I’ve finished the painting …

…and I’ve even started to lay the flooring. So much for my Sunday day of rest.

But the flooring needs to come up again. I was under the impression that there were only two different patterns in each packet but there are in fact four, so I need to re-plan how I’m going to lay them.

There was some paint left over to do the final wall, but I wasn’t sure whether there would be enough. So I added a cup-full of white paint and stirred it in. It didn’t go much lighter and it seemed to spread much easier too, so I wish I had done that from the very beginning. And when I finished, there was a cup-full of paint left over. And moving-in day looks much closer and I can’t wait.

The paint was described as “odourless” but it flaming well isn’t. The fumes have given me a headache which doesn’t seem to want to go and I’m off to bed in a minute.

But not before I tell you that I’m meeting this drummer on Wednesday.

-3

Saturday 31st October 2009 – I had another working day today.

This morning I masked off everywhere in the room and then went off to St Eloy for the shopping. I spent up in LIDL – they were having a musical day so I bought a couple of guitar stands and a guitar tuner.

Also buying a guitar stand was Michael – I haven’t seen him in ages.
“Do you play?” he asked me
“Yes – bass guitar” I replied.
“I’ve started to play electric guitar” he said

So we had quite a chat about guitars and music and other exciting stuff. I told him I was planning to get back on the road, and it turns out that he knows a drummer that lives near to him. He’s going to put me in touch with him
“You can come and join in too” I suggested
“I don’t know enough chords” he replied
“Look – Status Quo toured for 30 years and they only knew three chords!“
“I see what you mean“
I might be on to something here.

At Carrefour my favourite shop assistant (she’s the spitting image of a girl I used to work with) was there. But she’s had her hair cut!
“Who cut it for you?” I asked
“The coiffeur at St Pourcain” she replied
“Doesn’t he like you then?“

Back at home I spent the afternoon painting, as you can see. Half of the room is done, and I’ve used half of the paint. So it isn’t going to get a second coat any time soon. I’ve brushed it on too rather than rollered it – to make it go farther.

Krys’ suggestion of cream would have been an excellent choice but it’s a bit too late now. Blue will have to do. It’ll get the rest tomorrow and if I run out I can do one of the walls in white.

And while I was up on the ladder doing a complicated bit the blasted phone rang. I scrambled down, lowered the ladder down again and climbed down to the phone but just as I got there the perishing thing stopped ringing.

Once I’d finished the first tub of paint I cleaned myself up a bit and set off for Clotilde’s, who was having a farewell evening before she goes into hibernation at Annemasse. But I must have driven around Lapeize about three times and I couldn’t see her house. Nowhere with plenty of cars parked outside. Even some local yokel couldn’t set me right for her house so after gnashing my teeth I came back home again.

As you know I don’t do “social stuff”. It takes me a whole load of effort to get out of my house but it’s one of the things I need to do so I force myself. But it’s twice now I’ve been to some social event like this where the directions have been … errr …. rather vague and I’ve ended up not going. maybe it’s fate trying to tell me something.

In other news, LIDL has been having a British week and selling loads of traditional British stuff, most of which I imagine has never done anything more British than watch an episode of Coronation Street on satellite TV in some factory in South Korea. One of the things that they have on offer are boxes of Jelly Babies.
And do you know how you can tell which of a box of Jelly Babies are the illegitimate ones/
The answer is really easy.
If you turn the box upside down, all the b@$t@rd$ fall out.

-6

Friday 30th October 2009 – I forgot …

… to take a photo of yeasterday’s efforts so I took one first thing this morning.

You can see my paste table – two trestles and a couple of bits of OSB, but saying that it’s a paste table is somewhat of an exaggeration seeing as what I’m doing is actually pasting the walls instead. So you might as well say that it’s a cutting table.

But this fibreglass wallpaper is awful and I hate it. It’s making me itch, which is one thing, and it’s dreadful quality stuff. But at least it’s cheap and easy to hang when you are on your own

But I’m useless at wallpapering and I hate doing it. I remember the time when the long-suffering Nerina asked me to help her to wallpaper and paint the walls in Gainsborough Road back in 1991.
“I hate decorating” I said. “Whoever invented decorating wants f***ing!“
“That’s not what you said on our wedding night” she replied. “You said that whoever invented f***ing wants decorating!”

This is today’s photo and you can see that it’s taken in the evening as it’s dark outside, if you look through the door. The four LED lights give quite a pleasing effect to the room, don’t you think?

If you look closely you can see that all of the walls are now papered and ready for painting, which I may well do tomorrow seeing as there’s no footy this weekend.

And if you look closely you can’t see the scaffolding tower that has been up there since we had no roof on the premises back in July. With the now-redundant woodstove in position you can’t manoeuvre the scaffolding around the walls and in any case the step stool is a little higher and much easier to move around.

In the wooden boz is my bed-settee and I can’t wait to set it up. I’m looking forward to having my first night’s kip on it and that can be any day now.

-5

Thursday 29th October 2009 – I’ve been poncing today…

.. and I’ve got most of the walls pretty smooth but there’s still a little bit to do where I had to do some patching.

Once I’d done the patching though I started to sweep out the room and almost dropped a ton of rubbish and dust onto the top of Claude’s head – he’d popped round to inspect the work. We had a long natter about this and that – he’s got to go back to hospital in a few weeks time for a check-up. What with all of the walking that he does these days I told him it was his 6000-mile service.

This afternoon I had a really weird phone call. It was from some woman – I forget her name, not that it meant anything to me as I don’t know her anyway – who lives in Les Coursieres, a hamlet about 2km away from here. Apparently she is buying some furniture from Germany mail-order and they have asked her for her e-mail address. She doesn’t have one so she wants to know if she can have mine to give them!!!! I dunno why it is but my fame seems to be spreading around here just now.

Once I disposed of that I started on the wallpapering. I’ve done about a third of it and tomorrow morning, after finishing the poncing, I’ll do the rest. But it’s looking much more like a home now.

In other news, on Tuesday Terry and I were discussing football and how all of the fun seems to have gone out of it. We said that even the hurling of abuse at opposition footballers seems to have gone out of the window and that there would soon be nothing left to go to the matches for. Of course, what with truth being stranger than fiction, no sooner do we discuss it than there is a news article about it. Football as an interactive spectator sport is dying, more’s the pity. All I can say is that I will stand in the centre of any football stadium you care to name for 90 minutes every Saturday and let 50,000 football fans say whatever they like about me and my family, for just a quarter of the money that Craig Bellamy gets, the big wimp.

-5

Wednesday 28th October 2009 – One thing that you need to understand …

… when you read my adventures is that I never ever make any mistakes. What I do is that I learn a lot, and sometimes learning can be expensive. In the olden days in the Wild West (yesterday in South Carolina, Rhys) greenhorns were continually being cheated at cards by people called “Doc”, and whenever anyone ever said anything, the response always was “you have to pay to learn“.

And so it is with house renovations.

And having got the preamble out of the way, let us now discuss the woodstove.

I lined the base with damp sand as required, and assembled a fire inside. “You need a 6x6x6″ fire, and be careful that it does not touch the sides“. How you do this when you have a fire that is 5.5×5.5×5.5” no-one actually said. But anyway I did my best and it toook ages to get going, but I slowly warmed it up. And when I was happy that it was burning I started on the grouting of the bricks I laid the other day (much more useful that laying eggs, I can tell you)

Halfway through the grouting the phone rang, so I opened the door to climb down the ladder to the phone, and “Blimmin’ ‘eck!” You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face with the smoke, and the fumes were overpowering. All through the house, even in my little room, was a pall of black smoke. I was appalled. as was the smoke.

Normally I would expect that the hot air would rise up the stovepipe and carry the soot and ash with it. When they burst out into the chimney the hot air would rise creating a current of air from the chimneys below, which would pull up the soot and ash. But not a bit of it. The soot and ash had descended in the chimney and come out at the bottom. So much for free circulation. And so much for the woodstove too.

I was toying with the idea of lining the chimney and putting the stovepipe all the way up to the outside, and I wish I had done it now. I can’t get the pipe in now that I’ve done the walls and so basically the woodstove will have to be put on hold while I think about this.

It’s not the end of the world though as I have the bottled gas heater, but I was hoping to get away from fossil fuels and go for a more natural source. What is going to be a major problem is that if the soot and ash can get from the attic to the living room it can also do the return journey when I light the fire down here. And that will be “an issue”.

Today’s image is entitled “What I saw when I opened the door”.

On the phone, as it happened, was a member of OUSA’s Executive Committee who wanted a chat. Of course I shan’t name names as talking to me is punishable by a “visit” from Pol Pot’s sibling, a whine from Caligula and her horse, and a thorough dressing-down from Turdi de Hatred (not to mention a thorough dressing up, in fairy boots if I remember correctly, by Lee “I’m a prostitute” Potty-mouth. But I digress – something that you ought to be used to by now)

I’ve now done all the grouting and the filling, and I started poncing (But not in fairy boots) this evening. Tomorrow will be finishing off the poncing, cleaning up the room and making a start on the wallpapering. D-Day is getting closer.

-5

Tuesday 27th October 2009 – You can guess what Terry and I have been doing today.

For a change I was up nice and early and with Caliburn fully loaded with scaffolding we nipped round to Terry’s to unload.

Then it was back here again to load up all of the rest and it was quite a struggle to move Caliburn what with everything in it. But there’s much less stuff to trip over around here now and I won’t be using the scaffolding before springtime.

Anyway, after a lunch of lentil soup (you might have guessed that there was an ulterior motive) we put up the scaffolding at the back of the house. Terry is keen to get some pointing done before the bad weather hits here. We managed to put it up without any major mishap. I avoided falling into the septic tank although I did put my foot into the drain.

You can see how impressive it is, this scaffolding. And this is by no means all of it. There are still two bays up at the side of my house where I need to do some pointing, and there’s a pile more that we didn’t put up yet. This scaffolding is a veritable bargain.

What was weird though was the weather. You know that I go on about the microclimates around here – at Terry and Liz’s the weather was as calm as a millpond yet at my place there was a howling raging gale with the wind turbine going round like the clappers.

Tea was vegan nut roast and veg followed by baked apple and vegan ginger and chocolate cake. And also an Eric bag full of leftovers. As I have said before, whenever there is an appeal for volunteers to do some work at Liz and Terry’s you get trampled to death in the stampede.

I also took advantage of the situation by asking whether I might use the shower there.
“I think it ought to be compulsory” said Terry
sniff> sniff> “I think you might be right“

-5

Monday 26th October 2009 – I didn’t do an awful lot today.

In fact, it was a day of interruptions.

Starting as we mean to go on, I wasn’t upstairs 10 minutes before the phone rang. The man from Nazar …. errr… DHL rang to seek directions to chez moi. I carried on with tidying up last night’s wiring efforts and Terry rang, asking if he could borrow my compressor.

Then Terry came round – and he helped me finish the wiring. I was struggling to get the 2x10mm cables for the heater element through the conduit – not something it’s easy to do yourself, so while Terry started it off I went to look for my patent cable dragger. And by the time I came back with it, Terry had threaded it through on his own. It pays to have an expert around the place.
In fact, I had a friend who was acknowledged as an expert by everyone else.
But in that case, it was spelt ex-spurt and ex is a has-been and spurt is a drip under pressure.

After that the man from DHL turned up with a little package for me, and then it was lunchtime.

Once lunch was over I played the usual game of “hunt the keys for Caliburn” and when I eventually found them I drove Caliburn round the back here and loaded him full of scaffolding to take round to Terry tomorrow – all the time half-expected to be confronted by The Ghost Of Farmer Parrett and his pitchfork again.

In the attic I did manage to do some work today. All of the chimney is now connected up, sealed and clamped together, and I’ve also done something to the concrete base.

If you follow the comments to the various entries (they are often the most exciting part) you’ll know that Krys and I have been discussing the edging to the concrete. I wanted to put a raised edge around it although Krys thinks (and rightly so) that it will be difficult to keep clean.

I’m still worried about flying embers though, but there’s no point in soliciting advice if you don’t intend to take any notice, so what I did was to put a raised edge around the front and most of the sides, and leave the back open so I can brush out around there.

And what did the man from DHL want? Well, he brought me my new lens that I talked about the other day. And that was quick delivery – I wish Amazon would be this quick from the States. And €36 customs and charges – that’s an enormous rip-off if you ask me.

I’m disappointed with the lens though. It’s very small and you would hardly notice it. Freud had a thing or two to say about camera lenses, something along the lines of them being substitutes for part of the anatomy in the same way that guns and sports cars might be. And I was hoping for a whopper. The filter size is 49mm, which I don’t have, so that means a 20-quid order to the 7-Day Shop.

The lens is a manual focus (not a problem because with the footy, the focus is always “full on”) and that reminds me of a story I heard about the two blondes on the beach, being approached by the beach photographer.
“Keep still” said one. “He’s going to focus!“
“What? Both of us?“

-6

Sunday 25th October 2009 – It was 9:03 when I woke up this morning

I thought to myself that that can’t be right – and it wasn’t.

Well, it was because in fact the clocks went back this morning and we are now on real time, although by yesterday’s time it would have been 10:03 and that is much more like a respectable time to wake up on a Sunday.

So having breakfasted I had to do a CD of footy photos for Xavier. He has some friends who play for Cebazat and I had photographed them the other week so he had asked me for copies of what I had. And as I was meeting him at Beauregard Vendon where the 3rd XI were playing this afternoon I needed to get my skates on.

First stop though was the fete de la pomme at La Cellette. I’d been invited by Marianne so I went along to say hello. Antoine, Liz and Terry were there so we had a good chat and then it was off to the footy.

Pionsat’s luck ran out today – they only had 10 players and not one of them was what could be called a goalkeeper. For much of the match Xavier was in goal and today’s pic features him diving to push a Beauregard shot round the post for a corner. There was precious little else to cheer.

On the way back home I went via the brocante at St Gervais. And what a waste of time that was. Most of the stallholders were Dutch and if you are a keen follower of my blog you will know that the problem with the Dutch is that they have no word for gratis. I was looking for a metal bucket or something similar to take away my ashes (well, not mine, the ashes out of the stove) but there was nothing that would do. Some stallholder had a battered aluminium casserole and he wanted €4:00 for it. It’s not very often I come away from a brocante empty-handed. Mind you, I met Gilles and Heidi there and we had had a good chat.

Back home I plucked up the courage to tackle that wiring job seeing as it was now dark. I took me about an hour to do it, most of which time was spent trying to fish the torch out from downbehind the battery box.

We’ll know tomorrow whether it works properly.

-8

Saturday 24th October 2009 – I have just seen …

…the most amazing game of footy that I have seen in years. In the driving torrential rain, 5 minutes to go and Pionsat trailing 3-1. Heads down, Montel-Villosanges on the rampage, crowds streaming out of the ground, etc etc.

And in a most astonishing and dramatic 3 minutes, Pionsat have three attacks and somehow, unbelievably, score 3 goals to end up the winners in a match that they never ever deserved to win.

Earlier in the evening the 2nd XI had played Menetrol and won 3-2 in a match that was scarred by controversy and had I been refereeing Pionsat would not have had two of their goals. For one of them, the Menetrol keeper takes a clean catch of a high ball but has come out with his foot up to ward off the Pionsat attacker. Now personally I think that if a keeper comes out with his foot raised then it’s “dangerous play” and if his foot does catch the attacker it really ought to be a penalty. You see this kind of thing in every match that you watch and even when there’s a collision a penalty has never ever been given. Yet tonight there was a collision and the ref gave the penalty. Like I say, quite right too but it would not have been given anywhere else.

Pionsat’s second goal I didn’t catch on camera. For the simple reason that I, like all of the crowd, like the Menetrol defence and like most of the Pionsat players except the guy with the ball, was waiting for the referee to blow the whistle in response to the linesman’s flag for probably the clearest offside I have ever seen. The linesman hurled his flag to the floor in disgust, and who can blame him? Normally the dubious decisions always seem to go against Pionsat so it’s about time they had some luck. But still ….

This morning I dodged the torrential rainstorm and went into Montlucon. At LIDL they were selling a video capture kit that enables you to plug your video recorder into your computer and copy al of your old tapes. I’ve been looking for one of these for years and at €19.95 it’s a bargain. I forgot more than I remembered at Brico Depot but I’ve got most of what I need now for my room and I’ll have to do without the rest.

And it’s still raining.

-6

Friday 23rd October 2009 – Even more Fiat Lux

You might think that this photo is rather blurred and underexposed, but it was taken with just 2.4 watts of light.

This morning I wired in the 230-volt lights but for some reason (presumably because of my bragging yesterday) I couldn’t get them to work. While I was musing on the subject Terry and Liz turned up so Terry (who is a sparky in his day job) had a quick look and noticed that I’d wired the light switch up wrong.

D’oh!

So once we’d got the wires in the right hole we had some light! All 2.4 watts of mains LEDs and you can’t dispute the brightness of those. This pic was taken from outside the room at 20:00 when it was pitch black outside.

You can also see the pot-bellied stove too. It’s all assembled and in place and it’s tiny. I’ve been cutting wood to a length of 30cms and I’ll need to cut that in half again in order to get it to fit in the aperture.

And would you believe that the chimney that came with it is the wrong size! The aperture is 107mm and the chimney pipe is 117mm. After much messing around I cut down another piece of chimney, sliced it downwards, fitted it inside the aperture (there’s a rim to stop it going into the fire) and lined the slice and the joint with fire cement. The natural springiness sprung it back into a tight fit and the fire cement should seal it, and then I sleeved the chimney over the top. Tomorrow I need to get a joining piece for where I had to cut the pipe and then I can fit the chimney stack completely.

I’ve also grouted the tiling. Krys was right when she said that grouting covers a multitude of sins. But there must have been more than a multitude with the tiling that I did.

Terry, while he was here, had a good look at my door.
“Do you know” he said, “that you can buy doors that come supplied with the doorframe?”
“Hmmmmm. I can see the advantages of that“.

-5

Thursday 22nd October 2009 – FIAT LUX!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-3

Wednesday 21st October 2009 – WHAT YOU CAN’T SEE …

… in this pic is all the varnish on the tongue and grooving. That’s because, for once in my life, I’ve found some clear varnish that really is clear.

So clear in fact that I couldn’t see where I was up to each time. I was impressed with that.

What you also can’t see is all of the rubbish, debris, sawdust, polystyrene offcuts and the like. I decided to start by tidying up and picking up all of the stuff.

And after half an hour of this I thought “This is ridiculous – I’ll be here forever” and got out the yard brush. One reason why I started from the top is that you brush the rubbish downwards.

And when I get to the ground floor? well, that’s easy. I’m putting in a suspended floor and all of the rubbish can go underneath.

Which reminds me – it rained today – about 8mms – and I happened to put my hand on the sandy soil that is the ground floor of the house (at least where I dug out for the battery box) and it is as damp as heck. A suspended floor is pretty much essential, I reckon.

And while I’m on the subject of that, now that I have the door on upstairs, the temperature is keeping pace more-or-less with what I get in my room. But it’s a totally different kind of temperature – like it’s a dry temperature upstairs and a damp wet one down here. I’m surprised I haven’t caught pleurisy living in here and I can’t wait to move in upstairs.

I’ve also installed all of the light fittings upstairs and started on the plugs at the “other” end of the room. It looks like I’m heading for an electrical day tomorrow.

-4

Tuesday 20th October 2009 – And so, to make up for last night …

… you can have two images this evening.

The first image is of the door, which is now hanging where it is supposed to be.

And not without some effort either. Don’t look too closely at it as it’s a bit of a mess.

I told you that the door was too large for the opening that I made, and I cut the bottom of the door so that the height was perfect. One of the edges needed to be trimmed and as the doorframe is out of perpendicular (how on earth did that happen?) it needed to be cut in a slight diagonal. And I was halfway through the cut when I realised I was cutting it upside down so the diagonal was going the wrong way. So now we have an an inverted arrowhead-shaped door, a padded doorframe on the bottom half of one side and on the other side the hinges on the top have had to be shimmed with washers.

In fact, it’s quite a shambles from that point of view.

But on the other hand, I mortised the door latch and lock into the frame and I’m quite impressed with how that has come out. I’ve also chiselled out the door so that the hinges will sit flush to the surface, and that’s turned out quite well. It closes absolutely perfectly so all in all, with that part of it it’s turned out quite well.

That was the morning and some of the afternoon taken care of, and for the rest of the afternoon I tiled the concrete pad that I had laid on Saturday. That’s turned out quite well too, and when it’s finished off it will look quite nice. I’m going to get some small bricks and build a raised edge to it, to stop ashes and the like falling onto the floor. I was planning to get those on Monday in Montlucon but those people who wanted to talk to me about fitting solar panels – they never got back to me. A pity that, as I would have gone into Montlucon on Saturday instead of going to St Eloy.

Mond you, going to St Eloy on Saturday had two noteworthy items that were so noteworthy that I forgot to mention them.
Firstly, LIDL now has the Christmas goodies in, so I bought a couple of bars of marzipan. They also do some nice soggy gingerbread biscuity things covered in plain chocolate, and that’s this weekend’s Christmas purchase.
Secondly, I saw an Opel Ascona (Vauxhall Cavalier to the Brits reading this) on the Carrefour car park, and it had rotten sills. Now when was the last time you saw a car with rotten sills? Back in the 70s and 80s I was welding sills onto cars all of the time but how often do you see a rotten car now? When I had my taxis I was buying 8 year-old cars and having to weld them up. You don’t ever do that now. In fact the last time I had my welding stuff out was to patch the Passat exhaust and I was still living with Laurence and Roxanne, so that’s at least 10 years ago.

Tomorrow, I’ll be starting on the varnishing of the tongue and grooving. That’s what I call progress.

-1

Monday 19th October 2009 – No photo today, folks.

I was too busy.

I started off this morning with the door to the room. Now you may remember that I carefully measured the door, worked out exactly how large the door opening needed to be, and I constructed it perfectly. And badger me if the door, the contrary item that it is, hasn’t grown 1cm in height and 2cms in width since I measured it and constructed the opening!

Luckily the circular saw rose to the task and dealt with the bottom and just as I was getting ready to do the side, Dave stuck his head around the door. So we spent the rest of the morning discussing the plumbing arrangements for the house. He reckons he can get something sorted out for me and he’ll teach me how to do plumbing next spring when he’s over again.

That reminds me – listening to 2 advertising executives talking about a colleague
“I taught him all he knows”
“All he knows?”
“Yes, all he knows. Not all I know – just all HE knows”

In the afternoon Dave helped me get my bed up into the attic and then we discussed the old office desk I have in the barn. I used it as a workbench but seeing as I made a new workbench last year it’s been redundant. So why don’t we get it into the attic?

Famous last words, those. I don’t know if anyone remembers Bernard Cribbins and “Right Said Fred“? That’s how we were up all the stairs. But it dismantles much more than you might think when you look closely at it, especially when you have it stuck halfway up a ladder and you can neither take it up nor down. So after much exertion and a great deal of bad language I now have a desk up there.

In February he’s thinking of going down to Southern Spain for some sun. I saw a photo of Gibraltar harbour the other day and I must admit that it did look quite enticing, especially with Africa looming just across the straits. I might be tempted to tag along if I can find some dosh.

And talking of voyages, Danielle was talking at the Anglo-French group tonight about going to the USA when she retires, but she doesn’t want to go alone. Perhaps I ought to look into this kind of thing as some kind of alternative career – professional holidaymaker-cum-companion-cum-guide-cum-bodyguard
“That’s a lot of …..”
“You said that the other day!”

But I dunno about an alternative career, whether I might have time for one, for following on to my posting last night I have been asked by the local correspondent for the local rag if I might accompany her to the Potato Fair (we don’t half have some fun events round here) at La Cellette on Sunday. Now that’s an invitation I find very hard to turn down, and for more reasons than just one!

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Sunday 18th October 2009 – In another major departure …

… from my usual schedule, I have been working on a Sunday morning.

Well, sort-of morning, because it was somewhat late when I heaved myself out of my stinking pit. And after breakfast, there was a little bit of morning left so I decided I would tile the back wall behind the concrete base I laid yesterday.

You can see that tiling is yet another one of the things that I’m no good at and it doesn’t help not having a wall that’s perfectly upright and straight either. But then again, it’s done and a blind man would be pleased to see it. And it’ll probably look better when it’s been grouted. But that’s not going to be for a while. At least all of the wood that will be stacked up in here to burn when the stove is connected won’t damage the wallpaper and the tiles will be easy to clean.

There’s a story behind these tiles too. When I was living with Laurence and her daughter Roxanne, Roxanne’s class at school decided that they would make some mosaics out of broken tiles and the teacher asked all of the parents to send their kids to school with some broken tiles. I didn’t have any in those days so I rang up a tile fitter I knew to see if he had any.
“Come round and I’ll give you some” he said.

So I went round and he loaded up my car with about half a tonne of tiles. Some were broken but many were undamaged and far too good to send to school so I brought them down here. And as my room is going to be light blue, I had a good rummage through the pile of tiles and found a load of light blue ones.

And here you are.

15:30 when I knocked off for lunch and then this afternoon I’ve been doing my coursework. I have to get back into this studying thing again.

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EPIC HALL

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