Tag Archives: eric hall

Friday 18th September 2009 – MORE HEAVY ENGINEERING.

If you look at the pic you’ll notice firstly that I’ve added the second floor beam. The gap in between the two new ones is just over 65cms and that’s going to be the width of the stairs.

There’s also a cross-beam added to the floor. This is embedded in the two new beams and the two older beams to the left. The third beam (the first of the old ones) is rather thin, having been devoured by some kind of obnoxious animal And as this beam will be taking the weight of people entering into the room in the attic and the wall that’s holding it up going to be knocked out, there will be a few more cross beams to spread the load.

The second upright is in, and all the cross pieces have been added. It looks rather like Richard Hauptman’s Ladder except that it’s much stronger. It will be to the right of here that I’ll be installing my desk and office (such as it is) and the bathroom will be underneath.

It took me ages to make all of the joints and to cut the wood to size, but you have to do it properly – not like my first attempt – the verandah – where you can walk in through the gaps in the joints.

In this case I cut the wood slightly over-long and the joints slightly under-size and then filed everything down to fit. And it isn’t half impressive – all millimetre-perfect.

After that I mixed some cement and went round and filled in some of the holes in the wall that I missed.

As I have said, you can tell when I’m enjoying myself by the time it is that I knock off. 19:20 today, and I knew it too, but there was no way I was going to stop until I’d finished what I set out to do.

For the music today, I had just one double album on continuous loop – another album that has been on my playlist almost from the day it came out. It’s surprising how many live albums are on my playlist but this is one that beats almost every one – Dire Straits’ best album by a million miles, Alchemy Live.

Besides having the very best Dire Straits track ever, the vastly underrated “Telegraph Road”, it contains in my opinion the definitive versions of “Sultans of Swing” and “Tunnel of Love” – the latter with the line
From Cullercoats to Whitley Bay
reminding me of a trip I made from Cullercoats to Whitley Bay a couple of years ago in the company of someone who is no longer with us.

What I don’t like about the album though is Mel Collins. There is no place in a good rock band for a saxophone as indeed Mark Knopfler admits in “Sultans of Swing”
Don’t give a damn about any trumpet-playing bands
It ain’t what they call “Rock and Roll!
and furthermore I absolutely detest with a fury those bands that bring on “special guest stars” to augment their numbers.

If I go to a concert I expect to see the band performing on its own and to hear the music that they can play. If I wanted to hear Mel Collins and his blasted saxophone (not that I do) I’d go and find a King Crimson concert somewhere.

Tomorrow is shopping day again. Insulation, tongue-and-grooving, varnish, wallpaper, paste, filler and tape (GRRRR at Krys and Rhys) paint tiles, refractory tile cement and a woodstove.

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Thursday 17th September 2009 – I STARTED ON THE HEAVY ENGINEERING TODAY

I’ve fitted the first of the new floor beams, and also one of the uprights that will enclose the head of the stairs.

And I’ll tell you now – that Hitachi battery-powered SDS drill that Terry ordered for me from Screwfix is phenomenal. It went right into the stonework of the house – with a bit of effort it has to be said – but nevertheless it drilled the holes for 4 big anchor bolts and it’s held them firmly.

So, what’s the plan?

Well, it all revolves around windows of which there aren’t all that many. The stairs up to the attic rise from bottom-right to top left as you can see and there’s a window at the bottom of the flight.

What I’m doing is to make a U-pattern staircase that will go from the centre of the attic (just where the window is in fact) down to the left and then round back on itself. This will be enclosed by a wall around the upright and a couple more of its friends.

To the right of the upright will be covered over with flooring and that’s the bit that I will be using as my office. It’s 2.1 metres from there to the front wall of the house.

The stairs are going to be narrower – 65cms instead of 1m so with an allowance for the woodwork the double width of the U shape will be 1.50m.

And where the stairs will stop at the floor below will give me a an empty space of 2.1 m by 1.5m which will have a window in it (the window that is currently at the foot of the existing staircase) and that empty space will eventually become the bathroom (but not any time soon).

Do you understand that?
If so, would you mind explaining it to me?

Mind you, it wasn’t straightforward. I had to open the window-that-will-be-the-bathroom-window to heave a few old chevrons out – but the blasted thing fell to pieces in my hands. I know that it needs to be replaced and indeed it will be but I hoped it would last for another year or two.

So there I was having to patch and screw it back together before I’d even got started. And mauling huge beams up into the attic isn’t my idea of fun either. In the end I ended up cutting that one down to size outside.

After I’d finished and had my well-earned cup of coffee I had to nip into Pionsat and empty the chemical beichstuhl.I hate doing that when there are people around so finding the village square overrun with the fairground attractions rather put me off my stride.

Hence I nipped round to the other publics across the way from the village hall and of course it’s Thursday – dancing lessons night – and half the Anglo-French group were there with Mark standing outside. It was just not my lucky day.

And talking of it not being my lucky day I’ve now run out of vegan chocolate cake. I wonder if Terry needs any more wood moving.

-2

Wednesday 16th September 2009 – WE ARE GOING TO …

… have a major change of plan.

This morning despite the torrential downpour and Novemberish weather I finished off the plasterboarding as far as I could on the walls. I’ve done exactly one half of it – one complete end (save for 2 places around the window that just require small offcuts from somewhere else) and half of each of the side walls.

I can’t do the rest of the side walls until I lay the flooring there and I can’t do that until I reposition the floor beams.

But you will notice that the ceiling has grown some battens and some of the chevrons have now been covered in white stuff.

What on earth is going on?<

After doing the walls, I cut the first piece of plasterboard to do the ceiling. Not too big – not too heavy. But it was too heavy to hold with one hand while nailing it to the chevrons.

And when I finally managed to attach it (after much manoeuvering and bad language) the weight of the plasterboard pulled it out through the nails. I even invented a kind-of tracking to run it along so that I could glue it in place and then nail it and I was struggling along with that.

90 minutes passed and I still hadn’t done it and then I have another 30 or so to do afterwards. I could clearly see that I would have a major sense of humour failure long before I finished. So it was time for a coffee and a pause for thought

This has led to a major change in direction which will be greeted with hoots of derision from many lurkers to this blog but ask me if I care.

I have a theory in life that I learnt from a very early age due to the family that I had at the time, and that is that if you can’t do a job on your own then you do something else that you can do on your own.

And that is why the idea of plasterboarding the ceiling has now been consigned to the dustbin of history (good job I only bought half the load) and the ceiling is going to be tongue-and-grooved whether I like it or not.

So I spent the remainder of the afternoon fitting battens on the ceiling and putting up between the chevrons the rest of the polystyrene that I didn’t use.

On Saturday I’ll be buying another 35 square metres of insulation and 40 square metres of tongue-and-groove. I can fit that quite easily on my own … “famous last words” – ed.

I also had a very bad attack of nostalgia too. Playing all of these ancient cassette tapes at random, suddenly Camel appeared on the scene with Rain Dances and Mirage.

I was immediately transported back to 1975, the lagoon-blue Ford Cortina PMB270D and Jackie Marshall.

She was still at school but worked on Saturdays in Nantwich library and each weekshe would surf through the new records that they obtained. “Eric would like that” – and smuggle it out for me to tape and then smuggle back in afterwards.

And it looks like I’ve now hit 1975 and so there will be heaps of Caravan, Hawkwind and all other exciting stuff from Nantwich library hitting the airwaves in the attic in the next few days – all groups that she and I used to go and see back in those days.

I wonder whatever happened to her? She was quite cute and sweet but her parents hated me with a vengeance and our relationship was destined not to last.

One day while I was driving for Shearings I stopped off in Whitchurch (Shropshire) to get some cash out of Barclay’s Bank and who should be working behind the counter? We had a brief chat but you can’t spend too much time with a queue of people behind you and I never saw her again after that.

I dunno. What with piles of Marillion and the ghost of Jackie Marshall up there in the attic, it’s a good job there isn’t any Leonard Cohen. If I don’t blog any more after this entry, it’s because I will have found a copy of Ralph McTell’s “Streets of London” and strung myself up in the beichstuhl.

-6

Tuesday 15th September 2009 – IF YOU COMPARE THIS PIC …

… to the pic of yesterday you will notice a change. In fact I’ve started to add the plasterboard to the walls.

First thing in the morning I finished off the battens and then set up a workstation outside with everything I need to measure and cut the plasterboard. I’ve been cutting it into manageable sizes and so although it looks like a patchwork quilt I can’t see any other way of getting it into the attic by way of the ladder that I’m using.

Terry recommended glueing the plasterboard to the battens but it was a hell of a job getting the polystyrene to stick. It wasn’t possible to put the pressure on at the right places and it kept on springing off. I held it on with some speed clamps but that didn’t work and so I tacked them on with nails – and then I thought “badger this for a game of soldiers. If I’m using nails I may as well nail the boards to the battens and forget about the glue”.

It’s not very pretty but I’m going to have to use filler anyway in the joints so mixing more filler to fill the nail heads is neither here nor there. It’s still going to be quicker than waiting for the glue to dry on each individual panel.

Claude poked his head in and had a look – and he’s quite impressed. The last time he was here we hadn’t finished the roof tiling. That was a month ago and doesn’t that seem like a long time ago? We had sun in those days – not like today. I had to put a jumper on as the temperature has now plummeted. In a valiant attempt not to light the heating, I now have a fleece jacket on as well. The first frost of the autumn can’t be far away.

In other news, at the Anglo-French group yesterday I was working with Antoine Ged. He’s the former postmaster (now retired) and his English is surprisingly good. He lent me a book to read – entitled Managing in Turbulent Times. This is another one of the Alvin Tofler – The Third Wave kind of books that were written 30 years ago forecasting how the world would look at the turn of the 21st Century. And while many predictions were totally wide of the mark, many others were surprisingly, if not astonishingly accurate.

In one chapter on the subversion of democracies, Drucker (the author of “Turbulent Times”) writes
“such a process (of subverting democracy) is doubly important …in which small, single-minded, often paranoid groups have attained a power out of all proportion to their actual size”
Now I bet you any money that many people are waiting for me to make a nasty and cheap crack about an organisation that many of us know and love. But not a bit of it. May I draw your attention to the key word in the quote from Drucker – a word that has as its middle two letters “NG” and not “MP” and so it can’t possibly apply.

But of course the Open University Students’ Association Executive Committee does in fact speak with a single mind (except when the OUSA President crawls out of her sick bed at the Annual Conference to oppose a motion in respect of which the rest of the Executive Committee is speaking in favour – but more of this anon) but that single (“do you mean “simple?” – ed) mind does not belong to any of the elected members of the committee.

No more graphic example of this that the one that was reported to me by one of my moles on various committees – taking a well-earned break from all kinds of activities at the last Annual Conference – who happened to be present when the much-maligned Turdi de Hatred very generously invited the members of the retiring Executive Committee to dinner at the University canteen.
The waitress approached the table at which Turdi and the members of the committee were sitting and asked
“is madam ready to order?”
“I’ll have the steak!” announced Turdi
“And the vegetables?”
“They’ll have the steak too!”

-2

Monday 14th September 2009 – I’VE DONE MOST …

… of the counter-battens today.

That is, the end wall, two thirds of a side wall and half of the other side wall. I just have to finish up that wall to two-thirds of its length, which will take me about half an hour tomorrow, and then I’m going to have a go with the plaster board.

The reason why I’m only doing two thirds of the sides and one end wall is that that is all the flooring that I’ve laid so far. I can’t do the rest until I build up the roof of the bathroom and the wall around the staircase and while it makes good sense to do it all at once, the fact is that I have 13 sheets of plasterboard (about two-thirds of what I need) outside at the mercy of the weather (fancy it not being able to fit inside Caliburn) so it needs to be utilised pretty quickly.

I’m starting with the easy bits – the vertical part of the side walls – to give me confidence in handling it. I’ll do the complicated bits when I develop a technique.

As I was driving down the lane on my way to St Gervais for the Anglo-French group, I bumped (not literally) into Claude. He’s been in hospital having open heart surgery and he wasn’t discharged, he was expelled. He’s leaner and fitter than he ever was and looks so much better. I was quite relieved when I heard that the surgery had been a success.

And in other news, autumn has arrived. It’s currently 17 degrees in my little room and that’s with the light and the computer on and with me in the room. That’s the lowest it’s been for ages. I’ll be having the heating on in here before much longer.

-6

Sunday 13th September 2009 – WELL, I MADE THE WRONG DECISION THERE.

Pionsat’s 2nd XI had won the third division championship at a canter last year. The defence was pretty shaky but the attack was phenomenal and they had swept everyone aside.

So when they ran out onto the pitch for their first match in the 2nd division with 3 or 4 people whom I didn’t recognise, a couple of players who had been in the 3rd XI last season and hadn’t inspired me too much and the star forward playing at centre-half, I had a sense of foreboding.

As for Pontaumur, they had finished 2nd in the second division last season and were unlucky not to win the championship. I’d seen them play Pionsat’s 1st XI in the cup last season and they had made it look easy. So that made my sense of foreboding even worse.

And sure enough, Pontaumur were 3-0 up before Pionsat even touched the ball. It was 6-0 at half-time and the final score – 8-1 – was something of a let-off for Pionsat.

Mind you it could have been worse. Pionsat’s ist XI were playing at Miremont just down the road. Miremont had just pipped Pontaumur for the 2nd Division championship last year and were promoted to the 1st Division. Pionsat scored with the 3rd kick of the game and at half-time they were 8-0 up.

Seeing as how close were the two matches we did suggest that the teams swap games for the second half – the 1st XI coming to Pontaumur and the 2nd XI going to Miremont. The game at Miremont finished with an incredible 12-1 scoreline in favour of Pionsat. And that is unbelievable. I wish I had gone there instead.

Yesterday there was the most incredible coincidence. The highest temperature in my little room was 21.9 degrees. In the attic it was … er … 21.9 degrees. The lowest temperature in my room was 18.6 degrees and in the attic it was … er … 18.6 degrees.

And this morning, in the verandah (which I’m using as the kitchen while I live temporarily in the kitchen) there was a dead mouse. Surely my cooking isn’t as bad as that?

-3

Saturday 12th September 2009 – GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

The footy season commenced this evening and Pionsat’s 3rd XI (who were in action aganst Neuf-Eglise’s 2nd team) started where they left off at the end of last season. Damian in goal with his teflon gloves and a 3-0 defeat.

The 1st XI are in action at Miremont and the 2nd XI are in action at Pontaumur tomorrow afternoon. Both away from home and I haven’t been to either ground before so I’m rather spoilt for choice. I can go to Pontaumur again as their 3rd XI are in the same division as Pionsat’s 3rd XI but seeing as it’s the 2nd XI’s 1st game in Division 2 following their promotion, I reckon I’ll be wandering off there to give them my (im)moral support.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I went into Montlucon today and spent a record low 200 Euros at Brico Depot.

And there is a good reason for that. Most sheets of construction material are of a standard size – 2.40 metres long. And short wheelbase Ford Transits are 2.42 metres long in the load bed to take this into account. So I have absolutely no idea why sheets of insulation-backed plasterboard weigh in at 2.50. It’s totally illogical.

I need about 20 for my attic but of course they won’t go inside Caliburn with the door shut and you can’t drive 30 kms with both the back doors wide open, and you can’t leave them in the back of the van until you need them. So if you stand them sideways upright with just one door half-open you can get 13 in which is enough to be going on with, particularly as you have to unload them and put them somewhere (like standing upright outside the house covered by a tarpaulin).

And they are big and awkward to manoeuvre. There’s no way I’ll be getting these up the ladder into the attic in one piece. I’m going to have to cut them to shape outside and then get them up into the attic. And where I could in theory fit a whole one, it’s still going to have to be cut in at least half so I’ll be able to handle it safely.

Mind you, the spending spree continued as I ordered my bed-settee (340 Euros) and my occasional table (I don’t know yet what it is for the rest of the time) and I had to pay a 25% deposit. It’ll all be ready for early October which is my deadline for doing the attic out. A lot of money for a bed-settee you might think, but I’ll be spending a lot of time on it and so I may as well be comfortable.

They also had a really comfortable office chair (like the old one in Brussels that I have curled up and slept in on numerous occasions) and a really dinky miniature gas cooker which has caught my eye for the future.

And as luck would have it they were having a sale of bed linen at the Auchan and I now have 2 quilt covers, 4 pillow cases and 2 fitted sheets for a grand total of 25 Euros. And all in matching colours too! All I need now is a room to put it all in.

-3

Friday 11th September 2009 – I HAD ANOTHER ONE …

… of those days where I couldn’t seem to get going.

Mind you, I was so exhausted after yesterday’s exertions that I had a lie-in until 10:00 to recover and it wasn’t until 11:00 that I got to work.

I finished the wiring at the far end of the room and then finished off the insulation down the two side walls. That involved fitting the battens and then xylophening them to protect against woodworm and the like. Then I had to stretch the insulation across the battens and staple it on.

This afternoon I started to fit the rest of the floor.

This involved pulling up the old pallets that I’d been using as flooring, xylophening the beams and then fitting the sheets of OSB.

A couple of them needed trimming down and cutting for shapes and I did such I good job of this (I even impressed myself!) that one piece took about an hour to tap into place. And I was giving it such a whack with the mallet that I’m convinced I’ve broken my finger when I missed my aim with the mallet
“Your whole finger?”
“No – the one next to it”
I’ve done almost as much as I can now before the major engineering starts and it was at 19:45 when I came down from the attic. By the time I’d unloaded Caliburn ready for the fray around Brico Depot tomorrow it was 20:15.

It’s all working though. The lowest temperature in the house is higher than the lowest temperature in my room – and that’s saying something. Just wait until the floor and the insulation are finished and there’s a wall around the head of the stairs.

Today was grey. miserable and overcast. No snow though although we have been told that it’s on its way. Only 13 amp-hours in the barn but over 60 in the house. A good move putting these panels on the roof.

And in other news, the footy restarts tomorrow night. YAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY.

-6

Thursday 10th September 2009 – THE ROAD TO…

… chez Terry and Liz is quite beautiful and there is always something interesting to see.

They live right on the edge of the Gorges de la Sioule – a cleft in the rocks right in the centre of the Combrailles where the River Sioule has carved a deep, narrow valley.

The valley, being so sheltered as it is, has its own microclimate that is often totally at variance with the rest of the area. Today, even early in the morning, it was hot and sunny throughout the region but of course the valley, out of the shadow of the sun, was cold and damp.

And hence the dampness, trapped in the valley by what is the equivalent of the phenomenon known as “temperature inversion”, had condensed itself into a very low cloud that threaded its way along the valley floor. This happens quite often and it’s most spectacular seen from up in the hills.

Terry and Liz had done well in moving all of the wood that they had, but they weren’t joking when they said that there was just the heavy stuff left. Terry and I lifted what we could onto the saw bench (and believe me – there were some trunks that we couldn’t lift) and while Terry was cutting them with the chainsaw, I was splitting with the log splitter those that he had cut and then throwing them down the cellar where Liz was stacking them.

18:20 when the cutting was finished. There are still about 30 or 40 lumps of wood that need splitting, and about an hour or two’s worth of stacking but that can wait. There was vegan chili and rice and (of course) vegan chocolate cake with soya cream as well as a nice hot shower (we looked like snowmen, so covered were we with sawdust).

And Terry has a cunning plan. They still have a couple of visitors to come for the summer, but as soon as they are gone, why don’t we push on and do the barn roof?

This would mean that I won’t get into the attic to live for a few more weeks
but

the roof on the barn is dreadful and the water pours in. There’s tons of stuff in there that’s being ruined in there, even though everything is covered with tarps
it won’t take long to do as it’s going to be sheeted in tile-profiled corrugated sheet made-to-measure
I have almost everything I need so it won’t cost very much at all
I can fix the solar panels and wind turbine properly
I’ll be able to rescue the flat-bed trailer
the scaffolding will be finished with and that has an income-generating potential of about €500 per month and we can get it out on hire quicker
I’ve lived in my cupboard for 2 years – another month won’t hurt
It’s quite cosy in here and I survived a bad winter in here with no problems
working inside can be done in the rain and snow – doing the barn roof would be done during the “Indian summer” that we have most years (but I bet we don’t have it this year now I want to do the barn)
Terry is all fired up to get going

Stand by then for a change of plan.

-6

Wednesday 9th September 2009 – IF ANYONE MENTIONS "PADDED CELLS" THEY WILL BE DISQUALIFIED;

I’ve fitted the insulation and the counter-battens on the far wall, and insulation to half of the two side walls as you can see.

If you look closely you will see that I’ve started to lay the flooring and install the wiring for the power sockets that I’ll be fitting.

But it’s blasted slow going and I’ve no idea why. I was up there working until 19:30 today yet you would never tell. I reckon it’s going to take at least a week longer than planned to get this room finished.

But the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

Remember that there is no door or wall to the stairwell and that there is no floor to the room either. Yet the temperature in the attic reached 27.5 degrees – a full degree higher than in my room and a record temperature, whilst even as I speak, at 00:18, the temperature up there is 23.2 degrees.

Tomorrow I’m having another day off – helping Terry with his woodpile. He had a lorry-load (and I mean 35 tonnes or thereabouts) delivered and although he and Liz have moved a good deal of it there’s still plenty of heavy stuff that needs to go. There was some mention of vegan chocolate cake, and as you know, that would entice me away from just about anything else, even Kate Bush.

In other news, I see that Caligula and her horse are actually calling for volunteers to sit on a couple of panels – one to help students with visual impairments and one to look at the role of students under OUSA Sutures. You may well be wondering what on earth Caligula and her horse are doing calling for volunteers – it’s not the norm for anyone on the Executive Committee to be interested in the opinions of the students.

It’s probably due to the right sandbagging that one of the previous committees received over the idea that they wouldn’t be interested in nominating a student voice for a committee to consider … er … student support (you really couldn’t make this up, you know – even the OU’s hierarchy couldn’t believe it – never mind the students).

But don’t be misled into thinking that any opinion voiced by any student is going to be of any interest to Caligula and her horse. There was this very ephemeral discussion group called “OUSA Consultations” where students were encouraged to publish their views on OUSA and the Executive Committee. One student wrote “load of crap” (well, he or she didn’t, but that was the gist of his or her message) and Caligula and her horse were so impressed by this remarkable display of honesty that she banned the poster from the airwaves for a month. Such is the manner in which dissent is dealt with in OUSA. Even Pol Pot would be impressed with that.

But the interesting point about this committee to look at OUSA Sutures is that it is charged to “consider the role that OUSA will play in the future“. You don’t need a committee to sit and consider this. I can tell you the answer right now without leaving my seat – and that is “bugger all”.

As long as OUSA has Caligula and her horse in charge, aided and abetted by your friend and mine Turdi de Hatred, OUSA will do as the OU tells it and likes it. Not a single member of the committee has the b@ll$ to stand up to the University and tell it to p155 off. Someone needs to be reminded that it is the students who are the customers and they are the people in the chair – they are the ones with the dosh.

The University exists to support the students, not the other way round, and it should therefore be the students – not the hide-bound chairborne wonders – who should be calling the shots. When are the students going to elect delegates with courage instead of this rabble?

But even more interesting is that OUSA Sutures has been on the cards now for well over two years, and OUSA has now reached the stage where we are going to have a committee to look at the implications.

And only after two and a bit years. Rip van Winkle, eat your heart out!

-7

Tuesday 8th September 2009 – IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL DAY TODAY …

… and I really took advantage of it by going on this walk.

There isn’t all that much to see in La Cellette – a hamlet that receives its name due to there having been a religious hermit living here in Merovingian times.

Many years ago they actually discovered the cell in which he lived and it is still extant but it’s incorporated into the cellar of a private house and not available to the public, which is a shame.

But the views from up on the top of the hills behind the village were terrific – including this impressive long-hop of the towers of the churches of La Cellette and Pionsat.

The railway is much more interesting.

It ran from Montlucon via Neris-Les-Bains and Pionsat to Gouttieres and hence to Clermont Ferrand and was the last major railway line to be opened in France (TGV tracks excluded of course),

Planned in the 1880s, construction started in 1913, was held up during the First World War and the line finally opened in 1931.

All of this area was a railway bottleneck. A whole series of coal seams running from Lapeyrouse to Gouttieres had been discovered and developed, and coal trucks clogged up the rail network

As a result, they kept on building a series of railway lines to by-pass the congestion. Unfortunately each time they did this, they discovered yet another coal seam that they then exploited, leading to more coal trucks, which led to more congestion, which led to more by-passes.

But not long after this line was opened, the coal seams exhausted and the infrastructure collapsed. The closed during World War II, reopened after a fashion once the war was over, but passenger traffic ceased shortly after, the last passenger train being a Paris-Neris “special” in 1957

The line beyond Pionsat, where we are walking, was abandoned quite quickly, but a goods service ran to Pionsat three times per week until 1973. How about that for a short-lived railway?

Of course it goes without saying that the earlier lines had all of the best routes, and the later lines ran over more and more difficult terrain. If you read what I wrote about the Waverley Line you’ll notice that I wax lyrically about the constant 1 in 75 gradient.

That is a mere bagatelle compared to the long slog up from Pionsat to the tunnel that passes under the Font Nanaud. That tunnel, the Tunnel des Bouchards,

is 585 metres long and there are no rumours or conspiracy theories about it. No steam trains in working order ready to return to the rails when the oil runs out – no knights of King Arthur waiting to emerge when Drake bangs on his drum – just a protected site for a colony of rare bats.

It was a good day out today and I really enjoyed it.

-10

Monday 7th September 2009 – I HAVEN’T MADE MUCH PROGRESS TODAY …

… and I can’t understand why.

I was working quite relentlessly all day without a pause, except for lunch. I’m rather disappointed with what I accomplished (or didn’t accomplish, as the case may be.

I have about half of the studding on the walls of the house. This is to create the air gap for the insulation I’ll be fitting. I was hoping to have at least three walls studded and the insulation fitted today.

But the place isn’t half going to be insulated – Terry thinks too much and maybe he’s right – but I shan’t be worrying about the cold. Even in my little room I noticed in the winter that putting the light and the computer on raised the temperature by a degree or so. It’ll do more than that in here.

And talking of heat, Bill came up with a nifty idea. I’m trying to find a cheap small pot-bellied wood stove for my room. But everything is too big and too expensive seeing as it’s just for a temporary measure. Bill suggests an “insert” – what the French put in their open fires – supported on bricks and connected up to the flue in the wall. I’d rather have a pot-bellied stove but there might be some mileage in Bill’s idea if I can’t source a stove.

And work is not going to progress very much this week. Terry needs a hand on Thursday and there’s Liz’s vegan chocolate cake involved, and tomorrow afternoon Marianne the local tourist guide and author who used to live in Alsager and who taught in the school across the road from where I lived in Crewe (you’ve no idea how small the world is) is giving a walk around La Cellette and the abandoned railway line.

In other news, at the Anglo-French group tonight someone asked the question that if you could drive between the UK and the mainland, on which side of the road would you drive. The answer is of course easy. Going towards the UK you would drive on the left to help you become accustomed to the English method and coming from the UK to Europe you would drive on the right in order to become accustomed to European methods.

Simple, isn’t it?

-6

Sunday 6th September 2009 – AS I HAVE SAID BEFORE …

… I can’t really have a day off and stay at home as there is so much to do here and I feel guilty about not doing it.

I can have a pretty good lie-in though, and it was 10:35 when I heaved myself out of my stinking pit. And if I hadn’t have had to get up to go to the beichstuhl I would still be in there now.

It was clear, blue sunny skies with a wind strong enough to send the AIR403 wind turbine spinning round. That can only mean one thing – WASHING.

So after breakfast I put the machine on and did a load. It made me think that here I am living like this with just my solar panels and a very part-time wind turbine, yet we have a fridge, a washing machine, loads of heavy DiY tools such as circular saws and the like. And the other week we had a cement mixer.

One of my friends at the time I was setting up all of this used to have quite a laugh at me behind my back and posted some pretty awful stuff about my plans in a newsgroup of which he was a member – so much so that one of the other contributors was quite offended and copied them to me. I bet he’s laughing on the other side of his face now.

While the washing was going round I tidied up my room and had a very pleasant 25 minutes chatting to Liz and Terry.

After lunch I had the afternoon off and read a book but after an hour or so I set about the house again. In preparation for restarting work tomorrow I amended the power board (amending the power board will be a regular feature). I now have the 600-watt inverter in here as I’ll be bringing the power tools inside in order to do the work on the walls and floor.

I’ve wired in the electricity meter so I can see how much electricity I’m using – but it’s not as good as the one in the barn as this one only goes to 1 decimal place while the one in the barn goes to 2 places and so is much more useful. There’s also a British double socket wired onto the power board now. One side will be for charging up power tool batteries and the other side will be for an extension to take power up into the attic temporarily.

And why British plugs and sockets? The answer is that the plugs for the appliances are fused and you can change the fuses. And as my circuit will be a maximum of 1200 watts (when the Studer comes back from being repaired) that’s 5 amps max. So a 5-amp fuse in the plugs for all the appliances will protect all my appliances quite nicely.

All the power board needs for now, apart from a woolly sock, is a mains (230-volt) clock so that I can see how long I’ve had the inverter running. But you try to buy a mains clock these days! In the barn I have a clock that Claude found for me – off an old electric cooker that he found down the tip. I wish he’d find me another for the house.

So much for my day off anyway.

-5

Saturday 5th September 2009 – LAST SATURDAY, FROM MY…

… €400 budget for my attic, I spent €354

Mind you, that didn’t include the shower base that never made it as far as the cash desk so that’s about quits.

Today, out of my €400 budget, I spent …. er …. €578.

I did get the shower base though, so you can knock €38 off that total, but I also made an unexpected expenditure of €170 while I was at Brico Depot.

I’m intending to put down on the floor some of this tongue-and-grooved laminated flooring and I had my eye on some at €5.74 per square metre, of which I shall be wanting about 28. But today, in the clearance lot was some at €3.67 per square metre. And not a miserable 4mm thickness or even a decent 6mm, but a whacking great 7mm.

Now I don’t think much of the style or the colour but there’s absolutely no dispute about the quality of the stuff. And I have to do what I can to get my budget back under some sort of control, so I can live with the colour and style at this kind of price and this kind of quality. I wasn’t going to miss out.

I also have the bathroom to do eventually and I was planning on tiling it, which would cost an arm and a leg. So when I saw some of this plastic tongue-and-grooving on special offer – just enough to do the bathroom and for just €56, then again in the interests of expediency and budget I wasn’t going to miss out.

I don’t like the stuff, especially as it’s pink marble, and the bathroom will probably end up looking like a tart’s boudoir, but it’s not as if I’ll be spending much time in there and it will do the job as well as anything else, especially at that price.

I ended up with 18mm OSB for the attic floor. That was the thickest they had and they seem to think that it will be perfect for the job. The reason why I went for OSB over chipboard is because having done the barn floor in chipboard and remembering how heavy the 2.8 x 1.4 sheets were and how I’m going to have to maul them up a ladder, the smaller and lighter 1.7 x 0.65 sheets will be much easier to handle.

I made three trips around Brico Depot today – a record. On the third trip through the checkout the young girl on duty there asked me if I had a lorry.

They ask you for your postcode when you go through the checkout and while I agree with Dave that it’s an invasion of privacy, it it helps bring a branch of Brico Depot closer to me then I’m all for it. The checkout girl was quite cute and when she asked me for my postcose I told her that she could have my address as long as she came round to help me fit it all. Ahh well, I have to keep trying … “You’re certainly very trying” – ed.

When I finished loading up Caliburn I went back inside the shop to get a coffee. She saw me coming back and hid behind her till. Serve her right.

I also spent a few bob in LIDL. I popped into the one by the bridge over the Cher at Montlucon, and they still had 7 of the 12-volt LEDs. Not any more, they don’t.

And in other more ominous news, the temperature in the heat exchanger dropped to 3 degrees last night. Winter is acumen in.

-5

Friday 4th September 2009 – I’VE FINISHED THE POLYSTYRENE TODAY.

All the silver has now turned to white, and there are lots of cables hanging down from the ceiling for the light fittings. I’m afraid that all the cables are buried, albeit in trunking, as I’m not planning any maintenance on them. I’m not sure what maintenance they might need.

Next task – which I should have finished today – is to turn the white into silver by putting up some battens on the wall and covering the wall with this insulation stuff.

From Brico Depot tomorrow I’ll be buying the under-flooring – 22mm chipboard or OSB. That’s what I’ll be fitting when the wall has been insulated.

But I need the shower base (I’ll try not to drop it tomorrow) as I have to design the shower room and then alter the floor plan of the attic to take into account where the bathroom will be – one or two beams neeed repositioning and we need some pillars. So that’s not going to be straightforward.

Once the floor is in (my task for next week once the insulation is done) I can get the plasterboard for the walls. I’m going for the standard with a backing of 40mm of insulation. All in all, that will be a hell of a lot of insulation.

After that, I need to reposition the stairs and to put up a false wall to keep the stairs enclosed and stop the heat disappearing.

Which reminds me – this insulation is working. For the last two days the highest temperature in the attic has been higher than the highest temperature in my little room, and also, I put my had down the back of the polystyrene as i was fitting the last piece, and there was definitely heat being trapped in there.

I’m not bothered about the quality of the flooring though. I’ll be fitting some laminate over the top which will cover it nicely.

And talking of temperature, the summer has now ended. 2 consecutive days of rain (3 of the last 4 have seen rain) and I have a jacket on in here. Winter is definitely on its way.

In other news, I see that the Septics are up in arms about Iran appointing a suspected terrorist as a Government minister. The hypocrisy is unbelievable and you certainly couldn’t make up a story like this one.

Just WHO do they think that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness of the Northern Irish government are? And the Septics brokered the peace deal that put them in power.

Of course you might be thinking that Adams and McGuinness are white and not brown or black and that makes all the difference as far as Americans are concerned – but that can’t be it. Didn’t the Septics fete Nelson Persondela when he became President of South Africa?

And never mind the “suspected terrorist” – he was actually a convicted terrorist and furthermore, the reason why he did the full 27 years and didn’t get parole was because he refused to renounce violence as a means of furthering his political aims (and one of the best definitions of a terrorist is “someone who resorts to violence to further his political aims”).

It’s just further proof of another famous definition associated with terrorists – namely “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” If the Septics and most of the British can pull their heads out of their nether regions for 5 minutes and take a dispassionate view of what’s happening in the world today, they can see that what the Iraqis are dojng in Iraq against the Americans and what the Afghans are doing in Afghanistan to the NATO farces, it’s no different to what the French and the Yugoslav and the other resistants did to the Nazis who had overrun their countries.

And the response by the American and NATO farces is no different to what the Nazis did to the resistants. Never mind your “illegal foreign combatants” in Iraq and Afghanistan – what about the British and other forces that were parachuted in to occupied Europe in the period 1942-45?

This current western hypocrisy makes me sick

-7

EPIC HALL

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