Tag Archives: aubergine kidney bean

Tuesday 17th October 2017 – REGULAR READERS OF THIS RUBBISH …

… will recall that I’ve been having certain issues about music and entertainment here in my little apartment. But today I’ve made a great deal of progress which has gone a long way towards dealing with the issue on a temporary basis.

And as we know, there is nothing more permanent than a temporary solution.

You may recall that a couple of years ago I bought an “old, new laptop”. They were on sale at give-away prices because although they were new and in working order, they had various defects and were sold “as seen”.

I have one of these data readers for modern vehicles that you plug into the vehicle’s data port to read off the fault codes. It works with a CD-ROM, which I didn’t have on my notebook (it uses an external DVD reader that runs off the mains) and that’s no good for out in the yard, and so a laptop with a working DVD reader was an essential.

The rest of the laptop wasn’t important, so when I ended up with one in which the mouse didn’t work, I wasn’t all that bothered. But then, of course, my plans all changed.

Many years ago, when I lived in Belgium, I rigged up an office with an in-house entertainment system that had a really good speaker system – a huge deep-bass speaker with a couple of all-round stereo treble speakers. And the sound was excellent.

And so today, I rigged up the “old, new laptop” with the speaker system, and it works a treat. I can play all of the music, whether CD or *.mp3, and DVDs, And with the USB Cassette machine that I bought a few years ago, I can even play cassettes through it.

There’s also a USB record deck here, so I can play my LPs on it too.

I’ve dug out an old desktop monitor too – quite a large one, and when I obtain an HDM1 cable, I’ll have large-screen film facilities too.

So having had an early night last night, I managed to raise myself from my stinking pit at about 06:10. It’s my aim to be up and about in between the two alarms as you know.

I’d been on my travels too. Back in Brussels, I was selling my final apartment somewhere on the north side of the city. It was laid out somehow like the place at Hankelow but, obviously, in much better condition. I’d bought it a few years ago but never done too much with it. With me was a girl, something like Cecile, and my solicitor. I was far too ill to take part in the proceedings, being confined to bed, so the solicitor and this girl did everything. After the sale had been completed, the solicitor came in quietly laughing. He told me that the woman had been lamenting about her son, and how she’s just saddled him with a mortgage at the age of 36. I was meantime adding up th cash on hand after selling all of my three places, and how it came to something like half a million pounds, and how I was too ill to spend it all.

I went down for a baguette a little later on. There is still the depot de pain in the newsagents here and the owner remembered me, which was nice.

Back here, I pottered around for a while, and … errr … had a little relax too – which led to a somewhat late lunch. And did some of the unpacking too. But only “some”. I need to gather up my strength to do the rest because it really did take a lot out of me, going around North America like I did.

Tea though was another one of my aubergine and kidney bean whatsits – with no olives because I seem to have run out and I forgot to buy any yesterday. There’s enough left over for three more meals.

So now, despite my early start, my little repose during the morning means that I don’t actually feel tired right now. It will take me a while to readjust to my habitual way of life.

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Wednesday 2nd August 2017 – I HAD A …

… slightly better day today.

Probably due to the good sleep that I had last night – out like a light and that was how I stayed. And it was something of a struggle to heave myself out of the stinking pit (the bed, I mean).

A good shower and a change of clothes made me feel like a new man (pretty fed up of the old one) too.

What with the weather (torrential downpour for most of the day) all that I’ve managed to do is to struggle through the floods for the baguette. No possibility of going to sit on the wall with my butties at lunchtime.

So I hope that it’s better tomorrow – I need some things from town.

Tea was more aubergine and kidney bean whatsit – the longer it sits the better it tastes which can’t be bad. Just one more lot left for tomorrow.

Despite the weather I’ll be off for a walk in a bit. To stretch the legs and to see the outside. It’ll do me good to go out and about, even if it is into a rainstorm I suppose.

Hopefully it will be another good night like last night, and then a good walk into town should do me good.

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Tuesday 1st August – DO YOU REALISE …

… that this time in 2 weeks I’ll be stepping off an aeroplane in Montreal?

And I hope that I feel better than I did today because if was another day like the last three or four.

Last night wasn’t quite as early as I was hoping, but when I went to bed, I went. And until the alarm went off I remember absolutely nothing. A deep sleep – you can certainly say that!

They were unloading chairs and tables in the little square down the road this morning. I’m told that there’s to be the “Fête de l’Haut Ville” this weekend, both days, with lots of things going on.

Dancing girls, cheerleaders – I’m all in favour of that but I bet that there won’t be any. Probably a buvette though – no social entertainment can ever take place in France without there being a buvette.

Lunch was on the wall, tea was the second instalment of my aubergine and kidney bean whatsit, and apart from that, precious little else. I’ve just been stirring a few papers round on the laptop.

This kind of thing happens occasionally, as you know. The secret is to ignore it because I know that things will be better tomorrow. The sun will still shine, the seagulls will still sing and the tide will come inexorably in.

So I’m going for a little walk and then a drink (there’s some Vitamin B12 juice in the fridge) and an early night.

Start again tomorrow.

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Monday 31st July 2017 – THAT WAS A NICE …

… tea tonight. Another aubergine and kidney bean whatsit, with enough left over to last the rest of the week.

And it would have been even nicer had I remembered the olives. And the peanuts. Ahhh well!

But it wouldn’t have made much of a difference because I couldn’t find a small aubergine at the weekend. The one that I bought was the smallest in the shop, but “small” in this case is purely relative. In any other place it would have been “enormous”.

It all makes up for my extremely bad night. Still awake and kicking at 03:30 this morning, and although I do remember stretching out to switch off the alarm at 07:00 I remember nothing else until the repeater at 07:15. And then it was a slow crawl out of bed.

But I’d been on my travels though. And it involved a flock of sheep, some of which were wandering around freely and others in a tightly-grouped flock. One of the sheep in this flock was quite a vicious sheep but the shepherd replied that he was a good defender of the others and so they kept him with the flock for precisely that purpose. Any monkey business and the vicious sheep would sort it all out.

Down at the magasin de presse I solved the issue of the water sprayer from yesterday. Yes – if you want to know the answer to a question, you have to ask the question, don’t you?

Once every year there’s an open-air mass on the quayside and all of the cliffs around here are good vantage points for the crowd to congregate.

And then a priest blesses some water which is taken by a ship to a point just off the headland which is significant as being the site of a marine tragedy when a lifeboat was lost in a storm.

The Holy Water is then ceremonially jettisoned into the sea at the site of the tragedy and boats sail by through the spray hoping that they too might be blessed.

Lunch on the wall again, watching Grima come a-dieseling in.

And doing a couple of laps of the harbour because some stern trawler had pinched her spec underneath the crane and had to be moved, otherwise she would not have been able to unload her cargo of scrap.

45 years of age, and looking every day of it.

But there was some excitement up there at lunchtime. A big family-size car with Dutch plates pulled up and a large family disgorged itself to take a photo.

After much hoo-ing and haa-ing they decided that a selfie wouldn’t work so they looked around for a suitable volunteer. And there I was tucking into my hummus salad butty.

The matriarch came over to me and asked in very faltering French if I would oblige – so I replied that I would – in very good Dutch – something that took her completely by surprise.

I was going for a walk tonight but I was distracted. There’s been an “issue” at the tyre place in Canada, and as a result I ended up being on the phone across the Atlantic for half an hour instead. It was nice to talk to people over there, even if the circumstances could be better.

And, despite my bad night, I’ve managed to avoid not crashing out today. But this won’t last. An early night is beckoning, I reckon.

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Thursday 13th July 2017 – IF YOU WANT TO KNOW …

… the answer to a question, the most important thing to do is to ask the question.

And I now know all about the Pluto and the Victress.

I was flat-out in my stinking little pit when the alarm went off this morning. Which totally surprised me because I’m lucky to be still here

I was well-away with the fairies last night, starting off on my old Honda Melody looking for an ice cream. And on the way back I was passed by a couple riding horses rather recklessly down a narrow street. 100 yards further on they had been stopped by a plain-clothes policeman in a silver Range Rover who was giving them both a lecture and an on-the-spot fine, so as I rode past, I made a few remarks of … errr … “encouragement”. It was then that I realised that I had no insurance, road tax or MoT and with the number plate I knew that it would be checked immediately. No hope of flight of course so after a minute or two of wracking my brains I decided to leave the bike in the back yard where I lived and clear off. Of course I did that but I hadn’t gone 50 yards when the landlady stuck her head out of the back gate and told me that I was wanted. No hope of escape now.
A little later I was on a push-bike going into Newcastle upon Tyne. But it certainly wasn’t the Newcastle upon Tyne that I ever knew. I’d taken the route twice and so didn’t have my map with me but I was pretty certain of where I was going so it was no problem. So down the hill, turn left and then round this sweeping right-hand bend following the tramlines – a road that would take me very close to the city centre. But here on this corner, people kept stepping off the kerb right in front of me. And for some reason or other, this degenerated into a situation that appears quite regularly in my nocturnal voyages – namely that I have Mark III Ford Cortinas scattered all over the town in various states of MoT and Tax and Insurance, and I need to consolidate them all so that only the 100%-legal ones are on the road and the rest are safely stored otherwise I’ll lose them, including my precious estate car.

marite port de granville manche normandy franceAfter breakfast and a little pause to gather my wits (which doesn’t take too long these days) I hit the streets, direction town. It was a lovely morning, that’s for sure.

Down the hill and down the bank, and then down the ramp to the harbour and there was a superb view of the Marité looking so splendid in the sunlight

I’m determined that one of these days I shall go out aboard her, even if it is only for a lap around the bay. But I bet that I’ll be very disappointed and find that it will be a diesel-powered “sailing” all the way.

That will be sad.

pile of scrap port de granville manche normandy franceThere was another pile of scrap on the quayside, mostly old agricultural stuff and the usual scrap fridges and cookers.

This seemed to bear out my theory from the other day about the Victress and Pluto bringing it in. But then I had another idea.

By this time I was down near the harbour offices so I popped in to ask them about the ships.

And it seems, I’m wrong. Yes, it does happen occasionally, which I know will surprise you all.

There’s a big quarry near Avranches that produces a special kind of stone and every so often Victress and Pluto come in to load up 2400 tonnes per trip to take back to the UK.

But they always come in empty – it’s not they who bring in the scrap.

So who’s bringing in the scrap then?

It didn’t take me long to find out.

grima port de granville manche normandy franceNo prizes whatever for guessing what this is – or, rather, was.

She’s the Grima and her claim to fame is that she was formerly the ferry that operated the Shetland Island Council route between Bressay and Lerwick between 1972 and 1992.

She has a carrying capacity of about 8 or 9 cars or so and was sold when the volume of traffic began to overwhelm her. She eventually became a work-boat for the Lerwick fishing industry

She was still displaying her “Lerwick” lifebelts so I hailed the crew who were relaxing on deck.
“Blimey! You’ve come a long way in that”
“Not really” replied the skipper. “Only from Jersey”.

It appears that she now sails out of Jersey and comes into Granville a couple of times each week bringing in the scrap (there are no scrap-processing facilities on the island) and taking back building supplies, wood and the like.

She’s probably not licensed for passengers, but I have a Cunning Plan. You don’t need a maritime permit or whatever to be a ship’s cook and my cooking has never killed anyone yet – although I have seen a couple of people stagger out of my kitchen.

mending the fishing nets port de granville manche normandy franceThey say that there’s a time for fishing – and a time for mending the nets.

Clearly for today it’s the latter. Here they all are with their needles and thread having a good old sew and sew.

That looks as if it’s the kind of job that might take for ever with a net that size, so good luck to them

buoys mending the fishing nets port de granville manche normandy franceWe all know what these are, but what surprised me was what they are doing out of the water.

And even more importantly, have they put anything back in to replace them? It would be exciting if they hadn’t.

It’s a little-known fact that Michael Jackson applied to join the US Navy. But he withdrew his application after the Recruiting Officer told him
“I don’t care how it’s pronounced. Those things that line the approaches to every harbour are called BUOYS”.

I headed off around town to check my bank accounts (money STILL not received) and where I bumped in to my neighbour again as I had done last week.

Next stop was to see the estate agents to warn them of my absence. And I forgot to check the times of the buses for the station in … GULP … just 30 days time.

ferry ile de chausey port de granville manche normandy franceLunch was once again on the wall overlooking the harbour.

Not much going on today but I did watch the ferry for the Iles de Chausey heading off with quite a crowd on board. Sea as calm as a millpond so they probably all had a good time.

And I had a new lunchtime companion today. Never mind the four lizards who always come to see me – when I dropped my apple core onto the ground for the wildlife, a brown mouse appeared – right at my feet – and dragged it off into the undergrowth to munch at its leisure.

Apart from that, I’ve been bashing away on the blog once more. Not quite the 20-odd (and sometimes more) pages of recent date though.

I ran aground round about 7th January 2013 and that’s when it all went haywire as my concentration and efforts were diverted. So I’ve advanced to June 2013 where there’s a couple of weeks that need to be done.

Then the difficult bits will start.

That wasn’t the only reason that I fell behind. The walk this morning had taken quite a lot out of me and I was totally out of it for two hours and more this afternoon. I clearly can’t last the pace.

But with the final batch of kidney bean and aubergine whatsit having bitten the dust today, and having had a good chat with Liz and Rosemary, I’m ready for bed.

And quite right too. Shopping tomorrow!

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Tuesday 11th July 2017 – LAST NIGHT …

… the computer told me that it wanted to perform a major update.

It’s been telling me that for a while actually, but last night it blocked the screen and wouldn’t let me proceed until I agreed.

And so I set it to perform at 23:59 and left the machine running when I went to bed. When I came round this morning to look at it, it was showing … errr … 21% completed.

As a result, today has been rather a difficult day.

It didn’t start off too well either. I was wide awake at 06:40 and when the alarm went off at 07:00 I was already preparing another mix of muesli, seeing as how I’d forgotten to do that yesterday.

With no laptop, I went and had a shower and sorted out a few other bits and pieces that needed attention, and while I was at it, I came across an 8GB memory card from the summer of 2015 that I hadn’t backed up. I made a mental note …

Round about 11:00 the laptop finished what it was doing, and so I launched myself into a programme of backing up the memory card. I wrote a couple of DVDs with the contents, and then found the 750gb external hard drive that I use to keep the (millions of) photos that I’ve accumulated over the years.

The ones off the SD card went onto there too, only for me to discover that I seem to have backed up this card on there some time in the past.

But while I had the external hard drive coupled up, I went about and did a major backup of the contents of my data folders.

I do a major back-up like this once every year or so – usually just before I’m taking my laptop with me on a major journey. In between times, I back up to a dedicated 64gb memory stick.

And how times have changed – I remember when USB ports became the thing with Windows 98 Series 2, and my back-up memory stick then was all of 256kb – with plenty of room on there for everything too.

And that’s where I am right now – this back-up is still going on some 10 hours later, and it probably won’t be until 11:00 tomorrow morning that it will be finished either.

It hasn’t meant that I’ve not been updating the blog though – in fact I’ve had another good day and I’ve almost finished October 2012. Just 104 “uncategorised” entries to rewrite, which might make you think that it will all be over soon.

But far from it, and for two reasons too –

  1. Many pages are “conjoined” pages – when I haven’t had internet access for one reason or another I’ve made a multiple entry as soon as I could. Since late 2013, when I started the new version of the blog, whenever I’ve not had internet access I’ve been writing up a page faithfully every night nevertheless and storing them up for a multiple-publication later. I’m going back over the conjoined entries and breaking them up into daily pages
  2. It seems that round about August 2012 the blog-host that I used back then (before I brought my blog in-house) started to make up tags and categories that my current set-up recognises. And they show up on a few of the pages from then. So these pages aren’t included in the number of “uncategorised” pages but they need updating nevertheless to meet my new, exacting … "and modest" – ed … standards.
    .

But what is exciting is to look at some of these old entries and what was going through our minds, and see how things turned out. A good example of this is the entry for 17th October 2012.

Here, Krys and I (whatever happened to Krys?) were discussing that we were having all the signs of an early winter. Krys remarked that she was “forecasting a bad and long winter this year”.

Well, the first snows fell just 10 days later – which is astonishingly early, and the last snowfall of the winter was on … errr … 25th of MAY. How about that for a prediction?

storm waves crashing on rocks granville manche normandy franceTea was the second instalment of the aubergine and kidney bean whatsit, and now I’m sitting at the window watching the teeming rain and the storm, with the waves crashing down on the rocks across the bay.

It’s a phenomenal wind that we are having – just the weather to be out there on board a three-masted schooner. I’d really fancy a run-out in this weather.

And I forgot to mention that some blasted English grockles, complete with thermos flask of hot tea, pinched my spec on the wall overlooking the harbour at lunchtime. I had to go and sit somewhere else.

And talking of comments, don’t be shy. If you would like to comment on the entries on this blog, please feel free to do so. Because of all of the spam that seems to be back on the internet these days, they will be “held” until I manually approve them, and then you’ll see your name in lights!

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Monday 10th July 2017 – AND AS FOR TODAY …

… this was one of the quietest days yet;

I was up and about as soon as the alarm went off, down to the magasin de presse for my baguette, and sitting on the wall at lunchtime with my butties.

Thrilling, isn’t it?

I’ve spent a lot of time doing hair washing too.

Not mine, I hasten to add, and not Randy Raquel’s either before you ask, Rhys. But it was something that I’ve been meaning to do for a couple of weeks now and each time something has come up to prevent me. This morning I was finally able to accomplish it.

For the rest of the day, I’ve been on the blog (that’s with an “L”, Rhys)

With something like a new record, I’ve done 23 pages today. My “7 pages per day” target being well-exceeded.

It’s quite interesting to read just how much I was being frustrated over the lean-to. The period that I’ve been doing covers my return from Canada in October 2011 and making a start on rebuilding the lean-to that collapsed in 2002.

I’m at the stage now, end of September 2012, where I finished it all amidst frustrations, cancelled holidays, bad weather, interruptions of all kinds. And personally, I reckon that I did pretty well.

I’d never touched a stone wall before October 2011 but by the time that the end of September 2012 came round, I’d not only completely rebuilt a stone building but I’d roofed it too – and all on my own.

How proud was I of that?

Tea tonight was something that I haven’t done in ages. I made myself a huge wok full of aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit. And it was totally delicious. Enough for another three nights too.

But when I buy my freezer later this year, I’ll be making stuff like this and then freezing it so I can rotate the diet around. That’s what I did when I lived in Expo – and it was bags of Aubergine and kidney-bean, chick pea and mushroom, lentil and green pepper.

Sometimes I’d do a potato curry, and of course I’d rotate the ingredients around too. And pies! I can do pies too, as we know. Every night would be a different meal instead of the same thing consecutively (not that I’m complaining too much, of course).

I can’t wait for a return those good old days.

But one thing that I have learnt is that the vegetable steamer is no good for cooking pasta. At least not in the 20 minutes that I allowed it. I had to finish it off in the saucepan;

That’s something else that I shall need to investigate

So tomorrow I’ll find myself in October 2012. Winter 2012 will be approaching and I have just 130 pages to go and a couple of personal tragedies to handle before it’s all brought up to date.

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Tuesday 14th July 2015 – HAPPY BASTILLE DAY

That’s right – the story goes that the reason why the French stormed the Bastille on 14th July was because it was a Bank Holiday, all the shops were closed and they had nothing better to do.

But I had plenty to do, such as trying to find this insurance sticker. I’ve waded through all of these papers and some have been filed, some have been put tidily in a box and the rest have been filed under CS. But as for the insurance sticker, well, not a glimmer of it, I’m afraid. I’ve no idea where I might have put it.

The only thing now is to contact the insurance company and ask for a duplicate. And then that will guarantee that the original one will come to light immediately.

I’ve also done the notes for four days’ travel around Labrador and I’ve now arrived back in Newfoundland. I’ve also done some research as well and found a few really good e-books about the region that I have saved to read at my leisure.

Not only that, I’ve collected the details for a couple more months of radio rock shows and made up the icons for the albums so that I can build playlists.

But all of that was later first job, before I’d even had breakfast, was to make some muesli, seeing as how I’d run out.

All in all, I’ve had a busy day, despite it being a Bank Holiday.

Finally, I’ve made a huge aubergine-and-kidney-bean whatsit and that will keep me going for four days. It won’t take much to warm up, the food for the next few days, and it won’t make much washing-up.

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Wednesday 17th June 2015 – I’VE BEEN DRILLING ….

holse chasing drilling for water pipes les guis virlet puy de dome france… for most of the afternoon.

I need to route all of the water pies – the cold water in, the hot water in, the hot and cold out and the hot and cold central heating – around the house, and where the water tanks will be going is in the attic right above the shower. The shower room and the kitchen where the sink will be are right in a vertical row one under the other, and so I’m planning to route all of the pipework down the inside of the stud wall.

The central heating is a later addition to the plan, and as well as that, I’d only made provision for the other water pipes in the top rails of the stud wall. Hence, there were 22 holes to cut and I’ve done 18 of them this afternoon.

As we’ve actually had some good weather today, I’ve resurrected the little 330-watt mains drill and that has made rather short and effortless work of the drilling.

Or it would have done, but I soon discovered why I hadn’t used it for years. The on-off switch is broken and so the drill is permanently “on”. That makes for some interesting moments when I’m starting off with the drilling.

I’ll finish all of this tomorrow and then I can finish off with the plan to fit the worktop. I might even have finished it off today but I crashed out for an hour – and I mean crashed out too. I was well-done.

This morning I started on my website, trying to resurrect all of the notes that I have lost, and that’s not easy. It’s going to be a lot of work and I’m not looking forward to doing it all again.

After that, I’ve been working in the garden. Yes, even though I said I wouldn’t this year.

But this was urgent as I had a load of stuff, including the beichstuhl, to take down to the compost heap. But I couldn’t get down there, seeing as the weeds, brambles and everything else have totally overwhelmed it. And so for a good hour and a half I was hacking my way down there.

But in a change, I’ve put the smaller container, the 15-litre one – in the beichstuhl. This will mean that it will have to be emptied more often, as it will fill up quicker, and that suits me fine. It’ll keep the compost bin turning over and keep the shower room healthier.

As it’s sitting low in the box, I’ve propped it up by taking the telephone directories upstairs and put them underneath the container. That raises it up and that’s much better. I’ve also put the bin bags and the shredder upstairs too so it’s all to hand.

And so I’ve had an easy night tonight. Day 2 of the aubergine and kidney bean casserole that I made yesterday and forgot to mention.

I was on my travels during the night – or, rather I wasn’t for I was here. Someone with whom I used to be very friendly back a few years ago was here too and we were watching my ocean-going yacht arriving down the little lane here. It took hours for them to unload it – in fact they still hadn’t finished by the time that I woke up, even though this guy had gone downstairs earlier to chivvy them up.

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Tuesday 21st April 2015 – AT LAST …

furniture in bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome france… we finally have some furniture in the bedroom.

The chest of drawers is a couple of years old, the chair and cushion is from last year, but everything else, including the fluffy carpet that you can’t see, is from yesterday.

No mattress yet, but that will be up there tomorrow one way or another and that will mean that tomorrow night will be my first night sleeping down there. I have new bedding as you know, and I’ll have a good shower too so that I’m nice and clean for my nice new and clean bedroom.

I spent all morning installing the bed, and that was much longer than it ought to have taken. However, one of the sets of laths was 80cms, not 70cms – misfiled by someone at IKEA I reckon, and as I had no intention of driving back to Clermont Ferrand, out came the chop saw and that dealt with that.

After lunch, I emptied out the two chests of drawers, cleaned them, dismantled them, took them downstairs and reassembled them. So they are in place now. And that took me nicely up to 18:20 when I called it a day.

During my lunch break I did another load of washing seeing as how we had a nice day, and I emptied out the beichstuhl – such delightful jobs that I have to do around here. And I also fitted into the lights under the eaves of the house two of the new LED lightbulbs that I bought yesterday. 1.7 watts each, so that’s an equivalent of about 20 watts of incandescent light, they are much smaller and weigh less than half of the weight of the usual LED light bulbs. So with these, there’s not that much risk of them falling out of the bulb holders.

After having crashed out for an hour this evening, I made another mega kidney-bean and aubergine whatsit, and I remembered to put the olives and peanuts in it too, which is certainly progress. That will do me for the next 3 days too.

But I forgot to tell you yesterday – something that I saw that goes to prove just how far ahead of the times that I am. In IKEA yesterday there were a couple of proud notices – “all the water in the toilets comes from the rainwater that falls on the building” and “all the hot water in the toilets is heated by solar energy”.

Well, regular readers of this rubbish will know that I have been doing this for almost 20 years. As I have said on many previous occasions … "and you’ll say it again and again" – ed … the world is slowly catching me up.

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Tuesday 31st March 2015 – I’M REALLY PLEASED …

… with what I’ve managed to accomplish today.

If you’ve never been in my barn, you simply won’t understand, but it’s a total devastation zone with stuff having been crammed in there without any form of organisation for the last 18 years, and then in 2011 we collapsed the barn roof into it.

Anyway, today I bit the bullet and set to work.

By the time that I had knocked off, I’d filled four more bin bags, moved a pile of stuff around (and which will have to be resorted in due course), sifted through the debris with a heavy magnet (and recovered a pile of misplaced stuff) and I’ve now cleared a space at the side of the Vanden Plas 1300 that is big enough to fit a small family car.

I’m really quite impressed with that, that’s for sure. And this has set me up for tomorrow’s work.

I had a pile of old plastic bread trays and I’ve put them on the floor (the floor is soaking in there) and tomorrow, I’ll be taking out all of the wood from the ground floor of the house and storing it all on top of the bread trays.

That should empty the ground floor of about half of the stuff that’s in there, and leave me plenty of room to move about and prepare myself for starting on the plumbing. I want to finish off the tidying up by Easter so that I can have a nice little break and then get myself going next Tuesday. I deserve a little break after everything that i’ve done just recently.

And for tea I made aother mega-aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit. And I remembered to put everything in it this week as well. That’s a first, isn’t it?

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Monday 9th March 2015 – I’VE FINISHED …

finished wardrobe bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome france… the wardrobe.

Well, I haven’t actually. It still needs varnishing, the hardware finishing off and a couple of the doors sanding down so that they can close properly. However, all of the woodwork is finished at long last.

The upper fascia panel isn’t particularly pretty, but with all irregular heights and having to carve around the ceiling beams, I’m not sure how else I could have done it. I suppose that I could have fitted a false ceiling as I’m planning to do with the ground floor, but I hadn’t thought of that when I started on the bedroom.

This has now taken me on to cleaning up and tidying ready to start the wallpapering. And I hate tidying up as you all kno. I can’t remember which Harry Potter film it was where Dumbledore had the magic wand that cleaned up that house where the timid teacher was living, but I would give all that I own and more to to have one of those.

But as I expected anyway, there isn’t enough room on the ground floor to put everything that I’ll be taking downstairs. This is going to become quite complicated before I go much further.

I was late starting because, as you know, I had to go with Terry to the quarry to fetch some sand. It was a nice morning out anyway because the sun was shining. However it clouded over in the afternoon and I think that the summer might have gone.

And for tea? Cooking in the verandah again I made one of my huge aubergine and kidney bean whatsist – enough to keep me going for four days. The next three days, I can warm up the food in here.

And tomorrow? I’ll be finishing off the tidying up and then hopefully starting on the wallpapering.

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Wednesday 18th February 2015 – IF YOU WERE TO LOOK …

… at the photo of today’s work, you would be forgiven for thinking that I don’t seem to have made much progress.

In actual fact, I reckon that today was the day when I accomplished the most work in the bedroom to date, in that all of the electricity in the dressing table area is now installed.

electricity fittings wardrobe bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceThere’s a pair of 12-volt sockets (you’ll notice that I use North American plugs and sockets for my 12-volt circuits as they take high-capacity cable), a 230-volt mains socket (I use British plugs and sockets here because the plugs are fused) and a light switch that powers one of these IKEA LED light strips.

All I need now is some extra-long screws to fasten the socket to the pattress, and also a mirror. But they will both come in the fullness of time.

I would have made much more progress too had I not fastened the connectors to the wire of the LED light strip before I’sd threaded it through the hole. I had to cut off the ends and pass the wires through, and then I couldn’t find any more connectors. I spent about half an hour looking too. In the end I had to invent something.

But you’ll notice the difference between today’s photo and yesterday’s. We have the mirror backing in position and also the other side wall of the dressing table area. We really are making progress.

Tomorrow I won’t accomplish too much because I have to go to Cécile’s to show someone round. But I’m hoping that I can fit the top of the wardrobe as well as the intermediate shelf. If I can do that, as well as to start to assemble the front walls, I shall be quite happy. But I have a feeling that I’m going to miss my target of the end of the month, and probably by a week or two as well, to finish the bedroom.

I had another helping of my vegan aubergine and kidney bean whatsit for tea, and I realised that I forgot to add the olives too. What a performance!

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Tuesday 17th February 2015 – I’VE BEEN ON MY TRAVELS …

… during the night and was having such an exciting time that I was determined to remember every second of it when I awoke.

Of course, you can guess what happened. I awoke and … paff … it was gone.

Ahhh well.

So this morning after something of a slow start (I’m not quite sure why I couldn’t summon up the enthusiasm) I cracked on. And much to my surprise, by the time that I had knocked off for lunch, I had really accomplished something.

home made chest of drawers bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceand here you are – my first ever home-made chest of drawers.

Don’t worry about the front panels by the way, they will be replaced eventually with pine planks when I have finished the wardrobe and know what offcuts that I might have left over. And they will pass in front of the wardrobe frame too, in order to hide the framework which isn’t quite straight.

Making the sides was exciting though. I had to make the first one and fit the runners in position by trial and error. And to my surprise, I only ended up 14mm out in height. And that was soon remedied with an offcut and from the outside, you would never notice.

The second side was of course so much easier, having already made the first and having taken copious notes.

The gap in between the two sides needed to be 549mm and to my total astonishment, having assembled the framework back in 2010 or 2011 or whenever, and doing it by guesswork, I had left a gap of 548mm. And what is 1mm betweem friends?

After lunch I fitted the top to the chest of drawers, fitted one of the sides of the wardrobe above the chest of drawers, and cut and shaped the piece for the back where the mirror will be. It’s all becoming quite exciting here as I progress.

But two things stick in my mind and one of them is annoying me intensely. I’ve designed the wardrobe so that the internal fitting is 500mm, meaning that I can use 500mm pine boards without having to cut them. However, the flaming, blasted, perishing 500mm pine boards are actually 505mm, meaning that I have to trim 5mm off each board.

This is a total shambles, I’ll tell you that. If there were anywhere else to go other than Brico Depot, I’d be there.

But the second thing that I have to say is based on the first thing, and this is definitely positive. That is that despite the hanging cloud that has covered us for all of the day, I’ve used the 650-watt circular saw intermittently today and you would never ever notice from the state of the batteries. Installing these new, big heavy-duty batteries back at the end of autumn was an excellent move. those old second-hand batteries would never have coped with this.

For tea tonight, I made an exciting vegan aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit. I’ve lost a load of supplies, including the macedoine vegetables and the kidney beans. I’ve no idea where these might have gone but its bewildering. I’ve had to use subsititutes and it doesn’t taste the same.

But where have these supplies gone to then? This is bizarre.

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Monday 2nd February 2015 – WELL, THE SNOW …

… looked quite pretty this morning. Especially when the sun came out and we had a little bit of blue sky to play with. It made me quite glad that the first job that I did this morning was to clear the snow off the solar panels on the roof.

That’s quite an exciting task – I stand on a tall step stool and reach out of the roof light and with a long handled window cleaner blade I can reach all of the panels and push the snow over the back of the house.

That’s not a new idea either. I can remember, when I was very young, watching a television film where some Indians were firing flaming arrows into the thatched roof of a pioneer house, and the pioneer wad having to reach out of the roof and try to dislodge the arrows before the fire took hold. And I wish I knew which film it was for it made quite an impression on me.

The little bit of sun encouraged me to use the electric sander to sand off the filler that I had done on Saturday afternoon. And when I had done that, the next task was to make some room in the bedroom where I could set up the paste table. As you are well aware, that’s not the work of five minutes to tidy up wherever I’ve been.

Now that the paste table was in place, I could make a start on wallpapering the landing. And much to my very great surprise, by lunchtime I’d done all of that. This was quite astonishing.

After lunch, I did some more tidying up and I’ve filled three bin bags with rubbish out of the bedroom (and there’s plenty more to come). That led to making a start on putting the battens onto the stud wall so that I can put the plasterboard on there. I also spent a pleasant 15 minutes in the lean-to looking for the drywall pattresses that I need for the electricity.

This evening, I’ve made yet another pile of vegan aubergine and kidney bean whatsits. There’s enough for four days in the batch that I’ve made and now of course I have the shelves outside where I can leave the stuff in the cold.

In other news, I’ve had some very sad news this evening. Another one of my friends from University passed away at the weekend. She was a lovely girl, very nice, very intense and very good company but that was on a good day, and as her perceived problems mounted up, her good days became fewer and fewer.

About 12 months or so ago, she walked out of her life and a short while later, turned up in her native Portugal. Presumably, with the intention of finding comfort and consolation in the surroundings of her childhood. However it looks very much as if she was unable to find whatever it was that she was seeking and this led to the tragic events of this weekend. I hope that wherever she is, she’s found peace and comfort and is at rest.

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