Tag Archives: Brico Depot

Tuesday 12th February 2013 – I was dead right …

… about the weather.

This morning was horribly grey and overcast with a hanging cloud. And it didn’t get any better than that either. Talking to Terry a few hours later, he said that it was snowing round by his place, and sure enough in the late afternoon it started chucking it down here too.

With regard to Bill’s affairs, it was too cold to go round there and so we stayed at Marianne’s and went through a huge pile of paperwork and did the accounts to date. After that I went with Pascal round to Bill’s and we moved some more furniture out.

This afternoon was yet another afternoon without working in the bathroom and this is becoming a tale of lost opportunities. Terry wanted to go to Brico Depot and wanted me to go with him. It was only fair and I’m not complaining as after all, a huge pile of stuff was for me but none of this is getting my bathroom done and for the last few weeks I’ve been continually sidetracked by one thing or another and it’s beginning to get on my nerves. What made it worse was that I was building up a list of things that I needed to buy next time I was there, and it went clean out of my head.

This evening I was at St Maurice. There’s a series of walks around France taking place every weekend and in 2 months time they will be walking around there, so they had a meeting of potential volunteers. I went along to find out what was happening.

 Back here, it was oven chips and baked beans for tea, and now I’m off to bed. Tomorrow we’ll have more hanging clouds and snowstorms. And who is going to come along tomorrow to put me off working in the blasted bathroom?

-3

Thursday 3rd January 2013 – WHAT A LOUSY …

… day

Grey, wet, miserable, depressing

But that’s enough about me – the weather was even worse.

So with almost no solar energy today I didn’t do all that much. When I opened my eye and saw the weather, I closed it again and went back under the duvet.

And if it hadn’t been absolutely necessary to visit the beichstuhl I’d probably be there now. 

After breakfast and working on the website for a while I started on the floor in the shower room. But I wasn’t there as long as I might have been, and for a very simple reason too.

I will swear blind that I bought 5 packets of tongue-and-grooved flooring planks, but I’ve only been able to manage to find four – there’s one missing somewhere. And the result of that is that I ran out of floor with two planks to go.

GRRRRR!

So that means a trip to Montlucon and Brico Depot on Saturday, doesn’t it? I’m never going to finish this blasted flooring seeing as how all of the fates are conspiring against me.

To pass the rest of the time I started to sort out the firewood in the lean-to in order to make more space.

I could have cut it up as well but I have to do that outside and with it pouring down with rain it wasn’t much of a good plan. But there’s progress all the same.

This evening I had another meal the same as last night and it worked just as well, if not better.

Having a rip-roaring blaze at the beginning is definitely the key to cooking with the wood stove. It heats the oven up quicker and that cooks the potatoes better.

Basically, 2 hours for the spuds, 60 minutes for the sprouts and 90 minutes for the rest of the veg. The veggie-burger takes about 20 minutes or so.

I had a few phone calls too. Cécile called me twice and spoke to me for hours. She’s giving a dinner party tomorrow night and wants to know if I can help her tomorrow afternoon to prepare.

Seeing as I don’t have the wood to finish the floor, that seems like a good plan.

Marianne also rang up for a long chat and to tell me about her adventures at Riom hunting down old historical documents. One of these days when I’m not busy, whenever that might be, I’ll have to go with her.

As for me, this afternoon I telephoned the hospital at Montlucon to enquire about Bill.

The receptionist wasn’t all that forthcoming. After much verbal fencing, she expressed an interest in knowing who I was, and so I explained that I was neither family nor close friend but just an everyday run-of-the-mill friend of no particular significance.

She then said that she couldn’t give me any more information, but would I care to leave my phone number so that she can pass it on the Bill’s daughter – his next of kin

I don’t like the sound of that one little bit

-2

Wednesday 2nd January 2013 – IT WAS BACK …

… to work today.

First time since I’m not sure when.

However, first task was to start on the web page for my visit to Lévis (that’s pronounced “Layvee”, not “Levi’s”) which is across the St Lawrence from the city of Québec. That was a brief excursion on a ferry across the St Lawrence in the middle of the afternoon during my walk around Québec.

It’s usually a bad sign for me to encounter a ferry and I’m never in a good humour, because every time I see a ferry, it always makes me cross.

Once that was out of the way I had a marathon wood-chopping session. I’ve used up a pile of wood over the last couple of weeks and so it needed to be replaced.

That took quite a while and created a nice pile of sawdust for the composting toilet.

It’s also made a nice little space in the lean-to and I’m hoping that I can crack on with that idea. I’d love to have enough space in there for my little workshop by the end of winter

Finally, I carried on with the floor in the shower room, and I’ve worked out why there’s a problem with the floor levels. It seems that with the wisdom that only Brico Depot can conjure up, the grooves are off-centre.

Now that wouldn’t particularly matter if the off-centre was consistent on each plank but in fact, while a pack might be consistent, the batch isn’t.

And that’s just plain ridiculous because there’s a planed side and a rough side, so you can’t even turn the planks over in order to even out the centres.

For tea this evening I tried a little experiment.

As well as starting off the baked potatoes in the oven, I chopped up a few sprouts and carrots, put them in a pyrex dish with some water and put them in the oven too.

Add a veggie burger and onions and garlic in a baking tray and use some of the veg water to make a gravy and I had a magnificent evening meal. Just like a king, in fact.

A wise move indeed, buying this little stove as I have said so many times before.

And setting up a little kitchen in a corner here, that’s working too.

-2

Tuesday 20th November 2012 – I’VE MADE A START …

shower room floor les guis virlet puy de dome france… on fitting the new floor in where the bathroom, or to be more precise, the shower room is going to be, and there’s one very unhappy bunny here.

The tongue-and-grooving is from Brico Depot and it’s a major mistake to buy anything from there.

5 packs of flooring I’ve bought, all of the same brand, all bought at the same time, and the packets are all of different thicknesses.

Not only that, the tongues of one packet don’t correspond to the grooves of the others either so when you firmly nail one lot down, the subsequent packet won’t slide properly underneath and you have to lever it up a little.

All in all, it’s looking quite a mess – nothing like the neat and tidy little job I was hoping for.

I haven’t finished it yet either because I ran out of light so that’s not going to be done until I come back from the UK, and I’m dismayed about that too.

This morning though, I made a start on the Radio Anglais Christmas Special that we do for Radio Arverne.

This is an hour-long programme, mostly speech but with some music as well and it doesn’t half take some writing. Today though, I’ve been researching and gathering material.

I’m not going to tell you the subject matter though – you can wait until it’s on the air.

Tomorrow, though, I’m going to be extremely busy.

In the afternoon Cécile is coming round to work in the garden in exchange for the work that I did for her last Friday.

Of course, I don’t want to frighten her away and so I need to do some tidying up, and that will take me all of the morning, and then some, I suppose.

Steam-cleaning the verandah is priority number one, and then emptying the composting toilet – that’s always a good plan too.

need to empty the verandah as much as possible, because for this winter I want to bring inside the pots of herbs and they are too heavy for me to lift on my own.

I suppose that I’d better go and have an early night then – I need to be fighting fit for tomorrow.

-6

Wednesday 7th November 2012 – I’VE FINISHED …

SHELVING UNIT stair cupboard les guis virlet puy de dome france… making the shelving unit for the cupboard at the back of the stairs.

And after all this time too, but it’s made-to-measure and each of the shelves had to be cut and fitted individually. Anyway, there it is.

It’s not actually quite finished though – it needs varnishing and it will have the first coat of that tomorrow morning.

The shelving unit is actually a huge beast and weighs a tonne – I never expected it to turn out anything like this.

You’ll also notice that there’s a shelf missing. The original plans called for 7 shelves, which is how many 400mm pine planks that I had, but Brain of Britain seems to have managed to forget his original plans and has made it to take 8.

But never mind. I’m bound be in Montlucon sometime and I can pick one up then from Brico Depot.

stair cupboard les guis virlet puy de dome franceThat’s where it’s going to go – in the alcove there that will be the stair cupboard in the empty space at the back of the stairs that I built in the winter of 2009-2010.

That’s an ideal place to make a little cupboard – after all, I can’t think of what else to do with the space.

And I won’t know myself when this is installed in there and full of all of the stuff that’s lying about all over the place and that’s the whole point of making it.

And so apart from that and the usual stuff on the computer, that’s about that.

But I did have a phone call from Nada who has resurfaced in the area after all this time, and also a long chat with Rosemary. She’s going out on a date tomorrow night – it’s alright for some, isn’t it?

Anyway, my bed beckons. I feel like an early night.

0

Monday 15th October 2012 – I HAD AN …

… exciting, if unexpected afternoon out today.

Not this morning though.

I put in a good stint on the computer and wrote the match report for yesterday’s game at Pionsat, which is now on line.

It makes rather depressing reading but nevertheless it needed to be done.

And it took me all the way through to 14:30 – there was a lot to write.

Meantime, I had had a phone call. It seems that the window that Rosemarie had bought had turned out to be the wrong size – Terry had given her the dimensions of the hole, not the window.

It meant that the window needed to be taken back and exchanged – involving some fairly hefty negotiation and it seemed that I was required for that.

And so rather like Janet in Tam Lin, round I went to Rosemary’s I duly went this afternoon, “as fast as go can me” and we loaded up the window.

Being somewhat … errr … financially-challenged at the moment (I can’t get to my Belgian bank’s Montlucon branch right now and remember, I wasn’t anticipating being here at the moment), Rosemary very kindly put some diesel in Caliburn, and off we went.

Changing the window was no problem (except that they didn’t have one in and so it needed to be ordered) but no refund of any difference.

I don’t suppose anyone could complain too much about that – Rosemarie was half-expecting an argument.

Never being backwards at coming forward, I took advantage of Rosemary’s presence and we went off to Brico Depot where I loaded up Caliburn with a pile of grillage – the mesh mats that you use when you are laying concrete onto a hard surface without any hardcore.

I also bought 4 pylons – the steel mesh reinforcing that you put inside hollow breeze blocks to support the walls so that they don’t fall down on passing children.

These come in 6-metre lengths and so we cut them down to 8×3-metre lengths that I can use inside these hollow blocks that I have here to make pillars and so on.

Nothing like having a handy volunteer, is there?

After a coffee and a chat, I came home. It’s cold and damp despite the beautiful day that we had, so I’m not going out again. I’ll save my strength for tomorrow.

0

Tuesday 2nd October 2012 – I HAD A GOOD …

… and profitable day out in Montlucon today.

Not the least of the reasons being that a chance visit to the LIDL came up trumps with another 5 packets of these LED light strips. That’s all that I shall be needing anyway for the foreseeable future.

So having picked up Rosemary’s window at Lapeyre we went off to Brico Depot. I bought a tarpaulin to go on the ground where I’m clearing, and I also priced up a whole pile of other stuff that I need for this concreting that I’ll be doing (yes, I have another Cunning Plan).

No suitable wood for shuttering though  – I’ll have to have some cut at a sawmill.

Grand Frais, the Fresh food place came up trumps with everything that I need for my pickling, except the malt vinegar for the shallots, but then again at NOZ they were selling white vinegar flavoured with tarragon and that will do just as nicely.

So after dropping off Rosemary’s window and helping her with her shutters I came back here and did a little tidying up in the barn.

I found the other missing sledgehammer and a few other gardening tools, and I also worked out why the desk light in the barn, over the battery bank, isn’t working. Seems that the wire has become disconnected and its probably been like that for years too.

So when I finished that I took off the flourescent light and fitted one of these LED strip lights in place.

At first I was disappointed but then I realised that I had disconnected the good batteries and I was trying to burn some old ones, and I had a reading of just 7.8 volts.

With 12 volts it should be pretty impressive I reckon, but that’s for another day.

-3

Wednesday 29th August 2012 – WE HAD OUR FIRST …

… no-show today.

Marianne and I went all the way out to Vergheas this afternoon for our Wednesday walk. Unfortunately no punters showed up, which was rather sad.

Mind you, it was only to be expected, I suppose. There had been the walk here a few weeks ago – the good one that I had been on, and then there was the pélerinage to the statue of the Black Virgin 10 days ago.

I suppose that everyone is simply Vergheased out.

Mind you it was just as well that no-one came because the sky was clouding over rapidly. We didn’t want to hang around too long. But long enough for one thing that I had wanted to do.

Vergheas is an old (and I DO mean old) fortified site – the mound upon which the church is built looks artificial to me, and that’s a good-enough indication.

early medieval stone rampart vergheas puy de dome franceWhat I had wanted to do was to see if there might be any trace of the old walls still remaining. When we had been here before, I’d had a good prowl around and had made a mental note of a couple of places that might be likely.

There was another flattened terrace on a lower level than that upon which the church is situated. This looked artificial to me.

The edges of this terrace were quite steep and in one or two places sloped down considerably towards the stream at the bottom. And sure enough, the side of that was lined with dressed stonework.

On the way back to Pionsat the heavens opened and we had 6mm of rain that fell in minutes. I can’t say that I’m sad about that, because we needed a good torrential downpour.

I was going to carry on working when I arrived home but I went upstairs and crashed out instead. I’d had a long, hard day.

This morning I was up early and met Rosemary at Montaigut en Combraille. She hopped into Caliburn and we went in to Montlucon. She ordered her new window at Lapeyre and I bought a load of stuff from Brico Depot.

I was back home for 13:15 – plenty of time to put the final coat of paint on the new woodwork ready to fit it tomorrow.

And in other news, and a bit of malicious gossip, if the conversation that was reported to me today means what a couple of people think that it might mean, no-one will be surprised if there’s a tiny addition to our little expat community’s population round about the start of the New Year.

-3

Tuesday 28th August 2012 – DESPITE MY …

… early night last night, I somehow managed to sleep right through the alarms this morning.

It was 09:22 when I finally heaved myself out of my stinking pit. It’s been quite a while since I’ve done that, hasn’t it

It was raining too – which makes a nice change. It’s been a while since I’ve had any. But it didn’t rain for long, but long enough to put 100 litres or so into the water butts and I am grateful for that.

The garden and my water butts needed it.

Despite this being a day where I was at home, I didn’t do any pointing at all.

I have done 75% of the painting of the woodwork for the window frames though – two coats on one side and one on the other – I’ll have to do the second one on there before I fit it all in

And while I was waiting for the coats of paint to dry, I was doing other things.

home grown potatoes beans carrots les guis virlet puy de dome franceOne of the things that I did do was to dig up some carrots and pull some beans. Proof, if any were needed, that thanks to all of Rosemary’s help my garden is coming up with the goods..

Add them to the new potatoes that I uprooted the other day, and then some cauliflower that I bought on Saturday, a veggie-burger fried with onion and then some vegan cheese sauce, it was absolutely gorgeous.

What a wonderful tea it all was too!

Another thing that I did was to empty Caliburn out. His load bed is now empty. I’m taking Rosemary to Brico Depot tomorrow and also to Lapeyre so I may well need the space.

I need some more guttering and also some more glass to replace that which … errr … met with an accident, and I need a very narrow springy trowel to replace the one that I broke here on the wall.

Finally, I’ve been tidying up downstairs too looking for my mobile phone which I appear to have mislaid somewhere. I didn’t find that but I did find the missing LED light strips, which pleased me greatly.

I’ve also thrown away about 1 big bin-liner full of rubbish – and there’s plenty more to go at too.

That took me to 19:00 and then I knocked off.

Montlucon tomorrow and then Thursday I can get cracking again.

-2

Saturday 28th July 2012 – WHAT A WIMP!

Yes, I’ve been spending my money again today.

And it’s this really hot weather that has made me do it – I mean, it was so hot this morning that I saw a midget buy an ice-cream in LIDL – and then sit in it.

At Brico Depot today they were selling small desktop fans, 40-watt ones, for all of €14:99. And having roasted to death up here for a week, I have to do something about it for the 12-volt lorry fan that I use just isn’t doing the business in this kind of weather.

So what a change it was tonight, actually being cool

.

I did make it to Montlucon as expected, and didn’t really buy anything exciting until I got to Brico Depot. Apart from the fan, they also had 850-watt SDS drills with rotostop.

The 1200-watt one that I have here is too heavy and powerful – it’s aching my shoulders out and at times stalling the 1200-watt inverter. It probably sounds silly but with a smaller, less-powerful drill I might well finish this hole in the wall quicker, as I won’t have to make so many pauses.

But I also went there for a pile of bricks to do the next window (I’m having two in that wall, if for no other purpose than making the wall lighter and for using less stone) and so having bought a pile of lime mortar, they had no common bricks. In fact, they have stopped selling them.

I’ll have to go elsewhere for them, and I wish I hadn’t loaded up the chalk now.

Back home, I watched an old black-and-white cowboy film Santa Fe Trail – notable for its complete rewriting of history and its treatment of the slave-liberators as … errr … the baddies.

It was enjoyable from an entertainment point of view though, but irony of ironies, the film’s most famous line is the one “we are soldiers – we aren’t politicians. We’re supposed to just obey orders”.

It’s spoken by A certain Captain Custer (we’re talking long before Little Big Horn here), the co-star, played by a certain Ronald Reagan.

What a small and strange world this is!

-3

Friday 13th July 2012 – IF A THING …

… is too good to be true, that’s because it usually is.

And when you see a thing that is too good to be true taking place on Friday 13th, then you can bet your life that it will be too.

And for that reason I didn’t hold out much hope of my little trip to Montlucon bringing home the bacon, but nevertheless you have to go through the motions and do all that you can, because you never know.

And so, up at 06:00, down the end of the lane by 06:25 to meet Terry as he drove past instead of him coming down here, going to Montlucon as quickly as possible, and all to no avail.

Brico Depot had a sale on this morning, and they had some prefabricated car ports at just €199 each. I wanted two, to put on my hard standing to cover up Caliburn and the Minerva, but even though we weren’t there anything like late, they had all been sold.

Or so they said.

At that price, it really was a giveaway anyway so it wasn’t really a surprise. Still, never mind. I did all that I could do, and it would have been a stunning coup had we really pulled it off.

I bought a few more bits and pieces and on the way back we called at the quarry at Montaigut en Combraille. I wanted some sand but we ended up with a huge load of dry mix for concreting – Terry is concreting a patio at his house next week.

And that has given me a little idea too – more of which anon.

So breakfast at 11:00, an event that occurs quite often regularly around here, but never ever AFTER a full morning’s work, including a trip to Montlucon and to the quarry though.

Wrapping my mitt around a warm cup of coffee I went off to do some work on the website but was interrupted by a phone call from Cheze in St Eloy les Mines. Our water butts have finally arrived.

And so I wandered off to St Eloy les Mines to do the shopping (it’s a Bank Holiday here tomorrow) and then off to Rosemary’s to give her her water butt and her guttering that had been lingering around in the back of Caliburn.

I was there until 19:30 as well – gossiping away like a right bunch of old women, we were.

Tomorrow is a Bank Holiday as I said, and it’s my custom to have a day off work on a Bank Holiday. But due to circumstances beyond my control, I’ve yet to have a Bank Holiday off this year, and tomorrow is no exception as I have a few radio scripts to write for next weekend.

It’s all go here. Really, I don’t know how on earth I used to find the time to go to work.

-2

Tuesday 10th July 2012 – YOU KNOW WHO …

… your real friends are when you ring them up and as if they fancy a trip to Montlucon on Friday morning – arriving there (45 mins from here) at … errr … 07:00.

“What’s the score?” asked Terry
“Brico Depot has some interesting stuff in the arrivages that has caught my eye but it’s big and bulky, and we need to be there early”
“I’ll bring the trailer then”.

I hate to tempt fate by making announcements about things that are outside my control but if this comes off it won’t ‘arf be a stunning development for round here.

So where was I? Ahh yes.

rendering concrete lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter the usual couple of hours on the web pages I went outside and spent a good deal of the afternoon putting the second coat of paint on the rendering of the lean-to.

You can see what the rendering was like prior to the painting if you look at the bottom left-hand corner where I couldn’t reach. I know which one I like better.

That took me until 17:00 when I went off and attacked the garden.

Clotilde gave me some of her lettuce thinnings yesterday and so I weeded and hoed a few spaces in a couple of the raised beds and planted them in … note to self – when I thin out the leeks, send some round to Clotilde in exchange … and then gave them a really good watering – not that they need it of course in this weather.

After that I checked on the carrots and beetroot that I planted a couple of weeks ago. They seem to be doing fine and so I planted another row of each. Certainly covering the sowings over with old caravan windows seems to be the way to go here

That took me until 19:00 when I knocked off. Thoroughly exhausted – you’ve no idea how much like hard work all of this is.

-3

Saturday 30th June 2012 – IT’S POURING DOWN …

… with rain outside.

The first time we’ve had a really decent downpour for a few days, and you can see how much I’ve become embedded into the local agricultural way of life with my potager – looking forward to the rainstorm.

This morning I slept through the alarms for a change. I was having a nice dream about a former friend and his family and it’s a long time since I’ve had a really pleaant dream.

But anyway after breakfast I did some more work on the laptop and then went out shopping.

I’ve bought a few new toys too. LIDL was selling Brother PC label-makers a while ago and I was tempted at €20 but I didn’t bite. Anyway, they were reduced to €10 today and so I grabbed one.

I also met Rosemary and we went to Cheze where they were selling 510-litre water butts for an incredible €32. Rosemary wanted one, and I’ve decided to buy two of them.

What I shall be doing with mine is that when I take the scaffolding down after I’ve finished the wall of the lean-to, I am going to put up some guttering to catch the water off the lean-to roof and sink a large tank into the ground to catch it all.

But meanwhile I can link these two together and use them as settling tanks with the take-off for the subterranean tank about half-way up the side. That will still leave 250 litres of water at the bottom of each tank.

If I put a tap at the bottom of the first tank, then I can use the water in there (which will be pretty dirty) for watering the vegetable plots. That will help empty the dirt out of the tank.

But I’m getting more and more fed-up of Brico Depot.

We went for the guttering for Rosemary’s barn yesterday but what they had on offer was all badly-damaged rubbish sold by surly staff.

At Bricomarche in Commentry she paid a little more but got everything she wanted and in pristine condition too.

There was some stuff that I wanted too but Brico Depot don’t sell it. They suggested a work-around, but that would cost a fortune.

However, Cheze had exactly what I needed. They also had an inner tube for my wheelbarrow, that has saved me a fortune on a new wheel.

Tomorrow I’m off out with Marianne. She did tell me where we are going but I have forgotten. I suppose that I will find out soon enough.

-3

Friday 29th June 2012 – IT AIN’T ‘ARF ‘OT, MUM!

Well, maybe not quite this evening, but last night it was 31°C up here in my attic and that is going beyond ridiculous.

In fact, things reached such a pitch that I almost went and slept in Caliburn. I’m sure that it would have been cooler in there.

But by 09:00 I was up and about, and by 09:30 I was working.

I was doing some work on a few web pages and then one thing led to another, and pretty soon you begin to find out just how many other things there are.

So much so that I’ve ended up doing a slight redesign of my web pages and I wish that I knew enough to do more.

I really must learn how to do embedded menus and so on. My web design techniques seem to have stuck in a time warp.

I’ve also been dealing with the European Paper Mountain today and a load of that was filed away. There’s still about 20 times that much that needs to be dealt with but every little helps.

Rosemary and I went to Montlucon this afternoon and had a rummage around the shops.

I didn’t buy any wood because the wood at Brico Depot is appalling so I’ll have to go to the sawmill for that like I should have done in the first place. But I have the stirrups, some of the plumbing bits, the corrugated plastic sheets, the hinges, the strengthenign rod and all of the concrete post rings – 20 of them in fact.

Rosemary was disappointed too with Brico Depot. She had wanted some zinc guttering for her barn but the stuff that they had was all bent, knocked about and not fit for use.

In the end, on the way back we went to Bricomarché in Commentry. It was dearer there but it was in perfect condition. You pay for what you get.

I bet that you are all dying to know what I’ll be doing with them – I know that Krys is. But you’ll have to wait until I buy the wood and start to build it – I won’t be giving a clue away.

Aren’t I a meanie? 

-3

Thursday 28th June 2012 – ONE OF THE REASONS …

… and there are many of them, to be sure, as to why I keep a blog is that I can refer back to it and find out when I did something.

I forget all too easily these days what I’ve been up to and when I was up to it – and just remember, before you start laughing, that you will be as old as me too one of these days too.

So I looked back and found that it was exactly a week ago today that I planted the courgette, cucumber, gherkin etc seeds, and sowed some lettuce seed in pots.

And while I was sorting out the herb buckets (those nice heaps of oregano and tarragon have gone – cut down now and hanging up to dry in my attic) I happened to notice that the lettuce were growing.

Blimey! That was quick!

So they had a really good watering, and they need it too in this heat.

And so, out of curiosity, I went to look at the beds where I had planted the courgette etc seeds.

And guess what?

Absolutely! They are rearing their pretty little heads too.

There’s even some beetroot from what I planted a week earlier, but the carrots are once again doing nothing at all.

Anyway, it seems to be all go in the garden again.

I didn’t manage an early start today, unfortunately. It was so hot that at 03:00 I was still up and about and I would probably still be flat out on my back right now if a hornet hadn’t come in at about 08:45 and chased me around the bedroom.

Still, makes a change from Percy Penguin, who doesn’t feature in these pages half as much as she deserves, chasing me around the bedroom.

This afternoon I started to draw up the plans for the next stage of construction work, and began to make a list of the bits that I need. Right on cue, Rosemary rang me up and asked if I would be interested in going to the Brico Depot in Montlucon.

Seeing as how it won’t be very easy getting all of this wood onto Caliburn’s roof rack all on my own, and it’s no skin off my nose whether I go tomorrow or Saturday.

And when I heard that half a day’s gardening was the reward on offer, then that was it, mercenary that I am. It’s a good job I emptied out Caliburn yesterday, wasn’t it?

In between the surveying I dragged out the tabletop washing machine and did a load of washing seeing as I had a pile to do, it was gorgeous and warm, and the water temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load for the surplus solar energy was at 60.5°C.

To finish off the day I treated myself to yet another solar shower seeing the temperature of the water in the black plastic solar hearing box had reached 41.5°C. And that was gorgeous too

It’s all go here right now, isn’t it?

    

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