Tag Archives: ford cortina

Friday 22nd January 2010 – all the charging circuits shut down today.

batteries fully charged charging circuit shut down les guis virlet puy de dome franceWhat happens is that the solar (or wind) charge during the day gradually increases the charge in the battery from the overnight figure (about 12.4-12.5 volts is a good figure) up to about 14.1 volts if it’s a good day.

Once it’s at that figure it maintains the charge for a short while to give the batteries a chance to warm up inside and to shake loose any oxides that have accumulated, and then it goes into PWM mode, which is where it distributes the charge equally over all of the batteries and balances the incoming charge against the outgoing load.

When it’s happy with all of that it goes into FLOAT mode where the circuits close down until the charge in the battery drops to about 13.4 volts, and then it all starts up again and we repeat the cycle.

So today was the first day since October (I think) that we all went into FLOAT mode, even with the fridge running throughout the day. Three good days of solar charge has done wonders for my system.

This morning I was woken up by Antoine ringing me. Mind you, it was almost 10:00. I’d slept through all of the alarms again. I’ll have to do something about that. Then Antoine phoned me again, Claude came round for a chat, Liz phoned me twice and Francois phoned me once. I’m still in demand as you can see. I’ve never been so popular.

old ford transit hedge tree jungle garden les guis virlet puy de dome franceToday I made a start on the garden. I’m resiting my vegetable plot as you know and so I need to clear a place to move the old Ford Transit, the Merc and the British Salt Cortina because it’s under where they are currently that the vegetable garden will be. Back in 2002 all of this was cleared out but all these years of neglect has seen bushes, shrubs, brambles and trees grow right around everything. First job was to cut down a tree that was about 15 feet high and about 2 inches in diameter. That’s grown since 2002!

I could get at the back of the old Transit then and so I took off the towbar. I’m going to let Terry have it to fit on his new van. His is a 2005 model and rear wheel drive so it should fit okay and the tow bar is doing no good at all to anyone, rusting down a field. Older readers of my blog will remember the old Transit. I was on my way to a ferry at Caen to go to the UK for my OU science lab work when I had a puncture. You know that I prefer steel-belted radial tyres to textile belted ones. I’d been travelling at high-speed for hours and so the tyres were quite hot, and the blow-out occurred with such force that it blew the tread and the belting off the tyre. The steel belting spun round like a flail and ripped out the side of the van and the nearside wheel-arch and floor. Mind you, the van was 16 years old and it had seen much better days but it was still a mess and not fit to be driven on the highway after that.

But it’s going to be a lot of work to do this garden. I’ll have to start making the borders for my raised beds.

In other news, the UK is getting weirder and weirder. Some woman has been given a suspended prison sentence for breaching an Anti-Social Behaviour Order. And the Anti-Social Behaviour Order she has breached? Well, her moans and groans during lovemaking are too loud for her neighbours, and they played a tape of it in the courtroom. Personally, I cannot imagine anything so pathetic. I reckon that what it is is that the neighbours are just thoroughly jealous. I remember telling Nerina that it would be nice if she would moan while we were making love. And sure enough, half-way through the next performance she said “when are you going to paint this ceiling? It’s been like this for 5 years. And the walls need papering too …“

Mind you, I did once live next door to a couple whose lovemaking was exceptionally noisy. But never mind the ASBO – I always wanted to give them a round of applause when they finished. But you know how it is – you can’t clap with just one hand.

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Sunday 27th December 2009 – How about this …

… for sheer utter laziness? The farthest I have been today is to walk across the courtyard to the barn to check the solar energy being received over there (10.4 amp-hours). Apart from that, a couple of times up and down the stairs and that is basically that.

But as it’s the last day of my holiday until Thursday I reckoned I deserved it. I start work again tomorrow. There’s a couple of little jobs I need to fix and then it depends what the weather is doing. If it’s raining I’ll be starting on the kitchen. If it’s fine I’ll be dragging the two halves of old Ford Transit, the old Cortina and the Mercedes out of the hedge and beginning on the site of the new vegetable plot. If you have a look at image 25 on this page you’ll see the Cortina and the Merc. That’s where I’ll be putting my plots.

Mind you, I reckon it will be “working inside”. The long-range forecast for the seven days is that for six of them there is a risque de pluie. The only day that is any different is Saturday when there is a risque de neige. Who says that the weather round here isn’t reliable?

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Wednesday 16th September 2009 – WE ARE GOING TO …

… have a major change of plan.

plasterboard wall ceiling attic les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis 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?<

les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter 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.

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