Tag Archives: solar shower

Tuesday 5th July 2011 – I managed to make …

… the time to do the guttering this afternoon. All of that netting stuff that I bought for €1:00 per roll seems to work fine – there’s still some left on the roll after doing this – it didn’t take much.

I was going to hold it on with cable ties but while I was looking for something else I came across (and how often does this happen?)a reel of that green plastic stuff that is used for fastening plants to canes. That did the job exactly how it ought to be done, and this should hopefully prevent all kinds of nonsense falling into the guttering, and keep the internal filter much cleaner.

But the proof of the pudding is the eating and what we need to test it is some rain, but there’s no hope of that for a while. It was another glorious day here. My solar shower reached 44.5°C so I had another scalding shower (at 19:00 it was still 42.5°C) and the water in the immersion heater went off the scale – that is, more that 70°C. In fact the washing up water was scalding as well – at 22:00 when I washed up the water in there was 64°C.

But there’s no doubt that my hot water – at least in summer – seems to be working fine. In the winter of course I’ll be having one of those stoves that heats, cooks, and boils water. But that’s a long time off just now.

This morning I emptied Caliburn of all of the stuff that was still inside (and that was about half a tonne) and took the solar panel off his roof. And then Marc and I went to Montlucon for the plasterboard for Marianne’s house. It’s a good job that Caliburn has a good roof rack as 9 sheets of 13mm plasterboard weighs a tonne – that’s the reason I use 10mm plasterboard – remember I’m on my own and I have to manoeuvre it around myself. 10mm is of course lighter.

But at Marianne’s she showed me today’s local newspaper. There’s one of my photos in all of its glory, suitably cropped of course. But I wish that one day they will put my name up in lights.

And in other news, another event that I have been foretelling has finally come to pass. A Dutch court has ruled in effect that the Dutch Army was responsible to a large degree for the massacre at Srebenica.

If you don’t know about this, Srebenica was advertised constantly as being a “safe haven” for Moslems during the Civil War in ex-Yugoslavia (although why a safe haven was declared and why the UN didn’t insist on all of ex-Yugoslavia being a safe haven and enforcing that is something that I never really could grasp), and it was guarded by part of the Dutch Army. And when the Serbs invaded the area en masse the Moslems flocked en masse to Srebenica and what they were promised was safety.

However, when the Serbs arrived, the Dutch commander drank a toast to them and then kicked all the Muslems – even those working for the Dutch Army – out and stood by watching as they were all slaughtered. The Dutch commander said that he was outnumbered and outgunned and didn’t want to needlessly risk the lives of his soldiers. But “needlessly” – when over 8,000 civilians were being slaughtered before their very eyes – that was always a shameful comment. The Dutch soldiers never even fired a single bullet to protect these civilians.

Everyone (well, everyone except Yours Truly) is said to be surprised by this verdict today. I’m surprised too – but surprised that it took all this time for the correct verdict to be given.

Monday 27th June 2011 – And if you thought …

that yesterday’s temperature was good, then it had nothing on today’s weather.

The temperature in the heat exchanger went off the scale – that means more than 70°C – and the ambient temperature reached 39°C or so. But where that gauge is though – that’s in the shade underneath the water tank. In the full sum the temperature reached an astonishing 42.1°C and I’ve never ever recorded anything approaching that before.

The really astonishing bit though is the solar water. That reached 47.5°C and I scalded myself when I had a shower this afternoon. I’ve never had a temperature like that either and I celebrated by having a solar shave – such is the high life that I live.

And so this morning I was burnt out of bed by the sun (well it was rather late, I suppose) and after breakfast I set about the radio programmes for the next month. But it was impossible to work up here and in the end I had to put a chair in the bedroom that I’m working on – it’s cooler there. But by 15:00, and a long way from being finished, I was burnt out of there too. By that time, the temperature up here had reached 34.1°C and I don’t recall ever having a temperature like that up here either.

With the water heating up in the electric water heater (I increased the insulation yesterday) I did the rest of the washing and now that’s up-to-date and I even have clean bedding for tonight. Whatever next?

Round to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse the programmes and they very kindly fed and watered me for which I am grateful – and so back here where, with the sun having gone down (but still 27°C outside and 42°C in the solar water) I watered all of the plants – and they needed it too. I used about 100 litres of water – everywhere is parched after the last few days.

In other news, this is an interesting article. It seems that a woman has been taunting a disabled policeman.

Now whatever you might think about the person and the offence served the Judges are thinking of sentencing her to “time served”. That means that she has been refused bail when she was originally remanded. How come you can’t get bail for an offence like this when only a week ago someone accused of murder was remanded on bail? And the murder victim – involved in a robbery with violence – was on bail for a similar offence? never mind Deep Purple and their “one law for the rich and one for the poor” – it seems that there’s one law for the civilians and another law for the police in the UK – as many people will no doubt tell you.

And being sentenced to “time served” – i.e. a minimum of 12 weeks – for this kind of thing when robbers and muggers and al those kinds of people are give suspended sentences or fined or conditional discharges – the UK is totally off its head, as I keep on saying.

Whether or not you agree with what the defendant said, that’s not the point. The whole point is that in a free country the existence of free speech is championed. But when you start to criticise the forces of law and order you get a prison sentence. The UK is just like Zimbabwe or China these days. Libya was bombed for less.

-5

Sunday 26th June 2011 – Just so as to show …

… everyone what today was like here, I’ve posted a pic of the temperatures that we had today.

The maximum temperature outside was 33 °C today and at 17:36 this evening it was still over 31°C. In the heat exchanger the temperature reached an impressive 63.7°C and the water in the solar water heater, the black plastic storage container with an old caravan window over the top was 42°C.

That was the cue for a beautifully warm solar shower and I didn’t miss out. It really was nice.

And so this morning Marianne forgot to ring me about this meeting at La Cellette but I was wide awake having had a severe attack of cramp in bed and so I made it in time. And with about 10 officials, one representative of the press and one photographer, they had a grand total of 0 visitors for the two hours that this meeting was on. Ahhh well ….

Marianne invited me to lunch which was nice of her and we had quite a chat afterwards, and back here seeing as it was such a nice day and with wind too, I did a huge pile of washing – something that I haven’t done for a while.

We followed that with the solar shower and that was really it. It’s Sunday, my day of rest, and so I’m not going to be working too hard today.

-7

Sunday 29th May 2011 – What a beautiful day!

Yes, definitely a leading candidate for the nicest day of the year so far. And I spent the morning sleeping – after all, it is Sunday. And if I hadn’t had to have gone for a ride on the porcelain horse I might still be there now.

But then again I might not, for Percy Penguin rang me for a chat this morning. She says that she’s missing me and so I told her to improve her aim.

And so after breakfast and a little relax it was off to the footy. Marcillat’s 2nd XI are pretty awful and they kept Commentry out until about 60 minutes into the game when they completely folded up and lost 4-0.

That led to a quick thrash down the road to Pionsat just in time for the match against Manzat. Mind you, the start was delayed while the referee checked the names, identities and shirt numbers of the Manzat team, all 14 of whom seemed to be called Mohammed.

I counted 5 players who were obliged by the referee to change shirts, and why they were wearing the incorrect shirts I shall leave it up to you to work out. I’m far too cynical to be objective.

What else was strange about this match was even though it was the last match of the season and despite that fact that no other side was playing, Pionsat could only muster 12 players, none of whom was a goalkeeper and Christophe ended up taking the gloves

Not that he had much to do – he didn’t have one save to make and the only shot that beat him was a shot that would have beaten most other goalkeepers. No-one can be disappointed by that goal

Apart from a slight wobble on the hour mark, Pionsat were never under any pressure and ran out 3-1 winners, with 2 of the nicest goals I have seen for ages. They were slicing through the Manzat defence like a hot knife through butter.

In the end the Manzat goalkeeper, who had been screaming at his defence throughout the match, stormed off in disgust and while I don’t agree with him doing that, I did have some sympathy with him.

This evening I had a shower seeing as the water was at 41 °C and at 21:30 I was outside eating a pizza, so nice was the weather.

Tomorrow of course I’m packing ready to leave. I’m on the road late Monday night to do a few hours before bedtime. I hate trying to drive through the daytime.

-3

Wednesday 25th May 2011 – I’ve finished …

… the latest version of my water collection system. I’m not sure if this is the fifth or sixth go at doing it either, but it seems to be working. I hope that it stays the course as well.

The issue was that with having the sump where it was before, there wasn’t enough head to drain the water through the sand and puzzolane filter (the left-hand container) and so it was backing up into the settling tank (the long grey pipe). And so what I have done is to put a right-angle in where the sump was, and to move the sump round into the horizontal plane. That gives me much more head as you can see and the slope is much more respectable. The sump in its new position is much more twisted and I don’t think that it will work as well as the vertical sump and hotizontal take-off of the previous version, but the height of the head is everything and so it will have to do. It was either that or cut down the legs of the stand for the water butts, but if I were to do that I couldn’t fit a bucket underneath.

I was woken up this morning by the telephone man ringing me to ask where my house was situated so that he could repair my internet connection. Strange, that, seeing as I rang them yesterday to cancel the appointment as the internet was working. Shortly afterwards, someone else rang, despite knowing full well that I don’t want phone calls before 10:00am. This is a job for repeating the message by beating it into the skull of the offender in morse code with a baseball bat.

The rest of the morning was taken up with the web site of course and then trying to sort out a digger. The fun we’ve been having with diggers is, as you know, unbelievable. I’m sure that there’s some kind of major scam going on here.

The back of Caliburn is now empty and tomorrow afternoon I can fit the false floor and recover all of my voyaging stuff ready for the UK. And I finished off the evening with a beautiful warm solar shower. That was lovely.

And if tomorrow is as nice as today I’ll do a load of washing as well.

-3

Monday 23rd May 2011 – I’ve found a new spot …

… from where I can take a good photograph of the Puy-de-Dome, my favourite photo object. It’s from the old road from St Gervais to Chateauneuf les Bains.

I was in Chateauneuf this evening as it was the opening of the Tourist season there and they were talking about all of the events that they will be doing. In my capacity as radio presenter I was invited. We were treated to some Gospel singers too, which made quite a change. Not my cup of tea at all but at least it shows initiative.

On the way back I took the old road and it was from there that I had the view. It’s a beautiful road, that one, but totally impractical if you are in a hurry.

And that was it, really. The internet is back and so after my long lie-in this morning (I had a Day of Rest today to make up for my long working weekend but someone still managed to wake me on the phone at 08:45) I caught up on the outstanding correspondence and the like.

Nice hot water outside and so a solar shower was called for. And quite right too – it’s really nice being clean. I should do it more often.

-2

Monday 18th April 2011 – I’ve been gardening today.

Well, after all it is the full moon. Before lunch I planted all of the main crop potatoes – I put 64 into two of the raised beds – the last two that I installed the other week. I’ve had to be careful how I planted them because the baby lettuce that I bought the other week – they are in one of those beds and I’ve had to fit the spuds all around them.

After lunch I planted this week’s seeds – things like cauliflowers, broccoli, carrots, courgettes, beans, peas and so on – they all went outside and into place. In the smaller cloche I planted into small pots some more peppers, chilis, cucumber and gherkins. And there are already some of those sprouting up from a fortnight ago. I’ve also weeded out the strawberry patch in the mega-cloche. That’s doing really well in there and it’s a mass of flowers, looking like there might be a bumper crop, and quite early too. But then again, this magnificent spring has a lot to do with that.

But there is a down-side to this magnificent spring. When I finished weeding and planting, I gave everything a thorough watering. And with no rain for 14 days, all of the casual water, that in buckets and bins and tubs about the place, that’s all gone. All that’s left is my rainwater for household use and there’s just about 150 litres or so of that remaining. I’m drying up and this could make things difficult here. I shall have to start a rain dance if it carries on like this.

But there’s still some water for a shower and at 36.5°C I had one as well. And then off to St Eloy and the Anglo-French Group where I set everyone an exercise – I’d found some old notes that I had made, with useful French phrases that are used in everyday life. And so I set everyone to translate them from French to English, to keep them out of mischief.

And so apart from working on the Newfoundland web pages this morning, that was my lot. Tomorrow we are in the studio at Radio Tartasse again. Don’t the months come round quickly?

-2

Friday 8th April 2011 – This hot weather …

is still going on relentlessly and I’m now a deep shade of red. Working outside is clearly good for me. But it didn’t reach the 42°C that it said it did on the temperature sender outside. And after a few minutes pondering this, I suddenly realised the answer to that.

Yes, I’ve had a great big bonfire (rather too close to the exterior temperature sender) and burned tons of stuff that was lying around doing no good. Including all of the foam-rubber seat cushions out of the old caravan that the rats trashed while I was ill.

And I’ll tell you what – I’ve never seen anything catch fire so quickly and easily and burn so fiercely. It’s put me right off caravans. If someone were to drop a fag-end down the bed there would be no survivors.

As you can guess, the tidying-up has started and I’ve been clearing things up. Not much because I’m no good at tidying up and I don’t know how to do it anyway. But at least there’s a little more space now that a lot of stuff has gone up in smoke. And there will be more to follow it as I slowly work my way round, although this isn’t the solution to my storage issues of course. The aim quite simply is to try to make the place a little more presentable in case I have visitors this year.

As well as that, I’ve been in the garden again and I’ve planted the pea and courgette seeds that I had set to soak a couple of days ago.As well as that, I stuck in half a dozen sweetcorn seeds. They are out of date and did nothing last year, but I’m intrigued to see if anything might happen.

In other news, I had a nice hot shower this evening and I did the washing-up with water from the home-made immersion heater, with a temperature of 68°C. It’s quite impressive, this immersion heater and the insulation.

-1

Thursday 7th April 2011 – I’m burnt!

Firstly by the sun. We had a magnificent day today, easily the best of the year. And I spent it in unloading Caliburn, stacking stuff wherever I could find some room (and that wasn’t easy – I’m beginning to feel the pinch here now) and then I washed out the inside of Caliburn where things had been leaking.

All the time of doing that, the sun was beating down upon me and I’m now a delicate shade of lobster. And cutting my hair (it had gone a bit wild just recently) didn’t help either as I’m now likely to get a suntan on there. I had to clean and overhaul my hair clippers as they were all clogged up, and now they cut as well as they ever did.

And when I knocked off, the water temperature in the solar shower was 40°C and I had a gorgeous shower. That really was nice.

But the best bit of news comes from the second way that I burnt myself – and that was with the washing-up water. And no, I didn’t leave the kettle on too long.

At 22:00 when I came to do the washing up, the water in the home-made immersion heater was an astonishing, incredible 64°C. It had gone off the scale (over 70°C) during the course of the day and that is down completely to the insulation.

This morning, the water was still 34°C after yesterday’s exertions – I could have had a shower ( and we aren’t talking the OUSA Executive Committee here either) in that. It’s proof positive that good insulation is definitely the way forward.

Electrically-heated washing water is a major milestone for me in my search for autonomy and I am glad that I’ve managed it. But this insulation is giving me another headache – with temperature over 70°C with 2 hours of sunlight left and a few more hours to come later in the summer, I’m going to be perilously near boiling up and I don’t need that at all. I’m going to have to rig up a proper immersion heater with thermostat and all of that – and then what will I do with the surplus electricity? But at least it is the right kind of headache.

And in other news, I now have a car transporter trailer. The company who makes them can’t build mine until July but they are building one for a dealer – exactly the one that I want – and he’ll sell it to me at the factory price if I go and collect it. The factory will keep it until the end of May when I’m in the UK and this is really good news

-2

Wednesday 6th April 2011 – What an exciting day.

Breakfast outside in 19°C on the pallets that I’m using as an impromptu terrace for the moment, interrupted by the postie bringing me a huge (and I mean huge) box of goodies from Amazon – my birthday present in fact.

And then the rest of the morning gardening. I’ve dragged the herb beds out of the smaller cloche (they are in large plastic troughs) and put them by the verandah so I can get at them for cooking, and then spend the rest of the morning clearing up some more raised beds and sowing seeds – putting tons of stuff out in fact. And it was beautiful weather to be out in, that’s for sure. Summer is well and truly back.

Lunch on the terrace of course, and by the time I was ready to resume, the water in the home-made immersion heater (that takes its energy from the excess solar power) had reached the magical 50°C (did I mention that I’d insulated it this morning with a load of the left-over offcuts of the bubble-wrap insulation?) and so that called for a washday, and now I’ve a load of clean clothes drying outside.

But isn’t it nice to have piping hot water for washing clothes without having to boil an array of kettles?

While I was in the washroom I made a start on tidying it up too – years of rubbish accumulated in there. Only a start, mind you. There’s a lot of stuff in there that needs to be sorted and a lot of it can be binned or burned as well. In fact it might be an idea to have a fire around here and dispose of a pile of stuff.

Once the washing was done it was back into the garden and planting herbs in the herb bed and delicate stuff into pots to warm up in the smaller cloche (which is why I moved the herb beds out). I’m now curious to see what my crops will do this year. Last year was rather disappointing as you may well remember, with snow in May that killed everything stone-dead.

18:10 when I knocked off too, and the water in the solar shower was at 38°C. That called for a shower (and we aren’t talking about the Executive Committee of the Open Unversity Students’ Association either) and so never mind the clothes – I’m clean too (well, at least on the outside anyway).

Back up here I had my coffee, watched the first one of the 41 episodes of Sherlock Holmes – Complete Collection [DVD] while I sorted through all of my purchases. I must admit I can’t wait to watch Bring Me The Head of Turdi de Hatred [DVD] [1974] sometime in the near future.

Switching on the computer, I found myself the recipient of some astonishing news and it’s the best news that I’ve had since Monday. I’m not going to sat anything about it as yet because it is too good to be true and I’m not going to believe a word of anything until I have a piece of paper in my sweaty little mitt. I’ve no idea why it is that my luck has suddenly changed for the better this last 9 months – it’s not like me at all. But things have certainly been turned upside-down just recently. So much so in fact that I’m convinced that there’s a huge banana skin waiting for me somewhere to compensate. But then again, if this news is as good as it seems to be then it won’t matter at all.

So now I’m listening to Made In Japan, and in particular “Highway Star” – the theme song for my trip to the Rockies and the Utah Desert in 2002 – at full volume before I go to bed. But no point in going to bed right now – I won’t be going off to sleep.

-2

Friday 25th March 2011 – This glorious weather is continuing.

We had over 25°C today outside, and for quite a lengthy period too. Not a cloud in the sky in fact. I carried on down in the potager –

I cut down a couple of huge trees that had grown there (although I haven’t uprooted the stumps yet), dug out where the third bed will be, uprooted god knows how many smaller stumps from out of there, dug it all over a few more times, and then made the raised bed framework that will enclose it all.

That’s in place now and so to finish off I tidied up in the barn so that I can now get in and out without falling over things.

The water in the solar shower was still at 36°C (it reached 37°C at one point in the afternoon) when I knocked off at 18:00 and so I took advantage by having yet another shower. I’ll be washing myself away at this rate – it’s only the dirt that holds me together.

And up here in my room the temperature was at 20.1°C – by far the highest of the year in here.

What more could any man require?

-3

Thursday 24th March 2011 – Nothing really special happened at all today …

although I am fed up of the blasted French Air Farce. At 16:32 precisely this afternoon one of their jets flew over my house so low that it set the wind turbines going off. It was unbelievable – I’ve never heard such a racket in all my life. And what did I do to deserve it? I haven’t had a UN Security Council resolution made against me, have I?

So that’s me thoroughly fed up and I’m going to declare my house a no-fly zone. I’m going to see if I can’t track down a Stinger missile somewhere (the Taliban still have a few that the Septics sold them back in the early 1980s) and set it up in my garden. The next b@st@rd who thinks it’s funny to fly over my house at zero feet will get more than he bargained for when I light the blue touchpaper and retire. All I’ll need to do after that is to see if there are still a few Scud missiles left buried in the sand in Iraq (the Scud, by the way, is a direct descendant of the German V1) and drop a few of them onto the French Air Farce headquarters. See how they like it.

B@$t@rd$

But it wasn’t just the French Air Farce that set off my wind turbines. It’s been quite windy today here too and round about 12:00 we had a good half an hour of high winds. I had 2.1 amp-hours of wind energy off the old AIR turbine and I’m impressed with that.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I had a good day in the garden and I now have two new raised beds installed. The one on the left is for the new potatoes and the other one, together with a third new one that I shall be installing in early course behind the compost bins, will be for the old potatoes.

But while I was hacking away in there I came across one of my original apple trees in the jungle. It’s weighted down with brambles and scrub but it’s still going with loads of buds right now. It might be possible to save it and so I had a go at clearing away much of the rubbish that was dragging it down.

Another solar shower too – water at 36°C rhis afternoon although it had cooled down to 34°C by the time I knocked off. It didn’t feel that warm when I was standing underneath it having a shower but I feel that I ought to be taking advantage of the warm weather and keep myself clean.

It can’t keep up like this for ever, although of course I wish that it would. This time last year we had a few days of 20-odd °C, I notice, but the weather soon collapsed.

-2

Wednesday 23rd March 2011 – And if you thought …

… that yesterday’s events were spectacular, well you ain’t see nuffink yet.

I woke up at the silghtly earlier time of … errr … 09:44 and I’ve worked out that for the last two days I’ve managed to sleep through 4 alarm calls each day. That’s some going even for me. I must be tired.

Anyway after breakfast I carried on with the new plots. with the first one that I’m currently working on I’m having difficulties in that there are huge tree roots running right through it. After ages of digging, I gave up and went and sharpened the hatchet that I use for cutting firewood. That did the business – you can swing it in confined spaces like trenches – and now I have the one bed finished.

Tomorrow I might well make the framework for that and then carry on with the second bed.

After lunch, the water in the home-made immersion heater (powered by surplus energy from the solar panels) had reached the heady heights of 50°C and so that was my cue to get 20 litres of water out of it and do a load of washing. It’s rusting a little inside the drum that I’m using. Clearly I’m going to have to rig up one of the copper immersion heaters that I’ve scavenged

But never mind that – I’m impressed that it works at all – it’s nice to have done a load of washing that cost me nothing at all to do. Apart from the soap of course – the €12 that I paid for the machine has been reimbursed many times over.

Drying too is free – just hang the clothes outside in the sun and slight wind. what more do you want?

But that’s not all. The water in the solar heat exchanger was showing 34°C all on its own without the aid of any hot water added from a kettle. And so that was the cue for yet another shower. And you’ve no idea how pleasant it is to be all nice and clean and in clean clothes, and ready for bed in clean sheets.

And it won’t be long before I’m in those sheets either. I can’t last the pace these days.

After my shower I went round to Marianne’s for a chat. She wants me to do some research for her at Cambridge next time I’m in the UK. But she also needs a bit of burglarising and breaking and entering doing. My name came to the top of the list in that respect so it seems and it’s for that reason that she invited me round.

The things I get to do!

-2

Friday 3rd September 2010 – In a change to the advertised programme ….

…. I had a day off today. Totally unplanned but somehow things just seem to work out that way. But first, just have a look at this picture. And what do you make of it? You might need to enlarge it first.

The giveaway clues are in between the two rails in centre pic and also in the top left corner.

What has happened is that at some time or other some kind of railway conveyance has come off the rails at the points just here and ridden along the sleepers for a long way. And no-one has bothered to repair the damage.

Where I am in fact is at the old Les Ancizes-St Georges de Mons railway station, where I have been for a prowl around this evening. This is on the abandoned railway line between Lapeyrouse and Volvic – the one that crosses over the Viaduc des Fades and which was closed in dramatic fashion a couple of years ago when they “suddenly discovered” that the viaduct was unsafe. But you know me and my conspiracy theories – I reckon that the closure was planned for years and the lack of maintenance along the line merely proves it. And not replacing these clearly-badly-damaged sleepers just adds more fuel to the fire.

So how come I had a day off when it wasn’t planned?

This morning I went to the doctor’s to have my football medical signed off – if I want to play I need a certificate. As it happened, it cost me nothing as all my details of the medical I had for my referee’s test were on file.

So that was good.

Then I decided that seeing as I was in St Eloy I would do my shopping. and LIDL was good too.

I needed some more identity photos so I went to Carrefour where I planned to finish my shopping. But no photo booth!
“We don’t have one” they said.
“So where do people go for their identity photos?”
“The professional photographer” she said – and watched me splutter.
“Anyway” she added “he’s closed until 15:00”
Sod this for a game of soldiers – a 50-mile round trip where I drove to the Intermarche at Commentry – I know that they have one. Mind you, I half-expected it to be closed for lunch or the machine out of order but no – it worked, and that must be a first.

They aren’t have having their money’s worth out of me, running around to collect all this paperwork.

On the way back and passing through Marcillat en Combraille I went to look at a building that I noticed when I was with Liz the other evening. Now is this a former railway station or is it a former railway station? You can even see the platform.

In fact what we here was the terminus of the Ligne Economique, – the narrow-gauge railway that ran between Marcillat en Combraille and Commentry.

Commentry is a steel-making town and there was a huge lime furnace just a mile or so away from here, so it’s no surprise that there was a railway line between the two towns. The station building here is in a direct line with the old lime furnaces, but modern building has obscured whatever track there might have been in between the two.

The narrow gauge track was ploughed up in 1930 when they built the standard gauge line over its track bed, so when the main line service was suspended in 1939, Marcillat en Combraille lost its passenger service completely, even though the rest of the tacot system staggered on into the 1950s

So while I was here in Marcillat en Combraille I went to the local Mairie and the secretary agreed to talk to the people who know, to see what help might be given for my proposed research

At Pionsat I dropped off my forms at the Football Club, only to find that I can’t find the receipt for the referee’s stuff, and I’ll need that if I want the club to pay it. I remember seeing it floating around the van so I picked it up to put somewhere safe. That says it all really.

So after a solar shower I went to St George for my HGV medical, and here’s another doctor who tells me that there is nothing dropping off quite yet. Mind you, he had me doing some funny things like standing on one leg with my eyes closed and all of that. And as I’m after a change of licence and an International licence he gave me my file back and told me to take it myself to Clermont Ferrand on Monday.

On the way back I went for a prowl around the deserted and abandoned railway station at Les Ancizes and took a pile of photos, a couple of of which you have seen above. In his book First and Last Loves” John Betjeman wrote that “Nothing is more empty than a deserted fairground”. But that was because in his day there weren’t any deserted railway stations. He’d change his tune if he were alive today.

And after coffee at Liz and Terry’s I came home just in time for tea at 21:00. And now you see what I mean. Tomorrow I shall have to work to catch up.

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Friday 27th August 2010 – It’s been an exciting day today.

This afternoon I had a good wander around the vegetable plot checking up on things as it’s been a while since I’ve had a really good look, what with one thing and another.

One of the things that I did was to check in the smaller cloche where I have the strawberries and the one surviving cucumber plant. That has just been growing and growing with plenty of flowers but nothing much else, however today I noticed for the first time that the cucumbers are set.

There’s just three of them at the moment, still quite tiny but it’s nice to see some kind of progress in there. If the way that the courgettes have burst into life is anything to go by, within a week they should be monsters.

After that I went and checked on the tomatoes in the mega-cloche. They are just growing and growing with tons of flowers and fruit and so I took an executive decision and topped them all. No point in growing stuff that is never going to ripen and letting perish the fruit that is already there. Topping them will hopefully concentrate all of the energy into the fruit and they may even ripen.

There’s a stray tomato plant in the greenhouse so I went to check on that. And fighting my way in past the gherkin plants I noticed that they are finally starting to do stuff.

And that’s about time too. Thousands of flowers and not the least sign of a fruit, and all of a sudden a few of those have burst into life.

Now what do you do with a gherkin? If I could get malt vinegar over here I might be tempted to pickle them but I can’t so I’ll have to think of something else. All suggestions are welcome

I followed that up by pulling the veg for tea. I had a veggie-burger lined up and so I pulled up some carrots and spuds, and picked some beans, spinach, sage and rosemary. Add a garlic clove and an onion to that lot and it really was a nice tea. Quite enjoyable. And I sowed the last of my parsnip seeds in where I’d removed the carrots. I’ve no idea what they might do but they won’t do anything in the packet.

The rest of the afternoon I’ve been sawing wood. I need to move the wood to erect the dividing wall in the lean-to where the composting toilet is. I keep on moving this wood around and nothing ever happens to it so I’ve decided to remove it by cutting up for burning, no matter how long it takes (and it will take a while). Winter’s not far away, you know.

This morning though I spent until midday working on my website. It’s almost up-to-date – I reckon another week will see the monthly pages done up to August 2010, and about time too. Nevertheless I was interrupted by a buzzing coming from across the yard – the water boiler that Smon gave me sprung into action at about 10:00. The weather today was terrible (it’s still pouring down now) and there wasn’t enough current to really fire it up, but it ran for a total of 3.5 hours. And more of this anon.

Once I’d knocked off computing at midday I went with Caliburn round to Lieneke’s and tidied up there. It seems that Terry and Simon have finished.

I rescued the breeze blocks, the sand and cement, a huge pile of buckets my tarpaulin and ladder and a host of other stuff, heaved it all into the Sankey trailer and brought it round here.

I reversed it down the lane (hard to think that 20 years ago I did that for a living) and parked it next to Terry’s tractor where it can live for a while.

And it’s amazing how much room there is on there. I still reckon that the money I spent on having that done was money well spent. There’s room for another couple of cars on there I reckon if I tidy up a little bit better.

But the exciting bits involved the water heating.

Of course the day that I get everything ready for blast-off is the day when the weather turns miserable. The immersion heater in the house ran for a grand total of two minutes. But it was trying its best to fire up as the charge in the batteries bounced along the critical voltage. It was quite a windy day so I reckon that if there had been a wind turbine on the roof it would have worked a treat. I’m going to have to sort out this wind turbine.

As for the water boiler, even though the solar energy levels were pretty miserable it fired up in early morning once the batteries in the barn were fully-charged and ran for a total of about 3.5 hours. And the water, all 2.5 litres of it, was boiling away merrily to itself. So much so that with it being POETS Day ….
“POETS Day?” … ed
“Yes, that’s right. P155 Off Early, Tomorrow’s Saturday!”
… today I had a lovely hot wash and shave out of that boiler at 17:30 when I knocked off. And had it been less windy, I would have gone for the hybrid shower – the solar water (that struggled to reach 30°C) diluted by the 2.5 litres out of the boiler. Now THAT would have warmed it up.

I topped up the water with cold water once I’d emptied it, and it carried on warming itself for a short while until the sun went down and the solar charge stopped. And when I went to do the washing up after tea at 22:00 it was not very far short of being hot enough to do the washing up. A couple of minutes on the gas ring sorted that out.

All in all, I reckon that this is major progress and I’m really pleased with all of this. This place is slowly starting to take shape one way or another. I just want a nice sunny day now so that I can see what the immersion heater will do. But with all this rain that’s going on right now that isn’t going to be for a while.

-3

EPIC HALL

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