Tag Archives: tidying up

Monday 9th February 2015 – THIS IS IMPRESSIVE!

Yes, I’ve had 105 amp-hours of excess solar energy today. The temperature of the water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load rose from 0°C (yes, it was really cold in the living room) to 41°C and on knocking off this evening I was able to wash my hands in nice warm water.

That tells you the kind of day it was today. Clear blue skies for most of the day with just a few clouds scudding by round about lunchtime. And I was able to extract Caliburn out from under hsi snowdrift and go into Pionsat and the Intermarché to stock up on the grub.

Mind you, that was rather problematical because, on arriving at the supermarket at 14:00 I discovered that it was exceptionally closed until 16:00 due to a bereavement, so I had to go back a second time. Anyway, I’m now good for another week if we are snowed in again.*

I’ve also been able to fill up all of the water containers, seeing as how for a brief period this afternoon everything unfroze itself.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I started off this morning by tidying out the bedroom. I’ve emptied tons of stuff and taken it downstairs and in doing so, I’ve …
1) cluttered up downstairs completely
2) made a few exciting discoveries of things that I had lost an subsequently forgotten.

But here’s an interesting thing. I took the gas heater downstairs and in order to move it easier, I took out the gas bottle. I had a look on the date on it (I date the gas bottles when I fit them so that I know how long they last) and this one was dated 10th November 2010, and it’s almost full. That means that it’s over 4 years since I’ve paid for any heating here and at €30 every three weeks for 18 weeks or so per year, that’s a saving of 88 weeks divided by 3 and multiplied by €30, that’s about €900.

The woodstove on the other hand cost me €279 and of course my wood is free, and there’s also a saving on gas for cooking in the winter too. So you can see that this woodstove really is the best thing since sliced bread.

So having spent all morning emptying out the bedroom, I can walk all the way around and reach all of the walls ready to start the filling. And after lunch and shopping, I made a start. But I stopped pretty quickly too because, looking at some of the plasterboarding that I had done back in 2010, I ripped a huge pile out and redid it, with proper bracing. It’s amazing how much I’ve learnt and how far I’ve come on since I started on this.

Consequently, I didn’t get much of the filling done, and I’m hoping for a better day tomorrow.

However, that’s going to be interrupted too as I’ve been summoned to the Mairie tomorrow morning. I told you that I missed the census the other week while I was on my one and only day out, and they came round today to catch me – the first day for well over a week that I’ve been able to leave the house.

Typical, isn’t it?

-2

Thursday 5th February 2015 – 12.8°C IN HERE THIS MORNING.

Hardly surprising, seeing as how downstairs it was all of 1.4°C. And (even at 10:00) it was minus 4.5°C outside.

Consequently, I have this morning fitted a decorator’s door to the head of the stairs on the landing.

These are great things, thrown together out of a bit of old plastic sheet and scrap offcuts of wood. Their main purpose is to stop the passage of dust into areas that are being painted, but they also work for keeping in the het and keeping out the cold. IN fact, you can feel the difference either side of the door so it’s clearly working. And as the temperature dropped downstairs, on the first floor we remained at a rather comfortable, if not balmy, 4.5°C

So having done that, and done some more tidying up, what was next?

Ahhh yes. We now have a windowsill in the bedroom.

This is from an offcut of pine board and normally it would be having about 3 coats of varnish on it. But that’s a waste of time with the temperature in the bedroom at 4.5°C.

The board took ages to fit as it needed to be carefully cut and shaped, and it’s come out quite well. But one unforeseen problem was that the window wouldn’t open with the sill in position. But that power belt sander that I bought the other day is superb, even if it did break the belt. Ith having something like some sun this afternoon I could use it. It did a really good job of sanding down where necessary and now there’s about 3mm of clearance under the window.

After lunch I tracked down some thin wood offcuts such as scrap tongue and groowing and nailed them to the wall inside the window and then started to clad the inside of the window with tongue and grooving like I did to the window at the head of the stairs. I have some of the t&g left over from when I did the bedroom ceiling and together with the offcuts from other projects, I should have enough to do a decent job there

I’ll post a pic when I’m finished with that.

I knocked off at 18:30 and it was just 9.3°C in here. And it’s snowing heavily outside too. If that’s not enough, the 10-day long-range weather forecast is promising not much let-up in the weather. It’s a good job that I don’t really need anything from the shops, as I won’t be able to go to fetch it.

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Tuesday 3rd February 2015 – IT’S BEEN ONE OF THOSE DAYS …

… when very little seemed to go right. After all of my exertions today until 18:30 this evening, I’ve put one (out of three) sheets of plasterboard on the wall, and that is that.

I started off by some more tidying up in the bedroom so that there was a place to work on the plasterboard, and then I cut the first sheet.

This needed four holes to be cut in for the pattresses, and then a frantic search for the pattresses and sockets. And despite a decent search, I can’t find the telephone socket that I bought the other day.

I then had to lengthen a couple of electric cables and that wasn’t easy either, and when I pulled out a redundant length of wire, I noticed that the insulation was shredded. A further search revealed that I’d put a plasterboard screw from the bathroom through into the conduit for the cables, so I had to remmove that and replace the wires.

But the screw was behind the batten for the suspended ceiling in the bathroom so I had to take the batten down. But the screw head was worn so I had to drill it out. And so the battery went flat in the drill.

And so it went on, and you get the picture.

Eventually, all of the wire was the correct length, in the correct place, properly routed and joined, and so I could offer up the plasterboard to the wall. It needed trimming off and so I had to take it all down again to trim it. And in puttilg it back, I smashed a corner of the plasterboard that I had spent all morning shaping.

But then again, that’s what filler is for and so it’s gone on the wall anyway. You’ve no idea how difficult to manoeuvre a sheet of plasterboard, thread four lots of cable through four lots of holes and then screw it to the wall all on your own.

But it’s done anyway, and if I’m lucky, I can fit the other two pieces tomorrow and – shock horror – maybe even paint the walls on the landing. But I’m not holding my breath.

It was freezing here this morning – 13.3°C. But that’s ot surprising seeing as how it was minus 6°C outside. And freezing where I was trying to work. That didn’t ease my humour any.

So tonight, I’ve banked up the fire and we’ll see what happens.

-1

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.

-1

Saturday 31st January 2015 – NOW HERE’S ANOTHER THING.

Something else that’s totally unheard-of too. At about 16:00 today I went downstairs and spent an hour working on my walls in the landing!

Mind you, what was astonishing about this was the weather. When I awoke this morning (early yet again) it was snowing – and quite heavily too. And it kept that up for most of the day.

After breakfast I wrote yet another series of radio programmes, in my quest to keep well in front of targets, and then, in other astonishing news, I started to empty the attic. A lot of the foodstuffs – those in glass continers – went outside onto one of the shelves and that made much more space on my table in here. And the shelf – the smaller of the two – isn’t even half-full.

I’ll find some more cardboard to put on the upper shelf tomorrow and move all of the cookery stuff, saucepans and the like, out there. At this rate, i’ll be able to move around in here.

Whatever next?

Well, next was 16:00 and, quite dramatically, the sky cleared and the sun came out. Never one to miss an opportunity, and not knowing when the next time will be that we will have decent weather as the weather forecast for the next few days is dire, I nipped downstairs, switched on the inverter, found the power sander and attacked the filler that I had put on the landing walls last night.

15 minutes had that all smoothed off and, in for a penny, in for a Pound, I filled in where the filler was low.

That’s now drying off and thennext time that we have half an hour of sun, even if it’s tomorrow, I’ll sand it off. I’m already two days behind where I want to be with this bedroom and I can’t afford to lose any more time. Wallpapering the landing on Monday, painting on Wednesday, that’s the next plan. And in between, I’ll empty out the bedroom ready for a work-in.

-3

Wednesday 17th December 2014 – THE WORST DAY …

… that I can ever remember having since I’ve been here.

By the time I took the stats this evening, we’d had 32mm of rain. It’s rained non-stop throughout the day, the ground is totally waterlogged, there’s surface water on the mud outside and the run-off has come into the verandah and the floor of that looks like a swamp.

If that wasn’t enough to be going on with, when I went back outside after (a rather late, it has to be said) lunch, it was so dark that the outside lights had come on. In fact, had I not been awaiting a couple of parcels still, I would have thrown a suitcase into Caliburn and gone off to find some sun somewhere, even if it had been Italy or Greece. Things are that bad here.

As far as the work around here goes, it was another somwhat later start. Hearing the amount of rain that was cascading down onto the roof made me rather unwilling to leave the comfort and safety of my warm little bed.

Outside though, I was in the barn working. More tidying up and repairing things that needed fixing. And I have also found, at long last, one of the 12-volt DC cables for the charger for the rechargeable batteries – something for which I have been looking for years. It just goes to show you what a bit of tidying up can do. And it was a nice change doing it all to music.It made me feel so much better just having the music playing in the barn again.

I’ve also made a temporary connecting board. I quite often have to quickly connect something to the DC ciruit to see if it works or to see if there’s a polarity issue (these IKEA LED striplights do have a polarity issue and the cables aren’t marked) and on the old power board I could touch the wires of any appliance to the connecting points of the terminals. Of course, with this new power board, the connecting points are behind the front panel and sheathed in pattresses, so I can’t reach them. I’ve therefore made up a wooden board with two wires connected to a plug that I can plug into a 12-volt DC socket. The other ends of the wires are connected to two bolts in the wooden board. One bolt is marked red (for positive) and the other one black (for negative) and there’s a warning light to tell me that there’s current at the terminals. This will do what I need to do.

After lunch, I carried out another long-term issue – namely replacing the final 12-volt flourescent light with one of the IKEA 12-volt strip lights. I do have to say that they are nothing like as good as the LIDL 12-volt striplights, but drawing 1.2 watts instead of the 7 watts of the flourescent light is a huge improvement.

I wasn’t in too much of a rush to knock off so it was 18:20 when I finished. And a little later I had to go to Pionsat to meet up with Liz and to give her the Christmas presents for them both.

And the rain is still cascading down. Since I’ve been back from Canada on 8th October, there’s been just one whole day when there has been no rain, and the weather forecast for the next 10 days is “more of the same”. I’m sick to the eyeballs of all of this.

-2

Tuesday 16th December 2014 – WHAT A DAY!

It’s deen yet another wet, miserable day today – rained non-stop from morning to night. It’s been 12 days since I’ve had any decent solar energy and aren’t I glad that I changed the batteries over at the end of October and put the new ones in otherwise I would be struggling.

I knew exactly how it was going to be. Even though I had another early night, I woke up to hear the rain pounding down on the roof so I turned over and went back to sleep for another hour.

After breakfast I was back outside – or, rather, in the barn. I’ve sorted out all of the tools that I’ve been using and also done some tidying up there. There’s a dustbin completely full of rubbish that I’ve sorted out. I have, as you might have expected, found a few things that I had mislaid in the past and that’s always useful.

Another thing that I’ve done is to change a few plugs over. You remember that I bought a job lot of North American plugs a while back, only to find that they aren’t handed, which is a nuisance. However, there were several lights of various descriptions that I’ve found and of course the polarity of lights isn’t important. Consequently I changed four of the plugs over and that enabled me to recover four handed plugs and use four of the unhanded plugs instead.

I’ve moved the Ryobi Plus One 12-volt charger into the barn and that’s wired into the circuit, and I found a USB socket on a cigarette lighter plug – one that I had thrown away a while ago. But I managed to make it work this evening and so that’s now wired into the circuit too and the little *.mp3 player is currently being charged up on it.

There is also a row of hooks screwed into one of the roof beams and I’ve been hanging stuff there out of the way where it will still be to hand.

That’s all that I’ve done today. And it”s not surprising. With the miserable day that we had today, anything at all was better than that.

-2

Wednesday 12th November 2014 – I WAS BACK …

… at work on the enlargement of the battery box today. But I didn’t make anything like the progress that I had intended.

First job was to move the home-made 12-volt immersion heater as it was in the way. And that wasn’t as easy as it sounds either as a load of other stuff needed moving too. The fridge and the chest of drawers upon which it sits too for a start.

Moving the fridge was a problem as there wasn’t any spare room between the legs of the stairway. It wasn’t half a tight fit and I reckon that it had grown during the time that it had been in there.

But once that was out of the way, I found that the chest of drawers had collapsed. No wonder that it had seemed to be sagging a little. I thus had a very pleasant half an hour repairing that and now that will last another 60 years.

With the chest of drawers out of the way, that gave me an opportunity to clean up underneath the stairs and it’s looking quite nice now. With the chest of drawers back in, and in a different position, there’s lots more room now.

I could then move the stack of insulation further down along the wall and this gave me space to put the immersion heater, but not as much as I wanted because we then had an issue about the length of the cables (you might remember this from a few months ago). Accordingly I had to build a level platform on the floor and that wasn’t straightforward either as I was right over where i’ve been digging out.

By the time that I had done that, the place was a total tip and I spent an hour tidying it all up. It’s even better now in there than it ever was.

This afternoon I knocked down the side of the battery box, the one that is next to where the extension is, and chiseled out all of the bits that remained cemented to the floor. I’m still impressed with the quality of the cementing that I did. I must be improving.

I could now get in behind the battery box and with the hook end of a crowbar I could rake out behind it. This was part of the plan as a couple of years ago I had dropped a whole pile of wire connectors down there. I recovered a whole pile of them, a load of screws, several pens, two screwdrivers and all kinds of things.

There’s still a ton of stuff down there and so I shall continue the raking out at the next available opportunity but I ran out of time. Nowhere near finished which is a shame, as that was the aim for today.

Still, never mind. It’s looking much better than it did.

-1

Wednesday 5th November 2014 – ANOTHER ONE OF THOSE DAYS …

… where things don’t go according to plan. And I need to have this place finished for my guests too.

This morning though, it all started quite well, although it might not sound like it.

The last few weeks I’ve noticed that the battery bank hasn’t been charging as quickly as it ought to be, and discharging quicker than it ought to. Furthermore, the overall charge has been slowly dropping overnight when nothing has been running.

I had a look inside the battery box and, sure enough, another one of these Hawker batteries has burst. And again, just as you might think, it’s the one that is at the input/output end of the battery bank. The burst was causing the battery to overheat and that was where all of the power from the battery bank was going.

It was therefore time to bite the bullet and start to install the new batteries that I bought a while ago – those enormous 200 amp-hour batteries that I can hardly lift up. This involved expanding the base of the battery box, and I’s started on that a while ago, but hadn’t finished. Nevertheless, by rearranging the surviving Hawker batteries and knocking out three of the breeze blocks that form part of the side of the battery box, I could fit three of the large batteries.

So that is what I spent all of this morning doing – reorganising the battery box so that I could fit the three large batteries in. And moving the three batteries from the barn to the house was quite something. lifting 58kgs from a standing start is one thing – actually carrying it is quite something else.

It involved a very late lunch, and with tools and rubbish and all kinds of things littering the nice, clean and tidy floor from yesterday.

Just as I had finished my very late lunch and about to go and tidy up everything, the phone rang. Someone has suffered a calamity and needs my urgent attention. And this event has occurred in Rouen, no less. Keen readers of this rubbish will recall that I had to go on a breakdown to Rouen just before I went off the Canada, and now I need to go back. I have to be there for round about 06:30 tomorrow morning and so this means that I need to set off round about now and find a place to settle down somewhere on the outskirts of the town ready for things to happen.

So much for my nice, tidy living room floor – and my plans to have both myself and the house all nice, clean and tidy for my visitors. And that reminds me – I wasn’t able to contact them to tell them what was going on and so I’ve been leaving messages all over the place. I hope that they will find at least one of them.

-2

Tuesday 4th November 2014 – WHAT A DAY

Yes, the weather really has changed today. It’s rained for most of the day and we’ve had almost nothing at all in the way of solar energy – quite a change from last week, isn’t it? And it’s cold too – 7°C throughout the day and tonight there was a chill in the air that reminded me very much of an incoming frost.

Today I’ve been in the bedroom emptying it out and now that looks quite respectable too. And so it ought to, given the amount of time that I’ve spent in there today. Three bags of rubbish have been ejected.

I’ve also tiied up all of the reels of wire that were all over the place. I’m amazed that I have much more than I thought I did, which is hardly a surprise seeing in how much of a confusion I’ve been working. With not knowing what I have and where I have it, I’ve been buying things in duplicate. It won’t go to waste as I have the barn to rewire in due course.

So now the bedroom and the shower room have been emptied out and cleaned and swept, and I’ve also swept the stairs and the ground floor. It’s amazing how different the place looks now.

Finally, I was in the barn measuring up the batteries that I bought a couple of years ago. This week I’ll be wiring them into the system but the battery housing needs amending. That’s tomorrow’s task, I reckon.

Monday 3rd November 2014 – LOOK AT THIS!

It’s a 2008 Ford Ranger 4×4 Sport pick-up fitted with a 4.0 litre V6 engine. And furthermore, it’s mine. All mine.

Long-term readers of this rubbish will recall that I am thoroughly fed up with the price that I’m having to pay in North America to hire a vehicle every time that I go over. And not only that, what laughingly passes for “customer service” with Avis Car Hire is appalling. Every time I go there, they try to chisel extra cash out of me for all kinds of excuses and reasons and it’s gone beyond the point of embarrassment.

So to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … I’d asked a couple of garage proprietors in New Brunswick to keep me informed about any suitable 4×4 pickup taken as a trade-in, and one of them has come up with the goods.

Bearing in mind how much I’m paying for car hire, this pick-up will pay for itself in one-and-a-half visits to Canada. and if I can find a lightweight slide-in camper back for it, I will be really in business.

Consequently, I spent most of the morning on the phone to a couple of people in Canada – the garage proprietor and my bank – and now the deal is done.

Apzrt from that, I’ve finished the verandah today. Totally stripped out, cleaned and tidied and you can actually see the worktops now. I’ve also cleaned and refurbished the chemical toilet now that you can reach it, because that will be useful for visitors.

Finally, I tidied up a little more on the ground floor and that’s showing a great improvement too.

Tonight, I cooked one of my famous augergine and kidney bean whatsits, accompanied by one of the most wicked rainstorms that i’ve seen for a while. The weather really has changed now.

Friday 31st October 2014 – THE TIDYING UP …

… didn’t happen today. I’ve been doing much more interesting things instead.

I actually started on some more tidying up but it didn’t last long as Terry and Rob put in an appearance at the door. It seems that they had finished a contract a day earlier and so with a free day they had come to concrete the rest of the hardstanding where we had run out of ready-mix in the summer. This was to be Rob’s payment for me having gone to pick up his car from Rouen in August.

And so I dropped everything and went to give them a hand. And it was just as well that I did as we had a whole succession of equipment failure. Although we are having a dramatic late summer here, there wasn’t enough power to run Terry’s big cement mixer (my small one needs some attention at the moment) and so Terry had brought his big generator. After about an hour, that gave up the ghost. I couldn’t start my ancient generator (it’s not been run since 2000) and we couldn’t get to the huge diesel one that I have hidden away in the back of the Luton Transit.

Next step was to repair my cement mixer so we could use that. That worked for a while and then packed up again. It’s thrown the Woodruffe key out of the pulley on the crankshaft. In the end we found a bolt and squared it off on the angle grinder and then hammered it it. That seemed to hold and so we could progress – until the sun started to go down and the sunlight went off the solar panels.

It was then that I had a brainwave.

I have some heavy-duty plugs and sockets, the kind that fit on flying leads and I’ve been using them here and there around here, mostly to plug in the power board with the electric meter and the 600-watt inverter in various places around the barn. What I did was to wire up one of the sockets to the battery on the Kubota B1220 (that’ll be useful for the electric winch and all kinds of other things too) and plug the power board into the circuit. And much to everyone’s surprise, at 2500 rpm the Kubota produced enough power to run the inverter to power my small cement mixer, and it worked an absolute treat.

Here we are. The finished product. That’s the last of the cementing for this year, I reckon. And it’s a good job too.

Unfortunately we ran out of material yet again which means that it’s about an inch lower than it should be, but that can’t be helped and it doesn’t seem to be worth getting another small load just to skim the top. It’s not as if anything really heavy is going to be driving up and down on it.

I was thoroughly exhausted after all of that – completely unexpected but welcome nevertheless – concreting session. I struggled off to the Intermarche at Pionsat nevertheless and bumped into Nan on the car park, so we had a long chat. I treated myself to a sorbet at the Intermarché – I felt that I’d earned it – and then came back here to crash out. I was in bed by 22:30 and I’m not surprised. All of the alarms are disconnected and I’ll sleep for a week.

-3

Thursday 30th October 2014 – I HAD ANOTHER …

… garden fire today. But to be honest, it was really the same one as yesterday, with a lot more fuel added to it.

Outside the house, the tidying up is done as much as I can do for the moment and it really is a great improvement on how it was before. That, at least, is noticeable. And where I couldn’t reach with the lawnmower or the brush cutter, I’ve poured a load of weedkiller over. That’s something that I’ve always been trying to avoid, of course, but sometimes it is necessary, especially as time is something of an issue right now.

Having dealt with that, I’ve been in the downhill lean-to. I’ve done some (but not too much) tidying up in there now and I can move around again. Dealing with that properly and comprehensively is another mediul-term goal of mine, and that depends upon what the winter this year is going to bring us.

This afternoon, I spent a considerable amount of time on the telephone. Firstly, I had to call the UK and my bank there to find out why a banking transaction hadn’t gone through. After what can best be called “a frank exchange of views”, this transaction might go through properly now, and there will be some news about this on these pages in early course if all goes according to plan.

The second call was to Canada and to my niece and her husband. This is something else that is going to involve a considerable financial outlay, but my best estimate is that it will pay for itself in just three voyages to North America, and I’m looking to reduce my outlay in this respect seeing as how it’s becoming a regular thing, these voyages. And there will be more of this anon too..

Once those were out of the way, I spent a delightful afternoon downstairs on the ground floor of the house tidying up all of that, and it’s now back to the pristine condition of how it was in the Spring. That left me just ebnough time to make a start on tidying the first floor where the bedroom will be.

As it went dark I had phone calls from Terry and from Rosemary. I’m exceedingly popular these days. I can’t be feeling myself these days.

And quite right too. It’s a disgusting habit.

-1

Tuesday 28th October 2014 – I HAD A SHOWER TODAY.

Well, it wasn’t actually too much of a shower but when I came back downstairs after lunch the temperature in the verandah was 24.2°C and the water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that is the dump load for the overcharge on the solar panels had gone off the temperature scale ie over 70°C. Yes, over 100 amps of excess solar charge today.

I mixed 10 litres of water to 40°C and had a shower in the corner of the verandah. Nothing complicated – just a water jug and a large bucket of nice hot water but it didn’t half fetch me up nice and clean, just for a change, and in no time flat too.

And, yes, in the verandah too. Because this morning I was out there at 09:30 going through absolutely everything. I’ve made enormous headway in there, although it doesn’t look all that much different as you might expect. But the floor is clear now, hence the space to have a shower.

There is still a great deal to do in there however but the aim was to round up all of the loose paper that needs throwing out.

Having done that this morning, then this afternoon I went around the house and rounded up another pile of scrap paper, as well as all of the plastic bottles and tin cans as they can also go into the yellow sacks, according to the notice on the side of the sacks. This is an exciting discovery and saves me a journey down to the big dechetterie at St Eloy in the near future.

All in all, there are no less that 16 yellow sacks for me to take down to Pionsat tonight for the morning collection tomorrow and that’s really something. But it really doesn’t look much different here all the same.

Tomorrow, I’m going to start outside tomorrow, tidying up out there. I’ll have this place looking pretty even if it kills me, which it probably will.

-2

Friday 24th October 2014 – THE DEED IS DONE.

Yes, William Shakespeare would have something to say about this place now. There’s nothing in here now that shouldn’t be in here (mind you, I bet that there is). It’s all been moved out and there is now plenty of room to move about. The next day that I have plenty of power, I might even vacuum the place with that 500-watt vacuum cleaner that I bought in the spring.

You wouldn’t recognise the old place now.

I have radio stuff to do this weekend and we are recording on Monday, but seeing as how the paper collection isn’t until Wednesday, I reckon that on Tuesday I’ll do as much as I can to collect as much waste paper as possible from around the place. That should make quite a difference.

And when that’s done, I’m going to have a go at clearing up some of the outside.

And the weather is definitely becoming colder. In the lean-to last night the temperature dropped down to 12.9°C. In here, it fell to 17.1°C and that’s a sign of things to come, isn’t it?

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EPIC HALL

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