Tag Archives: tidying up

Thursday 23rd October 2014 – AT LAST …

… it looks as if there has been some progress in here. For a start, the desk is completely cleared and there’s nothing on there except what should be on there.

Everywhere else in the attic has been atended to now and so by the time I finished this evening, all that remains is to take out everything that needs to be moved. And then I’m hoping to see some difference in here because, to be honest, as I have been saying for the last week, ther doesn’t look much difference (except on the desk as I metioned yesterday).

And, as you might expect, I’ve been finding stuff that I’ve long since given up for lost although there are a few things that I know should be up here and I’ve yet to discover

Mind you, I didn’t feel much like it this morning. i’m still being troubled by a mouse or something in the roof and for a couple of hours it was scratching away, keeping me awake when I was trying to gt off to sleep. That was really annoying.

I also had one of these vague telephone conversations with one of the radio companies that broadcasts Radio Anglais. It’s always difficult dealing with this particular radio station, for a whole variety of reasons, and today was no exception.

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Wednesday 22nd October 2014 – BRRRR!

It looks as if winter has arrived here. Last night the temperature outside dropped to 3.7°C outside, the coldest that it’s been in this latter part of the year. No wonder I didn’t feel much like getting up this morning.

So I had another leisurely morning on the internet and then carried on attacking the attic here. And by the end of the afternoon I finally managed to make a good start on the pile of rubbish that is the desk. I’ve been piling stuff up on there since I din’t know when and this is the one place that I really need to tackle.

We’ll see how it develops.

Rosemary rang up again as there has been another change of plan at her house and she needed to chat about a new project there.

And then, I had a quiet night, although for some reason I found it difficult to get off to sleep and I was still awake at 03:00. I need to do something about this;

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Tuesday 21st October 2014 – NO ONE CAME …

… from miles around … errrr, yes, no-one came to visit me today which was just as well.

After something of an easy morning during which I did some work on the web site, I carried on with the tidying up in here. Still not much difference in how it looks, I suppose, but I have to keep on going.

And Rosemary rang me for a chat this evening. She has the builders in at her place so she was telling me how things were going, and she was interested to hear where I’ve got up to with the tidying up.

And that, dear reader, is that.

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Monday 20th October 2014 – I’VE HAD SOME MORE …

… unexpected visitors today. I happened to glance out of the window this afternoon and there was an old woman and three kids, two aged about 8 and a girl aged about 13 or 14, staring at the house. Further enquiried revealed that the old lady used to live here years ago and she just happened to be passing.

She insisted on a guided tour, which was quite embarrassing given the state that the place is in, but I suppose that I couldn’t turn her down, and she went off quite happy. She says that she might have some photos of the house from 60 years ago, and she’ll let me have copies if she finds them.

It disrupted my afternoon considerably, but I know that had I turned up like this at somewhere where I had lived 60 years ago, I would have hated to have been turned away.

But I do wonder who is going to be the next person to turn up here.

This morning I was up and about comparatively early and after breakfast I dealt with a pile of paperwork and put a load of web pages on line. You can now quite happily follow my journey around the Saguenay.

I also wrote a couple of letters that needed doing. And after a good hour or so’s work, I finally have a working printer here. I’m not sure how long it will keep going because, as regular readers of this rubbish will remember, I get through printers here about every 3 months and I’ve no idea why.

I also loaded up Caliburn with all of the clothes that I’ve sorted out. I needed to go to the Post Office of course to post the letters so on the way back I went to the dechetterie in PIonsat to drop them off seeing as how they have a clothing skip there. I also picked up a couple of rolls of yellow sacks as there’s a waste paper collection in Pionsat next Wedneday.

Back here I attacked the waste paper mountain until I was interrupted, and once my visitors had left I carried on again until knocking off time.

You still can’t see much of a difference in here unfortunately, but I must be on the right lines somewhere with all of this stuff that’s being binned.

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Friday 17th October 2014 – IT’S ALL EXCITEMENT HERE.

Yes, it’s all happening here at Pionsat.

I went a’shopping this afternoon at Pionsat on my way home, and look what I found in a lean-to on the car park at the Intermarché.

Yes, Pionsat now has its own launderette. Not much of a one, that’s for sure, but a launderette just the same. And not only that, there’s a 18kg machine here. That’s good news for me because I haven’t washed the cover on my bed settee in the five years that I’ve had it because I’ve not found a machine big enough to take it since the launderette in Montlucon closed down all those years ago.

And so on the next fine day that we have when I’m at home, guess what I’ll be doing?

And so I did say “on my way home”. That’s because I’ve been out and about this morning. Terry rang me up to ask if I could help him cut some wood.

It was a warm morning today, and with all of the dampness that we’ve had these last few days, it wasn’t difficult to guess where the Gorge de la Sioule is. There is the mist gradually rising up out of the Gorge and dissipating into the atmosphere.

It certainly makes a good photograph, especially in the early morning.

The photo was taken from the birdwatching centre at St Gervais d’Auvergne, and I wasn’t alone here either. There was a pile of other photographers here admiring the view, although I’m not quite sure what it was that was of such an interest to them.

Still, chacun à son gout as they say around here.

Terry and I chopped up a good pile of wood this morning and Liz made a good lunch for us. Then they went off to the dentist and I came home, via the Intermarché at Pionsat.

Back here, I carried on with the tidying up and despite all that I’ve been doing, I can’t see any improvement, and I can’t see any empty space either. I don’t know why this should be, but there we are.

I’ll just have to keep on at it until something happens or that I die of boredom.

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Thursday 16th October 2014 – THIS WAS ANOTHER MORNING …

… when it was difficult to haul myself out of the stinking pit. I’m not doing too well at this.

After breakfast, I started on some work for the radio programmes and prepared a live concert for the rock programmes for Radio Anglais. This concert is not so easy to prepare as it consists of live recordings from a variety of different concerts and I’ve had to edit them together to mke a seamless performance. We ended up being a good few minutes short and I found a studio track to fill the gap so I had to edit in some applause and links. The lengths that I have to go through for my listeners, but it’s worth it because it’s made quite a good concert and I’m impressed with the editing.

After lunch I attacked a huge pile of errant papers and most of them have ended up in the bin. I there was, however, some good stuff that would do quite nicely for the radio programmes so I’ve cut them out to save for later.

I’ve also been editing the kitchen equipment that is up here too. I can’t think why I have half of it up here as I don’t need anything like this much.

This evening I crashed out again for another half hour or so and then I had another go at the aubergine and kidney bean casserole. It’s nice not having to cook much when I have a pile of that.

Tuesday 14th October 2014 – THIS JET LAG THING …

… is still affecting me and I’ve no idea why. Last night, it was 05:00 when I finally went to bed. And had Terry not telephoned me at about 10:30 to come round and pick up some things from here, I would probably still be in bed even now.

But anyway, seeing as I was up, I was up and I had a leisurely breakfast and watched a film on the DVD – Rio Bravo, one of my favourite Westerns and another one in which the actors are more intent on having a good time than they are on focusing on the script and the stage direction. Of course, it’s the kind of thing that only good actors can get away with.

This afternoon, the clearing up started and by the time that it went dark, I had no fewer than 10 bin-bags of clothes prepared for recycilng. And that’s not all either as there are three dustbins full of clothes in the barn plus a few items of clothes elsewhere. I can’t believe how much rubbish that I’ve actually managed to accumulate here – there’s even stuff that I remember buying in the UK before I met Nerina, and that’s 30-odd years ago. Still, it’s all ready now to be transported to the local clothes recycling bin.

Something else that I can’t believe is that despite all of this, there still doesn’t seem to be very much difference in the amount of space taken up in here. It’s as if nothing whatever has been moved or emptied. But then my tidying up is always like that. If it looks any different from before, it’s usually that it’s more untidy, with having to move all kinds of stuff around in order to get at what i’m looking for.

I rang up Rosemary as well in the evening. On Saturday I’m going to be taking all of these unwanted clothes to Montlucon and to do some shopping too, as it seems that I’ve run out of oats and things like that. Rosemary is always game for a wander around the shops so I invited her to accompany me, which makes a nice change.

And then I finished off the vegan lasagne that Liz had given me in a doggie-bag the other day. That was tea, and then I settled down to see what was happening in the big wild world.

Sunday 12th October 2014 – WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME …

… that you have heard of someone waking up at 16:30 in the afternoon? Well, you’ve heard of it now.

There are three reasons for this.
Firstly, jet-lag counts for a lot of it, even though I’d tried my best to deal with this
Secondly, I should never have had that final cup of coffee at Liz and Terry’s. That didn’t help
Thirdly, with the internet back on, I had a lot to do and I ended up being somewhat carried away.
As a result of all of this, I had the dubious distinction of hearing the alarm clock ring to wake me up before I’d even gone to bed to sleep.

Dawn had long-since broken when I went downstairs to switch off the inverter and take the statistics. There was a high wind blowing too and the big wind turbine on the barn was going round like the clappers. That’s always nice to see. I wired in the 12-volt immersion heater too before I went to bed. If there’s any surplus energy, I want to lay my hands on some of that for sure.

On waking up, I wasn’t sure whether to have breakfast or lunch. Anyway, I decided on breakfast, which saves me having to look for extra bread for Monday.

And then I started on the tidying up – or at least, some of it. I decided while I was away that I need to be much more ruthless here with the stuff that I own and that I’m never ever likely to use. There’s reams of stuff that is simply junk and needs to be disposed of. And there’s other good stuff too that is never ever going to be used and I could generate some income from that if I stick it on the internet.

There wasn’t much time to do very much however, as you have no idea how quickly it’s going dark these days, sO it’s not even correct to say that i’ve made a start.

Monday 25th August 2014 – I HAD A LIE-IN THIS MORNING …

… yet even so, I was up and about by 08:05. And after breakfast, I set about packing everything.

And despite everything that I had done, there were still one or two things that I could not find and led to me having a good search around for everything. I reckon that I’ve now found everything that I’ll want, but if that really is the case, it will be a first.

Plenty of room in the suitcase for a change so in an amazing departure from the norm, I’ve cut up a couple of strips of that space-blanket insulation, 1.50m x 1.20m.

There’s a good reason for this. I’ve been using tarpaulins as curtains in the Dodge but that’s not particularly efficient. If I cut each sheet of this insulation into 2 strips 60cms wide and obtain some double-sided tape from Home Depot, I can stick this insulation onto the windows to blank them out and this will be much more appropriate, as well as keeping the temperature in the vehicle a little more comfortable.

Anyway, with all of this insulation in the suitase, the suitcase is very full but doesn’t weigh all that much.

Apart from that, I’ve sorted out the washing, tied up the onions and the garlic, put the shallots in a panier and did some tidying up and cleaning too.

I’ve also has Rosemary, Liz and Cecile on the phone.

Anyway, now I’m off for an early night because I’m going to have an early start tomorrow. There’s quite a bit to do tomorrow and then we’re radioing.

Friday 22nd August 2014 – IT’S AN ILL WIND …

… that doesn’t blow anyone any good. And so it is here.

In the realisation that I am not now going to be able to find the time, before I go away, to go to Commentry to buy the 16mm wire that I need to run through this piping, first thing this morning I sealed up the hole in the wall and put everything back.

And in doing that, I’ve chucked away a pile of stuff that was lying around, found a few exciting things that I had lost years ago, and tidied up a pile of stuff. Now, in the little corner where I sit, it’s never been so tidy. And that’s progress, isn’t it?

So now I can sit in comfort and work on the laptop.

Which I did.

I finished off the additional notes for Radio Arverne, all 6 weeks of them, including events for the ‘what’s on” section and I’ve even found a recipe. So that’s fine.

I’ve also done two rock programmes, including compiling the live concerts, which is what takes the time. The text for the second rock programme needs completing, and I need to write the additional notes for the recording that we will do when I come back.

That will be all of the radio, completed until the end of October. I wish I had had more time to complete it today but there’s only so much that I can do.

Now I’m off to bed as I have an early – like 06:00 – start in the morning.

And I hope that it’s warmer tonight. Last night it was 9.4°C. Cold it was, but that’s not a patch on Wednesday night’s temperature of … errr …. (or maybe “brrrr”) 7.2°C.

And this is August too!

Thursday 21st August 2014 – THIS TIME NEXT WEEK …

… I’ll be at 34,000 feet. I hope that the aeroplane will be too!

And I can’t wait to go either – I need a break. Especially after today. It took an hour and a half to sort out the difficult part of the wiring issues. The problem was relatively straightforward but it didn’t half take some fixing. What had happened was that when we must have fed the huge cable through the piping, the pipe had come away from its mounting and dropped down through the floor some way. Pushing the pipe back up had wedged it underneath the floor and trapped the wires.

Of course, now that the plasterboard has been put on the wall in the shower room, it’s not possible to reach the pipe from underneath. Consequently I had to drill out the floor from above and chisel part of it away. That freed the wires off but the insulation on the one that had been trapped under the floor was damaged so I had to wrap it in insulation tape. It’s a good job that I noticed.

But this huge armoured cable going through the pipe – I can’t understand that. Why did I choose that? Two strands of 16mm cable takes up much less room than that and will be much better at carrying the surplus current upstairs when I finally manage to move the immersion heater up here when the bedroom is finished. Consequently I pulled the cable right out.

It still wasn’t as easy as it might have been to pass this cable through the pipe but anyway, there it is. And there’s plenty of room for 2 strands of 16mm cable as well as one or two others if necessary.

Before I could restart work after lunch, Rosemary came round and we pulled up the onions and garlic. And what a crop! I’ve never ever been so lucky as to have had a crop like this. It seems that this wet weather has done some good somewhere.

That took us until 19:30 and I was looking forward then to coming upstairs and tidying up because it is a total disaster here what with me trying to pack as well as having to clear part of the attic to access this cabling.

But it’s not to be. I’ve had a phone call that means that either tomorrow or Saturday, Caliburn and I will have to take the big trailer on a rather long run. Consequently I had to empty out Caliburn and rescue the trailer from the undergrowth where it lives. Of course, there was a light out so I had to fix that too and that took me right up to 21:30 when it was too dark to do any more and I didn’t feel like tidying up at that time of night.

Tomorrow I’ll have to finish off all of the stuff for Radio Anglais if we aren’t going until Saturday. The radio stuff can’t be left and so for the moment this is the priority task.

Friday 15th August 2014 – YEEUUCCHHH

Yes, it had been another one of those evenings last night. Late last night it started to pour down in spades and at about 06:00 it was so loud that it woke me up. It was unbelievable. Every day I seem to be saying that I’ve never seen anything like it, and every day I’m right because it’s just getting worse and worse.
,
It poured down for most of the morning and I did the usual work on the web site. I ended up building a shop as well – I’m slowly changing all of the links on my Canada pages from Amazon.co.uk to Amazon.ca and there’s a shop facility on there.

I need to maximise the income potential on my web pages.

After lunch, I waited until the rain subsided and then went up on the scaffolding to carry on working on the electrics. And I would make much more progress if I could find all of the stuff that I needed without having to spend hours hunting it down, and I knew where all of my tools were. It seems that this tidying up that I did throughout the winter isn’t working out as planned.

I didn’t do much while I as up there either. Despite having planned it all the other day, I’ve changed it a couple of times already this afternoon while I was up there, and it will be changed again before I’ve finished.

Not only that, I was suffering from a bad attack of dropsy. I was dropping everything while I was up on the scaffolding and I had to keep on going down to fetch it – I’ve forgotten how many times I was up and down the ladder. In the end, all that remained to fall off the scaffolding was me and so I called it a day. It’s not the place to be, the scaffolding, when you are having concentration issues.

It was however 19:50 when I knocked off – it shows you haw engrossed I was in what I was doing. And it’s a good job I stopped when I did as about 15 minutes later the heavens opened again.

So let’s see how I can get on on Monday.

– in that I was

Thursday 7th August 2014 – FIAT LUX

And we aren’t talking about Italian cars and washing powder either.

This morning, I was wide awake early, a good while before the alarm, but there was a reason for that. It was absolutely teeming down with rain. So much so that I couldn’t go back to sleep and so I was up pretty quickly for breakfast.

After breakfast I was on the website for a good few hours. The main part of my trip around the Saguenay is finished but there’s a lot of rewriting and editing to do and that’s probably going to take as long as writing it.

By 12:00 I would normally have gone outside to work but it was totally pointless so I rearranged my little office space here. Things are so much better now I’m here in my little corner on the new chair that I bought a year ago. That’s why I’ve moved all of the computer stuff over here. And Rosemary rang up too for a chat, which was nice.

After lunch, it was still teeming down and so I started on emptying out the wardrobe space in the bedroom ready to paint the walls of it. I chucked the stuff downstairs ready to file it away, but now it’s all heaped up at the bottom of the stairs, even worse than it was before.

That’s because I was sidetracked after having done about half of it.

There’s the plan to run some cable through the side of the wardrobe so that there will be some power and light there. That was what started me off on my little journey off the beaten track.

Once that was done and I had the wiring equipment out, I wired up the light in the cupboard at the back of the stairs. Finally, I fitted the light on the landing on the first floor. Final task was to run a negative wire from across from the other wall at the head of the stairs.

I fitted a 12-volt LED light in each of the sockets and, much to my surprise, it all worked perfectly, as you can see.

Now I have light in the cupboard at the back of the stairs, and there’s also a light on the landing at the top of the stairs. It’s all ever so impressive.

And what was even more impressive was that the sun actually came out later in the afternoon but seeing as I was well on the way to finishing the wiring, I carried on regardless.

It was even finished by 19:20 which was a surprise too.

If the weather is fine tomorrow, I’ll be back on the scaffolding. Otherwise I’l be carrying on with the bedroom.

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Wednesday 6th August 2014 – I’VE SPENT ALL …

… afternoon looking for my special wall anchors. I’ve no idea where they might be and I’ve run out of places to look.

These are special wall anchors because they don’t have a standard bolt or a piece of threaded rod in them, but a bolt with an eye on the end and they are designed for fastening ropes and that kind of thing.

I’m not even sure that I have any, but I did at one time have one because it’s in the wall with one of the guy wires for the wind turbine fastened to it. However, I can’t possible believe that I only ever bought one of them. I must have at least another four lurking around somewhere. And I need one to use for the second guy wire of the wind turbine – one of the reasons why I’ve put up the scaffolding.

Mind you, in my quest for the wall anchors with eyes, I’ve found tons of stuff that I had lost (like a load of red wire terminals), stuff that I’ve spent ages looking for in the recent past (like one of the missing black jump leads), and stuff that I had forgotten that I had, like a toolbox full of the tools out of the Passat. And many more besides.

I’ve been tidying up too, and how, and repaired some shelves that I had built years and were about to collapse (it’s amazing how much my technique has improved). I’ve also ended u tidying all of the keeklamp fittings and sorted them out into sizes. I’ve also sorted out all of the ancillary fittings inclusing the turnbuckles and while most of them were size M12, I found an old one that was an M10.

And that gave me an idea.

I found a M10 wall anchor and took out the threaded rod, leving me with just the shaft. Then I dismantled the M10 turnbuckle and tried to fit the end with the right-hand thread into the empty shaft of the wall anchor. And much to my surprise, not only is it the same thread, it actually is just about long enough to reach down for the splitter.

So now, about 15 minutes to knocking-off, I have my special Wall anchor. It’s not an eye but a hook which is not as good as an eye, but it’s the best that I can do and it might even work. I can fit that tomorrow and that will be the first job done, I hope.

Mind you, I’m impressed about all of the tidying up. I’ve not seen that part of the barn looking quite like this before.

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Monday 4th August 2014 – I HAD A …

… bad night last night.

Whether it was the two cups of coffee that I had yesterday late afternoon, I don’t know but I was still tossing and turning in bed as the dawn was breaking. I managed to be out of bed at the usual time and I had breakfast, but I don’t remember too much about the rest of the morning. I didn’t make much progress on the website.

After lunch I went outside and, for the first time in 5 years, I cleaned out all of the stuff that was in front of the house. And there was a load of rubbish too. When I finally get round to doing it and finally have the time, there will be tons of stuff going down to the dechetterie.

That took ages to do, as you might expect. But once everything was moved out of the way, I started to fetch the scaffolding round from the farmer’s field. I’ve now started to put it up, and it’s not easy when you are on your own. It takes ages to start it off as you need to make sure that all four sides are perfectly level by adjusting the feet, and then you need to make sure that both pairs of sides are perfectly parallel.

Once the first row of the first bay is up (which is where I reached at 19:10), starting off the second bay and then building upwards is pretty straightforward even if it takes a great deal of effort. I’m hoping that I can finish erecting it tomorrow and make a good start on the things that I need to do.

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EPIC HALL

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