Tag Archives: tidying up

Friday 25th July 2014 – WELL TODAY DIDN’T GO ACCORDING TO PLAN

With the late finish last night it was something of a later-than-usual start.And this was interrupted by the boulangère with today’s bread. She’s going to be spending the weekend making jam and so seeing as how she seems to know what she is talking about, I took her to show her a tree and some fruit growing thereupon. She considers that it’s small plums and there’s no reason why I can’t make jam with them – but not for a while yet until they are ripe.

Back here I was sidetracked again with some research and so it was quite late by the time I made it outside. First job was to pick up all of the scaffolding that I’d dismantled yesterday and stick it over the fence into my garden.

Once I’d done that, I went up on the scaffolding and attacked the woodwork, putting the second coat of preservative on where I’d done the first coat yesterday.

I also attacked the bolts on the Sankey trailer with the angle grinder but this was where things went wrong and I ended up spending the rest of the day dismantling the angle grinder to find out why it keeps on stopping. It’s not been right for a while.

The brushes were worn and there’s a wire with a bad connection, as I discovered after I dismantled it. And I hadn’t finished it (and not by a long way either) at knocking-off time.

Up here later, I fell asleep watching The Naked Gun. I’ll see it again tomorrow and fall asleep in a different bit.

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Wednesday 23rd July 2014 – IT’S 02:40 …

… and I’m still awake. Serve me right for crashing out for an hour after I finished work earlier this evening. And that’s something of a surprise as I was in bed well before midnight too.

No rain or anything to wake me up so I slept right through and after breakfast I carried on with my journey around Lac St Jean and the Saguenay Fjord.

Outside later, I finished off the guttering.

It was too much like hard work to set up the big electric SDS drill, and so I had a good go with the bigger Ryobi Plus One drill. I was quite impressed because once I put a new battery in it, the Ryobi did the job quite well. So that enabled me to fit the brackets for the downpipe and then fit the downpipe.

It’s all now glued into position and quite solid too as you can see.

With having the scaffolding in place where I want it, I put in a higher row of planks so that I can reach up along the chevron on the outer edge and I put a couple of coats of wood preservative on there and also on the end of one of the roof beams. I’ll wallop some more on there tomorrow too.

I spent a delightful hour or so tidying up the concrete hardstanding, stacking everything neatly where it should be, so now there is plenty of room to move about there too without tripping over anything.

Next, and as it happened, the last job for today was to look at the Sankey Trailer. I ripped out the flooring and ripped out the electric wiring so that I could have a good look at the chassis.

It’s not actually as bad as I thought it was. What I’ve been mistaking for rot on the chassis is about 10 layers of flaking paint. I reckon that if I attack it with the wire brush on the angle grinder and remove all of the loose paint and the loose rust, I can get down to the bare metal. I’ve a pile of dark brown metal paint that is suitable for painting over rust so a couple of coats of that should sort out the chassis and the inside of the trailer body. For the outside I have some yellow hammerite-type paint to match Caliburn.

For the flooring, there’s all of that that we fitted on a caravan chassis all those years ago – some heavy-duty 30mm planking. That should make a really good floor for that.

Once I’ve fixed that, I can go and collect some concrete from the quarry to finish off the job here.

And we finished the day in sunshine too. Even better, there’s a bright clear sky tonight with not a cloud in sight. Is summer coming back?

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Sunday 13th July 2014 – WHO WAS IT …

… who said that the weather would improve this weekend? We’ve had another desperate day just like the other day when we had a minimal amount of solar energy. 17.5mm of rain fell during the dy and by the looks of things there in plenty more to come.

Mind you it was very nice where I was during the night. I was back in Crewe driving a coach down Middlewich Street for G&B Travel. At the bottom of the hill I turned right into Badger Avenue and on my left by the petrol station … "WHAT petrol station?" – ed … were a few vehicles belonging to a band of travelling gypsies. All the way along Badger Avenue and as far as the Merlin pub were more gyspy vehicles and a few of them were erecting aerials. I went up to one caravan and asked if there was anywhere where I could have internet accent. The woman there told me that there wasn’t anything there, but in her next breath she said to her neighbour – in Romany – that there was excellent internet connection.

So this morning I was up at, would you believe, 08:15 and after breakfast I watched Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 1

This is another disappointing Harry Potter film. It didn’t miss out by much, but what it did miss made a great deal of difference. It was much more of a mystical, introverted film rather than an action film like the earlier ones. It was all dark and broody and could have been an excellent psychological thriller if a real director had been in charge of it. With someone like Hitchcock in charge it would have been one of the best films ever but I had the feeling that the director was afraid of the subject and afraid of losing his audience. As a result, he chickened out of the film and … errr … lost the plot completely.

This afternoon I had a mega-tidy-up, and you won’t believe the difference that it’s made here. I’m quite impressed and I did it.

So tomorrow, more of the same. It’s a Bank Holiday so another day off for me.

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Friday 11th July 2014 – THANKS TO TERRY …

… for helping me erect my scaffolding at the rear of the house this morning.

It was pouring down again at first and I was feeling that we were going to have another day like yesterday when I had the lowest July solar energy figure since I began keeping records in 2007 (just 17 amp-hours for those who are interested).

The field at the back is totally sodden and the scaffolding was sinking in in places but we’ve managed to underpin it. It’s not particularly stable but it’s the best I can do.

The plan is that starting next week I’ll be cementing in under the eaves, something that I have never managed to do since I did the roof in 2009. THat needs to be made good to keep out insects, animals and plants. The ivy needs ripping off the back of the house for a start.

I then need to fit some fascia boards to the end of the chevrons and give everything a really good going over with some wood treatment to keep out the weather. And when that’s done, fit the guttering to take the rain water to the underwater tank that I’ll be fitting and away from the base of the house. I’ll check the roof as well while I’m up there.

Finally, I’ll have to check the mortar to see if the ivy has pulled any out

You can see that I’ll have my work cut out.

I crashed out for an hour or two this afternoon, which was no surprise. I’d been to Mons during the night with the British Army in August 1914 and I do remember that we were being switched around from battlefront to battlefront by wading through filthy, dirty water up to our waists in these canals.

Later in the afternoon I carried on looking for one of these missing black jump leads. This ended up as a full-scale tidying up in the upstairs of the downhill lean-to and I discovered all kinds of exciting things. And also a metre or two of heavy black cable formerly of the starter of a car, and this will do for the 12 volt immersion heater.

I can finish that tomorrow.

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Thursday 10th July 2014 – WHAT THE …?

Yes, I’ve spent ages this afternoon looking for a black jump lead. I save all the old ones as they come in useful as a cheap source of heavy duty cable, and I can find no fewer than 5 red ones, but there’s not a black one anywhere to be seen. I just don’t understand this.

During the night I was in Calveley with my father and a few other people, visiting the farm that belonged to my father’s parents. All of the outbuildings were still there but the farmhouse was a prefabricated type of bungalow. It seems that the farmhouse had burnt down and my grandfather had erected a kind of mobile home to replace it, with no planning permission. The uproar that this had caused led to a variety of court cases against my grandfather, all of which he lost, and the farm had to be sold to pay the legal expenses and grandfather went bankrupt. My father was in tears when whoever it was told this story.

So when I woke up and after breakfast I carried on with the website for the customary couple of hours, and then as the driving rain was preventing any outside work, I started to tidy up the bedroom.

This led to a couple of discoveries, one of which was a halogen table light. After lunch (I had to go into Pionsat to buy some bread) I rewired it and fitted a LED bulb in it, and that’s now illuminating my new comfy chair.

I also found a multiple cigarette-lighter socket with USB socket and so I rewired that and fitted it on the control board downstairs.

While I was there, having been told that the bad weather is to contine, I emptied the 12-volt immersion heater and ripped the wiring out. When I made it, I had forgotten to insulate the terminals and that’s not been helping the circuit, and the cables are scorched as I suspected. This led to a couple of design modifications, and then the search for heavier cables, such as old jump leads.

At about 19:15 that up until tomorrow and knocked off work. Rosemary rang up for a chat for about an hour, and then I had tea.

I’ll continue the search for the cable tomorrow.

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Tuesday 8th July 2014 – I’VE BEEN A BUSY BOY TODAY

And I had a restless night too. I can’t remember where I was or what I was doing but it was certainly something quite active and I was quite worn out when I woke up.

So after breakfast I cracked on with the website until about midday, with an interruption from my solicitor in Belgium.

Downstairs I stripped down the water filters as nothing is getting through to the water tank. As I expected, the filters are all blocked up and so I cleaned them all out, fluhed them through and refitted them. Now they are working fine – I can tell you that because we’ve been having further rainstorms today.

I keep saying that I ought to adopt a regular programme of cleaning the filters – every four months or something – and that way they won’t block up. However I keep on forgetting to do it.

Next task was to reorganise the car parking. I’ve moved the Kubota and the Sankey Trailer over so that I can put Caliburn on the concrete. This is why I’ve done the concreting and it certainly does look better.

Talking of the concreting and parking the cars, this is something that I bought on my travels. I’ve been looking for an old-type portable air compressor for ages. In the old days farmers used to have air compressors with detachable air tanks so they can charge up the tanks and take them off down the fields to blow up tractor tyres and the like.

I’ve never found one, but in Belfort I found this. It has just an 8-litre tank and runs off a 270-watt motor which, as you know, is perfect for my low-wattage electrical system. It’s light enough to carry around as well.

I changed over the plug to a British plug (I use British plugs and sockets here as the plugs are fused) and gave it a try. It charged the tank in seconds and inflated the wheelbarrow tyre in an instant. I’m well-impressed with this if it keeps this up.

I also changed the plug on the 500-watt vacuum cleaner that I bought the other week and tried that out. That works fine too.

I’ve been tidying up in the barn too, and then I set to to pull down the ivay and rip out the weeds and brambles and so on from the back of the house so that I can fit the scaffolding and get up there to do the guttering. I’m hoping to have the scaffolding up this week so that I can crack on with that.

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Monday 8th July 2014 – TODAY WAS ONE OF THOSE DAYS …

… where I didn’t feel like going outside at all. Woken up by another pile-driving downpour of rain at about 06:30, I was thinking to myself “what a way to start the day”.

Anyway I finally made it out of bed at the usual time and had the traditional couple of hours on the web site. And just for a change I made myself a second cup of coffee at about 10:45. I was cold.

Just as I was about to pluck up the courage to go outside working, Rob came round. His internet is down and he was desperate to check his e-mails. Not a problem of course and we ended up having a lengthy chat. That put paid to any plans that I had to go outside to work as by now it was raining again and so I did some tidying up on the ground floor.

I missed out on lunch. I became involved in something on the internet and it was gone 17:00 when I stopped for my butties. And here’s a surprise. The lettuce fairy seems to have come by while I was away. I have 10 small lettuce plants in one of my raised beds and I’m convinced that they aren’t anything that I planted.

Later, I had a chat – in German – with Cécile. That almost finished off the day but I was determined to make at least some progress and so I tidied up in here, dismantled the old easy chair that marianne gave me years ago and I’ve had here in various stages of disrepair over the last 7 years, and erected the new chair that I bought in IKEA the other day.

It has arms that hold me up and so its much easier to work on than the sofa. That has no arms and so I sink lower and lower on that until it’s impossible to work.

Yes, for CHF29:00 this chair seems to be a good buy.

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Sunday 22nd June 2014 – THE NIGHTS ARE CLOSING IN

Yes, what happened to the first half of the year? I have never known one go so quickly. It’ll be Christmas before we know it.

Even more astonishingly, there I was lying in bed for a good half-hour thinking that I maybe ought to get up, and when I did, noticing that it was just 07:40. On a Sunday too. I’ll never have a decent lie-in at this rate.

Resuming my usual habits after this last few weeks of work, I watched a film this morning while I was breakfasting. Today’s offering was Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and I was totally puzzled by this film. I was sitting there watching ti all warm up and wondering when the action might begin and suddenly it ended. 2 hours or so of no real plot and no real action and I can’t think of where the time went because there was nothing memorable about it.

However, having read the reviews of the film, I’m clearly in a minority of one. Lots of people consider it to be the best of the films.

So I spent the rest of the day doing some informal tidying up in here until it became too hot, and also tidying up a huge pile of files on the computer.

This evening Iwas round at Liz and Terry’s rehearsing the radio programmes as we are recording tomorrow. I also went round to Cécile’s to pick up a couple of letters.

Sunday 15th June 2014 – NOTHING MUCH HAPPENED …

… today.

I was awake at about 07:50 but if anyone really thinks that I was going to be out of bed at that time of morning on a Sunday they are thoroughly mistaken.

So at 09:20 when I crawled out of bed and had my breakfast, and that was really about it.

I made something of a drisory effort at tidying up in here, which didn’t last long, and then for the rest of the day I did little if anything. Somehow I wasn’t in the mood for the doing anything and I don’t know why. In fact I crashed out for a couple of hours in the afternoon.

All of the stuff I had planned to do, I ended up doing nothing and I was in bed shortly after 22:00.

I’ve really no idea what is happening right now.

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Sunday 1st June 2014 – TWO EXTRAORDINARY THINGS …

… worthy of note happened through the night.

Firstly, despite there being no footy last night and me not having any coffee since mid-afternoon, it was well after 04:30 this morning when I went to bed. What time I actually went to sleep, I have no idea. It certainly wasn’t quickly.

If that wasn’t bad enough, I was up and preparing breakfast at 07:45. How do you explain that? I can’t even wake up at that time in the week when I’ve had a decent night’s sleep.

So I’ve no idea what has been going on but it’s certainly something extraordinary.

So having crashed out for an hour or so, I’ve been tidying up in here a little and sorted out the fresh food again. High time I did that too. And then I’ve been working on the computer again.

After all, it is Sunday and I’m entitled to have a day off. I’m back to work tomorrow.

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Friday 30th May 2014 – I’VE BEEN DIGGING AGAIN

Yes, and here’s a new development – I was actually outside working at 08:30 and I can’t remember if that has ever happened before.

Terry had a day off – he had another job to do and of course, paying jobs with folding stuff always take priority over anything else, and so I was on my own.

I started off by picking out all of the large stones from the pile of earth that I had excavated on Wednesday evening, And then I started to shovel up all of the earth into the trailer to empty at the precipice.

I’d dug out the soil a little too deep so it seemed, and so I ended up by having to backfill it and then driving up and down everywhere to flatten it all down.

Considering that it’s my first job with the digger, it’s not come out too badly but Terry says that he’ll smooth it off on Monday. Yes, we’re a long way from being finished.

There was still plenty of time left and so I started to clear out all of the weeds from where I had parked the Sankey trailer.

By the time that I had finished , I’d cleared out quite an area and it looks quite good there now – quite an improvement. I’m going to park the Kubota there for now as I’ll be using the Sankey trailer for a while as long as the digger is here.

But with my early night last night, I had a good night’s sleep without any interruptions. Nerina wandered along too. I was in Crewe again at the Bus Station in the good old days when Crosville did the bus services there prior to the apocalypse of the mid-80s.

Each of the buses carried a notice of some kind and the notice had a glaring spelling mistake. I spoke to Nerina, who was working for Crosville, and it turned out that it was she who had written the notice. I told her that she should take more care about what she writes, but she had the air of not caring less about it.

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Friday 23rd May 2014 – IT’S BEEN GETTING ON FOR 25 YEARS …

… since I cooked any sausages, but guess what I was frying tonight for tea?

And not just any ordinary sausages either but some vegan ones too.

I completely forgot that last year when Rosemary went to the UK she came back with about 20 packets of dehydrated vegan food from a British mainstream supermarket. Some I gave to Cecile but I completely forgot about the rest until I was talking to Rosemary once more this afternoon.

That got me thinking and I had to scratch round in the house until I found them. It wasn’t easy and it took a while but here we are. First packet that I put my hand on was the dried sausage mix (add 250ml of water and roll into shape) and there we were.

Surprisingly, they weren’t too bad either – much better than I was expecting, and there’s more for tomorrow night too. And I now know where that packet of dehydrated falafel mix that I had last weekend came from – I’m just curious as to why it wasn’t with the rest.

So after the usual morning’s performance I was outside doing a few odd jobs and so forth before starting on the bean frames. And I made one before lunch , sowed a pile of seeds into two rows and screwed the bean frame into position.

During lunch, the heavens opened and that was effextively that. In four hours we had 13mm of rain. I went out and did some tidying up in the barn and in the lean-to, sorting out some space and also finding some more wood for my bean frames. I did manage to make another frame and sow some more rows of beans during the odd break in the weather.

But this weather is getting me down. Every day this week it’s started off nicely and then degenerated into this depressing, miseerable weather that we’ve been having. It’s almost the end of May too and the weather forecast for all next week is the same – risque de pluie – a very good probability of rain.

It’s high time we had some summer.

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Saturday 3rd May 2014 – I’VE BEEN A LITTLE PREMATURE …

… about these batteries, so it seems. The problem has been that it’s not been quite dark when I’ve taken the readings and when I’ve been out the next morning to check, the sun has been up for an hour or two, so the voltage reading is being distorted by the amount of energy being received.

However, it’s possible to program the charge controller to show Minimum Volts, and that’s what I’ve done. And that reading isn’t anything like what I was hoping it to be. But the barn is lit by a few of these 1-watt LED lighting strips and they are plenty bright enough even with a lower-than-expected voltage so no harm is being done. The batteries are certainly good enough to power them and I don’t need anthing more than that for the time being.

So apart from that, what else?

I had a late night last night and so it was a struggle to crawl out of bed this morning. But I did, and at a reasonably-respectable time too.

And I worked on the web site too and uploaded a pile of pages – the effort of the last couple of weeks on the North Shore of the St Lawrence River. If you go to this page and follow all of the links, you’ll see the … gulp … 18 pages that I’ve uploaded.

And I’m nowhere near the end quite yet either.

This afternoon I’ve been tidying up a little. That’s right – only a little. As you know, I’m off on my travels on Sunday night as I have a few things to attend to in Brussels. And for that I need to find a few papers and a Bank Card – hence the urgency.

Anyway, much of the stuff has been found and I can now head off tomorrow night in reasonable peace, once I’ve cleaned out Caliburn. The back of the van is in a desoerate state after having had all of that mess inside it.

So apart from that, not much else to tell you about. I haven’t done too much else.

What is a real shame though is that my little attic doesn’t look very much different after my tidying-up session, despite the two bags of rubbish that I took out. All of this is very depressing.

And the glorious, clear skies that the weathermen promised us today. Ptah!! That’s very depressing too!

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Tuesday 29th April 2014 – I WAS UP …

… before all of the alarms had finished going off today. That’s keenness for you and it shows just what an early night can do for you.

It was a gorgeous day too at that time of morning. But it didn’t last. As I was working on the website again it started to rain and that’s what it’s been doing on and off all day.

after the website I went out to plant the raspberries and strawberries that Liz gave me yesterday. That meant hoeing the bed right through from one end to the next and then adding a pile of sand to lighten the soil.

Once I’d raked and hoed all of that well in, I could plant everything, and now they are in. And to take me up to lunch time, I hoed the onion and shallot beds.

I was in no rush after lunch as we were having a rainstorm. But once it died down a little I popped out and put the secon coat of wood treatment on the raised bed that I made the other day.

I’ve also been working on Caliburn. The back is all cleaned out nicely now and I’ve rebuilt a bed for the back. I’ve been using the old hammock-type of attachment that was a fifth bed in an old caravan that I broke for spares ages ago. But that gave up the ghost a while ago.

But then I had a brainwave. When I was living in a caravan I cut down a bed to fit in an odd corner and I’d forgotten all about it since I scrapped that caravan too. I resurrected it, cut it to fit the rear of Caliburn, fastened it all together with some angle brackets and aluminium strips riveted in position, and then made a cradle out of the old hammock supports.

It works a treat too, and I’ll be very comfortable on that bed, for I’m going away next week for 10 days or so, I reckon.

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Saturday 19th April 2014 – I’VE JUST SEEN …

… one of the best football matches for ages. No football at Pionsat tonight so I went to Marcillat en Combraille who were playing Mercy-Chapeau. An excellent game that finished 3-3 but Mercy can consider themselves robbed of a victory. 2 of AS Marcillat’s goal came from free kicks, one of which I wouldn’t have awarded and the second I would have awarded, but in the other direction.

And I have at last seen a player in the Allier who I would pick for FC Pionsat St Hilaire. Mercy-Chapeau’s n°5, playing at the heart of the defence, was big, quick, intelligent and commaanding and if Pionsat could find a player like him, they wouldn’t have anything like the issues that they are having now.

Apart from that, after breakfast I tidied up in here. Not much, it has to be said, but just a little but at least the table is clean and tidy and I’ve vacuumed the floor round by where I sit. Not with the new vacuum cleaner – I’ve yet to try that out – but with the 12-volt cylinder vacuum cleaner that I found again the other day.

In St Eloy les Mines, I did the shopping and at Carrefour they had 12 lettuce for €2:60 and the brasica was reduced to €3:95 for 10 so I bought some sprouts to go with the cabbage I planted a few weeks ago. They will be in the garden on Tuesday when I restart work.

I noticed today as well that the lettuce seed that I sowed in a tray – there’s signs of life in there as of this afternoon. That looks quite optimistic as I was beginning to think that I’ve been wasting my time with the gardening effort this year. Only the courgettes (and then only some of those) seemed to have done anything.

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EPIC HALL

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