Tag Archives: tidying up

Tuesday 14th January 2014 – THERE”S ONLY ONE THING WORSE …

… than not being able to swallow, and that’s not being able to swallow when you have a streaming head-cold. Hence it was long after 02:30 when I dropped off to sleep and I awoke at about 04:00. Yes, a bad night indeed.

Lying there listening to the rain didn’t improve my humour much either. A bad day was threatening.

And a bad day it was too. 90 minutes to eat breakfast, 90 minuts to eat lunch and 90 minutes to eat my tea. I have been most uncomfortable today without a doubt and I wish that I were dead.

However, look on the bright side, Eric. Every last piece of rubble and dust is not out of the downstairs room and I’ve filled two black bin bags full of yet more rubbish. Most of the product that I need to work on the place is now down there and I’m reorganising the room yet again, putting the table that I’ll be using as a workbench under the window where it will be light.

I’ve had another bit of good luck too. You’ve no idea how much I’ve found that I thought was irretreivable (running a powerful magnet through the dust and rubble works wonders) but I’ve also found my sunglasses!

Bought in South Carolina in 2005 because the ones that I took with me to the USA were no good at all in that weather, I wore them almost constantly. They were superb, best that I’ve ever owned. So when I lost them in 2008 I was distraught. But here they are, sitting on an old newspaper that had slid into a box of rubble that I had brought down from my old apartment in Brussels.

It just goes to show …

Anyway, tomorrow (if I don’t have any interruptions) downstairs will be finished and I will be able to move the workshop down and out of the bedroom to give me yet more space.

And it’s below freezing tonight outside – first time for weeks.

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Monday 13th January 2014 – I’M A LITTLE BETTER TODAY

To such an extent that I even managed to eat my pizza tonight.

Took me ages,but it went down. And was much nicer than that Pumpkin soup that I found for lunchtime.

So this morning I awoke to the sound of torrential rain – first time for a while that was, and then after breakfast I carried on with the ground floor.

I was right about one thing – that the room won’t ever be as tidy as it was when I took that photo the other day, because I’m now at the “moving stuff around” stage. I’ve even attacked a large bin full of rubbish that dates from 1999. And the beauty of sifting through it all with a magnet is that I’m finding tons of stuff that I lost uears ago and gave up hope of ever finding again.

I nowhave three sacks full of cement, brick and rock dust. And I bet that you are wondering why I have saves it, and the answer is that I need stuff like that for levelling off a surface so that I can fit tiles, and why pay good money for sand when I have this?

I’ve brought in from the lean-to all of the stuff that I need for the house such as the pine planks and work tops. And now there is a meter and a half of wall in the lean-to that is bare, exactly where I want to put the shelves for the gardening stuff

17:55 when I put on the light downstairs. Up til then I was working in the natural light. The nights are already getting shorter. We’ve added over 25 minutes to the evening since the Winter Solstice.

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Saturday 11th January 2014 – I was right …

… about the downstairs room lookng like it did for very long. Four hours down there this morning and it’s all disorganised again.

At least I’ve been finding new stuff, much of which I had forgotten about, and I’ve also binned quite a few items including the European carpet squares mountain that I accumulated. I was going to use those to cover the floor but now as you know, I’m going to be fitting a false suspended wooden floor down there so there’s no need to keep them.

I’ve moved the fridge and the water heater to under the stairs and the insulation that was there is now stacked up against the wall behind the table which is now parallel to the stairs with enough of a gap between to walk down.

Then apart from that, everything else is messed around and needs to be sorted out, and there’s still piles of stuff to
go.

This afternoon I nipped down to Pionsat and the intermarche to pick up a few things that I had forgotten. And while I was checking the BIO shelves I noticed that their products were cheaper than Carrefour in St Eloy. Shame there’s no LIDL in Pionsat otherwise I’d shop there.

After lunch I finished off the outstanding radio programme for Radio Anglais and that’s up to date now. But there’s some good stuff in a little magazine that I’ve been sent so I’m okay for the next few weeks after.

Tonight I had a fire going – the first since Sunday – because it was a little chilly and I wanted to cook tea. Now I’m sitting in my shirt sleeves with the windows open. Not a very clever idea gicen the heat that my stove gives out.

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Friday 10th January 2014 – MAKE THE MOST …

downstairs groound floor living room les guis virlet puy de dome france… of this photo for you may never see the like of it again.

I spent the morning cleaning out an area of the floor and I’ve put two old pallets against the old chimney and stacked the bags of cement and plaster on there to keep them off the ground. So now I can start to move things around.

But right in the centre where you can see the steps, the big black mortar-mixing bucket and the empty space, that was where there was a huge mound of rubble, stones, old insulation, all kinds of rubbish and it’s that which I’ve been emptying this week.

There’s still a huge pile of junk to be moved and I was planning on moving it this afternoo except that I had a little interruption. Terry rang to ask me if I was still interested in going to Montlucon. Do bears have picnics in the woods?

We stopped off at the LIDL by the river where they had a couple more of those LED light bulbs and then we went to Brico Depot. Terry bought his huge rainwater-harvesting tank and I took advantage of the 3m40 length of the inside of his van to buy another 20 shuttering planks. Like I’ve said before, they make excellent shelves and I’m in shelf-making mode right now.

A few other bits and pieces too, but the highlight definitely has to be some more 12-volt LED bulbs. 4-watt this time – even brighter, and €5:99 this time – not for one but for two. so I bought 5 packets of those and they will light up the barn a treat, I reckon. All I need to do is to invent a light to house them, and I have a cunning plan …

So by the time I was back home and had a coffee, it wasn’t worth starting work again for the last half-hour or so. But I had half a day off on Thursday morning and half a day off Friday afternoon so what I reckon is that tomorrow I should put in a few hours work in the living room again and crack on there.

There’s a reason for that. The long-range weather forecast reckons that by the end of next week this Indian Summer will be over and we’ll be in the depths of winter again. If I have an empty room on the ground floor I can move my workroom down from the bedroom. And when that’s empty I can crack on in there. That will keep me out of mischief in the cold weather and if I can break the back of that and finish the wardrobes in there I’ll have space to put my clothes and spare bedding.

And then I can dismantle the two wardrobes in here, and won’t that give me much more space?

I won’t know myself at this rate, will I?

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Thursday 9th January 2014 – WOW!

And for several good reasons too.

Firstly, I was up early this morning and I was at LIDL in St Eloy just minutes after the place opened. Not quick enough for the recessed LED lights and fittings that I was hoping to fit in the living room, which is a shame, and there were only 6xGU5.3 12-volt LED light clusters left.

Needless to say, I cleared those right out and when I returned home I had a good look at them.

The 12-volt LED bulbs that I have here are 1.2-watt bulbs which is sufficient for what I want to do. But these new ones are 3-watt. I fitted two, one over the desk and one over the kitchen table nd, well, WOW! It’s like Blackpool illuminations here. I’m well-impressed with these!

I stopped off at Cécile’s to chack her mailbox but it was still empty. And so I had to go off to St Gervais to talk to the Postie. Of course, with no letter of authority, no receipt or anything there wasn’t much that I could do, but I did it all the same.

I started to work on the downstairs lighting too. For years the lights in the verandah have been confusing me – the 2-gang light switches have constantly failed to do what they are supposed to do. I was there for an hour trying all kinds of permutaions and still nothing was working, but a closer inspection of one of the switches – the feed switch – showed that the brass housing seemed to be cracked. I fitted a new switch to see if that made any difference and, sure enough, not only did we have light but proper 2-gang controlled light switching too just as we are supposed to.

I then turned my attention to the light in the ground floor. Fitting it and wiring it all up was no problem but I needed a neutral connection. It was then that I found that I’d done all of the wires in twin-and-earth so there wasn’t a simple neutral cable. I need to cut into a twin-and-earth and strip out all of the insulation.

But then I had another look at it all. For a start, I’ve wired the lights up with blue and brown cable – the same that I’m using for mains wire and I almost ended up cutting into a 230 volt cable. I’d made up my mind long ago that 12-volt would be red and black so this wiring is evidently older, before I sorted myself out.

And it’s rubbish too. When I started doing this, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing and sorked it out by trial and error. It’s been a trial and there are dozens of errors, so I’ve decided that, seeing as how I’ll be starting work down here sometime soon, the wiring will be the first thing to be changed so there isn’t really any point in trying to do anything with it. Consequently I’ve abandoned that plan.

The next WOW! relates to my pile of rubble. In fact, it’s all gone and the floor is free. That’s not to say that there’s no rubble there of course. The big pile went by the end of the afternoon but there are still some bits and pieces.

So tomorrow I’ll be attacking the stuff that’s in there, reorganising all of it and making a work room there. That will mean that the bedroom will be free of clutter so that I can carry on in there.

And that really WILL be a big WOW!

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8th January 2014 – 18:07 …

… was when I finished outside this evening. It was quite dark – to dark to really see but there was just about enough light to see the weeds that I was pulling up.

Talking of light, I didn’t get around to fitting a light in the ground floor living area. However I did manage tp dispose of most of the rubble. It won’t take ling to finish it off.

I have a new tactic now. I have a plastic box with holes in it – like a giant sieve. I’m shovelling the rubble into that and letting the dust and small stones fall through into a large bucket. Then, I’m passing a magnet through whatever is left in the plastic box and when I’ve fished out all of the metal objects I tip that into some buckets and when the buckets are full I empty them onto the rubble heap.

I’ve taken tons of stuff out now and it’s looking completely different in there now; And no only that, I’ve filled about a dozen rubbish sacks and there’s still plenty to go.

I might not be doing it tomorrow though. Terry rand up and apparently he might be going to Brico Depot. I said that if he did, I’d cadge a lift. Fetch some more shelving as well as some other stuff.

Not only that, it’s a lighting sale at LIDL tomorrow and they have 12-volt LED light bulbs. I mustn’t miss that at any price, and Cécile wants me to check her mail box again.

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Tuesday 7th January 2014 – I CAME IN …

… this evening when it was too dark to see what I was doing outside. And a quick glance at the clock showed me that it was 17:58 – almost knocking-off time. The days are certainly lengthening.

And not only that, we had 16.1°C outside this afternoon and I was half-inclined to take my jumper off. This weather certainly is crazy.

I had a bad night last night. I couldn’t get to sleep until long after 02.00 and when the alarm went off at 07:30 I felt like nothing on earth.

I lost count of how many buckets full of stones and rubble I moved from the living room, and it’s taking longer than it should . I’m having to fill them by hand rather than with a shovel because, if you remember, a couple of years ago I dropping my box of tamper-proof fitting dismantling tools all the way down from the attic, and I only ever recovered half of them. The rest are on the floor somewhere all nicely mixed in with the rubble and stones, and I need to recover as many as I can.

In any event, the mound of rubble down the garden is looking quite impressive, and as for the heap of stones, that is even more so. I can’t believe that I thought that I was going to run out of those when I was fixing the lean-to.

I called a halt in there at about 17:15 because without a light (which I may fix tomorrow if I think on) I couldn’t see what I was doing inside. I spent the last part of the day in the garden raking out the loose weeds in a couple of the raised beds. I have to start on the garden some time soon.

No fire up here again this evening. 16.3°C. This weather is totally bizarre.

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Monday 6th January 2014 – GOD IT WAS HARD THIS MORNING …

… to get out of bed. Even though I had had an early night and was wide awake when the alarm went off, it was still a struggle.

And the first thing that I noticed was that in my haste I had forgotten to do the washing up last night, and there is very little that I hate more than waking up to a pile of dirty washing-up.

First job this morning was to empty the composting toilet. Such lovely jobs that I have to do here of course. And after that I had to sort out some wood. I’m running low on kindling but there’s a big bin of it that was thoroughly soaked in a downpour. I had to drain that out and, seeing as it was (for a change) a fine day, I laid it all out to dry.

To get there though I had to attack my pile of old windows – some that I had picked up from the dechetterie for the glass, the fittings and, of course, the wood to burn. So while I was there, I dismantled a few of those.

This then led to the woodshed. I hadn’t quite finished it off as there was a curtain, made from a tarpaulin, to hang across the front. While I was busy adding wood to the woodshed I took 20 minutes to sort that out, and now that’s finished.

Next job was to start moving the stones. And some of them were flaming heavy too – I’ve no idea how I got them into there in the first place. Most of them I could lift out but a few I had to roll.

This afternoon when the big stones were out of the way I started to tidy up some of the rubbish. And there was a pile of that too, but once that was out of the way I could look at the rest of the rubble.

To move that, I needed to clear the space where I had been tipping the rubble before. A year or two’s worth of weeds, nettles and brambles needed cutting down and removing so that took a while, and before I knew it, we were in the dark.

Still, with all of the donkey work having been done, the rest should be straightforward tomorrow.

No fire up here tonight and it’s 16.8°C up here. This weather is astonishing. I even ended up cooking downstairs tonight – far too warm here for a fire.

But guess who put a tin of lentils instead of a tin of kidney beans into his aubergine and kidney bean casserole?

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Tuesday 31st December 2013 – THE MOST ASTONISHING THING …

… happened today- so much so that it’s well-worth recording.

I have never ever talked about, much less photographed, the ground floor of this house. And for good reason too. When I bought the place back in 1998 I quickly dumped in there a pile of rubbish and since then the rubbish has been accumulating. Add to that a huge piles of damaged tiles, a couple of large piles of rubble from demolished walls and excavated floors, several bags of cement and plaster, and whatever else you can think of, then it really is a total disgrace.

On top of that, anything that doesn’t have a home anywhere else has been stuck in there to such an extent that moving around in there can definitely be a hazard to one’s health. I did once hear a story about someone who hoarded old newspapers and was crushed to death when a pile collapsed on top of her. Well, believe me, it’s not too far away from that on the ground floor.

Anyway, having said that, I was untangling a pile of cables from the equipment of the “Tower of Power” so that I can put that upstairs in the lean-to when, you’ve guessed it, I had an avalanche.

So that was that. I spent a delightful four hours this morning in the living room sorting out all kinds of stuff. New stuff into the lean-to, old good stuff ditto, plumbing fittings into the water room etc etc. That was followed by a couple of bags of paper waste into the old damaged water butt which will now be a paper receptacle, and a couple of bags of genuine rubbish into the back of Caliburn.

It doesn’t look like much of an improvement, for there’s 15 years’ worth of rubbish in there and I will need more than four hours to move all of that, but you would be surprised at the difference that it has made and now I can boldly go where no man has gone before since at least 1999. If that’s not progress then nothing is.

Another thing was that I had a bad night’s sleep. I was still wide awake at 03:00 and I was back awake again long before 07:30 when the alarm went off. Either there’s a lot of people talking about me, or else it’s my guilty conscience again.

And while it didn’t rain today, it was overcast and miserable with only the occasional glimpses of sun. We had high winds too – not like the high winds of the other day but high winds nevertheless.

After all of my exertions I knocked off for lunch at about 15:00 – late, I know, but I was on a roll – and then crashed out for a while and when I get my hands on the bank clerk from Pionsat ho woke me up with the telephone, he’ll be looking for a new set of teeth too. I was well away.

Tea was roast potatoes, broccoli, carrots, boiled potatoes, leeks, seitan slices, onion and garlic gravy with sprouts done to perfection, all cooked on the wood stove, followed by vegan Christmas Cake and “artisanal” mango-flavoured lemonade.

What more can any man desire (apart from Kate Bush and Jenny Agutter to share it with me)?

So now I’m off work for the next couple of days. And then, who knows? I might even carry on with the tidying up.

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Monday 30th December 2013 – AS YOU MIGHT HAVE EXPECTED …

… seeing as how today was the day that I started back to work, it didn’t rain this morning. In fact, for the first hour or two I thought that we were going to have some bright sunshine all day, but that idea was soon dispelled, even though the rain did manage to hold off.

And as I said yesterday, I’ve been shelf-filling today. And indeed they are almost full. You’ve no idea how much stuff I’ve been finding that Ive had lying around the place. Quite a bit of stuff that I had forgotten about.

I’ve also put the old computer stuff up there on one of the shelves. I can’t think when, if ever, I might use it again but Marianne’s stuff is quite important I suppose. I don’t want to lose it or have it damaged.

Tea was another one of those meals that wouldn’t get going for ages and when it did, it went berserk. I have a lot to learn about this stove

Anyway tomorrow, I’ll do some more stacking for a while and then knowk off early. New Year’s Eve.

And guess what the weather is doing?

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Sunday 22nd December 2013 – WHAT A GLORIOUS SUNSET!

sunset les guis virlet puy de dome franceI just happened to look out of the window and there it was. I couldn’t let it pass by without photographing it.

Of course it does remind me of the old saying –
Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight
Red sky in the morning, Sy Eloy is on fire.

Talking of mornings, it’s Sunday and so that’s a lie-in. And I was in bed until all of about 08:00 which shows you just how effective an early night might be. But with it being Sunday I didn’t exert myself too much. I’ve collected a pile of wood for up here and I’ve given the kitchen area another really good going-over and that was about my lot.

Apart from another crash-out on the sofa, that is. I’m having problems about staying awake, that’s for sure. And despite the pizza and the possibility of a vital gridiron match tonight between the Cardinals and the Seahawks, I was in bed long before midnight.

I’m definitely not feeling myself, and quite right too. It’s a dreadful habit.

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Wednesday 18th December 2013 – DESPITE WHAT I SAID YESTERDAY …

… I cracked on with this wall today, and it’s finished too!

What got me going was that in the part of the stone wall that I hadn’t touched, there were all kinds of things growing in it, including two huge thistles, and so I needed to demolish part of the wall to uncover the roots.

The wall there wasn’t much good and it didn’t take long, and by the time that I’d done that, I had a huge pile of stones. Digging out a track to replace the stones, I found that there was a long line of stones, right up to the boundary of the plot, down underneath the soil. There’s been a wall here before.

building stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceThat was the cue to dig out the track properly and to clean it out, and then I dashed off for my surveyor’s line and a pile of large stones from my collection.

There was one that made a beautiful corner piece and it was really heavy so with a large crowbar I levered it into position and there we were, on our way.

Building stone walls is not as easy as you might think – it’s a bit like a three-dimensional jigsaw and you need lots of patience, and so I’m surprised that I managed to get as far as I did.

building stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut it’s here in all its glory, all assembled and pointed, and it makes a world of difference to the place.

It needs to be built up from the reverse side but that can wait for a bit.

I always know when I’ve done something that I’ve enjoyed and that has pleased me, because I have a tendency to sit and look at it for ages. and I certainly did that with this wall, that’s for sure.

With what was left of my working day, I attacked the upstairs in the lean-to. I found a big box and all the dry mortar that I scraped out of the wall when I pointed it, that went in the box and now it’s quite clean and tidy up there;

Tomorrow I may well make a start on making the shelves and cupboards that will be going there.

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Sunday 15th December 2013 – YOU MAY NOT BELIEVE THIS …

… but outside here right now I have a washing line strung up outside and a pile of washing hanging from it.

Today has been another delightful day for weather and a strong wind has been blowing for most of the day. We were radio rehearsing today at Liz’s and I had to go round to Cécile’s on the way to pick up a box of stuff. And as there was a bag full of dirty washing in Caliburn, I took advantage of Cécile’s washing maching (I hope that you don’t mind, Cécile) and bunged it all in.

On the way back I picked it up and back here, with the temperature at about 8°C and this strong warm wind blowing, I hung it up outside to dry. It will be interesting to see what it’s like tomorrow morning.

With it being Sunday, it’s a day of rest of course, and so I had a lie-in until all of 09:30. After breakfast I did some tidying up in here, watched a film, did some more radio programmes and organised the computer a little better. But it’s in here that the most improvement was made. Little by little, if I can keep it up, I’ll have this place looking ship-shape and Bristol-fashion one day.

Round at Liz’s we had a very lovely meal of vegan lasagne and garlic bread followed by mince pies, and then did the radio programmes. But only for Radio Arverne though as Radio Tartasse hasn’t sent us any info for this month. We’ll have to work that out as we go along.

Liz also very kindly let me use the shower and so now I’m nice and clean, my clothes are nice and clean, and as I washed my bedding today I can put the other set on and I’ll be in clean bedding for tonight. Ahhh the luxury! It’s amazing just how much pleasure there is in the simple things of life.

And there’s no heat on up here tonight. It’s 16°C without any help from anyone.

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Wednesday 11th December 2013 – THIS HEATWAVE …

… is still continuing. It’s been five days since I’ve seen a cloud and for the last 3 days I’ve had almost 100 amps of surplus electrical energy – unheard-of in December, and I’ve about 63°C of hot water in the dump load.

There was 15°C of water in the solar water tank too – imagine that in December too. I was almost ready for a solar shower this afternoon, although 15°C is not really what I would be comfortable with.

Today I did indeed demolish the old wood sheds and now there’s space to move around in front of the house. But where the wood had been piled up against the stone wall, there’s not a trace of weeds or moss and that has got me thinking, which I know is dangerous. I’m not here tomorrow but if the weather holds out for Friday, I might mix up some lime mortar and point the wall. Strike while the iron is hot, as it were.

I didn’t put up the scaffolding though. Instead, I emptied Caliburn and finally put away everything that I had brought back from Marianne’s old apartment in Brussels. Loads of stuff has made it up here, especially the bits that will improve my standard of living up here in the attic.

There was also a big bag of biscuits and so on that Rosemary broght back from the UK in the Spring and which I had put in Caliburn, dropped off in Brussels and then promptly forgot about.

Tomorrow I’m taxiing, which might come as something of a surprise to long-term readers of this rubbish. I’m taking a passenger to Limoges Airport.hea

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Friday 6th December 2013 – I REALLY DIDN’t WANT …

… to leave my bed this morning. We’ve had dry weather for the last couple of days but this morning it was absolutely teeming down, just for a change.

So after breakfast I attacked the upstairs of the “downhill” lean-to, the one on which I fixed the roof two years ago. It was still like a building site up there and so I set about cleaning it out. After all, I have some demi-chevrons now and if things go according to plan I’ll have some shuttering planks tomorrow and they make really good shelves.

But I didn’t stay long up there as I had a phone call. A damsel in distress needed rescuing in Montlucon, and you know how Strawberry Moose is when it comes to damsels in distress.

However, as I said a couple of years ago, being a superhero today isn’t easy. The rise of mobile phones has meant the decline in telephone boxes, so where now does a superhero go when he needs to put his underpants on over the top of his trousers?

That was a few hours lost today anyway, and another 30 minutes soon followed that as Rosemary rang up for a chat. Not that I resent rescuing damsels in distress or talking to my friends, not in the least, but I have so much to do here. Anyway, I didn’t do much more cleaning, even if inbewteen the rainshowers I moved a little bit more wood.

Anyway, let’s see what tomorrow might bring.

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