Tag Archives: tidying up

Wednesday 4th December 2013 – I’VE ALMOST FINISHED …

… this woodshed. In fact I might have actually completed it had it not been for a “supply” issue.

This morning, anyway, I finished putting the roof on – that is, all for a small piece for which I need to find the offcuts from when we roofed the barn in 2011. They are about somewhere but heaven alone knows where right now. The roof is not on as I would like, because I really wanted to pass at least one screw through where all of the four sheets of corrugated iron meet up. However, I broke two metalworking drill bits in quick succession and so I had to give up that idea.

I’ve put some diagonal bracing in the back wall too. I noticed when I was up on the roof that the shed had a tendency to “rack” while I was moving about. The bracing has stiffened that up considerably now.

The shed is to be clad with old pallets, of which I have a large supply. but here’s the rub, they were amongst the first things to go into the barn after I fixed the suspended flooring, and so they have had ever so many years of stuff piled on top of them. It took most of the afternoon to pull out a dozen, and then most of those were not the ones that I wanted.

To cut a long story short, I now have 6 pallets stripped down and fixed to the framework and tomorrow I’ll need to fix another 8 to complete that. Then, there needs to be the pallets that I’ll be using for the shelving. Once all of that is organised, I can start to load it with all of the wood that is in the temporary woodshed.

It goes dark at about 17:30 in the evening and I don’t finish work until 18:00 so I usually look for things to do where there is artificial light. This evening I stripped out the food cupboard and sorted out all of the tins and jars.Before I started, the food was rather overflowing, but now it’s all stacked neatly and there’s room for half as much again.

Anyway, tomorrow hopefully I’ll be able to finish this woodshed. I’ve plenty of other things to be doing.

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Saturday 23rd November 2013 – AND AS I SAID YESTERDAY …

… I had no plans to go out today. And so, in fact, I didn’t. Farthest I went was to Caliburn to fetch the frozen chips for tea. Chips and baked beans, with real vinegar! Yum yum!

First task was of course to shovel the snow off the solar panels. Not that I needed to bother because I won’t be going far with just 0.6 amp-hours of electricity, but it still has to be done.

But after breakfast I performed a task that I have been meaning to do for ages, namely to sort out all of the CDs into alphabetical order. That took me much longer than I expected, and I was surprised to see that it’s the “B” that has the most discs. Anyway now they are all done and labelled and I can see what I’ve got – or haven’t got, as the case may be.

Apart from that I’ve had a good tidying session up here. I’ve cleaned up the wood in here and swept the fireplace, and also cleaned up behind the TV unit, which hasn’t been touched in an age. I’ve also brought a huge pile of wood up here, and I’ve rescued the wooden box in which I used to keep the fruit and veg. Thats had a good clean-up and been put to use.

It’s looking a little more like it up here now but there’s still plenty to do to improve my quality of life. Still, every day and in every way it’s getting better and better.

And the snow is melting tonight.

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Thursday 21st November 2013 – FIRST TASK THIS MORNING …

… was to shovel a pile of snow off the solar panels. I was right about it being more persistent last night.

Second task was to move Caliburn. As you know, here I’m down the bottom of a slight hollow at the end of a dirt track and traction is not what it might be. If we have much more of this snow then I won’t be able to go anywhere, and I do have places to go and people to see.

That having been done, I can concentrate on breakfast, even if it was a mere 12.5°C up here in my garret. It was much colder outside, of course, and so I didn’t really fancy the idea too much, but the work doesn’t get done by itself.

So I attacked the lean-to again and cut up another pile of wood. Then, with dexterious use of a brush and shovel I cleaned quite a large extra of space. I then set to to tidy up all of the new wood – shelving, IKEA furniture and the like, and that left quite a nice little hole for the shelving unit. But herein lies a problem, to wit the shelves that I was planning on using were 4cms too high.

Not to be too put off by all of this, I emptied the little shelf unit in the wash room and put that in the lean-to and started to fill that up. I want to put all of the gardening stuff in there and so I went on my travels around the various parts of the barn, and I find that I have filled the shelf unit and there’s nothing like all of it in there.

Clearly this is going to call for some more reorganisation. What I shall probably end up doing is what I should have done first rather than last, and that is to build a custon set of shelving like I have done just about everywhere else that I’ve been working.

It really is a crazy notion to do it half-and-half like this. I can see me making another trip to the sawmill next week, assuming that the snow is going to stop.

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Wednesday 20th November 2013 – THE SNOW DIDN’T LAST LONG …

… this morning. It was mostly all gone by 10:00 and we were back in the dreary marshland again. It’s like to good old days, with mud up to my ears.

This morning I carried on in the barn and finally reached the far wall. That’s an achievement – there’s stuff there that I haven’t seen for probably 15 years, and when I get around to it, there will be a lot of stuff going down to the dechetterie.

After lunch, it was the turn of Rosemary to ring up for a chat. She has a courtesy car at the moment as hers is in at the garage, and she couldn’t work out how to put it into reverse. Having sorted that out, we had a good 20 minute natter on the phone.

A then had a couple of hours in the lean-to. I found a shelf unit when I was tidying in the barn, and it will just go nicely in the lean-to by the door, but I need to make some space of course. The best way to do that is to chop a pile of wood and while that didn’t seem to make any room at all in the lean-to, it certainly filled up the woodshed. I suppose that i’ll have to keep on chopping. But if I can get the shelf unit into there I can put all of the gardening stuff there so it’s out of the way where it should be.

This evening I made another aubergine and kidney been casserole without the kidney beans because i forgot them, and it’s snowing again outside. And the snow looks much more determined than it did yesterday evening, that’s for sure.

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Tuesday 19th November 2013 – YEEUUUCCCHHH

It’s been one of “those” days again. When the alarm went off, it was dark outside, which it shouldn’t be at 07:30 in the morning. And as it wasn’t getting any lighter, I finally crawled out of my stinking pit to see what was going on and, sure enough, we had another hanging cloud. This one was right over the house, the barn and everywhere and you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face outside.

What a start to the day.

Consequently I was in no hurry to start work this morning which was just as well for at 10:00 I had a phone call from Marianne. One or two things with which she has been dealing seem to have gone tits-up in rather a spectacular fashion and so I told her I’d pop round for a coffee and a chat. That solved my problem about working anyway.

After a lengthy chat and a couple of coffees I came back here and started on the barn again. I’ve had a real go at that and a couple more bin-bags of rubbish, as well as a hibernating dormouse, were put outside ready to go to the tip. And as the day advanced, I ended up clearing quite a reasonable amount of floor space and that is good news for when I need to empty Caliburn. I might even have space to put the stuff now. And if the weather keeps on being thoroughly miserable, I might do even more good. You never know.

And the chances of that happening are very good, as it happens. For when I stuck my head outside just now, it was snowing. First snow of the winter.

Ahhh well …

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Monday 18th November 2013 – IT’S MONDAY AGAIN …

… and so it was “back to work”. But not straight away as I had a few important things to do first.

It seems that my bank is at it again. The credit card expired at the end of September as you know, and I finally received the replacement. That meant that I had to contact everyone to update the card details. But I’ve now received another one, with a new number, a new expiry date and a new security cide. I’ve now had to ring everyone again to update everything that I updated just a week or 10 days ago.

I finally did manage to go outside today to work, braving the rain that has restarted. I’ve spent all of the time outside clearing the nettles and weeds that have sprung up in front of the barn where I had my very first potager. It’s astonishing how quickly and how thickly it’s overgrown. It wasn’t looking too bad at all in the early Spring and I never expected it to become as bad as it did over a period of just 8 months.

You can see how good the soil is, though. I suppose that that is some consolation.

Anyway, I’ve made some progress, but not enough. There’s tons to do and I need it to be gone so that I can build my woodshed there. Once I’ve done that, I can crack on with other things that are holding me back.

After it went dark, I spent half an hour in the barn carrying on with my project of tidying up, not that I’m making much progess. But I’ve been thinking, which is of course a very dangerous occupation. It’s about high time that I sorted out the electrical system in the barn. I’m moving the batteries and the control panel down to where “bank two” is – at the southern end of the barn next to the walls to which the solar panels are fastened.

And so I ought to make a start on building the control panel and fitting the wiring. Maybe I’ll sit down tomorrow and draw up a few plans.

And pizza tonight followed by left-over apple crumble and custard from yesterday. What a way to end the day.

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Friday 15th November 2013 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT THAT YESTERDAY …

… was bad with its 8.5mm of rain, you should have seen today with its 20mm. I’ve not seen anything like this for ages – it was thoroughly awful.

Waking up and hearing all of that crashing down on the roof was not very good for the morale and so I was in no hurry to get out of bed. And after breakfast, I stayed up here and read a book for a while as well as doing a little reorganising.

I finally plucked up the energy and the courage to go downstairs to the bedroom, where I made a really good start on sorting out the contents of the boxes there, putting everything in he correct box where it ought to be. A couple more days of this and things will be looking quite different in there.

However, it didn’t last long, as the phone rang. It was Rosemary inviting me round for a coffee and seeing as how, judging by the weather, nothing at all was going to happen here, I duly accepted the offer.

I only intended to stay for a short while but it was well after 21:00 that I hit the road for home. It’s amazing how quickly time passes when you are in good company, putting the world to rights.

On the way back, I stopped for some chips at the chippy in St Eloy and had some interesting “interaction” with ths staff and customers there. They are all totally crazy in that place.

So there you are, dear reader. That’s the sum total of my day. And if you can think of a day when I have done less work than this, even on a day ofrf, don’t hesitate to remind me.

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Thursday 14th November 2013 – THIS BLASTED RAIN …

… is getting on my nerves. It’s rained non-stop for all of the day and that has put the dampers on everything.

It didn’t help that I had a bad night’s sleep. I woke up in the middle of the night with a severe attack of cramp in both legs and that took ages to pass. A short while afterwards it was the raging toothache that kept me awake for hours. I wasn’t therefore in the best of moods.

After breakfast I did some more tidying up in here – there wasn’t much point in going outside until the rain eased off – and another couple of loads of things have been moved downstairs. However I did manage to get into the barn to continue to sort things out in there, and I’m having a puzzled moment or two, because i’ve mislaid one of my tool boxes – not the big red Snap-on toolbox but a smaller red one in which I keep the duplicate tools. I can’t think where that might be for now – I hope that I haven’t left it at Cécile’s.

I’ve also moved a few more things out of Caliburn, such as the suitcases, the clean washing and the food. That means that there’s some room inside there now. But I had a light bulb go on suddenly in my head. I liberated an old soft suitcase from Marianne’s ages ago and I couldn’t think of why I did so, and so yesterday I put it in the dustbin (not like me, I know, but …). Now I remember, though. I’ve acquired (also from Marianne’s) an old quilt and some cushions and I’m going to keep them in Caliburn whenever I’m on my travels, seeing as these days I can’t keep awake as long as I used to be able to. I already keep a towel, my swimming cozzy and some shower stuff in the van. To keep all of that together and not rolling about all over the place, a suitcase may well come in handy.

I didn’t get into the garden though – there wasn’t much point with all of the rain, and while you can’t see much improvement in the barn, I know that I can because I remember what it used to look like.

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Wednesday 13th November 2013 – IT WAS EVEN HARDER THIS MORNING …

… to get out of bed. Probably going to bed at03:45 might have something to do with that though. Crawling out of bed at 08:00 was definitely an issue.

After breakfast, I went as promised and attacked the barn – the bit where I keep the Ebro. I had almost everything out of the front of the barn and I’ve thrown away two huge sacks of rubbbish. Furthermore, I can actually move around in there now without stepping on things, and isn’t that progress?

It wasn’t without its rewards either. I found an Euro on the floor in there, so spend!Spend! Spend!

The boulandgère came round today too, having forgotten me yesterday. It was Sophie, the woman who lived for a while in the USSR and we always have a little chat whenever she comes round.

After lunch (and a little siesta) I went and attacked the pathways, and now I’ve made it all the way down to the compost bin, which was my ultimate destination. Now, you can walk all the way down there without losing yourself in the vegetation and it’s a great improvement. It didn’t take as long as I was thinking that it might either, and so I’ve started on weeding the first raised bed. I want to have all of those done before the end of the year.

I’ve had a fire in here tonight too and so I cooked tea up here in the oven. It’s nice to recover some of my old familiar habits. I’ve missed being away from here.

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Tuesday 12th November 2013 – GOD, IT WAS HARD …

… getting out of bed this morning. It took me a good half-hour to finally show a leg; And although the sky had clouded over during the night, it was still pretty cold.

Anyway after breakfast, it was time to restart work for the first time for ages, and it was the turn of the lean-to outside to receive my attention – but not before I’d hooked up the crocodile-clip wire across the terminals of the charge controller in the barn so that the battery there will receive some charge.

By lunchtime I’d finished cleaning out the front part of the lean-to and making it look something-like in there, and I’d also collected some wood that was lying around, ready for the fire if I light one tonight.

However, a major issue at lunchtime was that the boulangère didn’t call with the bread, and wasn’t answering her ‘phone either. That meant a quick nip into Pionsat for a load of bread before I could have a butty, and then much to my surprise I crashd out for an hour afterwards.

Once I’d gathered up my wits (doesn’t take long – I don’t have many) I went outside and started to attack the garden. I’ve fought my way down to where the old cars are, and then I made a start on weeding the pathway down to the bottom of the garden and I was well on my way with that when the light disappeared. 18:00 hours or so, and so I did a few little jobs and then came up here to watch a film.

Of course, I can’t sleep now so I dunno what will happen next, but tomorrow’s plan is to clear some space in the barn by the battery box, and then to continue the weeding of the pathways.

We shall see.

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Saturday 9th November 2013 – DUNNO IF YOU REMEMBER …

… a couple of years ago and I posted a photo of the local village shop in Ronnet which had caught fire and burnt out.

burnt out shop restaurant fire ronnet allier franceThe owners moved to other premises in the village with their shop and opened a little café-restaurant there too. But that’s not lasted too long, because this was what I discovered when I went through Ronnet at midday today.

We’ve had another fire and all of this seems to have gone for a Burton too. Even more importantly, when the first place caught fire they had a tarpaulin up and over it almost as soon as the flames were extinguished. Here though after the fire at their second premises, they seem to have abandoned everything to its fate and that seems to be that.

Yes, I was in Ronnet today, on my way to Commentry for shopping, and rather later than intended too. I’d heard the alarm go off but I decided that, seeing as how I’m still recovering from my exertions, I was going to have another morning of rest.

But what a beautiful morning it was though, not a cloud in the sky and the batteries were fully-charged by 10:45. I emptied some more stuff out of Caliburn and tidied up some more in here, slinging some filled rubbish bags into the van and then went off to Commentry, via Ronnet.

Christmas isn’t too far off and so I’ve started buying Christmas nibbles today. And nothing else of note or excitement, except that at Centrakor I picked up a couple of small pepper mills on special offer, to use for grinding my cardamon seeds and so on, and also some waxed table cloth. That was what I wanted, because I don’t want to ruin this new table when I use it as my kitchen worktop up here.

As the weather deteriorated, clouded over and started to rain, Neris was next, and the swimming baths. Ages since I’ve been there and it was freezing in the building. About 25 of us poor souls braving the extremes, but at least I’m clean for once.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire chatelguyon puy de dome division one franceSo now that I’m back home I can return to my usual haunts and habits, FC Pionsat St Hilaire being one of them, and tonight the Ist XI were taking on Chatelguyon.

I had to get dressed for it too as it was freezing outside, although the rain had stopped. And it’s as well that I did for nothing that happened on the pitch served to warm me up at all.


fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire chatelguyon puy de dome division one francePIonsat started the stronger and were peppering the Chatelguyon goalmouth and it was no surprise that they took the lead. A beautiful cross across the goalmouth from Nico and Pavel, this new Polish striker, volleying in a superb shot at the far post.

In that opening spell wre had shots kicked off the line, shots pounded into the woodwork and shots put wide when it would have been easier to score and I can’t think how it was that they missed. Pionsat were threatening to run riot.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire chatelguyon puy de dome division one franceThey were however living dangerously at the back and it was no surprise to anyone that Chatelguyon equalised – with just a few minutes to go before half-time.

A break down the left wing saw a Chatelguyon forward clean on with the ball and although Michael managed to get down and stop the shot he couldn’t hold on and as the ball ran free from his grasp, another Chatelguyon forward following up had a pretty simple tap-in and that, dear readers, was that.

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire chatelguyon puy de dome division one franceThe second half started just like the first half. Pionsat came out of the trap like a rocket and for the first five minutes had Chatelguyon pegged right back in their own half and under something of the cosh.

We had the Pionsat missed chances, the woodwork peppered with shots, the Chatelguyon keeper making some excellent saves, and then the unbelievable happened.


fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire chatelguyon puy de dome division one franceWell, it isn’t unbelievable if you have been following what I was writing about the matches three and four years ago. Back in those days Pionsat were struggling because they had a defence that had a tendency to switch off and gp to sleep at important moments, and this was exactly what we had here.

And it didn’t happen just once or even twice, but FOUR TIMES, would you believe, and what looked like a comfortable Pionsat victory turned into something of an absolute rout as they went on to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.


fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire chatelguyon puy de dome division one franceI felt sorry for Michael in the Pionsat goal. He’s not a goalkeeper but with injuries to everyone else he’s in there keeping goal and doing his best.

No one could fault him for any of the five goals that he conceded, but with two Pionsat centre-backs standing too far apart so that an attacker can go straight down though the middle for a one-on-one with him, what is he expected to do?


fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire chatelguyon puy de dome division one franceWe had two of those, one after the other, and that was followed up by two balls over the top of the defence when the Pionsat defence was pushing too far forward and not quick enough to get back. For the fifth goal we had Michael on his own against three Chatelguyon attackers and no-one can do much about that.

Back home, I was skyped by an old friend of mine, telling me that he’s moved house. He has, but his wife hasn’t, meaning of course that their marriage of some considerable number of years has come to an end. That’s really sad news as between them they made quite an impressive couple with many qualities. But I suppose that it’s none of my business except to dole out the sympathy.

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Friday 8th November 2013 – GUESS WHO …

… spilt his mushroom and lentil curry all over the floor of the verandah this evening? And that was a shame because it was even nicer than on the two previous nights. Ahh well.

Anyway, this morning I had another one of these lie-ins – I’m taking it easy until Monday when I’ll be starting work in Earnest – and after breakfast I carried on with the tidying up. Another two sacks of rubbish have been filled and I’ve also been sorting out a huge pile of papers that have now been filed away correctly and I’ve collected together a pile of stuff that needs to be taken outside into the barn.

I’ve made a few useful finds too, not the least of which being the business card for the car wash that I used in Montreal in 2012 and was trying desperately to find a few weeks ago when I was there. I’ve added the address to the list in the Canadian notebook

Strangely enough though, despite all of the work, you can’t see much difference – in fact, the place looks even more untidy than it did before. Even worse, places that were comparatively tidy, such as the what will be the bedroom, are now starting to look cluttered. I’m not quite sure how that is possible but then again anything is possible when I am trying to tidy up.

This afternoon it was far too wet to go to work outside and so in a rare departure from normality I started to tidy up a few boxes on the ground floor. They had been in the way for over 2 years. Curiously (or maybe not), a lot of the stuff went straight into the bin. I can’t think what possessed me to bring it back here from Brussels when I sold Expo. Pressure of time, I suppose. But now I can actually move around much easier on the ground floor and if I spend another hour down there sometime, I might even have free passage all around the place. You never know.

I’ve also tidied up around the stairs and the landing so there’s even a free run up to my attic without stepping on anything. It’s all looking terribly impressive around here now, except of course in the attic 🙁

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Thursday 7th November 2013 – I’VE BEEN A BUSY BOY TODAY

Yes, high time I started work again around here. And even though I had something of a late-ish morning I still managed to do a good session before lunch.

First off, I repaired the woodshed. The corrugated iron sheets blew off while I wasn’t here and all of the wood is soaking wet. But I’ve rescued the sheets, nailed them down this time and used some bracing struts, and then covered it all over with an old tarp that was lying around not doing very much. That might hold it for a while until I can build the new one across the yard.

While I was outside I did some tidying up too and also a pile of weeding outside the house. It now looks as if someone is actually living here.

But that’s not all. The kitchen in the verandah was in a desperate condition and so I’ve tidied up in there and given it something of a superficial clean. At least the sink is empty now and unblocked which is a great improvement. Next task was the chest of drawers up here. There’s a screw retainer missing from one of the sides and so the drawers were dropping out of the runners. I emptied that, turned it upside-down to see what was needed and then fixed that.

After lunch, I emptied a couple of boxes out of Caliburn and dealt with those and seeing as I was in a good mood and having done a good day’s work I treated myself to a film. The Cannonball Run is 90 minutes of mindless mayhem but it’s a film that I can sit and watch time and time again, simply for the fact that it’s clear to see that the actors involved, and good actors too, are thoroughly enjoying themselves making it. As well as that, though, I keep a little database of film quotes and this film has contributed more one-liners to my database than any other film that I’ve ever seen. Who can forget immortal phrases such as “You wouldn’t last five minutes in a New York subway” or “It takes brilliance and years of hard work, and you wouldn’t understand any of that”.

Anyway, it’s beddie byes time now. See you all tomorrow

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Wednesday 6th November 2013 – AFTER SOMETHING OF A LEISURELY MORNING …

… in which it was something like 10:00 when I crawled out out my stinking pit, I started to work. But I do have to say that it was nice to wake up at home in my own bed with all of my own things around me. You have no idea just how much I’ve missed all of that over this last 10 months or so.

So what have I been doing? The answer to that is that being fed up of living in a tip, I’ve grasped the bull by the horns and there are now 5 sacks full of waste paper from up here as well as 2 sacks full of ordinary rubbish. And I can even see the top of the coffee table, which is very good news indeed.

I’ve also made a conscious decision that I will no longer use paper to light the fire. Having used firelighters for the last couple of times of fire-lighting, I’ve come to the conclusion that there is much less ash in the fire than there ever was before, and also the glass window of the fire isn’t tarring over as much. So that is going to be a little progress. It makes more waste paper here to be disposed of, but that will mean all the more for the recycling bins.

Another thing that I’ve done is to clear the kitchen table up here. I have the old white table that I used as a wallpaper pasting table and it’s in a pretty disreputable state. Covered with clutter of course and so I’ve sorted out a lot of that and when I finally reach it in the van, I can bring up the nice table and chairs that I liberated from Marianne’s and they will look quite nice in here. I’ll need to buy one of those oiled table cloths because I don’t want to ruin the tabletop but I can do that on Saturday at the shops if I go to Commentry.

Finally, I’ve been sorting out the web-hosting issues that I’ve been having just recently. I’ve been told that the management of the web-hosting company that I’ve been using have all left their posts, meaning that the company will eventually run down and close, with the loss of all of the data. One of the employees however, with whom I’ve had dealings with before, has accessed the company’s server and saved all of the files to his own server and so we’ve been engaged this last week or so (hence the “outage” of my organ) setting everything up. However, we did hit a snag. The guy dealing with my webhosting tells me that it seems that my domain name had expired and the credit card, which was linked to the domain name via an automatic renewal, has also expired, consequently the registrars were … errrr … proving difficult. Of course, that brought everything to a standstill until I contacted the registrars, and the following conversation ensued –
“Yes, your domain name has expired”
“When?”
“11th April 2013”
“So why didn’t you automatically renew it?”
“Well, your credit card has expired”
“When did my credit card expire?”
“Err … 30th September 2013”
“So what happened between 11th April 2013 and 30th September 2013?”
“Err … can I call you back?”
“No – I would like an answer now, especially as you have been giving my webhosts some very misleading information about my financial situation”

Anyway, the upshot of all of this is that my website is now back on line and all seems to be hunky-dory, for the moment. But it really was starting to be just like the bad old days of 4 or 5 years ago when my then-webhost thought it clever to impress her new masters by using her power over my website as a weapon.

I hope that we aren’t going back to those days.

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Monday – 28th October 2013 – MORE OF THE SAME

Yes, back to work today. And to carry on from where I left off on Saturday, and every other day (apart from Sunday) since I’ve been here, I was up long before the alarm went off.

The washing machine is going on Wednesday and so I’ve sent most of the day doing a mega-wash of clothes and the like, making sure that everything is clean. All that hasn’t been washed is the stuff that is going to the clothing bins, and also the curtains, because it’s very hard to do those when you have builders not 6 feet away from where you are trying to work.

I’ve reaired a few pieces of furniture too – stuff that is also being collected by the guy from the Troc on Wednesday. The better it is and the better the condition in which it finds itself, the more money I’ll receive for it.

The notaire has also been on the telephone with a list of things to do, and a eadline by which I need to do them. I’ve totally forgotten that it’s a bank holiday here on Friday, so that’s one less day that I have to do stuff. This is all closing in on me rather rapidly.

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