Tag Archives: football

Saturday 20th October 2012 – I’M ALL ICKY-POOHS

I started to feel ill on Friday night and I wasn’t feeling so good this morning either and so I decided to stay in bed to sleep through it.

Or, at least that was the plan.

But it didn’t quite work out quite like that as for reasons that I won’t explain because you are probably eating your lunch right now, I couldn’t stay in bed for longer than 10 minutes at a time.

Consequently I reckon that I’ve eaten something that disagrees with me – but what, I do not know.

On the basis that if nothing goes in, then nothing can come out, I decided not to eat or drink anything until the crisis passed but nevertheless I nipped into St Eloy-les-Mines (and wasn’t that an exciting adventure?) to do some quick shopping.

Having taken a few elementary precautions, I went down to watch the football, including watching FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 2nd XI win their first game of the season against the Goatslayers. but that was really too much.

Back home, I retired to bed and that was that.

Thursday 18th October 2012 – IT’S BEEN BLOWING …

… a right old gale here today.

I’m having a world-record day for wind, that’s for sure. Even the wind turbine that is anchored to a plank and stuck up on a fence has recorded about 5 minutes of wind time, and that’s astonishing.

As for the others, the one on the barn has had over 17 hours and the one on the house has had over 21 hours.

And with the wind gusting to over 45mph the amount of energy created is phenomenal.

So much so that in the depths of darkest night I’ve actually seen the ammeters run backwards for the first time ever during the hours of darkness. 13.1 volts on the battery bank in the barn is unheard-of at 22:00.

Mind you, its playing havoc with everything else.

The bins with kindling in have blown over twice. I picked them up the first time but there’s no point in doing that again because they’ll just come down again.

It’s not raining, and not likely to either with this wind, and so they aren’t risking anything. Mind you my money is on a torrential rainstorm as soon as the winds drop.

I did mention yesterday that the weather is turning earlier than normal this year. I recall these windy conditions usually occurring in mid-November – in fact trying to watch a football match at St Avit back in 2008 one Sunday afternoon.

Yes, winter is definitely starting earlier this year.

I’ve also emptied half of the hard-standing now – I just need to clean out where the banks have collapsed and then I can do the next part of the job.

As for the bank itself, I’ve decided that I’ll go half-high with breeze blocks and then lay wire netting over the other half, pour cement over it so that it forms a kind-of ferro-cement and then lay stones over the top.

It should look quite pretty, but I’ve no idea how it will work out.

-2

Tuesday 16th October 2012 – WHAT A HORRIBLE …

… day.

Yes, after the nice day that we had yesterday, today is definitely the start of winter.

Cold, wet, grey and miserable

But that’s enough about me, the weather is even worse.

This morning I did my usual bit on the computer as well as chatting on the phone for a while to Nan. But then outside it was absolutely teeming down and so this afternoon I’ve been working inside.

I’ve laid the floor in the cupboard on the first floor and then I made a start making the rails for the shelves that are going to be fitted in there. Another day or two and that well see them finished.

And then they need varnishing before I can install them in there.

Once that’s done, I can then start putting stuff in there and that will make more space for moving around.

What I’ve been doing this evening though while I was watching a film is something else that I should have been doing in the past, and a long time ago too.

There are screws and nails and so on all over the place, in buckets, bowls and all that kind of thing. And so I brought a bucket up here together with a pile of empty boxes, and I’ve been sorting everything out.

I’ve collected an enormous number of screws that I’m currently sorting into different sizes, and then I have to do the same with the nails.

Once all of that is done I can fetch another pile of stuff.

It’s amazing what I’m finding too – all kinds of stuff that I had mislaid or forgotten all about.

I was going to cook one of my mega-meals tonight but just as I was about to go downstairs the phone rang – Percy Penguin wanting a chat.

So 40 minutes later it was far too late to cook and so I’ll be going to bed in a moment

But not before I’ve seen the second half of the Honduras – Canada football match. 47 minutes gone and Canada are already 5-0 down. It’s a relief to know that it’s not just Pionsat who are struggling in the Cup.

Monday 15th October 2012 – I HAD AN …

… exciting, if unexpected afternoon out today.

Not this morning though.

I put in a good stint on the computer and wrote the match report for yesterday’s game at Pionsat, which is now on line.

It makes rather depressing reading but nevertheless it needed to be done.

And it took me all the way through to 14:30 – there was a lot to write.

Meantime, I had had a phone call. It seems that the window that Rosemarie had bought had turned out to be the wrong size – Terry had given her the dimensions of the hole, not the window.

It meant that the window needed to be taken back and exchanged – involving some fairly hefty negotiation and it seemed that I was required for that.

And so rather like Janet in Tam Lin, round I went to Rosemary’s I duly went this afternoon, “as fast as go can me” and we loaded up the window.

Being somewhat … errr … financially-challenged at the moment (I can’t get to my Belgian bank’s Montlucon branch right now and remember, I wasn’t anticipating being here at the moment), Rosemary very kindly put some diesel in Caliburn, and off we went.

Changing the window was no problem (except that they didn’t have one in and so it needed to be ordered) but no refund of any difference.

I don’t suppose anyone could complain too much about that – Rosemarie was half-expecting an argument.

Never being backwards at coming forward, I took advantage of Rosemary’s presence and we went off to Brico Depot where I loaded up Caliburn with a pile of grillage – the mesh mats that you use when you are laying concrete onto a hard surface without any hardcore.

I also bought 4 pylons – the steel mesh reinforcing that you put inside hollow breeze blocks to support the walls so that they don’t fall down on passing children.

These come in 6-metre lengths and so we cut them down to 8×3-metre lengths that I can use inside these hollow blocks that I have here to make pillars and so on.

Nothing like having a handy volunteer, is there?

After a coffee and a chat, I came home. It’s cold and damp despite the beautiful day that we had, so I’m not going out again. I’ll save my strength for tomorrow.

Sunday 14th October 2012 – THERE WERE NO …

… hunters shooting off their guns in the neighbourhood, no low-flying Air Farce jets, no driving rain beating down on the windows in the roof, no mice doing clog dances in the ceiling, none of the neighbours using a chainsaw .

And so to disturb my Sunday morning Day of Rest, some b****** rang me up on the phone at 09:00. Makes me thoroughly sick.

And seeing as how I started my day in a bad mood, that’s how I carried on.

I watched the odd Bulldog Drummond film. It’s amazing what is available to download on www.archive.org – before I went to Canada I downloaded tons of films from there to watch out there in my car at night.

Who needs DVDs?

I also continued to catch up with registering the data that I collect from the various recording instruments around here.

Every night I write it all down but I’ve been very lax in entering it on the computer. I need to organise myself much more.

This afternoon, braving the howling wind, the driving rain and the freezing temperature, I went off to watch Pionsat against Clermont Foot Auvergne

And a quick glance across the car park tells you exactly what you are going to be up against. When was the last time that any football club has had a team coach in order to bring its players to Pionsat?

But still, a match is never over until the 90 minutes has been played, and this driving rain and howling gale might be a great leveller.

Clermont Foot Auvergne sent their under-21 team for the match and even so, it was still no contest. Pionsat were simply swept aside, as everyone was expecting.

What made it worse was that FC Pionsat St Hilaire had no recognised goalkeeper again.

Michael bravely volunteered once more as you can see in this photo where he brilliantly saves from a Clermont attacker

But despite Michael’s heroics between the posts, neither he nor anyone else could do anything about the relentless Clermont Foot Auvergne side.

If I remember correctly, the opposing goalkeeper just had one shot to save during the entire match.

As is usual in matches such as these, most of the damage was done in the final 20 minutes when the benefits of full-time “proper” training pays dividends.

Pionsat’s players were run into the ground whereas the Clermont players hadn’t even broken into a sweat.

But hang on a minute – what is this?

Yes, the referee this afternoon has stopped the game and held up play so that a Pionsat player could tie up his bootlaces that were trailing everywhere and risking tripping him up.

Contrast that with last week when the referee allowed play to continue with FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s goalkeeper flat-out unconscious on the edge of his own penalty area, and you will see exactly what I mean about just how much of a poor decision that one was last week.

So with the football over and FC Pionsat St Hilaire well-out of the cup I came back home and, believe me, I’m not going anywhere else tonight. The weather really is atrocious.

-3

Saturday 13th October 2012 – I DIDN’T MANAGE …

… my quiet day at home today. It all went wrong from the very beginning.

The boulangère forgot to come this morning so in one swell foop I’ve gone from having far too much bread to not having enough.

That prompted a quick visit into Pionsat to stock up with bread, and to hope that the boulangère remembers me on Tuesday

Anyway, despite being considerably sidetracked all throughout today what with one thing and another, I managed to finish the Additional Notes for the radio programmes for the month of November.

With the Rock Programme notes already completed, I just need to choose a main text for the November programmes. There’s probably enough in the pipeline already actually but it’s as well to be sure. And when that’s completed I can start writing the Christmas Special

As there was no football tonight, I had a little pause and watched a football match on the computer. Now, Oldham Athletic? Isn’t that another good oxymoron? It’s almost as good as British Intelligence or Government Service.

However, not to be outdone, surfing the internet I discovered that the football in the Creuse is organised slightly differently than in the Auvergne, and there are league matches this weekend, not Cup matches.

And if that wasn’t enough, Auzance’s 2nd XI was at home against Dontreix-Chard in the 3rd Division.

It’s probably 15 years since I’ve been to Auzances and seeing as I think that I should get out more often (a sentiment with which many regular readers of this rubbish will agree) I set off into the unknown.

Quite a charming stadium in a nice urban setting, in what looked as if it might at one time have been an old quarry.

But the match itself was total rubbish. Dontreix-Chard were awful, but Auzances were even worse.

Even FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 3rd Xi could have taken on both of these teams simultaneously and held their own – and everyone else’s too – quite comfortably, I reckon.

4-2 it finished to Dontreix, and the big mystery was how come Dontreix-Chard managed to let Auzances score twice.

Dontreix-Chard’s fourth goal was a calamity that came out of absolutely nowhere.

3-2 down in the dying minutes and having Dontreix-Chard (surprisingly) under the cosh, Auzances win a corner. It’s everyone forward, and even the Auzances goalkeeper decides to go up.

However, as he is about three-quarters of the way upfield, his team-mates take the kick, not having seen him advancing.

The Dontreix players have seen him though, and when they win possession it’s the long ball right upfield over the Auzances keeper’s head, and Goodnight Vienna.

The Auzances keeper throws down his gloves and storms off the field – “I’m not playing with you guys any more”. Reminded me of Roxanne at Primary School when she was about 7 or 8.

There’s a pizzeria right next to the ground, and so I treated myself to a take-away – second weekend in succession after all of these years of doing without. After all, it’s a 35-minute drive back home and who feels like cooking at 22:45?

And a nice pizza it was too, especially the spicy oil dressing

But never mind the Combrailles – how about the Creuse for The Land That Time Forgot? On the D988 out of Pionsat through St Hilaire and St Maurice près Pionsat, it’s a nice two-lane blacktop with clear white lines – a reasonably fast road considering the terrain.

But cross over the border into the Creuze – it’s like the lane up to my house from the bottom road. Narrow, grey gravel, no centre markings, potholes and patches.

It’s a whole world of difference. It’s just like turning the clock back 25 years, which is astonishing considering that here in the Combrailles we are 100 years behind the times.

I forgot to mention that I put out the washing today to let it dry off, and this time I did bring it in before I went out. What has reminded me of this is that it has just this second started to rain.

-4

Monday 8th October 2012 – I HAD A LATE …

… start going outside to work today. In fact, it wasn’t until 16:00 that I set foot into the drizzle.

What I had been doing was much more exciting than that. I sat down and wrote out the web page for yesterday’s match between FC Pionsat St Hilaire and AS Cellule.

With it being a highly controversial match with two extremely controversial incidents, both of which called for a fair amount of comment from Yours Truly, I needed to be pretty careful about what I wrote.

Even more so as these days you can receive 12 weeks in prison for telling a joke on Facebook (I’m glad I no longer live in the UK) and I sometimes have a tendency to let my flow of enthusiasm overwhelm my discretion.

Back in Ye Olde Days, I always used to let Liz see anything controversial as she had the ability to read things objectively rather than emotionally – something that surprisingly few people have the ability to do these days – but of course that is no longer possible.

Luckily, Krys was on line and so after I finished it, she had a read and then we had something of a chat about it – hence the late start outside.

With the rain showers holding up work outside, it gave me time to reflect and I made a decision about the hard-standing.

As you know, I was planning to clean up the waste land where I had been working and dump onto there the stuff from the hard-standing, but I will need quite a few days of good weather to do the work justice.

It looks like we’ve had that now – the forecast isn’t too good – and so I’ve made a decision to put a large tarpaulin onto the land where I had my first vegetable garden, just in front of the house, and move the stuff onto that.

This is easier said than done too as I have tons of stuff to move and I forgot just how heavy some of it was. It’s going to take a while to sort out all of this.

At the Anglo-French group tonight we were rather thin on the ground and I ended up having a good chat with Cécile – so much so that we stood outside the bar afterwards chatting for a good hour or so.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had a decent gossip. I spend far too much time on my own, I reckon.

-1

Sunday 7th October 2012 – WHAT HAPPENED TO …

… Sunday morning?

Well, to be honest, I worked through much of it, but from the wrong end.

03:34 when I finished what I was doing last night.

I was a little wrong with my estimate of what time it was when I woke up. I reckoned about 10:40 – it was in fact … errrr … 12:41.

I must have been really tired and even though this is what Sundays are for, I still felt bad about having missed the morning.

I was having a lovely dream though – I was driving a minibus through some forests on a main road through some mountains and explaining to the passengers that these were the Bluegrass areas of Kentucky (work that one out). We were being chased – not in a threatening way – by two cars, one of which was an old metallic mid-blue Peugeot 403 estate, and they overtook us on a sharp right-hand bend, crossing well over the solid white line in the centre of the road, which was divided into one lane for vehicles going my way, and the other way had two lanes coming towards me. This bit – the overtaking – I was watching from the air – maybe 500 feet up. Strangely, we were all driving on the left-hand side of the road as in the UK, so I dunno what all of that might be telling me.

After that, I had just enough time to grab something to eat and then off to Cellule, near Riom, to watch the football.

But I shan’t be saying anything about the football in this column this evening.

As Ron Atkinson once said, “I never comment on referees and I’m not going to break the habit of a lifetime for that prat”.

Or as Jim Finks, manager of the New Orleans Saints once said, after a match against the St Louis Cardinals in 1986, “I’m not allowed to comment on the lousy officiating”.

We’ll just leave it at that.

But there’s a fruit stall at the side of the road just outside Combronde and I noticed that it was having a sale of apples. I’m getting low on them and so a 3kg bag of Red Gala apples for €2:50 seemed like a bargain, especially as the way fruit prices are at the moment.

So that’s Sunday dealt with. Monday is another day.

-6

Saturday 6th October 2012 – IT WAS SATURDAY …

… today and to be honest, I didn’t do very much.

Up with the alarm as usual, and after breakfast wrote the text for the Radio Anglais rock shows for next month. That seems to be the current way of spending Saturday mornings these days as I try to organise myself so much better.

After lunch I went for a whizz around St Eloy-les-Mines.

LIDL now has acquired a bakery, like the LIDL in Commentry. It was the grand opening today and so they were handing out free bits of bread and also coffee to the clients.

Nothing of any such at Carrefour though, and in any case I just bought the usual items – nothing at all that was special.

It was my day for meeting people though.

In Carrefour I met some friends of my Dutch neighbour Lieneke and we had a lengthy chat.

In LIDL I met Michael from the footy club, and we had a lengthy chat too. And he had some exciting news.

The draw for the Cup was made this morning and FC Pionsat St Hilaire, for their pains, have been drawn against none other than Clermont Foot Auvergne. They were in the French Premier League not so long ago and now play in Division Two – only about 9 levels higher than FC Pionsat St Hilaire.

Even if they send their reserves, which is likely, it’ll still be the biggest day ever in the history of FCPSH. We’ll have to go all out to attract a bumper crowd.

This evening I went to see AS Marcillat play, and a more one-sided match I have never seen.

About 89 and a half of the 90 minutes were played just outside Marcillat’s penalty area and how Villeneuve only scored one goal is a total mystery to me.

Even so, it still wasn’t enough to win the game as during the 75th minute one of AS Marcillat’s players, the n°8, took the ball all the way from his own penalty area through about 30 tackles and into the Villeneuve box. His shot was blocked but another player following up slotted the rebound into the net.

Taking the ball out of the net and kicking it upfield was all that the Villeneuve keeper had to do during the entire match.

And me? I’m off to Cellule tomorrow for FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI match against AS Cellule. Michael thinks that we might be at almost full strength tomorrow and won’t that be a change?

-3

Monday 1st October 2012 – BY THE TIME …

… that you read this I shall be well tucked up in the Land of Nod. I’m thoroughly exhausted.

This morning nothing much happened but with a good run at the website I managed to do all of the photos and write the text for FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s famous victory yesterday against Briffons-Perpezat.

You can read the text here if you like.

Rosemary came round at lunchtime.

So while I moved the scaffolding and cleared out the weeds, brambles and small trees from around the Mercedes, she dug up the onions and garlic and pulled some dried beans off the plants.

Tons of all of that stuff she harvested too – a good fruitful exercise

But doing this garden is driving me nuts. The brambles have torn lumps out of me, the nettles have stung me to death and so on and some of the tree roots took ages to dig up

But it’s looking all quite good there now. Just that one big tree to cut down and rip up.

Tomorrow I’m off to Montlucon with Rosemary to Lapeyre to buy her window and a few other bits and pieces that I need, and then I’ll be carrying on in this patch of land, sorting out the stones and levelling everywhere off.

Then I can bring everything round there from off the hardstanding.

At the Anglo-French Group this evening we had the biggest crowd for ages with two new attendees. Nice to see some new faces.

Anyway, that’s it. Off to bed before I fall asleep.

-1

Sunday 30th September 2012 – AND IF YOU THOUGHT …

… that last night was dramatic, what with the Miners coming back from the dead, you should have been at Briffons this afternoon, cos you ain’t seen nuffink yet!

FC Pionsat St Hilaire had no goalkeeper out there today for the match against Briffons-Perpezat for a start.

Michael Bucaud was in the orange and warming up behind the goals. Although he’s not been long at the club, I’ve never seen him play as a goalkeeper before.

And with FC Pionsat St Hilaire being 2-0 down with the game dragging on towards the end, it really did look as if that was that.

But then, suddenly, someone flicked the switch and the team burst into life.

And in the space of probably 20 minutes they scored 4 times to win the match and to progress through to the next round of the League Cup.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anything quite like this – especially from FC Pionsat St Hilaire. They are much more likely to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory as we all know.

And I bet that you are wondering how come they managed to score 4 times in a match, especially as Cedric was having the day off.

But for a very pleasant change the rest of the attackers, once they had come to life, looked the part as well and tore the Briffons- Perpezat defence to shreds.

Even Vincent, an 18 year old lad who signed for the senior team this year, although about 6 feet tall but weighing about 6 stones, threw himself about and made two goals for his striking partner, as well as hitting the post in the closing stages of the game.

It was a lovely day to be out as well, a really nice day for a long drive, and I arrived at the ground early en.ough to see the second half of the previous game

That was a match in the Ladies’ League.

Briffons-Perpezat won that match quite comfortably – after all, they are second in the league – but the standard of play is much higher than I was expecting.

I was pleasantly surprised by it all. In fact it made me wish that I would have arrived even earlier to watch all of the game.

But this morning, I’m not sure what happened.

Chatting to Rhys until about 02:30, and with it being a Sunday too, I expected to be in bed until midday. But 08:45 when I woke up, and I could not get back to sleep.

So a lazy morning, but I did repair my two chests of drawers that are slowly starting to fall to pieces. At least now they open and close properly.

Anyway, back to work tomorrow. I need to clean out at the side of the lean-to and then move all of the stuff onto there from off the hardstanding.

That isn’t going to be the work of five minutes.

-4

Saturday 29th September 2012 – I SAW SOMETHING …

… this evening that I have never seen before.

I was at St Eloy-les-Mines watching Nord Combraille play Beauregard-Vendon in the league cup, and halfway through the match the home supporters started to hurl abuse at the visiting linesman.

The Miners’ captain ran across the field to his supporters and told them to “fermez la geule” – or “shut your gobs”. And how I wish that more captains of more football clubs would take the initiative like that.

It was an exciting match too – with 10 minutes to go Beauregard-Vendon were comfortably winning 3-1 but then the Miners scored a goal right out of nothing to bring it back to 3-2.

Then, with the last kick of the match, they scored an equaliser from a corner.

Extra-time followed, and the Miners ran rampant, winning 5-3, including as the 4th goal one of the best that I have ever seen at this level of football.

That led to me doing something that I have never done before in all the time that I’ve been here. By the time the match had finished, what with extra time and everything, it was 10:45 and so I wouldn’t be home for another 20 minutes.

Far too late to cook tea, but the kebab house was still open and so I bought a large portion of chips to eat in Caliburn on the way home.

No vinegar, of course, but they were pretty good chips and I’ll go there again if ever I’m out late at weekend.

So what about today then?

I nearly missed my shopping slot at Commentry today as well. But there was a good reason for this.

Just as I was closing down to go to bed (at a comparatively early 02:30) I had a message to ring Rachel in Canada urgently. And so I did, and it turned out that at the garage in Centreville they had mislaid a box which included, inter alia, my bank card that they keep for me.

It’s surprising, if not amazing, that you can spend over 90 minutes talking to people whom you like, about a subject as simple as that (and it was all a false alarm anyway as they found it this morning)

The result of that was that it was gone 04:00 when I finished and then I couldn’t sleep – still awake again at 05:30. and so it’s just as well that the guy up the road started up his chainsaw at 11:00 otherwise I’d still be asleep now.

So what with one thing and another it was gone 14:00 when I set out for Commentry. One of the things that I needed to do was to buy even more tool handles as I’d broken one or two more during the week, and so I needed to strip out the old broken bits before I could go.

At Mr Bricolage I managed to sort everything out (at a price) but the handle for the pickaxe. They didn’t have a wooden handle and so he sold me a fibre one.
“This is unbreakable” said the salesman
“Leave that to me” I replied. “I’ll see to that”.

I also bought the bits I need to do some work for a client with a solar hot water system, and at LIDL they still had a couple of packets of those LED light strips and so I liberated them.

Makes me wonder how many I might have liberated had I managed to make it there last week.

No swimming baths though – far too late to go there, and so I came back here and crashed out for a couple of hours instead after my bad night.

Tomorrow I’m off to the Mont Dore – FC Pionsat St Hilaire are playing Briffons-Perpezat in the cup.

-1

Saturday 22nd September 2012 – YOU’RE PROBABLY WONDERING …

… what happened to the blog last night and why you have to wait until Sunday evening for Saturday’s write-up,

The truth is that it’s been something of a totally mixed-up couple of days.

I managed an early start on Saturday morning and long before lunch I’d even selected the music for the rock programme for December – talk about trying to get ahead – but then it all went a little haywire.

I had four phone calls one after the other. Marianne rang me to see if I would like to be a technician at a Haydn concert on Sunday afternoon (so much for my day off), then Percy Penguin rang, and then a solar panel salesman phoned up.

As for the fourth person who rang me, I can’t now remember who it was.

In between the phone calls I was trying to do some tidying up, without too much success, and so I made a coffee and sat down for five minutes.

Next thing that I remembered was that it was 14:43 – I’d missed my window of opportunity to go shopping in Commentry and then for a swim at Neris-les-Bains.

Instead, I simply nipped into St Eloy-les-Mines (remembering while I was there exactly why I needed to go to Commentry – those 12-volt light strips at LIDL) and then came back home to prepare for the footy.

If you think that the 7-0 hammering that FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 2nd XI had at Chateaugay the other week, that was nothing compared to the score against Nord Combraille.

No goalkeeper, and so a young boy going between the posts, last season’s 3rd XI defence, and the result was a foregone conclusion even before the kickoff.

It was a shame because for the first time for ages the team had a shape and a plan, and in midfield and up front they weren’t too bad. They certainly had a few chances against the Miners in this game, but every time they lost possession that was that.

The FC Pionsat St Hilaire 1st XI won 2-1, scoring two goals that were, well, extraordinary.

Beating the offside trap completely and utterly for one goal, and the second, a free kick from 30 yards out that went straight through the hands of the keeper.

Still, they all count, and that’s what is important.

Of course, with two matches and a pile of injury time, we didn’t finish until almost 23:00, and so it was midnight when I came up here.

Too tired to do anything but all that coffee and the nap at lunchtime made sure that I was still awake at 05:30.

Wednesday 19th September 2012 – I TOOK DOWN …

… the scaffolding at lunchtime.

Yes, the first time in over 10 years that there has been no scaffolding of one kind or another out there at the back.

I was working out there all afternoon but I’ve not made much progress because this isn’t as easy as it looks. The concrete mortar that they used to cover the gaps between the stones is taking ages to come off.

Usually, if the mortar is in good condition I’ll leave it on and put the chalk over the top, but what is happening here is that water has infiltrated down the back of the concrete mortar when there was no roof on the lean-to.

This has washed away all of the original sand-and-clay mortar, so that it’s hollow behind.

The concrete mortar needs to be hacked off, the joints raked out, stones hammered in to keep the existing stones in position and in tension, and then the whole lot mortared in with chalk.

Of course, sometimes 3 or 4 stones fall out, and so I have to find an oversize one to knock into the gap with a sledgehammer. This is important to lock the remaining original stones in their position so that the stresses are spread horizontally and not vertically.

This morning though I had a good session on the website dealing with the footy match on Sunday.

It’s not quite finished yet but round about 11:30 I had a go experimenting with my old digital dictaphone to see if I could make it work like I wanted. No such luck and so I decided I would have a good search around for the one I lost on Sunday.

In the end I found it – fallen out of my pocket and down the back of Caliburn’s driving seat.

But no phone though – I must have been mistaken about hearing it bleep as it doesn’t seem to be anywhere in hearing distance.

I’ve also had an angry phone call with one of these rip-off solar panel merchants.

Apparently if I have his system fitted, it will pay for itself in 10 years.
“How is that?”
“Well, it costs €19,000 (three times what it would cost me to supply the stuff incidentally) and the Electricity Board will pay you €1,800 per year for 10 years
“That makes €18,000 doesn’t it?”
“Yes”
“So how will if pay for itself in 10 years?”
“Because the Electricity Board will pay you €1,800 per year for 10 years”

So after much arguing and shouting, he slammed the phone down. Serve him right. Nothing but a rip-off

But I’m glad that I got my wood in anyway. In the short space of time that it took to make tea tonight the temperature fell from 12.1°C to 8.0°C – on course to be the coldest night of this end of the year.

That’s also why I’m glad that I stayed here to do this wall and not go gallivanting off to Canada just now. Finish this before the end of autumn and it will last for ever.

-2

Sunday 16th September 2012 – HAVING LOST …

… my mobile phone about a month ago, it’s the turn of the dictaphone to go walkabout now.

I picked it up off the floor here and I’m convinced that I put it in my pocket, but when I arrived at Servant, it wasn’t there. No idea where that’s gone.

Yes, that’s where we are this Sunday – down at Servant.

It’s a cup match this weekend, so FC Pionsat St Hilaire have fielded something like a makeshift hybrid team featuring half of the 2nd XI

And while I was scrabbling around in Caliburn looking for my dictaphone, I missed FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s opening goal.

But not to worry, there were plenty of other goals that I didn’t miss.

Their opponents are a Third Division side and Pionsat cantered to a leisurely 4-1 win.

They didn’t at any time look under any kind of pressure, and could have had a bag-full more, missing two or three sitters on the way.

But, uncomfortably, they didn’t look all that convincing either. Last season, they would have demolished a team like this without any trouble at all.

Apart from that, all I seem to have done today is to back up my photographs onto DVD. I keep an external drive with the photos on, and also a portable drive as a fall-back.

I’ve also been copying them to DVD every time I have a fill SD card as an additional safeguard, but I’ve not done that since the second half of 2009 so there are thousands – and I mean thousands – to do.

It’s not helped either by the fact that the DVD writer is a little old and creaky and needs a long rest after each session, and that also some of the DVDs I have here are corrupted. Flood damage by the looks of things.

Anyway, tomorrow I’m off in the morning helping Rosemary with a furniture delivery.

I’ve swapped that for half a day’s work in my garden. It’s the only way that any weeding is going to be done in the near future.

-1

EPIC HALL

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