Tag Archives: tidying up

Sunday 23rd June 2013 – I WAS IN CHESTER …

… during the night in the street where I first went to live when I moved there in September 1972, only last night it was where I was working. Parking in this street was usually problematic but last night it was snowing lightly and there was hardly a car about. It had me worried – was it a working day or not?
But anyway I went in to my building which was a modern building of brick, concrete, aluminium and glass, well spread-out but not too tall, and with a couple of friends we went to the restaurant. But with having spent so much time talking, we arrived just in time to see the aluminium shutters lowered down, for it was 10:00, the time that the restaurant closed.
Just after this, there was a fierce banging from the other side of the shutters- it seemed that someone had been locked in behind them. I went off to the reception area where there were three women, one of whom by her behaviour clearly had the air of being in charge, and so I told her about this person behind the shutters. “That’s too bad” she replied. “She’ll just have to wait there until 11:00”
“Can’t you unlock a service door?” I asked with surprise. “There must be a way out of there”
“No – I don’t have access so she’ll just have to wait”. Our conversation after this became rather heated, but she still wouldn’t budge.
At this point the front door opened and a group of kids, dressed up as an American marching band, complete with instruments, came marching in, and behind them came three men, clearly officers of some import and wearing képis and cloaks of the style of the Royal Dutch Army. The senior of these was an enormously tall métisse, probably close to 7 feet tall, so I went up to him and told him the story of this woman locked in the restaurant behind the shutters. He went over to the woman at reception and said a few words to her that I did not hear, but she went bright red and took a set of keys out of the drawer in front of her and went down the corridor, opened a door, and let out the woman who was locked in the restaurant.This woman, for reasons that I did not undertand, was wearing an orange rotating light on her head.

That was another one of these dreams that it seems a pity to leave, but leave I did because Cécile bought me a cup of coffee in bed, which was extremely nice.

Yes, it’s Sunday, which means a day off, or, at least, it’s supposed to. But Cécile has so much to do at her house (well, I’m not convinced, but she is) and only a short time in which to do it, so we ended up repairing cupboards and moving shelves around and so on.

Sunday is also pizza day and Cécile cooked a lovely example for lunch (thanks, Rosemary, for fetching the vegan cheese), but as we were about to restart work, one of Cécile’s friends came round for a chat. Consequently we were late for Liz and Terry’s.

Terry is now a very happy bunny, seeing as he has all of the slates (and a darned sight more as well) to do the roof on his new extension, and I am aslo an extremely happy bunny, having been repaid in Liz’s home-made chocolate cake.

And after running through the radio programmes for tomorrow, back here and that was that. Tomorrow is another day;

-5

Friday 7th June 2013 – WELL, I’M OFF.

But then you all knew that already.

The Postie delivered my monster CD order and now I’m free to leave at any time I like for a couple of weeks. Liz found me a cheapo ferry on the site that she uses – it’s at 04:00 so I’ll be leaving in a bit for the UK.

That’s really all that I’ve done today apart from clearing up and dealing with this load of web stuff that I mentioned the other day. The apartment here is still a mess and I’m not really making much progress but I will have a couple of months when I come back to deal with it all and isn’t that famous last words?

I’m not sure when I’ll have internet access again. After the UK I’ll be off to Fromentine and the Ile d’Yeu to do the two weeks’ work that I promised Cécile in exchange for her two weeks here back in April and there won’t be any internet access there, that’s for sure.

after that, it’s back to Pooh Corner, the radio, and two weeks working on the bathroom here as when I return to Brussels at the beginning of July I want to buy all the tiles from that guy who did us so handsomely when we were working on Expo in early 2011.

So, see you soon. Don’t wander away in my absence.

-3

Thursday 6th June 2013 – I MIGHT HAVE BROKEN …

… the back of all of this paperwork. I think that I’ve found it all and I’ve sorted it into at least things that need to be taken home for a further sorting or things that I can simply throw away. A mere 14 sacks there are – and that’s just the stuff for throwing.

Anyway, I’ve started emptying the sideboard in the living room now and that’s exciting too. I opened one of the doors and a couple of bats flew out – it’s that kind of sideboard. I’ll be here for a bit yet.

That was this afternoon though. This morning I made a rather startling discovery – or, rather, rediscovery. I went to Labrador in 2010 as you ll know by now and I wrote all of the web pages to cover the journey from Baie Comeau in Quebec all the way round to getting on the boat at Channel-Port-aux-Basques in Newfoundland that was going to take me across the Gulf of St Lawrence to Cape Breton Island.

But while I was ferreting about looking for something else, I came across a huge file that was in fact a large part of the journey, all properly written up as far as New Glasgow, and I can’t think why I never finished it all off. Anyway, I reckon that now I’ve done all of the radio stuff for the next while I deserve some time to myself so for a couple of hours each morning I’ll be doing that.

And pet hate of the day? When someone asks for my advice and I give it, and they go off and do something else completely, and when that all goes pear-shaped they spend half an hour ranting at me. Agatha Christie wrote in the Sleeping Murder, “Good advice is almost certain to be ignored, but that’s no reason for not giving it” – I’m not convinced of that if I’m going to be getting a pile of earache. I have better things to do with my time.

-5

Wednesday 5th June 2013 – HELLO AGAIN.

I thought that I would have a nice interesting introduction this evening, because in all probability it will be more exciting that the rest of the post.

Basically, nothing much has changed since yesterday. I’m still up to my ears in papers. Mind you, the wardrobes and wall unit in the main bedroom have been emptied and most of the stuff has been packed away.

I suppose that that is progress.

There are three large sacks full of clothes and one of shoes (Marianne seemed to like shoes) and they will all be headed for a clothing bank next time I take Caliburn for a joy ride. Someone else may as well have use of it all.

So apart from that, what else?

Ahhh yes – Julie went into St Eloy-les-Mines today which was quite lucky because today was the day that the compost bins that we ordered from the VALTOM were to be collected. So thanks for that, Julie.

And in other news, I’m going to the UK – to Dymchurch in fact – for a day quite soon.

Just as I was wondering where I can get boxes and packing tape from in bulk and regretting that there was no Screwfix nearer than Dover, and how I was feeling like a day out by the seaside, Terry rang me up. He’s just won a job lot of 400 slates on eBay and they are in Dymchurch, down on the edge of Romney March about 10 miles from Dover. Fuel and ferry fare offered, and you can’t say fairer than that.

It’s a region that I know quite well of course, and if you were following my adventures in March 2009 you will know that I spent a pleasant few days just down the road at Dungeness.

Yes, a nice day out this weekend would just suit me fine. I hope that the weather stays fine.

-2

Tuesday 4th June 2013 – I’M UP TO MY KNEES …

… in papers right now, trying to start the packing. But somehow it’s just not happening.

Someone once saif of Ford Madox Ford that they could put him in a totally empty room and come back later and find the place in total chaos. Anyone who comes here right now will understand exactly what they meant by now.

But never mind. Nietzsche famously said “out of chaos comes order”, but that was many years before I was born.

It depresses me, though. I’m not sure why it is but when God or whoever it was was handing out the tidying-up gene, I dunno where I was. I somehow make the place even more untidy until it looks like a total tip and then I lose interest or something and it’s always the same. The road to hell really is paved with good intentions.

I’ve been going round finding all of the DC appliances in the apartment, and believe me, ther are tons of them. But not a charger or transformer in sight. Anyway, today, I came across a drawer full of DC chargers and transformers, And not one of them labelled either. This is going to be fun, mating them all up.

And apart from that? Nothing at all. But then, that’s quite enough to be going on with, I reckon

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Saturday 25th May 2013 – There’s a strange round object …

… out there in the sky. It’s a golden orange colour and it hurts my eyes when I look at it. Also, the sky is a funny colour. There are parts of it that are a strange blue colour, not the usual grey that I am used to. It’s absolutely weird.

Not like yesterday, though. Fighting the snow and the rain, I emptied Caliburn. And while there wasn’t a great deal of stuff that I threw away, the fact that it is all tidied up inside means that there is tons of space inside. And that’s good news.

After that, I went off to Pooh Corner and sorted out Caliburn’s summer tyres ready for changing. He has his MoT on Monday morning and then I’ll be changing them over and putting the winter tyres in store. I found the mountain bike that needs to be taken over to Rosemary’s, and I also sorted out my CDs and started to fit the CD racks that I had bought in IKEA in Brussels. The first time I’ve seen some CD racks that actually do what I think that they ought to do.

Back here though, a bit of bad news. Cécile’s mother has had another funny turn and so after Caliburn’s MoT we are hitting the road, but to Fromentines, not to Brussels. I’ll have to drop Cécile off to catch the ferry out to her mother’s island and then I’ll have to head off to Brussels from there – a mere 880kms again.

It’s all happening here.

-1

Tuesday 12th February 2013 – I was dead right …

… about the weather.

This morning was horribly grey and overcast with a hanging cloud. And it didn’t get any better than that either. Talking to Terry a few hours later, he said that it was snowing round by his place, and sure enough in the late afternoon it started chucking it down here too.

With regard to Bill’s affairs, it was too cold to go round there and so we stayed at Marianne’s and went through a huge pile of paperwork and did the accounts to date. After that I went with Pascal round to Bill’s and we moved some more furniture out.

This afternoon was yet another afternoon without working in the bathroom and this is becoming a tale of lost opportunities. Terry wanted to go to Brico Depot and wanted me to go with him. It was only fair and I’m not complaining as after all, a huge pile of stuff was for me but none of this is getting my bathroom done and for the last few weeks I’ve been continually sidetracked by one thing or another and it’s beginning to get on my nerves. What made it worse was that I was building up a list of things that I needed to buy next time I was there, and it went clean out of my head.

This evening I was at St Maurice. There’s a series of walks around France taking place every weekend and in 2 months time they will be walking around there, so they had a meeting of potential volunteers. I went along to find out what was happening.

 Back here, it was oven chips and baked beans for tea, and now I’m off to bed. Tomorrow we’ll have more hanging clouds and snowstorms. And who is going to come along tomorrow to put me off working in the blasted bathroom?

-3

Friday 4th January 2013 – IN A CHANGE …

… to the advertised programme, I’m not actually at home right now.

I was this morning though, and it was one of those mornings where nothing much out of the ordinary really happened.

After breakfast, I cracked on with the website for quite a while and then had a few little jobs to do here and there around the place.

Once lunch was out of the way I went round to Cecile’s to help her prepare for her do tonight. That took a while because her preparations are much more thorough than mine ever will be, and she’s far more adventurous too when it comes to cooking.

We were four at the table, all enjoying ourselves which was nice, and then after the others had left we did the tidying up.

The one thing that can be said about more preparation and more adventurous cooking is that it takes much longer than it should (in my opinion anyway) to clear up and wash up.

And when you’ve had a very late night with company, it’s even later still by the time that you have finished.

I was exhausted too and didn’t feel up to driving home and so I ended up staying the night.

Serves me right.

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Thursday 3rd January 2013 – WHAT A LOUSY …

… day

Grey, wet, miserable, depressing

But that’s enough about me – the weather was even worse.

So with almost no solar energy today I didn’t do all that much. When I opened my eye and saw the weather, I closed it again and went back under the duvet.

And if it hadn’t been absolutely necessary to visit the beichstuhl I’d probably be there now. 

After breakfast and working on the website for a while I started on the floor in the shower room. But I wasn’t there as long as I might have been, and for a very simple reason too.

I will swear blind that I bought 5 packets of tongue-and-grooved flooring planks, but I’ve only been able to manage to find four – there’s one missing somewhere. And the result of that is that I ran out of floor with two planks to go.

GRRRRR!

So that means a trip to Montlucon and Brico Depot on Saturday, doesn’t it? I’m never going to finish this blasted flooring seeing as how all of the fates are conspiring against me.

To pass the rest of the time I started to sort out the firewood in the lean-to in order to make more space.

I could have cut it up as well but I have to do that outside and with it pouring down with rain it wasn’t much of a good plan. But there’s progress all the same.

This evening I had another meal the same as last night and it worked just as well, if not better.

Having a rip-roaring blaze at the beginning is definitely the key to cooking with the wood stove. It heats the oven up quicker and that cooks the potatoes better.

Basically, 2 hours for the spuds, 60 minutes for the sprouts and 90 minutes for the rest of the veg. The veggie-burger takes about 20 minutes or so.

I had a few phone calls too. Cécile called me twice and spoke to me for hours. She’s giving a dinner party tomorrow night and wants to know if I can help her tomorrow afternoon to prepare.

Seeing as I don’t have the wood to finish the floor, that seems like a good plan.

Marianne also rang up for a long chat and to tell me about her adventures at Riom hunting down old historical documents. One of these days when I’m not busy, whenever that might be, I’ll have to go with her.

As for me, this afternoon I telephoned the hospital at Montlucon to enquire about Bill.

The receptionist wasn’t all that forthcoming. After much verbal fencing, she expressed an interest in knowing who I was, and so I explained that I was neither family nor close friend but just an everyday run-of-the-mill friend of no particular significance.

She then said that she couldn’t give me any more information, but would I care to leave my phone number so that she can pass it on the Bill’s daughter – his next of kin

I don’t like the sound of that one little bit

-2

Sunday 16th December 2012 – I’VE SPENT TODAY …

… not DOING very much at all – some tidying up … "THUD" – ed … and arranging some papers, which makes a change.

Later on, I went down to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse the radio programmes. On the way I stopped to pick up Cécile who had been invited.

It’s a mammoth radio programme as I told you, and I doubted very much that we’ll finish it – after all, 35 pages of A4 is some going. But at least it’s broken the back of the radio programme for next Christmas too, if anything else survives after Friday.

I also received my Christmas prezzie from Liz – a vegan Christmas cake – and I’ll post a photo of it as soon as I can find a fork lift truck to lift it out of the back of Caliburn because it’s enormous.

Cécile was having further trouble with this new wood stove that she’s been given and so I stopped off there to have a good look at it.

It took me a while to figure it out but once that was resolved and it had had a good cleaning it burnt like a good’un.

But it took ages, hence the late return home. Good job that Caliburn knows the way on his own.

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Saturday 15th December 2012 – I DIDN’T BLOG …

… last night before going to bed, and I bet that you were all disappointed.

But no matter, I’ll serve it up this morning for you.

Actually, I was far too busy, working on the radio programmes and it was 02:30 before I went to bed. “If you have the inspiration, keep on at it”, as the actress once famously said to the bishop.

But at least it’s all finished today, all …errr … 60kbs of it. That’s the equivalent of almost 2 hours of discussion.

And then you have to add the ad-libs in too and then of course the music that we’ll be playing in between – so that should be enough for the next three years.

At least, I hope so. As I said yesterday, it’ll all come in handy.

And so, apart from writing the radio programme, that was that

The weather warmed up dramatically this morning and it was 17°C in my room when I woke up. That makes a nice change, and at least I was comfortable without the fire when I was doing the radio programme

Shopping was next on the agenda and so a run out to St Eloy-les-Mines was called for.

But there’s been a change of plan as far as the diet goes. Pasta doesn’t work in the oven, and rice is a bit samey day after day and so I’ve bought a big bag of potatoes. Baked spuds should be just about fine for the rest of the winter I think.

But while I’m on the subject of changes, I’ve changed the room around a little.

I’ve moved a bookcase or two and shuffled the pair of chests of drawers around a little, and now the end wall underneath the little window at the side of the oven became miraculously free.

Remember the table that I brought up here a while ago? That’s gone nicely just there and I now actually have a kind of kitchen in that corner. Won’t that be really handy for the winter.

And I’ve finally heard from Bill.

I set Marianne a task viz to contact the hospital. Marianne is not easily brushed aside and managed to find out where he was. So she came up with a number and so I rang him.

He’s out of danger but he’s not himself yet. Time will tell but I’m so relieved.

I was really worried.

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Tuesday 20th November 2012 – I’VE MADE A START …

shower room floor les guis virlet puy de dome france… on fitting the new floor in where the bathroom, or to be more precise, the shower room is going to be, and there’s one very unhappy bunny here.

The tongue-and-grooving is from Brico Depot and it’s a major mistake to buy anything from there.

5 packs of flooring I’ve bought, all of the same brand, all bought at the same time, and the packets are all of different thicknesses.

Not only that, the tongues of one packet don’t correspond to the grooves of the others either so when you firmly nail one lot down, the subsequent packet won’t slide properly underneath and you have to lever it up a little.

All in all, it’s looking quite a mess – nothing like the neat and tidy little job I was hoping for.

I haven’t finished it yet either because I ran out of light so that’s not going to be done until I come back from the UK, and I’m dismayed about that too.

This morning though, I made a start on the Radio Anglais Christmas Special that we do for Radio Arverne.

This is an hour-long programme, mostly speech but with some music as well and it doesn’t half take some writing. Today though, I’ve been researching and gathering material.

I’m not going to tell you the subject matter though – you can wait until it’s on the air.

Tomorrow, though, I’m going to be extremely busy.

In the afternoon Cécile is coming round to work in the garden in exchange for the work that I did for her last Friday.

Of course, I don’t want to frighten her away and so I need to do some tidying up, and that will take me all of the morning, and then some, I suppose.

Steam-cleaning the verandah is priority number one, and then emptying the composting toilet – that’s always a good plan too.

need to empty the verandah as much as possible, because for this winter I want to bring inside the pots of herbs and they are too heavy for me to lift on my own.

I suppose that I’d better go and have an early night then – I need to be fighting fit for tomorrow.

-6

Thursday 15th November 2012 – THE SHOWER ROOM FLOOR …

… is almost up

SHOWER ROOM FLOOR LES GUIS VIRLET puy de dome franceJust two boards left to pull up but they aren’t going to be easy as I can’t get the circular saw in to trim them off the boards that run through the bedroom.

For that, I shall have to resort to some heavy engineering.

And I’m glad that I decided to take it up anyway, as two of the boards are pretty rotten. They weren’t going to hold much up.

All of that means that the beams will need to be treated with xylophene just in case there’s anything living there that shouldn’t be.

home made shelf unit stair cupboard les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou might be wondering where everything has gone, because the last photo that I took showed it all covered over with junk.

So here, while I have the camera handy, is the cupboard at the back of the stairs with everything arranged thereupon.

And you can see that there’s plenty of room left for more stuff – but that’s never going to be a problem around here, is it?

This morning though, I read through everything that I had written this week, made a few corrections and then printed it off. That takes ages with my sick little printer but at least it’s all done now.

I reckon that there’s enough stuff now in the pipeline for three months, which is just as well.

I’ve also been inundated with phone calls again. I don’t know what it is, but I’m clearly doing something right.

But as a result of all of this, tomorrow I have to go to the printer’s, then to Marianne’s, then to the Radio Tartasse at Marcillat-en-Combraille and then round to Cécile’s – all before midday.

I’ll be having my work cut out to do all of that.

-2

Tuesday 13th November 2012 – I’VE JUST WOKEN …

… up 🙁

Yes, I went out like a light again in the middle of the evening and it’s hardly as if I’ve been working too hard either.

This morning after coffee I wrote some more stuff for one of the Radio Anglais programmes that we do – a delightful couple of pages on composting toilets, would you believe?

And then I went out to cut another pile of wood ready for the bad weather.

After lunch I carried on emptying the first floor and finally, at 18:00, I was in a position where tomorrow, if nothing else crops up, I can rip up the floor in what will shortly be the shower room.

It’s quite nice tongue-and-grooving but it has about 200 years of ingrained dirt from when it was the upstairs hallway – that is, until I turned the stairs around in November 2009.

It’s impossible to clean it – believe me, I’ve tried, and so it’s coming up and being replaced with new. Once that’s in and given a couple of coats of varnish, I can start on insulating the walls and then fit the plasterboard.

Yes, and I don’t know why, but I also seem to have been very popular today.

I’ve had four phone calls, from Cécile, Rosemary, Percy Penguin and Liz, although not necessarily in that order. Maybe its those that are wearing me out.

-1

Monday 12th November 2012 – SO ONCE AGAIN …

… yet another early morning, another early breakfast and another early start.

We started off the day by tidying up in here in the attic- something that I had been meaning to do over the weekend but somehow never managed it.

And then I cracked on with the website and the next round of radio programmes for Radio Anglais.

But here’s the exciting thing. I’ve decided, as many of you might already have guessed, to go to the UK for a week or so quite soon to catch up with old friends and have a break.

This involves a ferry crossing of course, but my plans to book a ferry on-line ended up being a total failure as I can’t make any of my credit cards work with these new security controls.

In the end I booked by phone with one of these bucket-shop travel agents (my usual one was just totally unhelpful and I won’t be using them again).

Just for a change, seeing as there is nothing to be gained or lost, I’ve abandoned my usual ferry routes and travelling on the Dieppe – Newhaven route. I’ve never sailed that route before and it will make a pleasant change for me.

But over 90 minutes trying to book a ferry is just absurd.

Anyway, I’ll start back to work tomorrow. I’ve plenty to do as you know

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