Tag Archives: shower room

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 – *@ç#%§µ ¤£&€ù+§ cheap flaming useless tools!!!

damaged arbour sds dtill les guis virlet puy de dome franceThat’s the arbour off the core drill kit that I bought (and spent a lot of money on) 18 months or so ago. The drill end is totally burnt out.

What’s been happening here is that the arbour has not been a precise fit in the chuck of the SDS drill. With the 4 hours of constant pounding that it received yesterday, the percussion effect of the play slowly but surely enlarged the groove in the arbour until it burnt through.

Mind you, as I said yesterday, the impressive thing about this is that everything else – the inverter, the batteries, the wiring, even the LIDL drill, stood up to everything that I could throw at it.

I expected loads of other things to burn out before the arbour would give way.

And it took me hours to dismantle the SDS drill too before I could extract the arbour, and I can tell you absolutely everything about how an SDS drill works now because I’ve seen it first-hand.

Anyway, once I’d freed the arbour I cleaned and greased everything and then reassembled it.

I’m not sure how the automotive circlip will stand up to the pounding but then that would be hammered to death in the con-rods and pistons anyway with much more force than an SDS drill so it should be okay.

rail cascading off verandah roof les guis virlet puy de dome franceTook hours, as I said, and it didn’t make any difference to my work programme because I couldn’t have drilled anything anyway.

Look at the rain cascading off the verandah roof. We had the most amazing tropical thunderstorm, as you can see.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen rain like we had this afternoon although believe me, we have had some here for sure in the past as you know.

Not much good for working in but impressive all the same. And for a while there was no solar energy getting through at all. No chance of doing any drilling today of course, but there is still plenty of work to be going in with.

Later on in the afternoon I did manage to get into the shower room. I started cutting and shaping the horizontal supports for the stud wall between the shower room and the bedroom.

I cut and shaped four of them before I ran out of demi-chevron (and I wasn’t going outside for another one in that weather) and I managed to screw one of them in place before the batteries in the Ryobi Plus One drill and screwdriver went flat.

It just wasnt my day at all.

Mind you, it was 19:40 when I finished off so I suppose it was time enough. But I need to get cracking tomorrow.

I’m wasting far too much time and I don’t have too much to spare.

-3

Monday 1st July 2013 – THERE’S A HOLE …

hole in wall shower room les guis virlet puy de dome france… in my shower room wall. 48mm in diameter, 18 inches from the floor and almost (but not quite) all the way through to the outside, dear Liza, dear Liza.

. I took advantage of the absolutely beautiful summer’s day to power up the mega-SDS drill and carve a hole through to the outside to act as the air vent for the composting toilet – something that is quite important for not for nothing is this place known as Pooh Corner.

And if you were around a year or so ago when I took months to drill the hole through from the lean-to into the house, it took just four hours to end up a mere 9 centimetres from the outside wall … "and it’ll probably take you another year to do the rest" – ed.

So why didn’t I carry on and finish it?

The answer is simple. The core drills that I use for punching my way through stone are about 15 cms long and I have three extensions – a 6cm one, a 40cm one and a 60cm one – giving me 21cms, 55cms and 75cms respectively.

hole ssaw arbour stuck in SDS drill les guis virlet puy de dome franceWith the 60cm one and the core drill it would make short work of the 55cm walls but it is so heavy and awkward that I start off with the small one, then graduate to the middle one, and then I finish off with the larger one.

But damn and blast! Would you believe it (well, knowing me, you probably would), the 40mm extension is jammed solid into the chuck and try as I might, can I heck as like move it? .I was there for a good hour or so trying to extricate it from the chuck and  no luck at all.

Never mind for now, though.

I’m still impressed that I can run a 1400-watt SDS drill for four hours punching my way through blocks of Grès de Lapeize without even a hiccup. And with the fridge working too. And as well as having electrically-heated hot water to wash in afterwards.

That’s despite all of the doubters and prophets of doom that I had when I first started this project back in 1999.

And despite all of the criticisms that I’ve had to bear, from people whom I thought were friends but behind my back were having a nice little laugh at my expense with their friends in “a certain newsgroup”.

As you know, that was something that angered me intensely, as I have said before … "and at great length too" – ed.

Anyway, enough of me ranting.

By 18:00 I called it a day in the shower room and went outside. With the weedkiller that Liz gave me and the pressure sprayer that I bought on Saturday, I attacked the weeds again for an hour and a half.

They are looking quite sad after my last effort but we are promised sunshine until tomorrow night and so a second helping won’t go amiss.

I forgot to tell you about last night’s dream as well. I was in the EU offices in a long corridor with hordes of people trying to get through a turnstile into the inner sanctum of the building and it was taking hours. But there were two office of member states, Ireland being one of them and I can’t remember the other, and they had access through the rear of their offices into the interior of the building. I knew all of the girls who worked there so grabbing my friend, we went through the Irish Permanent Representation offices into the main part of the building, much to his surprise, the surprise of the girls there and the surprise of everyone else.
From there I was in an exam and I needed to remember the proportion of energy in the UK (at least I think that it was in the UK) generated by coal. I’d taken some papers with me into the exam and they had notes upon them (contrary to the rules) and I spent a few anxious moments looking through the papers, not finding what I wanted and wondering if it was indeed 18% or some other figure.

-5

Wednesday 26th June 2013 – HERE’S ANOTHER …

electricity shower room stud wall les guis virlet puy de dome france… photo of the new temporary electrical circuit here at Pooh Corner.

At first glance it looks very much like a close-up of the previous image but in fact a closer perusal will reveal the addition of a pair of American 110-volt sockets.

As you might recall if you are a regular reader of this rubbish and have been following these pages quite closely since right back at the very beginning, my house is powered by solar panels and wind turbines creating energy at 12 volts DC.

As a result I spent an inordinate amount of my time sourcing 12-volt appliances, because I can run these directly off my supply without the need for a transformer.

That calls for a 12-volt DC circuit around the house and that means that the cables will be carrying a heavier amperage (500 watts at 230 volts is just over 2 amps, but 500 watts at 12 volts is just over 40 mps).

And the heavier the amperage, the thicker cable – I use 6mm cable instead of 1.5mm cable.

Because North America runs on 110 volts instead of the European 230 volts, then more than twice as much amperage is required to power an identical appliance, and so the USA uses thicker cable.

Consequently all of their plugs and sockets are much more suitable for my purposes when it comes to a 12-volt system as they are built to handle heavier amperage and thicker cable.

So that’s what I’ve been doing this afternoon, expanding the 12-volt power circuit into the shower room.

All that remains to do now is to fit the wiring for the light circuit, drill two large holes through the outside wall for the air exchange, and then I can wallop the rest of the plasterboard onto the walls.

This morning though, once the sun had climbed well into the sky, I doused the weeds outside the house with this radical weed-killer that Liz gave me. I’m not quite sure just how well its going to work but it has to be better than nothing at all. I really do hope that it lives up to expectations.

I had a little relaxation in the evening and watched a John Wayne film – Fort Apache. This is one of what is known as “The Cavalry Trilogy” and is famous for two particular reasons.

  1. it’s probably the earliest mainstream film to look at the American genocide – if not holocaust – of its ethnic citizens from the point of view of the victims
  2. most of the action takes place over ground which I know extremely well, because you might remember that back in 2002 I drove for a couple of days through the Utah Desert and in particular through Monument Valley and The Valley Of The Gods where most of the action takes place. I recognised almost all of the sites and it brought back some very happy memories.
-4

Tuesday 25th June – HOW LONG IS IT …

12 volt dc domestic electricity circuit shower room les guis virlet puy de dome france… since I posted a photo of work that Ive been doing round here at Pooh Corner?  I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s all of 6 months.

If you look carefully you’ll notice a pile of new trunking, cabling and wires as well as two new (temporary) wall sockets, one to the left of centre and one just lower than centre right on the back wall.

I’ve been extending the electrical circuits ready to put the next sheet of plasterboarding on the stud wall.

Mind you though, I’m lucky that I got that far. After being away for 6 months, I sent the first three hours looking for all the tools and the second three hours looking for all the cables and accessories.

The third three hours was spent trying to work out how it was that just 6 months ago the wiring that I was in the course of doing was so simple and straightforward that I didn’t need to label everything to say where it is to go.

So after my exertions I went round to Rob and Julie’s to give them the tea and marmite and to pick uo everything from there, including Terry’s super-duper lawn mower with which I’ll be attacking Cécile’s lawn one evening this week.

And I didn’t use the weed-killer either. I have two watering cans here and I was going to use them, but it was rather silly of me to have thought that I would have been able to find them in this jungle here right now.

-4

Saturday 22nd June 2013 – MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE …

les guis virlet puy de dome france… house I was confronted by vegetation the like of which I have very rarely seen.

It’s all very well with “the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye” but I bet that the weeds round here aren’t so far off that right now.

There was no path down to the house either and with nothing with which to hack my way through the brush I had to wade my way through the shrubbery, being nettled and brambled all the way.

Not very pleasant at all. and while I could just about make my way in via the verandah, it’s out of the question to go in by the front door.

I suppose that what I should really have done was to ask someone to nip round with the strimmer, or strim round with the nipper – one or the other. But it’s too late now.

As for the house itself, it’s as if no-one has lived there for a hundred years. Cobwebs and all kinds of things all over the place. All in all, very depressing.

However, I do have to say that I did feel at home there, more than anywhere else, and how I wish that I could go back on a permanent basis. I can’t wait for all of these issues in Brussels and elsewhere to be finished.

I also made a startling discovery too. I was looking for the keys to the barn and after a while I did discover them – in one of the barn doors, which was wide open.

Yes, and for about a month or so too.

I remember going in there to pick up a bottle of stuff to drink before setting off for Fromentine and then Brussels last time I was there. Ahh well …

Another depressing item is that my printer is not working. It’s already only printing in blue but now it’s not printing anything at all and I was there for half an hour trying to fix it.

I never seem to have any luck with printers – Pooh Corner is littered with all kinds of abandoned printers that have never seemed to keep going for long.

But at least I now know how I’m going to do the shower room. It involves the abandonment of one of the projects that I had in mind but it can’t be helped.

For that particular project, I need another 10cms on the width and while it is possible to invent a work-around, it involves all kinds of contortions with the plumbing and the pipework and at the end of the day, it just isn’t going to be worth the extra effort.

It won’t look as nice as I wanted it, but then again, since when did I ever care about aesthetics?

-2

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

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

Wednesday 2nd January 2013 – IT WAS BACK …

… to work today.

First time since I’m not sure when.

However, first task was to start on the web page for my visit to Lévis (that’s pronounced “Layvee”, not “Levi’s”) which is across the St Lawrence from the city of Québec. That was a brief excursion on a ferry across the St Lawrence in the middle of the afternoon during my walk around Québec.

It’s usually a bad sign for me to encounter a ferry and I’m never in a good humour, because every time I see a ferry, it always makes me cross.

Once that was out of the way I had a marathon wood-chopping session. I’ve used up a pile of wood over the last couple of weeks and so it needed to be replaced.

That took quite a while and created a nice pile of sawdust for the composting toilet.

It’s also made a nice little space in the lean-to and I’m hoping that I can crack on with that idea. I’d love to have enough space in there for my little workshop by the end of winter

Finally, I carried on with the floor in the shower room, and I’ve worked out why there’s a problem with the floor levels. It seems that with the wisdom that only Brico Depot can conjure up, the grooves are off-centre.

Now that wouldn’t particularly matter if the off-centre was consistent on each plank but in fact, while a pack might be consistent, the batch isn’t.

And that’s just plain ridiculous because there’s a planed side and a rough side, so you can’t even turn the planks over in order to even out the centres.

For tea this evening I tried a little experiment.

As well as starting off the baked potatoes in the oven, I chopped up a few sprouts and carrots, put them in a pyrex dish with some water and put them in the oven too.

Add a veggie burger and onions and garlic in a baking tray and use some of the veg water to make a gravy and I had a magnificent evening meal. Just like a king, in fact.

A wise move indeed, buying this little stove as I have said so many times before.

And setting up a little kitchen in a corner here, that’s working too.

-2

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

Monday 19th November 2012 – WE WERE RADIOING …

… today

But I almost wasn’t.

Coming into Marcillat-en-Combraille I encountered a large red lorry, and the closer I approached it, the farther it drifted out across the road into my path.

I ended up with two wheels on the pavement and a big bulge in one of my tyres. And just before I come to the UK too. I could have done without that.

Just for a change, things went according to plan at Radio Tartasse and we weren’t there long. I put some diesel into Caliburn and then went down to Liz’s for lunch – hot-pot, apple crumble and custard.

That was followed by some of Cecile’s chocolate cake and Liz’s carrot cake, all the leftovers from yesterday evening, and very nice they were too.

Radio Arverne was surprisingly well-organised too and we didn’t stay long there.

I’ve been planning a new format for the presentation of the programmes and that seemed to work quite well – a vast improvement on piles of scattered papers all over the place.

Bernard the engineer finally managed to track down some of the programmes that were lost following his technical hitches in March and September but the rest are, unfortunately, irretrievably lost which is something of a shame.

Back to Liz’s for more coffee and carrot cake (I really am so lucky) and that was that

Tomorrow it’s back to work and I’ll be doing the flooring in the shower room I hope, unless I have any more interruptions.

That should keep me out of mischief for a while. 

-4

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

Wednesday 14th November 2012 – I DIDN’T MANAGE …

… to rip up the bathroom floor today.

In fact, I was considerably sidetracked.

This morning though was pretty much more of the same. 11 pages of writing about the French laws of slander and libel for Radio Anglais – important for ex-pats due to a couple of high-profile court cases just recently concerning postings on social network sites;

And you wouldn’t believe just how different is the law over here compared to the UK.

Yesterday however when Rosemary was on the phone, she told me that the swimming baths at St Eloy-les-Mines had reopened after maintenance, and that one of the few times that they are open is Wednesdays at 13:30.

And seeing as it’s been a good while since I’ve had a decent soaking, we agreed to meet up this afternoon and go for a swim.

And so we did. 

Flaming cold in there it was (although not as cold as that swimming baths in Québec last May), but at just €1:88 a ticket, it was value for money and I had a really good scrub in the shower afterwards.

I look almost human now.

We went for a coffee and a chat afterwards, and then for a wander around a couple of the DiY places.

That wasn’t all though.

I’m nice and clean now, but my clothes weren’t. In fact my bedding walks off into the cupboard every morning under its own steam. Consequently, off I went to the laundrette and washed everything that I could lay my hands on.

Yes, a nice clean me, nice clean clothes and nice clean bedding tonight. I won’t know myself, will I?

But we did have a culinary disaster tonight. I made one of my mega-aubergine-and-kidney-bean-chili things tonight, to last me for three days, only to realise that I had forgotten to add the kidney beans.

And then I dropped tonight’s portion on the floor in the verandah. Luckily that I had a few more helpings left over.

But what a waste of food, hey?

-3

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

Thursday 8th November 2012 – I’M BACK!

And I bet that you didn’t know that I’ve even been away.

You may remember that a couple of weeks ago a small group of us went round to Nan’s for some kind of soirée – well tonight, we all went round to chez Gilles.

6 of us there were – Nan, Cécile, Zoë, Gilles, Yours Truly, and Isabel. We wined and dined and then played a board game.

It’s quite rare this – me socialising, isn’t it? But I think that I really ought to get out more, and that’s an opinion which everyone else shares.

This morning I didn’t have my usual go on the website.

In a change to the advertised programme, straight after breakfast I attacked the shelf unit and varnished it all. This would give it much more time to dry, of course.

And then I had a problem.

When I went to take off the lid of the varnish tin, I discovered that it had rusted on and so I had to chisel it off. And what I had to do to it to make it come off meant that it was clearly in no fit state to go back on afterwards.

It was a large tin – and expensive too – and so I had to find a few more paint tins, throw away the content, clean out the tins and pour the varnish into that.

Such is life.

Once the varnish had dried I fitted it all into the cupboard – not without having to do a few little alterations, it has to be said, butnow it fits beautifully – exactly as it should.

7 shelves there are, and soon there will be 8.

The metal shelf unit that I had brought upstairs and put in the shower room to store some of the bits and pieces that were loitering around – what was on there didn’t even take up one shelf on the new unit.

Yes, it’s a monster and quite right too.

Actually I’m impressed – it goes quite well in there and fits the little cupboard quite nicely.

And it’s amazing – with that I’ve already managed to put on there, there’s already so much more room to move around in the bedroom and work

When I’m organised – whenever that might be – and the house is well-advanced, there will be tons of room in there to store all kinds of stuff – you can’t have too much storage room.

Tomorrow I’ll finish off rounding things up and stacking them on the shelves. and once it’s all done I might even have enough room to start cutting plasterboard again.

-1

Tuesday 19th June 2012 – WE’RE BACK …

… in winter again§

Yes, folks. it’s been raining for most of the day. And quite heavily too at times. To such an extent that sod the shelving! I’m going to build myself an ark!

But not so heavy that I couldn’t nip down the garden and see what was happening in the vegetable plots.

indian corn sweetcorn les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd here’s a complete surprise.

If you look very closely at this photo you will see a pile of light green shoots rearing their ugly heads – or rather their very pretty heads – through the soil.

Yes indeed, the Indian corn that I had brought back from Canada and for which I paid just 33 cents for a packet, has burst into life in a major way and this is so impressive.

I planted them very closely together thinking that I would be lucky to have half a dozen but it seems that almost all of them have come to life. This is so impressive.

Even more bizarrely, the bean plants that grew this year, all … errr … four of them, all of which looked a short while ago like they would be struggling to survive, have burst into life as well.

They seem to be throwing tentacles everywhere too. Not has-beans by any means!

In fact later this morning after I had finished on the laptop, I went to gather some wood to make a climbing frame for them, but I was beaten back by the rain. That will have to wait for another day

After lunch, seeing as it wasn’t possible to work outside, I mixed a pile of polyfilla and sealed all of the joints and screws on the plasterboard walls of my little cupboard. I want to crack on with that.

The plan is next to sand it all down again, add another layer of polyfilla, sand that down, paint the walls with some of that cheap pinky-orange indoor crepi stuff that I bought ages ago, lay the flooring, and then build some shelves in there.

That will give me a place to put everything and hopefully tidy up a pile of stuff out of the way so that I can continue in the bedroom and the shower room.

I hadn’t finished either.

dried herbs mint lemon balm tarragon rosemary tansy les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou may remember that last summer I cut down a pile of herbs and hung them up to dry in the attic, where they have been simmering away for the last 10 or 11 months.

Today I decided to pot them all.

The chives didn’t work. That was just like dry grass, but the mint, lemon balm, tarragon, rosemary and tansy worked fine and now they are all in jars.

The lemon balm smells gorgeous, it really does. I just wish I knew what to do with it now Maybe sprinkle some of it on a salad – I dunno.

Tomorrow afternoon I’m going to Rosemary’s. She needs help tidying out her barn and seeing as my house door will be living there for a while it seemed only fair enough that I should help her make the space.

In exchange she’s offered to come round for an afternoon next week and help me weed my garden.

That should be fun. I often lack motivation when I’m on my own. Two of us doing it should accelerate things quite nicely.

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