Tag Archives: st eloy les mines

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.

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Friday 12th October 2012 – A RIGHT PICKLE!

I’ve been pickling today, and it looks as if I shall be eating beetroot for the next 100 years, with the amount that Rosemary and I bottled today.

And that tarragon-flavoured white vinegar didn’t half smell nice. By the time that we had added all of the spices to the vinegar and boiled it up, Rosemary’s kitchen smelt like a Babylonian boozer’s bathroom.

Still, it’s all done now.

We also shelled all of the peas and beans and I ended up with two jars of those. A few of them have chitted and so I’m going to try them out as winter plants under one of my patented plastic-bottle cloches. It might be worth a try.

Another thing that we did was to sort out the garlic and onions. I have enough garlic to last me all my life, I reckon, but not as many onions as I wanted.

I’ve no idea what happened to the shallots though – I had plenty of those a few weeks ago but I couldn’t find any the other day.

So first thing in the morning I went off to St Eloy-les-Mines. Firstly, to buy a recharge for the mobile phone, but the Post Office is closed for renovations for a few weeks so that was that.

Secondly I went to the dechetterie to dump all of the rubbish, but they are on winter hours so the blasted place was closed this morning.

After doing the weekly shopping though (seeing as I’m out, I’ll stay out and it’ll save me a trip tomorrow) I nipped off to Rosemary’s for the pickling session.

On the way back this evening, I “picked up a hitcher, a prisoner on the white lines of the freeway” to quote Joni Mitchell.

Only from Menat to St Eloy-les-Mines, but in my youth I spent lots of time hitch-hiking around the UK and France and I was always grateful for the ride, and so it’s nice to repay the debts that I owe.

I made it to the dechetterie and emptied a van-load of rubbish, mostly papers and glass bottles, and enquiries revealed that it is indeed true – if you go to the dechetterie during opening hours but during office hours, you can indeed help yourself to compost, which is freely available

So Saturday I’ll be having a working day – doing the radio programmes. I’m not going out at all, especially as there is not footy anywhere at all around here tomorrow.

-2

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

Friday 5th October 2012 – TALK ABOUT EARLY!

Yes, I had knocked off work today by 16:45!

But there was a reason for that.

On my official sky-watching scale, today would be described as “glorious”. So much so that when a small cloud floated by at about 15:30 I stood and watched it.

The batteries were fully-charged by midday and by 16:45 I had hot water at 64°C. All of this can only mean one thing, and so I unleashed the tabletop washing machine.

Loads of washing here as it’s been a few weeks since I last did some, and so that was that. Off we went

Of course, washing means clean sheets, quilt cover and pillowcases.

As for me, I’m still smoking from being too close to the fire that I lit in my brassière the other day. But not to worry – 5 litres of water at 64°C into the solar shower to push that temperature up, and I had a gorgeous and most unexpected shower, followed by clean clothes and the like.

That’ll all go nicely with the clean bedding.

While the washing machine was still going, I went and had another look at these LED strip lights.

The batteries that I had been burning were up to 12.55 volts (of course they didn’t stay like that) and when I switched on the strip light that I had fitted the other day, well, I wasn’t disappointed in the least.

Quite the reverse in fact.

So much so that I disconnected the 12-volt fluorescent strip light over the work bench in the barn and installed a pair of these, together with the appropriate switch. These are impressive, these strip lights, and I’m going to buy more of these wherever I can find them

This morning though I was feeling inspired for the first time for ages and had a good session on the web site. But I was interrupted for half an hour as Terry needed to go to the quarry and wanted a hand.

With being nice and clean, I won’t go to Commentry and the swimming baths tomorrow – i’ll just go for a quick flash around St Eloy-les-Mines. It really was a nice, unexpectedly good day today and I’m glad that I took full advantage.

-1

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.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire football nord combraille puy de dome franceIf 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.

puy de dome franceThe 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.

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Monday 17th September 2012 – IT ISNT HALF …

… going dark early these days.

collapsed lean to pointing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceI was still out pointing the wall this evening when the first of the solar night-lights came on.

19:40 that was, and long after my knocking off time of 19:00 when I’m on Summer Hours working.

Mind you, it wasn’t as if I was unaware of the time either – I knew almost exactly how late it was, but I’m falling behind again with this wall and I need to press on.

And I’m not going to be here tomorrow either.

This morning I had to go to help Rosemary unload this van with all of this new furniture.

Quite modern it is, but made of oak and in a period style that perfectly matches the type of house that you find round here. I’m not much of a one for aesthetics as you know, but it really is beautiful stuff.

The guy who delivers it was quite a useful person to know. He runs a business having articles delivered to him which he then brings down to France for the purchaser. We had a lengthy chat and I’ll be having a few more chats with him in the future too.

Then I had to go with Terry to the quarry for a trailer-load sand.

All in all it was 16:20 when I started on the wall, so you see why I’m getting all behind.

I had a couple more stones drop out on me when I was raking out the old cement – that part of wall really was badly damaged. Anyway, a few oversized stones hammered deep into the gap and that should hold it up, I hope.

So why aren’t I going up the wall tomorrow then?

Simply that Terry and I own a mini digger that we hire out and it was out at the weekend. The guy offered us cash, or a huge load of wood instead. Wood being more valuable than the cash, Terry ended up with a huge trailer load.

So tomorrow I have to go to help Terry cut it into 30cm lengths and then I can load up Caliburn with my share. Wood is a vital part of life round here, especially when it’s -20°C here in February.

I’ve still not found my dictaphone and neither have I found the mobile phone, but 1O minutes searching threw up a few other things that I’ve been looking for.

And I almost forgot to mention that I did go to LIDL this morning and they had 3 packets of those lights left. Or, rather, they did. So now I have enough for the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, as well as for over the workbenches in the barn and the lean-to.

But I still need plenty more so I might go a little farther afield this weekend.

In other news, we were having a little chat about this affair in Annecy with this Iraqi family that was massacred. You know, the more I look at this and the more I think about it, the more it looks to me like something that MOSSAD might well have organised.

I smell a very large rat with all of this.

-5

Saturday 15th September 2012 – I FOUND SOMETHING SPECTACULAR …

… in LIDL at St Eloy-les-Mines this afternoon.

Rummaging around, like you do … “like YOU do” – ed … I noticed several twin-packs of LED light strips. About a foot long, they consist of about 12 tiny LEDs and consume just 1 watt of electricity.

They are 12-volt and come complete with tiny mains transformer and little movement-detector.

I’ve been looking for something to use as strip lights in the kitchen whenever it might be that I start it, and also for the bathroom over the sink and the bedroom over the dressing table.

You can buy 12-volt flourescents and indeed I have a few here that I was planning to use, but they take about 7 watts and they are big, bulky things.

So I duly bought a pack and brought it home. And after cutting a few wires and so on, I gave it a try.

And blimey!

for just 1 watt, that’s incredibly bright. Now I have to go and help Rosemary on Monday morning so I’m going via LIDL at St Eloy-les-Mines and I’ll buy the rest of the stock of those lights.

That’s another problem solved. Good old LIDL, hey?

There was also a sale on at Cheze – everything in the shop 20% off today. Now I have a few decent tools lying around here that don’t have handles, like a rake, a sledgehammer and a binette – that kind of thing, and so I popped in there today.

So that’s something else organised.

I also bumped into Bill and so we went for a coffee and a natter.

This morning I sorted out the radio programmes for the rock shows that I do for Radio Anglais. I’m now up to November, with records selected and scripts typed and so that will keep me out of mischief for a while.

And then I headed for town.

Back home after the shops, I went through the SD cards and copied their contents onto DVD – something that I’ve been meaning to do for quite a while.

And I’m supposed to take it easy at the weekend.

Phew!  

-3

Saturday 1st September 2012 – IT’S HARD …

… to believe that not so long ago, I was up here in my attic melting away to nothing, totally unable to move with the heat.

This evening, not two weeks later, there were about 150 of us shivering to death on the terraces of the football ground in Pionsat.

Yes, it’s that time of the year again. The footy has restarted.

veterans teams fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire football puy de dome france We had a little competition between a few of the local sides followed by a friendly match between two veterans’ XIs – one of which represented the old team of Pionsat and the other the old team of St Hilaire before the fusion.

And believe me, some of these veterans cut still mutt the custard in the lower leagues of the Puy-de-Dome District Football League.

The final match of the night was the final friendly of the season (if any match with the Miners can be called “a friendly”) between FC Pionsat St Hilaire and Nord-Combraille.

mattthieu malnar wins the cup fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire puy de dome franceFC Pionsat St Hilaire won that encounter at something of a canter thanks to a blistering 3-minute spell midway through the second half when they stuck three into the Miners’ net.

What was even more interesting was that FC Pionsat St Hilaire had no recognised striker on the field. Cedric wasn’t there, and it appears that Jérome (who is probably the best player I have seen in Division One) and Thomas (who on his day is as good as anyone) have left the club.

But there were two players out there new to the team, one of whom I’ve seen playing at AS Marcillat last season, who took the Miners apart.

There was another guy called Rene, who I saw play once last season and who looked thoroughly unfit back then, who seems to have been working hard in close-season and ran the opposition ragged throughout the game.

les guis energies renouvelables fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire puy de dome franceWhat is even more interesting from my point of view is that my signboard is up, as you can see on the perimeter fencing.

I’m something of a sponsor of the club, not in a big way of course, and that gives me the right to have a signboard.

I don’t expect that too much will come of it, but it’s advertising all the same and no advertising is ever wasted.

Furthermore, it shows solidarity with the local community and that is also very important in my opinion. Participating in the community means that you are no longer an outsider and in my opinion, all ex-pats should make some kind of active participation in the community.

As for the weather, I closed all of the windows on Thursday evening which is just as well as the temperature has taken a dramatic plunge. Last night it bottomed out at 5.5°C, a far cry from nights that didn’t drop below 30°C just 12 or so days ago.

What is even harder to believe is that despite it being Saturday, I’ve been working outside – on the lean-to in case you haven’t guessed.

This morning I wrote up the additional notes for the October radio programmes (I intend to be well ahead in the future) and then I went into St Eloy-les-Mines to do the shopping.

I spent absolutely nothing extra although I did go into Cheze, the DiY place, and buy the glass that I needed (€4:80 – made me wonder why I bought that sheet of perspex in the week).

I managed to bring the glass back without breaking it and then trying to find a safe place to put it until Monday, I reckoned in the end after much reflection that the safest place to put it was into the window frame.

And hence the work on a Saturday.

till, it’s in now. One less thing to worry about and one less job to do on Monday and I can have an extra 15 minutes in bed to compensate.

Tomorrow is Sunday, my first Sunday off for ages. And I’m going to have a lie-in and then do nothing all day.

Just you watch someone ring me up at 10:00 and spoil it!

-2

Friday 31st August 2012 – WHAT A WAY …

… to start the day!

Yes, a phone call at 08:00 from Terry “I’m off to the quarry – do you want any sand?”

Well, as you know, I am rather low on the stocks and so at 08:30 I was at the end of the lane and we went off together. 2.5 tonnes of that went into Terry’s huge trailer and then we shovelled 12 sacks – about half a tonne – into the back of Caliburn.

I was back home by 09:30, soaking wet because we were having a storm at the time. But at least i now have plenty of sand for Stage Two of my wall and that will keep me out of mischief for a while

few more hours on the web site – I’m currently walking around the walls of Québec right now (and did you know that Québec is the only walled city in the whole of America north of Mexico City?) – and then outside to play.

Pascal came round with the Twingo and a couple of dents that he had acquired. I had a play around to try to take them out out but that wasn’t any use – his car is well bashed up and so that was that.

After lunch I started on the guttering on the lean-to.

guttering glass window collapsed lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd not just started on the guttering either because there it is in all its glory, all finished.

No downpipe yet of course because I need to know the height of the water butts and all that kind of thing. That will be a later addition.

But what there is on the guttering which you might just be able to see is that there is some of that fine netting to keep out leaves and so on.

I had a few rolls of that lying around and so I’ve fitted it over the guttering. That is where the cold water supply for the house will be coming from and so I need to keep it as clean as possible.

What you might also notice if you look very carefully is the reflection of the sky in the upper right-hand window. That’s where I fitted the glass yesterday.

I was going to fit some perspex in the other one but then I thought that as I’ll be going into St Eloy-les-Mines tomorrow I may as well buy the real thing – waiting until Monday isn’t going to hurt any.

What’s also significant about this photo is that it’s taken with the Nikon D5000.

You remember that it packed up when I was on that icebreaker going out with the relief supplies to that island in the Gulf of St Lawrence in May and I had to send it away to be repaired.

Anyway, it came back this morning, much to my delight.

It seems that there was a crack in the housing, and some water from the driving rainstorm that we were having when I was on that boat found its way inside.

Strangely enough, I do recall when I was out on the Sageunay Fjord that the photos suddenly started to become woefully over-exposed. Maybe it was round about then that the crack occurred and the over-exposure would be due to the extra light finding its way in through the crack, bypassing the light meter.

I knocked off early today – 18:50 because I ran out of things to do that I could do in 10 minutes and anyway it’s POETS day today as you all know.

I’m going to take it easy this weekend and then start the re-pointing of the long wall on Monday.

I’ll finish this lean-to if it kills me.

-5

Saturday 18th August 2012 – THIS IS RIDICULOUS.

Well after midnight and it’s 32°C up here in my attic.

It reached 33.8°C in here at sometime during the day, and outside the temperature reached 40.1°C

There was a pile of radio programmes to do for our next recording session and so I spent this morning up here doing the music ones. And that made me melt, I can tell you.

After lunch I nipped into St Eloy-les-Mines for some shopping and that was painfully hot too. But there’s something going on at LIDL – fewer and fewer articles in the shop, bigger and bigger gaps. I don’t like the look of this one little bit.

Once the shopping was completed I nipped round to Rosemary’s and we spent a couple of hours having a really good chat and a coffee. It made quite a pleasant end to the afternoon

turkey farm teilhet puy de dome franceOn the way back, I took the short cut through Menat and Teilhet.

And you can tell that despite the boiling weather it will soon be Christmas. Everything at the turkey farm is going berserk.

The noise, the dust and the stench, you could feel all of that from miles away and thee were thousands of the little perishers all running around.

THey won’t be running around for much longer though. Christmas will soon be here, right enough.

Back here, the water in the solar heat exchanger at 20:35 was 34°C and so even at that time, in the dusk, I had a lovely solar shower. That’s the kind of thing that maks me feel so much better.

So now I have to try my best to go to sleep. But how, in 32°C I really do not know. And to think that it was only 3 weeks ago that we were complaining about the cold.

40.1°C – I ask you …

-3

Saturday 4th August 2012 – NEVER MIND A PERSONAL BEST …

… this must be something of a new world record.

Believe it or not, I was up and about this morning at the stupid time of 05:50 and I’ve absolutely no idea why. It’s not as if I’d wet the bed or a mouse in the attic had been doing a clog dance or something like that.

Anyway, I had a really leisurely start to the morning and spent a load of time working on the website. I’m currently discussing the Battle of Québec, as it happens.

13:30 I nipped off into St Eloy-les-Mines to do some shopping and also to buy some bricks.

Cheze had them in stock – but at €0:94 a piece which is ridiculous if you ask me. Anyway, I bought just enough to do the surround for the second window that I’ll be fitting in the lean-to. It wasn’t until much, much later that I remembered that I had bought the original lot from Point P.

Just by way of a change, I did some work this afternoon – putting back into position the stones that I knocked off the wall the other day, cementing them into position and then concreting them in place.

But now I’ve run out of gravel, would you believe? It’s clearly not my destiny to finish this wall.

But no gravel means that I can use up the pile of scrunched-up brick that used to be two internal walls in the house until I knocked them down.

They were just lying where they fell all over the floor and so this means that I’m clearing them out of the way, which is A Good Thing. They make nice lightweight concrete too.

Tomorrow is a day off – no village Open Day to attend. I’ll have a lie-in and maybe go to Pionsat for a prowl around the brocante and see how Marianne is doing with her stall for the Amis du Chateau de Pionsat.

-1

Saturday 21st July 2012 – I’VE BEEN A BUSY LITTLE B…..

… all day today, although you might not think so.

Not quite managing an early start, I still managed an early breakfast and then started to work. We needed a series of 5 radio programmes for Monday and so no time like the present.

All morning (and some of the early afternoon) was spent drawing up five minutes of a gardening programme, and then 15 minutes-worth of useful French phrases. It’s all becoming rather complicated.

We had a little break for shopping. St Eloy-les-Mines unfortunately. I was hoping to go to Montlucon as I’m running out of everything, but the radio was more important.

I just managed the basics, as well as some A4 pouches for the laminator, seeing as LIDL had some on offer, and also a pile of bags of hazel nuts for the muesli – it’s been a while since LIDL had any of them in stock.

Back at the ranch I cooked some more rice in the steamer while I had lunch and then continued wih Part II – a load of notes on the system of points for traffic offences here in France.

It’s quite complicated, and having to navigate around the French Government’s own website is not so easy either.

Anyway, there’s enough to keep us going for a good few weeks.

This evening, with piping hot water in the dump load and only 24°C in the solar shower tank and me feeling rather dirty, I dumped 6 litres of water from the former to the latter, which pushed that up to 35°C.

I stripped off and just as I was about to plunge underneath, the ‘phone rang.

And it’s a good job it was a telephone and not a television as it was Marianne reminding me about tomorrow. She would have had a giggle if she had known how I was answering the phone.

So a nice clean me, and I’m off for an early night. And a little lie-in tomorrow.  

-3

Friday 13th July 2012 – IF A THING …

… is too good to be true, that’s because it usually is.

And when you see a thing that is too good to be true taking place on Friday 13th, then you can bet your life that it will be too.

And for that reason I didn’t hold out much hope of my little trip to Montlucon bringing home the bacon, but nevertheless you have to go through the motions and do all that you can, because you never know.

And so, up at 06:00, down the end of the lane by 06:25 to meet Terry as he drove past instead of him coming down here, going to Montlucon as quickly as possible, and all to no avail.

Brico Depot had a sale on this morning, and they had some prefabricated car ports at just €199 each. I wanted two, to put on my hard standing to cover up Caliburn and the Minerva, but even though we weren’t there anything like late, they had all been sold.

Or so they said.

At that price, it really was a giveaway anyway so it wasn’t really a surprise. Still, never mind. I did all that I could do, and it would have been a stunning coup had we really pulled it off.

I bought a few more bits and pieces and on the way back we called at the quarry at Montaigut en Combraille. I wanted some sand but we ended up with a huge load of dry mix for concreting – Terry is concreting a patio at his house next week.

And that has given me a little idea too – more of which anon.

So breakfast at 11:00, an event that occurs quite often regularly around here, but never ever AFTER a full morning’s work, including a trip to Montlucon and to the quarry though.

Wrapping my mitt around a warm cup of coffee I went off to do some work on the website but was interrupted by a phone call from Cheze in St Eloy les Mines. Our water butts have finally arrived.

And so I wandered off to St Eloy les Mines to do the shopping (it’s a Bank Holiday here tomorrow) and then off to Rosemary’s to give her her water butt and her guttering that had been lingering around in the back of Caliburn.

I was there until 19:30 as well – gossiping away like a right bunch of old women, we were.

Tomorrow is a Bank Holiday as I said, and it’s my custom to have a day off work on a Bank Holiday. But due to circumstances beyond my control, I’ve yet to have a Bank Holiday off this year, and tomorrow is no exception as I have a few radio scripts to write for next weekend.

It’s all go here. Really, I don’t know how on earth I used to find the time to go to work.

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Saturday 7th July 2012 – It’s flaming well raining again;

It’s not like me to use bad language – in fact I only swear when it slips out, as the much-maligned Percy Penguin, who doesn’t appear in these pages anything like as often as she deserves, will be only too pleased to testify, but this weather is rather getting on my nerves.

This morning we had a few clouds and the weather slowly improved during the day, to such an extent that when I was shopping in St Eloy this afternoon I treated myself to a sorbet. But this evening it clouded over, and then we had the storm.

I was late going to St Eloy too – 16:00 or so. and I didn’t spend long (or much) there either – just a quick whizz around. But our water butts haven’t come (as if we were really expecting them) and that’s bad news.

So what have I been doing that’s been holding me up? Well, I’ve sold some photos to a book publisher and of course he wants the originals, as you might expect. But could I find them? I could find everything except the ones that I wanted and so I’ve been on a frantic search. Eventually I tracked them down on a long-unused hard drive (no idea where the DVD backup for that period went) and so that was that problem solved. But having reached the conclusion that my photo filing is total rubbish, I’ve spent all day (and probably tomorrow too) sorting them all out and filing them as they ought to be filed. And when that’s done, I’ll redo the back-up photo DVDs.

And while all of that was a-doing, it gave me an opportunity to start filing away the European Paper Mountain. if I’m not careful I might find myself all organised and that will never do.  

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