Tag Archives: tidying up

Tuesday 3rd April 2012 – Remember the other day …

spring trees in bloom blossom puy de dome france… when I told you about all of the trees in the garden bursting into life in that couple of hours? Anyway, I thought that you might like a photo of the blooming things.

It was taken out of the little window at the top of the stairs in the attic – a favourite point of view of mine for the garden. Just compare it with any of the other photos taken from the same spot just recently and you will see the difference.

Another thing that you might notice in the photo is the change in colour of the soil. There’s a reason for that – it was positively precipitating down outside – the first time for 13 days that we have had any kind of precipitation. Just as well too, because I was getting pretty low with the old water, but the 8mm of rain that we had – that filled up the water butts considerably.

Mind you, at one stage it was touch and go. A huge pile of accumulated dust and dirt just have been washed straight down the pipe and it blocked the filter. No water was getting through to the puzzolane filter, and the water was backing up in the system. I had to disconnect the pipe – emptying about 30 litres of water all over me, clean the filter and then reassemble it. It did the trick and allowed the water to circulate through the filters and into the water butts.

So apart from that, what else did I do? Well, emptied the composting toilet, such is the highlight of the exciting life that I live around here. And have I described the composting toilet? Basically, it’s a stainless steel 20-litre casserole pot with lid. I pad it out with shredded cardboard packaging and then line it with a biodegradable bin liner. At the bottom of the bin liner I put a pile of shredded telephone directory pages (nice and absorbent). You take off the lid, do what you need to do (the casserole is in a nice wooden housing that I built, cover it with a ladleful of mixed sawdust and wood ash, and then put the lid back on. When it’s full, the contents are emptied into the compost heap and we start all over again.I can do that because, as regular readers of this rubbish will know, I’m a vegan. You can’t do this if you are a carnivore

As well as that, I tidied up in here. With being so busy over the last few weeks I hadn’t tidied up at all and the place was looking totally depressing. I’m useless at tidying up, so it’s always quite an effort, but now at least it looks a little more civilised. And I found a few important things that I had mislaid so at the end of the day it’s always worthwhile tidying up.

But I wish that I knew the secret of how to be tidy.

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Tuesday 20th March 2012 – I WAS BUSY TODAY

First thing, after breakfast, was to check all of this paperwork that I’ve been doing, and then take a few pieces down to the mairie to sign or countersign.

Back here then, I then had to photocopy everything, or scan it for reference.

Bill rang me up too – he was having computer issues and needed help sorting that out and so I told him that when I had done my errands I would go round to help.

Off to Pionsat, and first stop was the bank, to pay an outstanding bill. And talking of bills, there was Bill in front of me. He managed to make the woman at the cash desk crash her computer and so we all had an agonising wait while she tried to fix it.

So having sorted that problem, it was off to the Post Office. They have a guaranteed 2-day delivery service, which is what I need, but of course none of the special envelopes that you need to do it. She can order one, but it won’t get here until the morning.

At my insistence, she rang the St Gervais office. They had one in and the parcel lorry was there and so St Gervais sent it down in the lorry.

The postal clerk put my papers into it, and handed it to the parcels driver to send it on its way. At least I hope that she did – it’s what she told me that she would do and she better had as well, for I am working to a strict time limit here.

Down to the boulangerie. There was no delivery this morning and so I needed to buy the bread.

But woe is me – the boulangerie closes for lunch between … errr … 13:00 and 15:00. This meant a trip to the Intermarché for some bread, so I picked up a loaf and wandered over to the till.

A woman with a full-to-overloaded trolley saw me coming and … quickly put her purchases onto the conveyor belt. Aren’t some people nice?

At Bill’s I managed to fix his computer for him and then we had a good chat for ages – all about old cars, buses and the like. It always helps to pass the time of day.

But it was cold today and so I lit the fire up here this evening. So much so that I lit the fire for the first time in 10 days. And taking advantage, I cooked baked potatoes and baked beans for tea.

Tomorrow I’ll do some gardening, I reckon. That is, unless the weather is really bad.

It’s clear skies and stars outside just now but this is the Auvergne and things can change in the blinking of an eye.

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Monday 19th March 2012 – SOLAR WATER HEATING OVERLOAD …

… from the dump load was not an issue today. We didn’t see the sun at all,

it was so grey and miserable. Winter is certainly back, and with a vengeance too.

It’s hard to think that only 3 days ago I was standing outside in the all-together giving the naughty bits a really good scrub under the solar shower. There was no danger of that today.

And so with not going outside at all, I stayed in and started to sort through a vast pile of paperwork that I had lying around. All kinds of stuff here, and some of it has been here for centuries by the looks of it.

Of course I ended up being sidetracked and branching off on something else, but it’s the thought that counts after all. I even found a few things that had been missing for ages, which just goes to show that you can do it when you really try.

I almost had the fire on as well. Temperature has dropped in here to about 14°C or thereabouts and that’s cold as well. We’ve had 10°C more than that just recently.

I had to pop into Pionsat to see someone about something, but I’m not going to go into details about it as I am rather disappointed (to say the least) about the outcome of this meeting.

All I can say is that for once I tried to do something correctly by the book, but even when you do try to do it, it never works out. Years ago, in my misspent youth, I would have forged a letterhead and done it myself.

I’m beginning to realise why.

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Friday 9th March 2012 – WHAT A GLORIOUS DAY TODAY!

Apart from the wind, which had the wind turbines going round for most of the day, we had beautiful blue skies with not even a trace of cloud anywhere.

I’m not sure how much solar energy I received but there was about 55 amps in the barn, with all of the batteries fully-charged – and here in the house when I looked at about 17:00 we had had 250 amp-hours with some more after that.

That’s a total of something in the region of about 4 KwH and that can’t be much short of a record.

The water temperature in the dump load had reached 63°C as well by 15:30 and so with all of that kind of thing today, there was only one thing to be done. And that was to unearth the little table-top washing machine and do a load of washing – with proper washing powder this time, not those nuts. Nuts to them!

I’m not quite completely up-to-date with it, but there’s not much left to be done.

And if I go to the swimming baths tomorrow (if the good weather keeps up) I’ll treat myself to the luxury of clean bedding tomorrow night.

While the washing was doing, I did some tidying up on the ground floor in here. I did a lot too, as you might expect in 90 minutes, but you can’t see any improvement. There’s that much that needs to be sorted out there. 90 minutes isn’t even chipping away at the edges.

This morning though, after computing, I went back outside and did an hour or so on the wasteland that I started to clear yesterday when I should have been doing the vegetable beds.

That’s much easier to clear than the downstairs of the house and the results are so much more tangible as well. I’ve actually made it to the stone wall at the boundary of my property and that’s astonishing.

The downside of this is that the heap to burn is far too high for safety where it is, and I shall either have to move it elsewhere or else burn it in stages – probably the latter.

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Thursday 8th March 2012 – I HAD ANOTHER …

… one of those nights last night – still awake at 04:30 and up again before the alarm went off at 08:00. And so I’m pretty whacked right now.

Today started with a major tidying up as planned due to my expecting a visitor. And while I was making good progress the aforementioned visitor rang up to cancel.

Ahh well. back to the computer for an hour or two.

Once the computer session had taken place I went outside and finished weeding last year’s potato beds.

There were about 20 potatoes that I salvaged but some of them had started to sprout. So what I did with those was to put them in the raised bed that I had laid down the previous day. We’ll see what happens with that lot.

But there is already a potato plant fully established in one of those beds. There’s no sense in moving that and so we’ll leave that in position to confuse the beans and peas that will be going into that bed.

After that, things became confusing. I have garlic growing in the next row of beds and so I started to clear out the row after that. In that row I discovered some carrots that I must have missed and so I started to clear out the following row of beds so that I can move the carrots.

But in there are some leeks, so I found out, and they need to be moved another rown higher …

Anyway, you get the picture. I’m going to start at the top and move downhill instead.

But then I was sidetracked by a row of nettles that was growing in front of the old Mercedes 240D that is festering in the field, and so I started tugging at that. This turned into something of a major session of weeding higher up the garden and by the time that I had finished (19:15 – isn’t that something of a record?) for the evening, I was well on my way to clearing a rather large part of the wilderness that will eventually be the lawn, whenever that might be.

I’ve worked really hard today. No wonder I’m knackered.

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Wednesday 7th March 2012 – I’VE BEEN CRACKING …

… on in the garden today.

gardening les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ve finally dug out where the new bed is to go, so that’s all prepared.

But in a slight change of plan I decided that the old raised bed was too badly knocked about and damaged to be reused and seeing as I have plenty of wood, I threw my bonnet over the windmill and knocked myself up another.

It’s slightly larger than the other and it fits so much better into the scheme of things as you can see.

I then had a pleasant hour or so weeding some of the pathways.

Now that I’ve found the stuff that I was going to use as a weed blanket (as I knew that I would as soon as I no longer needed it) I’m going to lay it on the pathways, cover it in the sand and mud mortar that I raked out of the house wall, and then top it off with the broken slates from the house roof.

For the rest of the afternoon I did some weeding of the raised beds – starting with the two that had the main crop potatoes. Unfortunately the bad weather has done for most of those and there aren’t very many worth salvaging.

But never mind. I did notice that the garlic is looking quite healthy though and it won’t be much longer before I can pull that up.

This morning though I spent my computer hours working on some of the footy pages. I’ve been letting them slip just now so I need to get myself up to date.

I won’t be doing that tomorrow though – I’m expecting visitors so I need to tidy up a little.

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Thursday 1st March 2012 I’M GOING …

… to have an early night in a couple of minutes. All of this paperwork in the morning is wearing me out

But still, it’s nice to be up early (well, early for me, anyway) and spend the morning with a pot of coffee.

Ohh what luxury!

But once the paperwork period was over, I excelled myself by doing a little tidying up in the bedroom where I’ve been working. I can actually see some floor now, and that’s real progress.

I’ve also been tidying up a little in the barn, and outside I’ve fought my way further down the garden and hacked out a load of brambles.

What I’ll be doing tomorrow afternoon if it stays nice (and today was easily the nicest day of the year with over 120 amp-hours on one of the solar banks) will be to have a garden fire and burn a load of dead vegetation, and then move one of the compost bins to its final position.

Won’t that be a cue for a torrential rainstorm?

The hour-meters for the solar banks, those that I installed yesterday, are giving me the results that I expected, but the hour-meter on the overcharge is not quite so good.

It seems that there’s some current seeping through the overcharge controller once the voltage passes 13.4 volts. Not much – a question of a couple of milli-amps or so – but it’s enough to start the hourmeter working.

These things are so sensitive that this one is feeding off the current that is seeping. The old car clock that I was using before couldn’t detect that current, and so tHe figures are going to be a little distorted as from now on

Another thing that I’ve been doing, or at least, trying to do, is to continue to drill this 48mm hole through the wall between the lean-to and the house in order to pass some electrical cables through.

But for some reason, the first 25cms went through without any real effort whatsover but ever since then it’s been making no impression at all, and I’m not halfway yet. Today with an hour or so, I reckon that I made almost one centimetre.

There’s definitely something not quite right about this

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Wednesday 29th February 2012 – I’VE GONE …

… onto summer hours!

Yes, already! It’s now light enough to be still working outside at 19:00 and so that’s what I’m doing.

And the computing activities that I need to do, well I’m doing those from 10:00 until 12:00.

So with an early night after my dithering about, I had an early morning as well, just for a change. And on went the coffee pot again because if anything it was even nicer today than yesterday.

So much so, in fact, that I ran the electric heater up here. Not because I needed to, but because it was a shame to waste the energy.

One of the things that I needed to do was to print off about 50 pages of stuff that I need to complete. And I think that I’m having printer issues. The black ink didn’t work at all and in the end I put a new cartridge in.

That worked fine for a few pages and then we were back to the missing lines and dirty heads again. I cleaned the heads, and that worked fine for a while and then we were back in the missing lines and dirty heads.

I don’t know why that is. Printers never seem to last very long with me.

This afternoon I had a pile of fun.

I’ve had a few parcels delivered these last couple of days, and one of them contained the half-a-dozen 12 volt DC hour meters similar to the 230 volt ones that I bought to run with the mains inverters.

control panel solar energy wind turbine timer overcharge meter les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe purpose of these 12-volt hour meters is to wire them into the solar panel circuits to see for how long a solar charge is received by the panels (to help in resiting them to an optimum position), to wire into the wind turbine circuits ditto, and also to wire into the overcharge circuits to see for how long surplus energy is created.

And so I spent a happy afternoon wiring in the overcharge timers and the solar timers. I’m not able to do the wind turbine timers as I need diodes to stop the backflow of energy from the batteries and they haven’t come yet.

The wind turbines are connected directly to the batteries with no charge controller so if you wire a timer in there without stopping the current flowing back from the batteries, the timers will be running 24 hours per day, feeding off the batteries.

I also did some tidying up of the panel that I made a couple of months ago – the one with the 600-watt inverter, the electric meter and the electrical sockets, that I’m using in the barn. That looks neater and tidier, and works better than before.

But I forgot to say that when I was in Brussels at Christmas, Marianne was chucking out an old hair drier – something like 400 watts or so. Anyway, I chucked it into Caliburn and brought it back here.

The reason?

Every now and again I use heat shrink insulation on bare wires and while you are supposed to shrink it using a hot-air paint stripper, I don’t have enough power to run a hot-air paint stripper.

I do have enough though to run a 400-watt hair drier and while it’s slower and not quite as effective, it does in fact work well enough.

I’m quite impressed with that.

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Saturday 25th February 2012 – AFTER MY TRIUMPHS …

… of yesterday, I celebrated by doing … errr … badger all.

That’s right. A nice lazy days today.

And I reckoned that I deserved one after all of the hard work that I have put in over the last week or so on my presentation.

Mind you, I didn’t quite do nothing at all. In fact I managed a little (but not much) tidying up and later went down to St Eloy les Mines to do the shopping this afternoon around Carrefour and LIDL. A couple of hours out around the shops and even that wasn’t exciting because I met no-one whom I knew and didn’t buy anything out of the ordinary.

And back here, I carried on with the rest of my Day of Rest – and see if I care.

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Thursday 23rd February 2012 – HAVING FINALLY …

… broken the back of my presentation, I can get on and do other things.

This morning I cut up another pile of wood for in here, and doesn’t the lean-to start to look empty now, especially as I discovered that a major proportion of the heap in the middle is actually bricks and stone from when the wall collapsed all those years ago.

Moving some of that stuff out has made quite a difference, that’s for sure.

It’s going to be a while though before I can finish in there though – a term of years is not unlikely. The more wood I cut up, the more that I seem to find.

I also had a good look at the window in the bedroom. Having given the matter considerable thought, I now reckon that I know how I’m going to do the surround. And the next chance that I have to work in there, I’ll be making a start.

But tomorrow I’ll be printing off my notes because the presentation is at 20:00 tomorrow evening. So just you watch the printer break down or run out of ink

But assuming that we do go ahead, everyone is invited!

20:00 at the village hall in Virlet

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Monday 20th February 2012 – I’VE HAD SOMETHING …

… of a busy day today.

And it started, believe it or not, with me being up and about before the alarm clock went off – something that doesn’t happen every day.

So after an early breakfast I stayed in and spent much of the time on the computer working on another project for the radio, more of which anon.

But this involved making a few downloads from the internet. And as I watched these downloads unfold I noticed the internet speed dropping slowly but surely. Clearly something is up, and it’s high time I fixed it.

That meant disabling and then deleting the MacAfee anti-virus suite, which is something pretty appalling and I can’t think whyever it is that computer manufacturers bundle it in.

Once that was out of the way I went back to prehistoric computer protection, and installed the latest free AVG anti-virus software, and then Ad-Aware, Spybot and C-Cleaner, the same as I have been using for years.

Sure enough, 2 viruses, 140-odd adware links and the odd bit of spyware, and half a gb of bunged-up old temporary files all littering the computer and after quite a bit of patience and persuasion, they have all gone.

Now I seem to have a leaner, fitter computer.

Mind you, trying to download AVG at 9.3kbs took absolutely hours, but it was worth it and I’m hoping that I can win back the time in due course.

It’s all very well having virus protection, but not just any old virus protection though. You need one that works quietly, quickly and effectively without pinching all of your resources.

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Friday 17th February 2012 – I FINISHED THE CEILING …

TONGUE AND GROOVE CEILING les guis virlet puy de dome france… just before lunchtime. And I’m really impressed with how it has turned out, even if it did take ages to do.

And there’s 60mm of insulation underneath that tongue-and-grooving, and that is what is probably helping to keep my little attic warm. I remember just how cold it was in here when I first moved in and there wasn’t any insulation at all.

But it was colder in here this morning too – a mere 14.4°C. Positively arctic, I mused to myself. And that’s a difference too from 9°C from the other day, although the difference between 0.3°C outside last night (first 24-hour period for ages that it didn’t get below freezing) last night and -16°C the other night is even more spectacular.

So after lunch I cleaned the pathways outside now that everywhere is warming up. I can walk about the place without sliding over now.

And then it was back into the bedroom. All the joints in the plasterboard on the wall by the window are now sealed and filled, and I’ve almost finished sealing in the window.

I started off using mastic for that but then I remembered that Terry gave me a load of mastic-type glue that he didn’t think too much of, and so I used a pile of that.

That has gone in from the inside, but I’ll buy some proper stuff tomorrow to do the outside.

Once the window is properly sealed in, I can do the window= framing in the bedroom. The two sides and the top will (of course) be in tongue-and-grooving and I’ve some pine board that will do for the windowsill.

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Friday 10th February 2012 – THIS WEATHER IS STARTING …

… to get on my wick a little bit.

Yes. Deep-frozen veg and deep-frozen chili beans for tea tonight.

No big deal, you might think, but these were deep-frozen vegetables and beans from out of tins. And when your tins of food are freezing then you know that you really do have problems.

Not much water today either. It’s becoming harder and harder to melt the solid ice that is in the water butts.

We are at the stage where I’m beginning to think that the next time we have a really decent day’s solar energy, I’ll take the halogen heater outside and use that to melt the ice.

So I spent a major part of the day in the lean-to. I’ve stacked some of the wood so much better, moved some bricks outside, moved some stones upstairs, shovelled some bits and pieces out of the way, made up three large containers of wood for up here, and that’s given me plenty of space to move stuff from out of the house.

But you’ll be amazed (or maybe you won’t) at just how quickly the space is filled up, and things don’t look all that much different in the house either, which is really rather sad.

Anyway, there’s tons of old waste paper and old waste cardboard so if I have a huge bonfire once the weather improves (whenever that might be) it’ll make the place look emptier (I hope).

I’ve also done a bit more on the ceiling.

I was going to have a really good crack at it but Rosemary rang up and we had a big long chat instead. It’s her first winter living here, and she needs encouragement. Luckily she decided on moving here more-or-less full-time to sell her old rear-wheel drive saloon and buy a 4×4. She’ll certainly benefit from that decision. 

Confronted with the deep-frozen tinned food, I’m now moving more and more stuff up here. The washing-up stuff is now in the attic (the sink in the verandah has been frozen up for over a week anyway) and so all of the crockery, cutlery and saucepans will be staying up here.

It’s pointless taking them all downstairs to wash, leaving them there overnight and then bringing them back up here the following evening. It’s the coldest winter for decades, apparently, and no-one expected it to go on for as long as this.

Consecutive minuses in double figures for well over a week – something that’s unheard-of. But I have done the roof in the lean-to and I have a really good wood stove, so who cares?

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Wednesday 8th February 2012 – AFTER ALL …

… that I said yesterday about my heat pad melting the water in the deep-frozen water butt, the sum total of water received today was precisely zero.

Although we had a really warm night for a change (the temperature rose to the dizzy heights of -11.4°C in fact) we had some snow. It was overcast all day with snow flurries and the sun hardly broke through at all, hence the maximun temperature today was a crazy -7.9°C and not even a heat pad can cope with that and do anything worthwhile.

I also had a phone call first thing.

François, who I haven’t seen for ages, came on the blower. He’s having issues with the blog of one of his Associations and now that there’s no technical assistance with the reseau since Liesbeth moved away, it looks like I have the short straw.

That meant the first part of the morning tidying up. Can’t have visitors with the place looking like a tip.

I cut up some wood too, and brought up here a load of wood to make an impressive woodpile up here.

I had a couple of hours in the bedroom, having managed to scrounge enough water to mix some quick-drying filler to do the joints between the plasterboard and the ceiling. And quick-drying it needs to be too – to set and to dry before it freezes.

And after that, I had another good go at the ceiling.

François came round after lunch, and won the prize for being the first private visitor of the year (yes, 6 weeks in as well, it shows just how popular I am). We chatted for quite a while and I sorted out his problems.

But once he had gone, I didn’t resume work. The temperature is dropping rapidy and so I stayed up here in the warm.

As for tea, I had tinned ratatouille standing by but what with my late lunch (17:00) I wasn’t hungry. a kettle with a small amount of water boiled up in no time on the stove and I had a coffee instead.

Anyway, it’s bright moonlight outside and not a cloud in the sky. It’s going to be another stinker tonight.

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Sunday 5th February 2012 – SUNDAY …

… is a Day of Rest.

And so I did nothing – not even to write up my blog. I just stayed in here in the warmth, read the odd book, watched a film and did some more of my presentation on the Trans-Labrador Highway. And cooked pizza, garlic bread and rice pudding in the oven. I didn’t even manage to watch the superbowl – I was asleep a long time before that.

Mind you, I did actually do something else.

I’ve changed the furniture round in the room yet again and I now have the bed-settee going across the room in front of the fire where I can see the flames. That’s a much more logocal arrangement and it also helps to break up some of the draughts that circulate around the place.

I’m certainly living the nomadic life these days, aren’t I?

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