Tag Archives: tidying up

Tuesday 31st January 2012 I DIDN’T LAST LONG …

… outside this morning.

Just enough to cut up an old rotten chevron and then cold damp hands (I forgot to dry my gloves) drove me inside.

First thing that I did was to clear the bedroom of some of the junk that was in there. A pile of cardboard boxes were flattened down, the old woodstove went outside, and they were followed by the old windows. And as an aside, I now have a woodshed with windows 😉

Next task was to dig Caliburn out of the snow. And there was plenty of that to move as well. I eventually put him at the top of the hill and we went for a little drive in the snow – I need to be sure that I can move around tomorrow as he is off to be serviced.

After lunch I made some more space in the bedroom and carried on in there.

Now all of the plasterboarding on the outside walls of the bedroom is finished – something about which I am very pleased. I’m glad that I’ve done that. It looks quite good too. What it needs now is to be all taped down at the edges and then filled.

And when that’s done, I can carry on with the ceiling.

That’s two outside walls that have been plasterboarded. The third wall is the back wall and of course there’s a fitted wardrobe built into that. The fourth wall is of course the stud wall and half of that – against the corridor – is done. The half that is against the bathroom I can’t do yet until I’m able to sort out the plumbing. And then I also need to fit the door.

The window opening needs edging too, and then the floor has to be done.

But thinking about it, I’ll be putting hardboard on the floor and then putting some of that flooring stuff on top.

But it’s nice to see some light down at the far end of the tunnel and if this cold spell continues, I might see even more.

I’m also at the stage where I’m actively thinking about the bathroom too and how that is going to evolve. I reckon that it won’t be long before I have the plasterboard on there as well. But that means replacing the floor first.

But seeing how the weather has suddenly turned nasty, I’m still impressed with that 10 days of warm weather just after New Year when I managed to do the roof on the lean-to.

It really was astonishing and I’ll be talking about that for years.

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Saturday 28th January 2012 – IT JUST GOES TO SHOW …

HEAVY SNOW FALL 2012 les guis virlet puy de dome france… that those people in football clamouring for a winter break mid-season quite simply don’t have a clue about whatever it is that they are trying to say.

Here we are in the Puy-de-Dôme, having had our 6-week winter break in the mildest winter in the area since records began, and the football season restarts this evening.

And today we have had the heaviest snowfall of the winter and so all the matches are postponed.

So much for the winter break

But not that I am complaining too much. I spent the morning and some of the afternoon working on my presentation of The Trans-Labrador Highway for the local village social evening in a month’s time. and I’ve managed to reach the outskirts of Goose Bay – i.e. well over halfway.

It’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow anyone any good.

But at about 13:30 the snow stopped and we had a little thaw. That was the cue for me to race off to St Eloy and so some shopping.

And I was back by 15:00 with the usual stuff, but also two Harry Potter films, the director’s cut versions, for €9:99 the pair. I’ll have to see what Herry Potter is up to – so far I’ve managed to avoid those films (except for one that I caught a glimpse of – in French – with Marianne over Christmas).

This afternoon I’ve turned my room around again. I’ve done a lot more sorting out, repositioned the furniture and by the time you read this I will have the bed back where it used to be. Only this time, with a proper array of chests of drawers behind it for the clothes.

What inspired this was the fact that the new large set that I bought in IKEA in the spring, and the medium sized set that I acquired at a brocante 18 months ago fit together nicely and are exactly the right size to fill one of the alcoves.

But I’m surprised at all of the bedding and stuff that I seem to have acquired since I emptied out Expo. I can see me having a really good sorting out one of these days.

I’ve left Caliburn on the road at the top of the lane in case the weather continues to turn nasty. From there I can drive him out.

Because tomorrow afternoon, Terjat, who I saw last Sunday in a basement Allier 3rd Division clash, are at home again. If I can move around, I’ll go for a nosey to see if they really are as bad as they looked last week.

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Friday 20th January 2012 – I CAN’T SEE …

… a thing right now in my room.

There’s a gusting wind blowing up outside and it’s in just the right direction to blow right down my chimney so every couple of minutes a load of smoke is blown back down the fire and out of the air vent into the room.

I’m being done up like a kipper just now.

But I was right about the weather – it’s rained for most of the day. And it is indeed nice to see the rail cascading off the new roof on the lean-to onto the ground, well away from the wall, and everything inside the lean-to being bone-dry for a change.

I can’t believe my luck with the weather for that 10-day spell when I decided to go for broke and do the lean-to roof. It’s not like me at all.

So I did some sawing of the wood this morning, but a downside of this now is that I’m cutting it faster than I’m burning it and I’m now running out of room to store it. I suppose that I shall have to make a larger woodpile, or a taller one or something.

I could, I suppose, even dig the trench that I need to dig at the side of the house by the “other” lean-to, drop the drainage pipe in there that needs to go in there and connect it into the drainage system, fill the trench with gravel, cover it over with a weed blanket and then build the real woodshed where it is supposed to go, but that’s not the work of half an hour.

After the woodcutting (which I managed to do without any interruption for a change) I did some more tidying up, starting in the lean-to.

First job was to rescue the remaining Hawker deep-discharge batteries and charge them up.

And here I’ve hit a problem, in that the battery box I made for the previous batteries is too small – the Hawkers are taller. But anyway once they were out of the way I tidied up in the lean-to, collected all of the stray solar panels and stacked them in a corner, and then hung up the smaller gardening tools so that I’m not tripping over them.

Having moved a couple of solar panels out of the barn I could then get in there and make some space to put the old Rutland wind turbine tidily out of the way.

This led to the discovery of a circular saw, not the 600-watt one that I can’t find anywhere at all, but the old 1050-watt one that was all rusted solid having been left in a container that filled with water through a leak in the barn roof when I was ill and which had subsequently been partly-dismantled for spares.

Of course, now that I have a 1200-watt inverter all things are possible, so I gave the saw a good spray with WD40 and reassembled it with some other bits and pieces. And much to my surprise it fired up!

Even more surprising was that the inverter didn’t even bat an eyelid.

The saw needs some “attention to detail” before I can use it to cut wood, but this is definitely progress.

This afternoon, with the weather deteriorating, I restarted work in the bedroom – the first time for God knows how long. I’ve fitted the false beam at the side wall – the beam that hides all of the electrical cable – and I’ve also packed out one of the plasterboard panels that didn’t quite mate with the others.

It was then that I lost the light and so I spent the last hour tidying up in the barn again.

And despite all of this time that I’ve spent tidying up, a I really can’t see any difference at all.

This evening by way of an experiment, I brought a kettle of water up here and put it on top of the woodstove. And after about 2.5 hours it was gloriously warm and I had a lovely hot wash and shave in front of the fire.

Definitely the highlight of the week, that, and I can’t think why I hadn’t done that before.

Next step is the coffee pot on the stove, and put the produce in a thermos ready for the following morning.

I ought to be much-better organised than I am.

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Thursday 19th January 2012 – THE WEATHER …

… changed during the night, just as I suspected that it might when I saw the clouds gathering yesterday afternoon.

I woke up this morning to a grey and miserable overcast day, and that’s how it remained all day.

The third of these cold-calling solar panel salesmen came to see me at about 11:00 and he was gone by 11:05, interrupting my woodcutting.

I need to do as much as I can of that because I want the space at the back of the barn, where I’m storing the tree trunks, for other things. Getting it out of the way by cutting it up seems like a good idea to me and I’m planning to do half an hour each day. Warm me up for other things.

Once my time was up I went to look for something in the barn and I can’t remember what it was now, but I didn’t find it, as you might expect in my barn.

I ended up doing some kind of tidying up (after a fashion) and repairing the lights up there so that I can see what I’m doing, and I found the 400-watt halogen heater that I brought back from Brussels.

The oil heater isn’t heating as much as I had hoped and it’s not keeping its heat as long as it ought to either, and so I’ve decided to go with the halogen one for now.

100 watts less, but of course halogen is much more efficient than most other forms of electric heating and I recall getting quite warm with that in the old days. I’ll be intrigued to see what it can do in a glorious alpine day.

I also found a pair of steel toecapped work shoes that I had forgotten all about. They’ve been rescued and put to good use. It’s nice to have decent footwear.

This afternoon I went about and inspected the trees overhanging the next stage of the garden development – the space to where I’ll be moving the compost bins. There were a couple of them that looked rather dodgy and so they came down.

I also cut up the tree that had fallen down in the gale last summer and flattened my spuds and onions, and moved it out of the way.

I DO like this new saw.

To finish off, I started to weed one of the raised beds where I grow my vegetables and I’m making quite a pile of stuff for burning, right where the greenhouse is going to be.

And four reasons too.

  1. it’s a nice big clear space there
  2. it’ll get rid of all the rubbish that’s accumulating
  3. it’ll burn the weeds that are growing there
  4. the ashes will fertilise the soil

But I won’t be burning anything tomorrow, and I won’t be working in the garden either. We’re having a torrential rainstorm right now outside and I’ll be intrigued to see how the new roof is coping with it all.

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Tuesday 17th January 2012 – YOU MAY REMEMBER …

victron energy 1200 watt inverter les guis virlet puy de dome france… the other day that I mentioned that there was a new digital 1200-watt inverter in the post on its way here. Well, it turned up a couple of days ago but I never had time to install it.

Anyway, that all changed this morning and after cutting another huge pile of wood I set about fitting it in the system.

It’s quite a monster and quite heavy too, and the cable is 25mm welding cable. And to fit it on my panel board it involved moving a few things around in order to make the space.

But it’s certainly impressive and if it works as well as it’s supposed to, it will be a big improvement on the current (well, we are talking electricity here) analogue 600-watt inverter, which creaks and groans under the load that it sometimes has to bear but which has kept going for almost three years, day-in and day-out, nevertheless.

600 watt inverter portable power board les guis virlet puy de dome franceThe aforementioned has now been relegated onto the portable power panel that I made the other week which I drag around the outside from place to place when I need power.

As for the 150-watt inverter that was on there that has creaked and groaned day-in and day-out for even longer, that has now been relegated into Caliburn where it will just be used for charging up the laptop and the occasional power tool once in a while, replacing the unsatisfactory 150-watt pulse inverter that only seems to want to pulse when it wants to, which is never when I want it to.

This afternoon I did something that is so unusual as to merit recording here on the blog. And that is something called “tidying up”.

That’s a phrase that is contained in the vocabulary of many people but is somehow missing from mine.

You can’t see much of a difference because I seem to be the only person in the world whose tidying up makes more of a mess that it was before I started, but I’ve recovered 7 square metres of roofing tiles left over from the roofing of the house and the two lean-tos.

I’ll put them on one side for now and think of a way of using them.

I also went into the field next door hunting for the nails that made a bid for freedom. I don’t want the farmer’s cattle to find them first. I recovered a dozen or so but that’s just a tiny fraction of the number that got away. I’ll go for another look tomorrow

But the purpose of tidying up was to clear all of the wood off the floor of the first floor of the lean-to. Where the tarpaulin had been blown away, that area of the floor was soaking wet and the wood that was piled on it, much of it new stuff, was also soaking wet and it was all stopping the floor from drying.

So all of that wood has been arranged tidily where it will receive a nice current of air, and the floor is clear so that it might dry out. You might remember that it was only 18 months ago that I laid the floor and I don’t want it rotting away quite yet.

In other news, I have two companies sending representatives around tomorrow to sell me these roof-top solar panel systems.

I hate these cold-calling canvassers who ring up at 19:15 and 19:45 when I’m trying to drink a coffee and watch a film. Worse than spam e-mails they are – at least you can delete those – and so I’m fighting back.

I can waste more of their time than they can of mine.

And in other other news, the water in the new immersion heater reached 28.5°C this afternoon. Not a lot you might think, but that was 25°C over the ambient temperature downstairs, and that’s well-worth having.

It’s not hot enough to use the washing machine or to have a shower, but we are moving in the right direction.

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Thursday 5th January 2012 – I THOUGHT …

puy de dome france…that you might like to see my Christmas present from Liz and Terry, before I started hacking it about.

Yes, it’s nice to have good friends, especially when they make you nice things for Christmas, like this absolutely gorgeous vegan Christmas Cake, isn’t it?

Anyway, today started off with the howling winds and gales and rain – that put the kybosh on any plans I had for working outside. I’m not going up a ladder in this weather.

So after a leisurely start and watching one of my films, I went about tidying up the attic. And what I’ve done is to change things around a little.

The bed is now on the other side of the room now by the books and music, which is much more logical, and I can actually see the fire in the wood stove from where I’m now sitting.

The wardrobe and a couple of chests of drawers have been moved around too. It looks like there’s more room up here now although that’s an optical illusion.

That took ages to do and so by 18:00 I knocked off and had a coffee – and tucked into slice 1 of the Christmas cake. It was well worth waiting for as well. Absolutely gorgeous. I can see me enjoying that for the next few weeks to come, and quite right too.

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Wednesday 4th January 2012 – TODAY DIDN’T WORK …

… out as I had wanted it to do.

Forgetting to switch off one of the alarm clocks didn’t help much, for a start.

But nevertheless it was about 10:00 when I finally surfaced.

As part one of the plan, I watched one of the the films that Marianne had bought for me for Christmas. I’m a big fan of Louis de Funes and have a great many of his films, which I can watch time and time again.

But I’ve had loads of difficulty trying to track down one of his films that, to my mind, is by far and away the best film that he has ever made –  La Folie Des Grandeurs.

It concerns de Funes as a Spanish nobleman who runs foul of the Queen of Spain. Apart from the legendary “towel in the bath” scene, it also contains the immortal lines –
de Funes – “tell me some little flatteries”
Valet – “senor is the greatest Spaniard who ever lived”
de Funes – “that’s not flattery – that’s the truth. Try again!”
Valet – “errr … senor is very very handsome”
de Funes “that’s better!”

Anyway, Marianne tracked down a copy for which I am extremely grateful, and I sat and watched it. and I’ll be watching it again … "and again and again" – ed.

But at lunchtime, Terry rang up. He and Rob were working somewhere and they had run out of concrete. So that involved digging out the Sankey trailer and setting off for the quarry. He just had the sand/stone mix and so we had to go to St Eloy les Mines as well, and that took most of the afternoon.

So much for my plans to tidy up and do some paperwork.

But the tyres on the Sankey are thoroughly perished and they need to be changed before it goes anywhere else. You can’t haul a tonne or two of sand and gravel on tyres like those.

So this evening was quiet – I read a book. And that’s really it.

But going back to Marianne’s I do remember one evening sitting down to watch La Grande Vadrouille, another de Funes film in which he stars with Terry-Thomas. It’s another one of my favourites and Marianne had bought that for me as well.

And as I was getting the film ready to watch, Marianne was idly surfing through the channels and what should be on the TV but La Grande Vadrouille?

Coincidence or what?

-2

Saturday 10th December 2011 – SINCE WHEN …

… has one day’s blog started with a full account of what happened the next morning?

It’s not a very usual occurrence, I know, but it does happen to me now and again – usually because I don’t keep “normal” hours like everyone else. Years of working nights driving taxis and coaches means that I’m more “nocturnal” than “diurnal”.

My days usually finish when I go to bed, no matter what time that might be. And when there have been days when I haven’t gone to bed at all – which also happens very occasionally, I find a convenient break-point.

And so I hit the road tomorrow at 00:30 with still a long way to go before the day is ended.

Today though, I had a very desultory, leisurely day. Taking it easy due to the long night which I knew that I was going to have.

And my heart wasn’t really in the packing and I didn’t really do as much as I should. As a result, I set off on probably the most ill-prepared voyage that I have ever made. And I have made a few of those in my life as well, as you can probably imagine.

The road to Le Havre took me on a merry, mazy way via Bourges, Orleans and Chartres.

Parts of the road were really quick and I was able to make quite good time, whereas others were … err … not so quick, especially when it came to navigating my way through the cities with the endless strings of traffic lights.

caliburn overnight parking chartres franceFinally I found a service area about 20 or so miles beyond Chartres and that’s where I went to sleep.

And it was freezing as well – frost and ice everywhere – but I’m not that easily defeated.

A few years ago I stripped an old Volvo saloon and that had heated seat pads in it. And so I wired one of them up to one of these 12-volt powerpacks, and you’ve no idea how warm my feet were in bed.

That is – until the powerpack’s battery went flat.

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Saturday 3rd December 2011 – I HAVEN’T DONE …

… anything at all today.

A miserable wet windy Saturday was enough to keep me up here.

All I’ve done is to tidy up (just a little), do a little work on the radio programme, and read a book on Canadian railways. It’s a long time since I’ve had a lazy day like that.

f1.4 50mm lens fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire football club de foot puy de dome franceThis evening I went to Pionsat with the new lens to watch FC Pionsat St Hilaire. I’ll post a pic up here so that you can see what it looks like, but action night shots at 1/640 on ISO1600, and sufficient light to do it as well is amazing.

And with being manual focus, the reaction time is instant.

However one slight drawback is that the focus doesn’t stay locked and I didn’t realise that. It floated off from infinity and I didn’t notice, and one or two pf the photos at least are not much good.

I’m curious to see what the rest are like

But I’m going to do that tomorrow. I’m pretty tired again right now. All of this lazing around is no good for me.  

-4

Thursday 1st December 2011 – GOING TO BED EARLY …

… does you no good at all if you roll over onto your staples at 04:00. It’s flaming painful and you can’t go back to sleep again.

And so I was up early again and breakfasted, and then I went out to cut more wood. That’s a couple more of the old chevrons and the tree trunks from 2 years ago all ready to burn in my nice new wood stove, with which I am almost as impressed as I am with my galvanised steel dustbin.

But then I had another idea and I cleared a space near the big front gates and laid out a couple of pallets. And then I moved one of the wood piles – the one that was at the side of the lean-to. That’s now on the pallets right at the front of the house and will be easy to get to in the winter, whenever that might be.

That pile of wood was formerly at the side of the lean-to on a concrete pad that was formerly the base of a chicken coop. This concrete hardstanding is now covered with plastic roof tiles – I did a safari around the garden and hunted down all that I can find ready for doing that roof, whenever that might be.

I also took out the plywood from the back of Caliburn and I’ve stood that upon the concrete pad. Even though it’s for exterior use, I’ve covered it up with a tarpaulin to protect it for a while from the weather.

All that’s left in Caliburn is the window and that’s rather heavy. But I have a cunning plan for that, more of which anon.

When it went dark I fetched a shelving unit that I had forgotten and I have put it in what will be the bathroom. I’ve started making a tour of the upper floors rescuing tools and so on, so that I know where everything might be.

But that’s not so easy as there’s just so much stuff. I really ought to have a good tidy up sometime.

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Wednesday 9th November 2011 – I BET …

… that you are fed up of hearing me talking about this wall.

Well, so am I, if the truth need be told, but not long now. Even as I speak, I’m sitting on the scaffolding planks doing the last row that I can, and there’s just about 90cms underneath that that I will have to do from a ladder.

But that can’t be done until I’ve moved the scaffolding, and that can’t be done until I’ve mounted the wind turbine (I don’t half do some weird things around here) and then there’s a strip that I can’t reach from the scaffolding – that’s going to be a ladder job too. 

I’m likely to run out of sand tomorrow and so rather than spend all of this time getting out the Sankey trailer, what I’ll do is simply to go to the quarry at Montaigut with a dozen or so sacks and bag it up myself there. That’s much more sensible, I reckon.

But I can’t believe that I’ve used so much sand. There was more than a trailer-load here before I started. 

At about 17:40 it became too dark to work and so,by the light of the solar lamps around here I started to tidy up at the front of the house. I’ve been pulling up weeds and putting them in the brazier that I bought the other week. When they have dried out I can have a bonfire.

There’s piles of other stuff that can go on the fire as well. High time I had a tidy up.

But it’s all getting to be quite exciting around here just now.There might even be a roof on the lean-to before long and won’t that be progress?

Ohh – and remember the thumb that has a lime burn on it? I’ve hit it with a hammer today. It’s not having much luck, is it?

-1

Wednesday 2nd November 2011 – NEVER MIND …

kwikstage scaffolding lean to les guis virlet puy de dome france… the Towering Inferno – and never mind the legendary Tower of Power either. This is what I’ve been doing today.

Well, not all today. The first thing was to give the downstairs part of the lean-to a good clean-out so that I could fetch the scaffolding inside, and then I had to sweep up the floor of the first floor so that I could erect the scaffolding.

It was half-way through that part of the exercise that I realised that maybe it was not such a good idea to put the framework of the washroom in position yesterday. It’s bad enough trying to negotiate the small hatch in the floor without having to negotiate a gratuitous upright as well.

But I tell you what – you know these tournaments where the military have to dismantle a field gun, pass it over a wall and through a hoop and then re-assemble it? I’m entering for that next year. Putting this scaffolding up onto the first floor of the lean-to is good training for that.

And so the scaffolding was erected and that took quite a while to do – mainly because it’s the first time I’ve put the scaffolding up on my own, and I’m not as young as I used to be.

But there it is – all in place and 8 metres high. In fact it’s so high that my ladder won’t reach the top. I’ve had to put that on planks 1 metre off the ground and shin up there like a monkey.

What has impressed me is that the floor of the first floor, that I fitted last summer, is perfectly level. I proved that by setting the adjustable feet of the scaffolding to the same height before I began the assembly,and when I checked the first row of scaffolding with a spirit level, it was absolutely level.

The floor is also extremely strong as well. Not only does it take the weight of the scaffolding, it can withstand the shock of a scaffolding plank (and these are heavy) being dropped onto it from 8 metres up. That is definitely impressive.

Mind you, never mind the answer blowing in the wind, my friend, the scaffolding at 8 metres high is swaying about too and not surprising – we’ve had gusts today of over 25mph.

You might be thinking to yourself that tomorrow I’ll be attacking the wind turbine, but not a bit of it, and that’s all Terry’s fault.

Normally I’d fasten the wind turbine pole with anchor bolts drilled into the wall but the problem with them is that they are never a very good fit in stone and work loose after a while – you need to be constantly tightening them up. But when we were doing the windows Terry showed me a kind of mastic that you squirt into holes and which sets like concrete.

And that gave me an idea.

Drill the holes about 1cm deeper than necessary, squirt a pile of stuff into the hole, ram the anchor into the hole, fit the mounting bracket and tighten up. The force and pressure will force the mastic everywhere into the hole, the crevices, the screw threads and so on, and then set like concrete and (hopefully) you won’t ever be able to move it.

I need to wait until Saturday and shopping so that I can get a tube or two of it. It’s expensive but if it does the job it will be well worth it.

And so until the weekend I’ll be pointing the wall, and in the comparative luxury of a scaffolding too. It makes a change from shinning up ladders with a bucket of stones, a bucket of water and paintbrush, a loose-handled brush, a hammer and chisel, some mortar and a trowel. 

-1

Tuesday 1st November 2011 – THE ONE THING …

… that I like about having made some space inside the house is that when it rains I can work indoors. And the one thing I like about it raining is that I have plenty of work to do that can be done indoors as well.

steps stud wall lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd so what with the pouring rain this morning I brought inside the struts for the stud wall-cum-ladder that I’ll be fitting inside the lean-to and I spent much of today working on them.

And to such an extent that I have two of them – the front two – now fitted and screwed into position. Mind you,that involved working in the dark with a torch because we are now on winter hours of course and it goes dark at 17:45.

The bit in front (nearest the camera) will be the wash room, where the washing machine and stuff like that will eventually be installed. Then we’ll have the steps up, and then a little workshop or something behind it.

That’s really all the excitement for today – I haven’t done very much else, although I made myself a really wicked aubergine and bean casserole kind of thing, with enough left over for two more days as well. I suppose that’s fairly exciting.

Tomorrow if the weather is good I’ll put up the scaffolding on the lean-to and plan the erection of the wind turbine. And if it rains I’ll carry on with the stud walls in the lean-to. That’s what I like about having choices.

But I forgot something.

If you have been following my website you will recall that I’ve been talking about the Nova Scotia Museum of Industry, and in particular the restored Mobile Technical College, “Shopmobile 5“.

Anyway I’ve had an e-mail today from the person who was in charge of the restoration project and he’s sent me a pile of photos, together with a promise to sort out a pile more stuff for me if I want it. Do bears have picnics in the woods?

I suppose that that’s exciting, isn’t it?

-2

Friday 28th October 2011 – HOW LONG IS IT …

st gervais d'auvergne gorges de la sioule puy de dome france… since I took a pic from the birdwatching platform near St Gervais d’Auvergne just up the road from where Liz and Terry live?

Quite some considerable time, I bet.

I was up and about quite early (well, early for me anyway) this morning and after something of a hasty breakfast, in the words of the great Mars Bonfire I got my motor running and headed out for the Highway

st gervais d'auvergne gorges de la sioule puy de dome franceIt was a cool damp morning but it was heating up quite quickly (well, for this time of year anyway) and this was causing the mist to rise out of all the hollows.

It doesn’t half look impressive when it does that, particularly from up here, and you don’t need any guesses to work out exactly where the Gorges de la Sioule might be when it’s like this. It didn’t half look impressive and it’s one of the sights that everyone should aim to see when they come to visit the Combrailles.

Liz and Terry’s house is down there somewhere and sure enough, they were bathed in mist when I arrived.

Anyway, I picked Liz up and we went to Gerzat for the Radio Arverne sessions of Radio Anglais. We were there for just after 10:00 and so we went for a walk around the town for 20 minutes before Bernard turned up.

It took just over an hour to record the four sessions today – even though Bernard was rather … errr … confused and disorientated. He just now has rather a lot of editing to do.

Back at Liz and Terry’s, Terry and I had quite a long chat about things and then I came back here.

It was raining of course after lunch and so in a change of plan I’ve done a huge amount of tidying up on the ground floor and the first floor and it actually looks like something now to a certain degree. I’ve also done some tidying up outside and that has helped, especially as the vegetation is now dying down for winter and some lost articles are now coming into view.

And tidying up as well. How about that? And to tell you the truth I would have been tidying up this afternoon even if the weather had been absolutely gorgeous because there is a cunning plan looming in the background.

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Friday 21st October 2011 – TODAY WAS ….

… a quiet day or at least it should have been. But Terry and Rob came round to fix Lieneke’s barn and no-one can sleep through the kind of racket that those two are capable of producing.

But what about last night,hey? Temperature plummeted to -1.9°C. A minus temperature – winter is flaming well here, right enough. I’m even contemplating lighting a fire shortly if we don’t have an improvement

However, never mind that for a moment – three hours and more on the computer and my visit to Trois Rivieres is well-advanced.

Trois-Rivieres is on the north bank of the St Lawrence between Montreal and Quebec. It’s the oldest industrial site in North America and the newsprint capital of the world. In fact all of my visits to the area have been overwhelmed by the smell of wet paper from the pulp mills so I’ve always kept well clear. 

This year though I found myself in the town and my opinions of the place rapidly changed. The town seeps history from almost every pore and I’ve completely changed my opinion about the place.

This afternoon though I had to wait for Terry to move his van before I could get out to the post office and post that parcel. And I fell through the floor when I found out the price. I bet that it’s cheaper to fly to Canada and deliver it by hand. It makes excess baggage charges look a bargain

To the bank after that to sort out a few financial details, and then to Bill’s to fix his computer again.

This evening it’s POETS day of course and so I finished early – spending half an hour or so sorting some papers that date back to 2004. And there’s so many of them that it’s going to take a while.

Tomorrow it’s shopping and as I have so much to do it’s going to be a St Eloy les Mines quick half hour-type of shopping. And the washing is building up here and so I might visit the local launderette and sort it out.

>But I’m not really looking forward to tomorrow. I’ve finished all of my stock of Canadian vegan cheese slices and that is a catastrophe.

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