Tag Archives: tidying up

Wednesday 16th March 2011 – Ohhh ‘eck

Errr .. yes, It’s almost 06:00 and I’ve been awake for a couple of hours.

What usually happens is that when I come back from a long drive I go for a kip for an hour or two in the early afternoon but today I wasn’t feeling tired. That’s a surprise because I didn’t have much of a sleep by the roadside last night. The dawn woke me up and I was back here by 08:30.

And so I pottered around for a bit doing not very much at all. At about 16:00 I went out to Caliburn and emptied the cab, and gave it a good brush, a sweep-out and a tidy up.

Back up here round about 18:00 that was when I started to feel a little tired. And so I reckoned I would have a couple of hours on the divan before tea. And that was that.

In other news, I see that the UK is up to its old tricks. The police are called to a local park by a local councillor for a most heinous crime – a couple of little girls are  …….. wait for it …… picking the flowers.

Clearly the local councillor is too afraid to go to speak to the girls himself, the hero, and so two coppers come along, spend 20 minutes watching the kids picking the flowers, and then go over and caution them and their parents. Heavy stuff, hey? Whatever would the Kray Twins have said?

And so that’s two coppers hiding behind bushes watching little girls for 20 minutes (Garry Glitter got 18 months in prison for doing that) becuse a Councillor is too afraid to carry out his civic duties, and all the while crime is rampant on the streets of Poole in Dorset.

You can’t make up a story like this, can you?

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Thursday 17th February 2011 – I’m not going to be here much longer tonight either.

Yes, it’s taking it out of me. And early though it is (for us, anyway) I’m the last one up. Everyone else has retired a while ago.

This morning while Terry carried on in the toilet Liz and I uprooted the tiles and cement and sand and everything else from off the terrace at the front of the apartment. And then we took it all down and loaded it into Caliburn.

After that we stripped the terrace at the back of the apartment and loaded that all into Caliburn too. What with the old toilet and cistern and other bits and bobs we were pretty well loaded up.

After lunch it was down to the dechetterie with all of the rubble. And €12.10 later, Caliburn was empty. And that was quite astonishing as there was quite a load, as I have said. We then took a few bits back to Brico for a refund and came home to find Terry looking for the drain hole for the toilet sink
“Where did you put it?”
“On top of the old cistern while I cleaned the pipework
“Errr …. ohh dear”
So finishing the sink will have to wait for another day.

We also have a shower screen for the bath and it looks splendid. It really sets the bathroom off. It cost about €80 if I remember correctly but it was well-worth the money just for the aesthetic pleasure. And while Terry was fitting it I went through all the boxes of tools, fittings and the like, sorted eveything into the correct boxes and threw away a pile of stuff.

Me! Throwing stuff away! Whatever next?

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Wednesday 16th February 2011 – I’m not going to be here much longer.

I’m all thoroughly exhausted again.

I slept right through last night until about 08:45 and it’s been a long time since I’ve done that. And afterwards, while Terry carried on in the toilet, Liz painted the woodwork in the living room while I painted the ceiling and did some more sanding on the floor.

Once Liz and I had done that, we carried in ripping up the tiles and the old infilling on the terrace. We managed to make enormous inroads into that, and it was all put into dustbins, bin bags, crates and the like.

After lunch we went to the tip where I disposed of one of the sofas from here, an old carpet, some wardrobe doors and some other odds and ends. Back to the apartment via LIDL, we loaded up again with all the tiles, sand etc etc off the terrace and took that down to the tip. You have to pay to dospose of that and I’m sure that they make up the prices there. The first load a couple of weeks ago cost €68:00 – the second last week cost €36:00 and today’s, which was probably the heaviest, cost €12:10.

But it’s exhausting mauling all of this heavy stuff about. I’m not as young as I was. And so I’m going to bed early to recover my strength ready for tomorrow.

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Friday 11th February 2011 – We have one room finished!

third bedroom expo avenue de l'exposition jette brussels belgiumThe third bedroom is now done, well, give or take the odd bit of touching up. And if there is any touching up to be done, I’ve had my face slapped more times than enough so in the words of the late, great Bob Doney, “I’m your man”.

Terry and I finished off the skirting board this morning and then filled and sealed all around it while Liz put the second coat of paint on the woodwork in the bathroom. After that, we cleaned and vacuumed and scrubbed the place a little and another load of stuff went outside for the tip.

Once lunch was out of the way Liz cleaned some of the furniture and we installed that in the third bedroom. There’s one of the sofas, the table and chairs, a standard lamp and two occasional tables (whatever they are for the rest of the time is no concern of ours) and now we have a clean and tidy living room. The other sofa, the carpet and a few other bits and pieces then went into the back of Caliburn ready to be abandoned in a needy area of the city tomorrow night and all the tiles I bought yesterday came upstairs. All of the stuff such as tools, construction material, paint and so on that was stored on the inner side of the living room was then moved over to the outside and then I started on washing down the walls on the inner part ready to wallpaper it (Marianne and I painted the ceiling a few years ago and it’s still the best part that I did of the house).

I was going to help Liz wallpaper the bathroom but it’s pretty small in there and two people working in there would be difficult and so she managed on her own. Half of that is done now and the rest should be finished this weekend (we’ve abandoned our weekends off now as we all want to go home).

Terry has been grinding out the grouting in the toilet ready to redo it and while he is waiting for the dust to clear he’s taking the old tiles off the terrace and putting them downstairs. But I’ve had a brainwave about this – the President of the Residents’ Council says that no-one can find the tiles to replace any broken ones that they might have as they aren’t made any more. So instead of me weighing them in (at €36 per tonne!), why not ask around if anyone wants them? That should save me quite a few bob I reckon.

But there are some weird things going on here. Liz told me at lunchtime that she was “going to put the soup on and then clear the table”. The mind boggles. What exciting times we are having right now.

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Saturday 29th January 2011 – We went to the seaside this afternoon

I say this afternoon, because this morning we were busy. Terry finished off the electricity in the bathroom and fitted the tiles in the kitchen (the grouting needs to be done), Liz painted the ceiling in the toilet and rubbed down the one in the bathroom, and I emptied more junk out of the third bedroom and plastered the wall behind where the radiator will be.

But you can’t make a DiY-type noise in these apartment blocks after 14:00 on a Saturday, it was a gorgeous (but freezing cold) day, and I had promised that I would take Liz to the seaside some time while we were here, and so this afternoon was a good bet.

And it was freezing too and there was a bitterly cold wind blowing, but we still had a walk along the prom and round the harbour at Oostende, as well as coffee and waffles in a cafe. And as pure luck would have it, as I was trying to show Liz and Terry around the huge church there (but there was Confession going on there so we couldn’t go round) we noticed a huge old-clothes repository. And so back to Caliburn and we deposited the sacks of no-longer-needed clothing there, and that was that.

grote markt grand place brugge bruges belgiumOf course you can’t be in that neck of the woods without going to see Brugge and so we went for a wander around in the evening. Places always look so much better at night, all lit up, and Brugge is no exception. We wandered around the main square there and soaked up all the atmosphere, went for a meal and I bought a restaurant. At least, I imagine that that was the significance of the amount on the bill, unless I was paying for everyone else in the restaurant.

So scintillating is my company that Liz and Terry fell asleep on the way home, and we finally arived back here at 23:00. Not bad at all for just an afternoon out at the coast, was it?

Tomorrow is a day of rest and if Esi remembers to contact me, we will also be eating out tomorrow.

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Thursday 27th January 2011 – We didn’t quite manage the shops today.

And if we had woken up at a respectable time, we still wouldn’t have made it.

The fact is that we had run out of space to put things, and if we had bought more stuff there would have been even less space for the. As a result, we decided on having a packing day. Tons of stuff made it into the trailer for taking down to the dump, and even more stuff made it into the pile for Oxfam. Whatever was I doing with all those clothes? Worse than a woman, I can tell you. And there were even a few things that made it into the pile to take home, much to everyone’s surprise.

When we had a van-load of rubbish for the tip we took it along. We arrived there at 15:46 only to find that the tip closed at 15:45 and they refused to take the stuff. That was rather sad.

Anyway the place looks a lot different now – you can actually move around in here after a fashion. Tomorrow is going to be a day of taking things to the dump and if we aren’t careful we might even manage the shops.

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Tuesday 25th January 2011 – We’re cracking on in this apartment.

After a leisurely start Terry and I went down to the garage and brought up the kitchen tiles. And then Terry set off and tiled one of the walls in the kitchen. Just like that! There’s another few places on the other walls to tile, and then it will all need to be grouted, but it was impressive all  the same.

Liz bravely attacked the big bedroom and gave it a thorough cleaning and polishing. I can’t believe how dirty that had become and how much dust there was since I relaid the floor back in 2001.

Me, I emptied the 3rd bedroom of all of the rubbish so that there’s now room to move about in there. That needs some polyfilla in the walls and then a thorough clean before Liz and I can start to decorate it. I’ve also been dismantling the furniture in the hall and I made a start on the cupboard under the stairs.

Another huge pile of rubbish found its way into the skips today. I can’t believe how much stuff has accumulated here since I moved in, in May 2000. I do recall that I moved here with a half-empty Luton Transit. I reckon I’ve thrown that much out in the last couple of days and there is still more to go. But I’m impressed with all of the work so far.

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Monday 24th January 2011 – It’s a shame about the forest.

And I should know. I served on 5 Open University Students Association committees (OUSA Belgium, NERF, the SRG, the Region 9 Regional Committee and the OUSA EC) for about 3 years and I have just thrown all my papers away. And it took three huge Royal Mail sacks to take it all down to the skip here. Heaven knows how many trees that represents but if you calculate the number of people who actually serve on these committees it must be at least something the equivalent of the New Forest.

Yes, the European Paper Mountain indeed.

But at least I can get into my office now which is just as well, for that’s where I’ve been sleeping and so I’ll have room to spread out tonight.

We also have an electric oven and grill. Terry helped me fight my way into the garage that I rent downstairs and we pulled out the fitted oven that I bought a few years ago in a sale. A slightly shopsoiled display unit it was and so reduced from £769 to £307 and so in keeping with my idea of going for quality at a reduced price rather than full-price rubbish, I bought it and stored it in the garage until I was ready for it.

It seems too that the rewiring that I did in the kitchen was rather … errr ….unorthodox and with Terry being a fully-qualified time-served electrician he put that right in no time at all – well, geologically speaking that is.

The cleaning and throwing away of stuff is also continuing and at this rate we’ll have a place to sit down by the weekend.

I’m hoping that we can have the place finished off in a couple of weeks so that I can sell it and have another weight off my shoulders but in a certain respect I shall be sorry to leave here permanently even though it’s been almost four years since I paid it any more than a flying visit.

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Saturday 22nd January 2011 – My first day back in Brussels …

… and it’s really difficult to adapt to the new conditions. Running water, proper bathroom and kitchen, central heating, a comfortable bed. How can I possibly survive?

We have a  proper bathroom and kitchen thanks to Liz who has performed heroics today in making this place fit for heroes. And I also have room to sleep properly, a dining table and chairs and a comfortable sofa thanks to some rather thorough sifting of a huge pile of old and manky paperwork from heaven alone knows when. Terry has been making plans and projects for the work that will be needed, and that resulted in a trip to the shops.

The traffic was difficult to adapt to as well – there isn’t traffic like this in the Auvergne. And there aren’t the queues in the carparks either. And neither are the ridiculous prices. No wonder I moved down there when my income dried up. I could never have survived here.

The tidying has come to something of a halt though – we have filled up all of the containers in the waste room. We shall have to wait for the concierge to start back to work on Monday before we can take any more rubbish downstairs. But not to worry. There’s plenty of other things to be going on with.

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Friday 21st January 2011 – I was right …

.. about blogging from another country. We are actually back in Belgium. In Brussels in fact, and in my apartment here. It’s been sitting doing nothing for a couple of years so we’ve decided that it’s high time we attacked it and got it done.

I say “we” because Liz and Terry are with me. We are going to have a work-in and not leave until the place is finished and up for sale. Liz has already attacked the fridge, and managed to avoid being grabbed by whatever it was that was living in the freezer compartment. She’s also been into the bathroom, which I told her was a silly thing to do just before going to bed. She’ll be having nightmares all night now.

I won’t say it’s warm in here but considering I haven’t been here since September and then for only a day I was expecting it to be much colder than it was. But tomorrow I’ll switch on the heating. That might help. And also tomorrow we’ll have a good look round and make a plan of attack and see where we go from here. I mean – regardless of whatever I could raise by selling it, it’s costing me €200 or so each month to keep it up with the communal charges, electricity and rates and so on and I have much better uses for that money.

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Thursday 20th January 2011 – Winter is back.

I woke up this morning to discover a smattering of snow, sub-zero temperatures and a hanging cloud. Just like it ought to be in January, methinks, although you would never have guessed if from the last few days when we’ve been having May-type weather.

First task was to clean out Caliburn and check him over as tomorrow we are going on a long journey. everything needs to be ship-shape inside. And while I was waiting for the man from Viking to come with a pile of cardboard boxes I packed a few tools and other bits and pieces that might come in handy, as well as some paperwork that I need.

After lunch I packed the computer bits and pieces that I want and some clothes and bedding and that kind of stuff. Not to mention some food. My long driving journeys include nibbling snacks all the way on the journey.

I’ve also been tidying up in the barn and in the lean-to where the wood is. I need to make quite a bit of space (which is always at a premium around here) for when I come back.

And that is that. I’m having an early night due to the fact that I’ll be making an early start tomorrow. And the next time I blog, I’ll be in another country, assuming that the snow lets me leave. How about that?

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Wednesday 19th January 2011 – Just by way of a change …

… I was awake before the alarm clock this morning. Surprising too, because it was after 03:00 when I went to bed – rather busy on the computer was I last night.

And this non-seasonal weather is still here – light cloudy skies and plenty of solar energy, and thus electrically-heated water too, but the temperature has dropped. At 21:00 it was -2°C and falling, so winter is still with us.

I’ve had another good day working on the bedroom roof and that is making progress. Slowly, it has to be said, but at least it’s one of those tasks where you can actually see how you are getting on. I’ve probably done about a third of it and it seems to be making something of a difference up here with all of the extra insulation and then the tongue-and-grooving on the bedroom ceiling, which is of course the floor in here.

But I think that I have made something of an error in that I started with the tongue-and-grooving by the window, which means that I am having to do all kinds of contortions around the framework of the fitted wardrobe. It would have been easier to start at the wall by the fitted wardrobe and then continued out to the window. However, where you start is much neater than where you finish and by finishing over the top of the wardrobe, no-one is going to see how it all ended up.

The days are lengthening too. It was 17:48 when I finished work in the bedroom due to fading light, and I went outside to do some more but the drop in temperature drove me in at 18:10 when it was still light . enough to carry on for a short while. Give it another month and I’ll be outside working at 19:00. I’ll need to be too, as I have this greenhouse to build and some new plots and raised beds to deal with. Wherever does the time go to?

And in other news, CREFAD – this Government-sponsored business networking thing that gives lectures and advice to small businesspeople in the Auvergne – rang me up. There’s a meeting on 1st March at St Gervais on the subject of auto-entrpreneurs – this new system of taxation for small informal businesses – and they need a speaker for it. would I be free by any chance that evening? Magali (the girl who runs it) clearly remembers me from 9 months ago when I did a talk on eco-construction.

As it happens I am free that evening and even if I wasn’t, I would be. There’s no payment or anything involved of course which is a shame, but it gives me a chance to meet some more potential clients and talk about my business. An opportunity not to be missed. And they must clearly be impressed with my command of the French language otherwise they wouldn’t keep on asking me to speak at these public meetings, and that is something that pleases me greatly.

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Tuesday 18th January 2011 – We were recording again today

This time it was for the programmes for Radio Tartasse – the next lot of four-weekly programmes to take them up to the end of February. Luckily I don’t have too far to travel because it’s an early start in the morning, like … errrr … 10:00.

This time we were allowed to do the programmes how we wanted to do them, and it went much better. Liz and I have a very good rapport and much of our stuff is done as ad-libs and you can’t do that if you are having to concentrate on pages of script. And they have also agreed to let us have copies of the recorded programmes so that I can stick them on our blog when I have the time and I’m not so tired. But that will come – you can be assured of that.

And so back here, and carrying on with my ceiling. and that’s what I did for most of the rest of the day such as it was. And I’m making good progress too. It won’t be all that long before it’s done. BUt it went dark at about 17:00 – at least too dark to work on the ceiling, and so I had an hour or so outside doing a little more clearing up. And slowly but surely it’s looking a little (but only a little) more respectable out here. But the weather has turned. It clouded right over and it’s gone cold. I even have had the heating on a little earlier this evening. But not that that worries me. Now that the weeds and brambles are dying down I’m uncovering a few of the old chevrons that we ripped off the barn roof and threw down to the floor. It’s all more firewood for the stove.

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Monday 10th January 2011 – I had a little fun …

eglise de gouttieres church puy de dome france …with the Nikon this evening.

On the way down to Christiane’s, I noticed that the church of Gouttieres, situated on a hill right across the valley from the main road, was clearly visible with there being no leaves on the trees right now. And it’s always well-illuminated at night and I’ve often thought that it would make a good photograph.

And so on the way back home I found a suitable spot at the side of the main road, set up the tripod and spent a pleasant 15 minutes experimenting. Considering that I’m probably a mile away from the church and it was pitch-black, I don’t think it’s come out too badly at all.

We’d been down to Christiane’s to celebrate Epiphany (I know we are three or four days behind but so what? The rest of the Auvergne is 200 years behind) and to cut the “galette du roi” – a traditional European Epiphany event. We were about 10 or so people there, but it’s the quality that counts, not the quantity and we had a very pleasant evening.

Today though, I did something that I bet you would never ever consider that I might do – and that is I swept up in the bedroom and bagged all of the rubbish. So at least I can move around in there for the next stage of the work and not trip over anything. I need a sieve to sift the rubbish to rescue nails, screws, screwdriver bits and the like and in the absence of such I made one, by the simple expedient of finding a damaged 20-litre liquid container, cutting off the top, and drilling a huge amount of 5mm holes all over the container. I tried it on the rubble that came out of the chimney and it worked a treat, and so I tried it in the lean-to on the debris from the wood I’ve been cutting and it separated a pile of small kindling from a huge amount of sawdust. I’m clearly onto something with this.

Tomorrow I can make a start on fitting the false beam that will hide part of the electrical trunking, and I also have to go to see Bill to pick up this immersion heater that he wants to dispose of.

And talking of water heating, the batteries in the barn topped out today. The first time since November.

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Sunday 9th January 2011 – What a miserable day.

Well, at least, the afternoon was. I … errr … don’t know what the morning was like. And having gone to bed quite early (well, for me anyway) last night, all I can say is that I must have been tired. All of this hard work and the early start yesterday have been taking it out of me.

So with the grey clouds and all of the rain that I awoke to, I was surprised to see how warm it was in here. Hot stuff indeed I must be, for when I went to bed last night it was 13.4°C in here, and when I awoke it was 15.4°C. But it didn’t stay like that for long as a huge grey hanging cloud appeared and brought a cold snap with it.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire cellule puy de dome ligue football league franceWe had a footy match this afternoon – Pionsat’s 1st XI against Cellule. And while Pionsat’s team was well ahead of the opposition on possession and play they couldn’t do it on goals and lost 2-1, and the two goals that Cellule scored were surrounded in controversy. Pionsat are rather naive when it comes to playing the referee and were well outmatched in this department.

The 2nd XI were at Miremont – a team that was in Division 1 last season and who where crushed 12-1 by the Pionsat’s 1st XI last season in one match. I would have liked to have gone to see that match but “a man cannot be in two places at once, unless he were a bird” as the legendary Sir Boyle Roche once said. And so I came home and tidied up a pile of papers.

In other news, if you have been following my comments for a few years now you will know that I have been making a series of predictions, many of which are coming to fruition. One of the things that I have been prophesying is that with Great Satan deposing a pro-western Sunni dictator in Iraq and paving the way for an anti-Western Shia dictator, there will soon be such an anti-western dictator that Great Satan will wish that it had never ever deposed Saddam Hussein.

And so we learn that Moqtada Sadr, he who led the Mehdi Army against the Septics in some fierce fighting in Iraq a couple of years ago, has returned to Iraq and accepted a post in the Iraq government, seeing as his party won 38 seats in the recent elections there.

Watch this space.

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