Tag Archives: tidying up

Monday 23rd August 2010 – It seems that …

… my inolvement in Lieneke’s roof has come to an end.

All that remains to be done is the plasterboarding, followed by the pointing up of the end wall, and then the tidying up. No labouring of any description is required and so after opening up the house for Terry and Simon I was paid off (well, not actually paid off because I’m not actually being paid). And I am not displeased by this either, as you can imagine.

First thing that I did was to stack all of the wood. There are tonnes of new wood lying around here that I haven’t managed to put away over the last few months and all of that is now neatly stacked and I know how much of it that I have. That took all of the morning.

After lunch I was in the barn, finishing the tidying up of the workbench, fitted the new vice that I bought in July last year, and did some more sorting-out of stuff. I can actually move around now inside the barn and that is progress. And the stuff that I have rediscovered ….

Tomorrow I’m going to make a start on the composting toilet and get that fitted. That involves making a box to put the bin in, and building a couple of walls. So all of these demi-chevrons and cheap tongue-and-grooving will start to disappear.

High time I organised the hygene around here.

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Sunday 22nd August 2010 – You’ve no idea …

… how long I was standing on the birdwatching point at the back of St Gervaisd’Auvergne, watching this storm rolling across the ridge in the distance – the one that I live just a couple of miles behind.

Nor how many photos that I took either. What I was trying to do was to take a photo of a flash of lightning, and for a while there was plenty of that but I just wasn’t quick enough. And after a while the storm drifted off the the north-east as the wind swung round from the south.

But the storm was impressive from up there and you can see in the pic the sheets of rain that were falling down

I’d been round to Terry and Liz’s to discuss business and the like. We have a lot to organise – including trying to record SEVEN radio programmes at our next recording session. It seems that my trip to Canada (have I mentioned this yet?), if it comes off, clashes with Liz and Terry going back to the UK for a week and so we will have our work cut out.

But this morning (or what was left of it) and the early part of the afternoon I carried on with the tidying up in the barn. I’ve found tons of stuff I had forgotten all about and which is now all put in boxes, and I’ve cleaned up half my workbench. I can now get into the drawer where the power tools are, and that is real progress.

Once Lieneke’s roof is finished off (and I’ve been saying that for a while now) I can do some more and have the place looking just a little more shipshape. It’s about time, too!

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Saturday 21st August 2010 – Here’s an interesting photo.

The time is 17:47, the air temperature outside underneath the solar shower is 31°C, and the water in the solar heating tank, all 20 or so litres of it, is 44°C.

Today has been a right scorcher right enough and I almost scalded myself when I had a shower. Believe me, 44°C is really hot and I am ever so impressed that I have managed to heat to this extent 20 litres of water in a black plastic container with an old caravan window over the top

But that’s not all either. The automatic water heater ran for several hours and I had 44.5°C in that. And that’s 50 litres of water in an open bucket with a 12-volt heater element floating on top, heated by surplus energy from the solar panels that would otherwise be dumped. Just imagine what the temperature would have been if it had been 30 litres of water in a sealed and insulated container.

That’s going to be my next trick – making an immersion heater, and I have a 30-litre container all lined up for use. All I need now is the time.

I reckon that the water heating, in summer anyway, is making great strides, and I have plans for the winter too. They involve some of that flexible copper tubing would round the chimney of my wood-burning stove. I also have 3 solar panels and a 400-watt wind turbine in the barn and I don’t use the power from there all that much – just the lighting in the barn, the washing machine and charging up the power tools. So if I made a portable immersion heater then in winter I could take it to the barn and rig up an automatic water heating system over there. I reckon that the batteries in the barn were fully-charged on an average of one day in two throughout last winter. Probably not by much, but nevertheless it will be worth seeing what happens over there and what results I would get.

While we are on the subject, I bumped into Simon at LIDL today. He had a 12-volt water tank in his van and he took it out a while ago. He’s offered it to me so I’ll install that in the barn for now and see what happens.

I had an expensive day out shopping today and I blew a mammoth €35. And all on the usual stuff today – nothing exciting or extravagant. I don’t know where my money goes. And while I was in the Carrefour I had to give directions to this Dutch guy who was looking for a public convenience for his little girl. And it wasn’t until we’d been talking for a few minutes and he said “are you English? I think that your Dutch is excellent” that I realised that we had been talking in Dutch. Well – he might have been, and I was replying in Flemish – ik spreek een beetje Vlaams – but I’m really going to have a go at remembering some of the languages I used to be able to speak.

What got me thinking about languages too was that I had a visitor this evening – the guy off this building site who wanted to talk about solar panels. He studied in the Soviet Union round about the same time that I was driving buses there and I reckon that I can’t remember anything at all of all the Russian I used to speak.

I’ve also been tidying up here. I have some tie-wraps with screw-holes that will be ideal for a job that we are doing on Lieneke’s house. But can I hell find them and my place is just a total tip. It’s high time I exerted myself to make an effort – yet another job for when this perishing job on Lieneke’s house is finished

Tuesday 17th August 2010 – Tomorrow the World!

Do you remember that plant that I showed you a photograph of the other day – the one that had taken over the greenhouse? It’s actually a gherkin plant and here you can see it leaving the greenhouse and setting out for Montlucon.

At the rate that it’s going, it’ll get there before any UK Council Worker or British Rail porter will, that’s for sure, and who knows where it will head for next?

I’ve been gardening again today. Or at least, this afternoon.

We had done as much as we could on the roof today. The cement on the stone cladding on the side of the house hadn’t quite set and you can’t put too many stones on a cladded wall like this in one go, and the tiles that we had ordered for the roof hadn’t arrived.

We hadn’t had instructions from Lieneke about the inside of the lean-to either, and with Terry and Simon needing to price up some more material, we decided on a half-day on the roof.

I dug up the garlic and weeded the onion bed – that was the first thing. Strangely, only half the garlic had taken and the other half was in its single clove. The latter I replanted in one of the herb troughs to see what happens. But there’s nothing like enough garlic – I’ll need to bear that in mind.

And while weeding, I noticed the onions. Nothing like enough of them either but they are there all right.

I also tidied up all of the wood at the front of the barn – the left-over new stuff at least. I need a rainy day so that I can have the time to stack it correctly inside without having to worry about working on Lieneke’s roof. In fact I have tons of jobs to do really – let’s hope that this week will see us finish the roof.

You’ll notice a couple of little changes in the lean-to too. I’ve moved a couple of sheets of iron and now the end wall is totally exposed. I’ve fitted (at the top, at least) two demi-chevrons that will guide me in forming the top of the long wall.

There was a full drum of waste in the mixer when we knocked off and it was a lovely chalky mix and so I did a pile of pointing, including that corner of the other lean-to where I lived for a while and which was getting damp.

I cleaned out the mixer with stones again. built a couple of thin walls and poured the mixture in between. I hadn’t quite sealed the wall as you can see and so some of the stuff leaked out, but it’s progress all the same.

A solar shower (the summer sort-of came back today) and that was my lot.

The automatic water-heater switched on too – and a temperature of 45.5 degrees. This is looking quite optimistic.

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Sunday 15th August 2010 – The weather seems to have changed.

Last night the temperature in my room dropped below 20°C, the first time for ages. And that was with the windows closed too.

Outside, it’s been gradually falling little by little and it dropped as low as 9.1°C. A sure sign that winter is on its way. And it’s only mid-August too! A depressing thought.

I should have gone brocanting today but instead I stayed in. And now my little room looks quite tidy. What a way to spend a Sunday. But it was looking rather a tip in here and its not going to get any better what with doing this roof and so on. We are back on there tomorrow.

And that’s it, really. I’m blogging early as I want to have an early night. I need to keep my strength up.

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Friday 9th July 2010 – As I have said before ….

… if you are the kind of person who is always in a hurry or rushing around for appointments and the like then you don’t want to be living around here.

Not with leviathans like this roaming around the lanes round here anyway.

I encountered these two beasts on my way back from Commentry. The other side of Ronnet it was, and it wasn’t until we reached the Abbey of Bellaigues that they took the high road and I took the low road. About 6 miles of 25kph with nowhere to pass them. Ahhh well!

This morning I was awoken at 06:04 by a storm – howling winds and all that kind of thing. I was half-expecting torrential rain but when I finally crawled out of my stinking pit (09:40 – I was having a lie-in after my efforts on the roof) there wan’t a trace of anything.I surely can’t have dreamt it all?

So a couple of hours catching up on the computer and then off to Commentry for shopping. And nothing really interesting at all. But even more interesting – I’m trying to set up my water filters and can I elephants find any puzzolane. I asked inter alia at the local builders’ merchants and he had to look up in his catalogue before telling me that he didn’t have any. In case you are wondering what puzzolane is, it’s a certain type of volcanic lava – lightweight, porous and made of carbon and it’s a superb natural water filter.

In the Puy de Dome there are over 80 dormant volcanoes all of which have produced puzzolane, and not for nothing is this region littered with commercialised natural springs – Volvic being the prime example but there are many others. All the ground water is filtered through the natural puzzolane layers. So why can’t I get hold of any?

Back at Pooh Corner, having unloaded Caliburn, I made a desultory start on tidying up. But the weather clouded over and it looked like rain so grabbing hold of a few offcuts and odds-and-ends I’ve rigged up a kind of downspout system for one of my spare 203-litre water butts to catch the rain that might fall on the barn roof.

And badger me if, when I came in and read my messages, that Krys hadn’t written to me to suggest that I think about a way of collecting the rainwater that falls on the roof. Great Minds or Fools, Ms Stephenson?

And now it’s 00:30 – 7 hours after I fixed this downspout – and it’s rumbling away with thunder and flashing away with lightning and not a drop of rain has fallen. All my plants and I could do with a heavy downpour, especially through the night. I can’t wait to see the water cascade off the barn roof and into the water butt.

And another solar shower this evening. That’s 6 consecutive days. I was never this clean when I lived in my apartment in Brussels!

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Saturday 3rd July 2010 – Today was really decided for me.

You may remember that last night I was undecided about what to do today and so while musing over the problem with a coffee this morning, the phone rang. Nada had been wanting to come round and see Pooh Corner for a while and could she come this afternoon?

I told her to come this evening instead and I legged it into Commentry where I bought all of the stuff I needed to finish off the guttering, the stuff I needed to make the puzzolane water filter (except the puzzolane), a pile of stuff from the cheapo shop (including a load of those clip-together storage bins at €1 for 3) and then back here and a quick tidy up.

While the tidying up was in progress we had a huge thunderstorm that presented us with 5mm of rain and flattened my potatoes (but at least it soaked all of the plants which is a good thing) and then Nada came round for her visit.

This evening was the annual walk around Virlet to get to know the commune and Nada came with me for the walk – it turns out that she knows the Mayor’s wife. Going for a tramp in the woods was out of the question due to the thunderstorm and the fact that we wouldn’t have caught him anyway

Instead, we visited the highlights of the village – namely the church that blew down in the hurricane in 1999, the old house that is on the point of falling down, and the cemetery which is of course right in the dead centre of the village.

Virlet is of course a very healthy village – so much so that they employ a man to go round the cemetery at closing time to tell the deceased to go back to sleep. It’s a huge cemetery for such a small village and an American tourist said “do people die here often then?”
The cemetery keeper replied “no – just the once like everywhere else”
The wall is quite high too and our American visitor wanted to know why they bothered to put a wall around it. The keeper replied that it was because people were dying to get in.
And I was impressed with the cemetery keeper. He told me that his job carried a great deal of responsibility – he had 500 people under him.
One thing that he did try to tell me was to reserve my plot. There were no English people buried in there (not that I am English but let’s not spoil this story by introducing facts into it). He did say that there was a Scots grave in the cemetery. So I wandered off to have a look, and there it was – “Here lies Jock MacTavish, a loyal father and a devoted husband”. Now isn’t that just like the Scots to bury three men in one grave?

One of the issues with burials here is the cost – it isn’t cheap. You can now get burials done on the instalment plan – they bury your left arm the first month, the right arm the second month et cetera. And I did ask the keeper what happens if you miss an instalment. “Well”, he replied “we simply dig them up”.

On leaving the cemetery this old guy was struggling his best to catch up with us.
“How old are you?” asked the cemetery keeper
“I’m 102 years old” he replied
“Well, it’s hardly worth your while going home then, is it?”

Because of the inclement weather, they decided to abandon the idea of lighting up the bonfire. Instead, we all went into the village hall for drinks and cakes and to have a good chat. It’s just a shame that there weren’t more of us.

You can’t have a village fête without inviting Strawberry Moose. He is very popular and took advantage of the occasion to have a photo opportunity with some more new friends. He’s always up for that.

A little later we decided that regardless of the weather we would indeed all go outside and have a go at lighting the bonfire after all. Perhaps the wine played something of a part in this decision.

I tried to encourage the deputy mayoress to play the leading role in my new production of “Joan of Arc” but she wasn’t having it. Shame. Everyone else thought that it would be a good idea.

We had a good time talking and telling jokes, all that kind of thing. It really was a nice friendly gathering and represents the best of French village life – something that you probably won’t understand if you have never taken part in it. And at midnight, with dogs and children all long-since asleep we all called it a night.

Tomorrow I’m going to have to make up for this by painting the wood for next week and doing the gutttering. I shall have to get my finger out.

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Thursday 17th June 2010 – Today started off quite nicely …

… and so I heaved myself out of my stinking pit quite early in order to catch up on what I should have done yesterday.

And by the time I’d finished, I’d made substantial and real progress. Not only do we now have another trailer, I’ve even managed to put the bent one onto the new trailer, as you can see in the photo just here as I prepare to do a little moving about.

Taking the wheel off the bent trailer was comparatively straightforward and once I’d freed off the brakes on the new trailer (whose idea was it to leave it parked for 12 years with the handbrake on?) I could set about winching it out of the barn with the chain winch.

By the simple expedient of tying the body to the beams of the barn, the trailer came out of the barn without its body and I just shovelled up the debris and heaved it back into the barn again. I’ll tidy up another time.

All the loose wiring and gas pipes on the chassis were sorted out and then I had to position the trailer, swap the wheels around again and then winch the bent trailer onto the new trailer. I took all of the wheels off the bent trailer to stop it rolling around, put the good wheels and tyres onto the new chassis and then tied the bent trailer onto the new chassis so it won’t move at all.

That took me until 15:30 and I didn’t stop for lunch as the weather was changing and sure enough we had a torrential downpour. And with no trailerboard (mine was cannibalised for parts for the old trailer) I had to take the lighting board off the Sankey trailer – and that needed a total rewire. So I did all of that in the pouring rain. 15.5mm we’ve had, and it all fell in a four-hour spell this afternoon.

But soaking wet as I am (yet again) I can at least move the bent trailer and I have the other one to fetch my wood tomorrow for the barn roof, if the weather ever stops raining long enough for us to make a start.

I’ve always said I work much better under pressure and having to give Terry a hand to set his business up, I’ve accomplished far more this last three weeks back here that I ever would have done if I had been left to my own devices.

But I wish it would stop perishing raining.

Thursday 10th June 2010 – Look what I’m having for tea!

Yes, strawberries. The first of the year, and all grown with my own fair hands too in my own garden.

Unfortunately there aren’t not all that many. It looks as if the local wildlife has been helping itself to them but nevertheless there were five left, and these, together with some soya cream, is a sure sign that summer is here at last.

Or is it?

It was raining again this morning and although it stopped for several hours, at about 18:00 it started up again in earnest and it’s still chucking it down now.

A quick look inside the wheelbarrow will tell you everything that you need to know about the amount of rainfall that we’ve had this last couple of days. Remember that this was empty just a couple of days ago when we were shovelling all of these stones around.

Liz came round this morning with my beans and vegan cheese and that’s good news. There are also some tins of curry and so it’s back to my Saturday night ritual again. We had quite a chat and it was a shame that she had to go.

And after that I carried on with the tidying up outside. Now that I have a hardstanding (or a wetstanding, or a notwithstanding) I’m moving over there everything that was propped up against the side of the barn. In a couple of weeks we’ll be putting up a scaffolding against the barn in order to do the barn roof, and I’ve been waiting years to do this. For many reasons actually – not the least being that I can finally move the solar panels off the roof of the Luton transit and onto the wall of the barn.

I’m tidying up a few other things too so I’m clearly not well. And when it clouded over at about 17:50 I called it a day and came up here. In fact I crashed out for half an hour.

In other news, I see that the new Conservative Government is planning to remodel University education. The Minister has considered several University models, including major part-time suppliers, ans has decided to try to remodel things on the lines of that well-known supplier of distance education, the … errrr … University of London.

As I said a few years ago when they set up a committee to consider part-time degree education and it consisted of staff from that other well-known supplier of distance education the … errrr … North Staffordshire University, the days of the Open University having any kind of significance and playing any kind of major role in shaping Government policy, these are long-gone. The OU has lost its relevance and has received yet another kick in the teeth.

Increasing prices and tuition fees brought an angry response from the National Union of Students. But of course they are a small-minded militant body made up of kids still wet behind the ears. So where was the response from the Open University Students’ Association – that body of 180,000 grown-up and mature students? The answer is of course “nowhere”. Either no-one considered the OUSA to have any relevance (which is a damning indictment of OUSA) or else whatever OUSA did say was considered to be not worth reporting (which is a damning indictment of OUSA).

It seems that OUSA has outlived its relevance too. But we all knew that, and a long time ago. A couple of years ago when the Labour government considered the idea of increasing costs and reducing subsidies, the response of that grown-up and august body of mature students was to … errr … sign a petition! I mean! We did things like that in Primary School when we were 10 and 11. Was that really the best that OUSA could come up with?

I once worked in a multinational multi-government organisation and we used to receive petitions from all kinds of people in all walks of life, on a regular basis. And do you know what we did with the petitions that we received? Well, we never bought any toilet paper, that’s for sure. That’s how petitions are treated in organisations such as that.

And the strawberries were delicious!

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Tuesday 8th June 2010 – How about this for bizarre?

As you know, I spend some of the winter cutting down trees for firewood and the first that I cut was the old tree just in front of the house that looked like it had died (and a good move it was to do that too as it immediately revitalised itself and went berserk)

.The wood that I cut down I chopped into lengths and stacked neatly (for once) at the side of the barn to dry out ready to burn.

However, one of the the lengths sprouted a branch or two so I reckoned that there must have been tons of sap still in it. But not at all. In fact when I tried to move it during my tidy-up session I noticed that it had pushed some roots out and grown back into the soil.

Now THAT‘s unusual.

But I’ve not done much in the way of tidying up for the simple reason that the weather has been against me. I did a machine load of washing yesterday and it was such a beautiful evening last night that I left it out to dry. So of course we’ve had nothing but torrential downpours all day and everything is thoroughly soaking. I spent the morning computing and after lunch did some of the moving around but dodging the showers was difficult and in the end I made a coffee and came up here to watch a film.

But there’s been so much rain that my hardstanding is like a squelchy sponge again. I was hoping that it would stay dry to give me a chance to tamp it down. And ironically the puddle that was soaking wet and into which I spent a day embedding rocks into it, that’s currently the driest and most stable part of it now. That’s weird too.

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Monday 7th June 2010 – I had another gardening day today.

You can see in the photo that I’ve rediscovered my bean and pea frame, so seeing as I now have three pea plants and four bean plants ( and isn’t that disappointing?) I put it up so that they will have something to cling to. When I saw the lack of beans and peas this year then I needed something to cling to for support, but I hadn’t recovered the frame then.

The radishes I planted a couple of weeks ago are going berserk and the spinach is now coming up. maybe things are putting in a late burst.

I’ve sown another row of carrots in place too, and transplanted the first showing of cauliflower and the second showing of broccoli. The cucumber plants I planted in the small cloche and to do that I had to take out the trays of herbs. They are on the window ledge of the house for now.

You might recall that I brought my herbs back from Brussels and planted them in a trough. I had some more in small pots and so I made up another trough and those herbs have gone into there. I’m putting them in troughs so that in winter I can take them indoors.

The mint I left in a pot and planted the pot in the trough for the simple reason that mint goes berserk and spreads everywhere if you don’t contain it.

The soil in the trough by the way is 50% compost from LIDL, 50% soil from when I dug out the earth beichstuhl and a dusting of wood ashes to give it all some potash.

So that was the afternoon. In the morning I was computing and before lunch I did a load of washing – the first for ages down here but you might recall that I did a few loads in Brussels when I was there and Liz kindly did a few loads for me while I was helping Terry.

This evening was the Anglo-French Group. Mark prepared a good game for us and we had some fun. We were somewhat divided into two groups though – some of us working upstairs and the others talking and smoking downstairs.

So tomorrow now that the garden is done for this week I’ll carry on moving stuff from the side of the barn. I want to get all of that stuff moved as soon as possible.

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Friday 4th June 2010 – I needn’t have worried …

… about getting up for 09:00. At about 06:15 some kind of rodent on the roof decided to try to scratch away at the tiles to try to get in. And so there I was, lying in bed quietly reading a book until 08:00 when the alarm went off.

Then it was off to Marianne’s and off to pick up the Foreign-language library. The people in whose shed it’s stored are selling up and so the library needed to be moved. Marianne had the key but when we got there, the owners of the shed had put this huge whacking great padlock on the door.

It totally amazes me the people who spend probably tens of quid on these enormous heavy-duty anti-theft anti-everything padlocks, and then use a hasp and staple that is fixed to the door and doorframe with woodscrews rather than coachbolts. So 30 seconds later we were inside the shed and moving the books.

We’ve put the books in the garage of a neighbour for now – a little old lady in her 80s. This lady was telling us how her garden had gone to pot and she had had some professionals in to sort it out for her but there was lots that needed doing. I mentioned that I had a friend in the business and described what he did.
“Petit bricolage? Isn’t that the kind of person that goes around doing little odd jobs for single elderly ladies?” she enquired.
I can see that I’m going to have to start charging Terry 10% commission! But seriously the best way to develop the kind of business that Terry is doing is to talk, talk and talk.

Marianne made lunch and then I came back here and ran Caliburn a few times up and down the lane at the back to tamp down the track. But it was far too hot to work – it’s been a gorgeous day – and so I stayed up here until 17:00.

I’ve now started to move stuff from around the outside of the barn and put it on the hardstanding. I need to make the space to put the scaffolding for when we do the roof. That’s going to be pretty imminent.

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Thursday 3rd June 2010 – I went outside this morning …

… and had another look at that damp patch. I went to have a dance in it and sure enough a whole pile of water welled up in my footprints.

I have mixed emotions about this. I’d like the new hardstanding to dry out as quickly as possible so that I can use it, but on the other hand I can see the advantages of digging out my own well.

So I dunno. Bernard reckons that it might be 8 days before it’s safe to drive onto the hardstanding – to give it time to settle and to tamp down, but this damp patch he reckons will take much longer. I’ll be interested to see what it’s like in a fortnight.

But I was right about this morning. I had a nice leisurely breakfast, did some work on the computer and spent most of the afternoon in the garden planting. I’ve more veg coming through but it’s still weeks behind down there. Mind you we had a good hot windy day with the wind now blowing from the east. I’ve done some tidying up as well and I can now get into the barn for a change.

And talking of the barn it won’t be long before we start on that roof. At least all of the stuff that’s lying around in the way can be put on the new hardstanding.

Tomorrow I have an early start. I need to be in Pionsat at …errrr…. 09:00. No idea how I’m going to manage that.

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Sunday 30th May – Sunday is a day of rest …

… as you know. There are no alarm clocks, no nothing. And I lie in bed until whatever time I like and I don’t care.

So what the heck was going on that I was wide awake and sitting up in bed reading a book at … errr … 06:52 this morning? And by the time 08:00 had come I had eaten my breakfast, drunk my coffee and watched an episode of Up Pompeii.

First thing I did though was to stick my head out of the window and take a photo of the work that was done yesterday. And it’s even more impressive from up here. They did a really good job and I can’t wait for it to be finished.

Once I had taken the pic I made a start on a big mega-tidy-up here in the attic. It looks completely different now up here with everything where it ought to be (more or less) and it’s much more like a living room.

And do you know – that was that. I crashed out for an hour after lunch (no surprise there) and did nothing else of any importance. Apart from talking to Helena that is. She was the girlfriend of a mate of mine at school and we kept in a little bit of touch after that and then we disappeared. I briefly encountered her on a schoolmates website and we have now met up on a social networking site.

In other news, the nuclear talks in New York broke up with the contributors agreeing to a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. One group of people has objected and decided to oppose the idea. let me ask you to guess which group?

Hamas? The Iranians?

No – the Zionists! Now of course the Zionists refuse to admit that they have nuclear weapons (although it’s an open secret that they do and that they were built in conjuction with white racist South Africa) but ask yourself this – if they didn’t have any nuclear weapons, why would they be objecting to a nuclear-free zone? And while Iran agrees to suspend any question of nuclear activity there if everyone else does the same, then now tell me who it is that is the REAL obstacle to peace in the Middle East?

Yes, it’s high time that the west stops this absurd and illogical defence of the Zionists at any costs and starts to concentrate its activities on the Muslems, Jews and Christians that the Zionists are massacring. If the west pulled its support of the Zionists there would be peace in the Middle East inside a month as they would be forced to negotiate with their neighbours.

And in other Middle East news, there’s an aid convoy sailing from Cyprus to Gaza bringing in urgent supplies. The UN reckons that the Palestinians (many of whom are women and children and many of whom are Christians) need about 60,000 tonnes of supplies per week to survive and the Zionists permit only 15,000 tonnes – and no building materials so that the Palestinians cannot rebuild the houses that the Zionists demolish with bulldozers. So an aid convoy is setting off with supplies. And the Zionists have vowed to stop it.

This of course raises two important questions.
Firstly – have the Zionists forgotten already about the ships that brought them and their supplies to Palestine in 1947 and 1948 and which led to start of all the trouble in Palestine? Surely not, the hypocrites.
And secondly, how does the treatment that the Zionists are handing out to the Palestinians differ from how the Nazis treated the Jews back in the 1930s and 1940s. We haven’t got as far as ;ass murder yet, but we have the economic blockade and if you have been keeping up with the news just recently we are having the ethnic cleansing and the deportations. The Zionist treatment of the Palestinians has been described as a “pogrom” – and by a Zionist politician too!

When is the west going to put a stop to it?

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Friday 30th April 2010 – Well I was wrong about the rain.

We didn’t get 10mm at all. In fact we had a mere 9.5mm, most of which came around midday. So I nipped downstairs and uncovered everything so that everywhere can get wet. I uncovered the cloche but forgot to cover up the thermometer in there and now that’s wet too – I’ll have to see about drying it oit.

I stayed in, did some work on the computer in the morning and then started the unpacking. I’ve managed to put it (or most of it, anyway) away and I can actually see the floor no without walking on anything.

With the weather having cooled down I went to training tonight and had a good run around for an hour and 15 minutes. It’s totally worn me out, which is a good sign. It shows that things are doing something. And I managed to have a shower too, which is another good reason for going. Clean bedding tonight!

But no footy on Saturday – it’s Labour Day! They don’t even think that the shops will be open either. That will be an inconvenience. On Sunday the 3rd XI are playing Effiat in a right bottom-of-the-table encounter.

But right now, I’m off to bed before I fall asleeep.

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EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality