Tag Archives: Brico Depot

Friday 14th January 2011 – Ouch!

It’s been an expensive day today – and I didn’t go shopping either. GRRRR What did happen was that the postie came by today bearing some major bad news.

Firstly, when the solicitor charged with handling the sale of Reyers was asked to settle all of the outstanding Brussels taxation issues, well, indeed he did. But he did that on the 29th of September, the day that the cheque for the sale was cleared, and of course the property taxes on Expo were due on October 1st. And so I had a red reminder today for €1200 that I had not taken into account in my budget.

Secondly, a couple of years ago I went into the taxation office here and asked that the taxes that I am to pay on Les Guis and on Montaigut should be paid by direct debit instead of by demand. I told the tax office that I travel around a great deal and was afraid of missing a payment or two, and the tax office very kindly helped me to complete the forms.

And when I went into the tax office that time, I was brandishing around a tax d’habitation form. And so you can guess what has happened. Just how many brain cells do you need to have, to work out that if someone tells you that he travels around a great deal and is afraid of missing a payment or two, he means ALL HIS TAXES? And so that was another €733 that bit the dust.

While I was out, I reckoned that I may as well go and buy the plank that I need for making my false beam, the one that the electric cables will be running behind. So to St Gervais and the sawmill. And he will cut me a plank of the required width and thickness, but to a maximum of 4.15 metres. That’s no good. The room is 4.47 metres and the plank of course needs to be in one piece – it will look silly as a beam if it is in two pieces.

And so I shot off through the wilds to Montel-de-Gelat and the huge sawmill there. And I arrived about half an hour before closing time. They have planks in stock – 4.50 metres long by 18mm thick. Absolutely ideal for what I want. But the width – 150mm whereas I want 120mm ideally.
“Can you trim one down for me?”
“No”
“No? Why not?”
“Because this is the week when the cutting mill is closed for machine maintenance.We can do it for you next Friday”.

I’m clearly having no luck at all today.

wood pile lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceI said the other day that I would take a photo of the lean-to with all of the wood. It looked like this in November last year, and all through the following 12 months the pile increased in size as I flung more and more bits of wood in there.At one stage in the summer I couldn’t even get into the place. But anyway, you can see that it’s emptying out quite nicely.

The wall on the left is the eastern wall of the house and the kitchen will be built against this wall. The dark grey cylinder is the large gas bottle that will power the gas cooker. I’ll anchor it to the wall and drill through the wall in order to pass a gas pipe through. The other cylindrical object is an old immersion heater that Claude gave me to play with.

In the bedroom I did some more of the tongue-and-grooving but that came to a dead stop too as I ran out of 20mm insulation. I’ll have to go to Brico Depot tomorrow and buy a load of that so that I can carry on next week. There’s not much else I can be doing until I buy my plank.

-1

Wednesday 12th January 2011 – Well, we are still progressing …

plasterboard insulation bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome france… slow as it might be. You can see in the pic that I’ve fitted 2 of the strips to the front wall, all with the castellations nicely cut out, and the joints all properly filled in. It took me hours, as you might expect, as I don’t really do finicky, as I said yesterday.

I haven’t fitted the third strip as this depends on the 4500 x 100 plank that is to go as the false beam on the right-hand wall. I really need to go to the sawmill and sort that out, as well as picking up a pile of 40×27 laths.

What the plan is for tomorrow is to make a start on the ceiling – cutting some tongue-and-grooving to fit between the beams. I won’t be able to do much as I don’t have any 20mm insulation sheets. I forgot to get some last weekend at Brico Depot, but whatever I do will at least give you an idea of how it’s all going to work. As I say, slow progress but it’s progress all the same and It’s looking a little more optimistic here. I might even have a bedroom for the summer!

That is, of course, if we ever get any summer. For the last 2 days it’s poured down with rain more-or-less non-stop and working outside for the last half-hour before I knock off (the days are lengthening) is getting me soaked to the skin. But at least you can see a little improvement at the outside of the house – the place is slowly starting to look a little tidier. And there’s more space in the lean-to since I’ve been burning the wood in there. All in all, I’m feeling a little more optimistic.

-2

Saturday 8th January 2011 – I had to go …

…and lie down for an hour in a darkened room today.

Yes, I’ve been to order my windows for the bedroom and the bathroom. A whopping great €1100, for which they wanted a 50% deposit on the spot. I’ve never spent that much money in my life, and you should have seen the moths come flying out of my wallet when I unlocked it. These windows at Lapeyre are three times the price of Brico Depot windows but then again they are supposed to be 100 times better. I hope so.

Apart from that, there wasn’t much of any excitement happening in Montlucon. I’ve bought another pile of stuff that I need to carry on working in the bedroom and I did my monthly shopping. But I had a huge GRRRRR at the Auchan. I have €8:50 in credit on my card there so I asked the girl to cash it up – but having checked me out she then forgot to do it and if I’m not careful I’m going to lose this money. I only have until the end of the month to claim it.

At Brico Depot someone from a florist’s left a note on Caliburn for me to go round there to chat to them – one assumes about solar panels and the like. But there was no-one at home so I dunno what that was all about. Next stop was the swimming baths at Nerys-les-Hughes where I spent most of my hour in the water watching half a dozen kids aged about 9 or 10 having a load of fun on a huge foam-rubber raft-type of affair. It’s a long time since I’ve seen kids have so much fun without any adults moaning at them.

I was told that tonight there was to be a football match at Pionsat – one of the matches that was postponed from December. But the place was in total darkness – apparently the game has been re-rearranged for tomorrow. But there were lights on at Marcillat. Their first team had a game and so I wandered off up there for a couple of hours. A Promotion League match this was. That’s about one division higher that Pionsat’s 1st XI but in all seriousness Pionsat’s 3rd XI could have stuffed rhe both of them – at the same time. The standard was pretty dire.

But you can see that I’m slowly emerging from my winter hibernation – I’m getting ready for footy again.

-1

Wednesday 22nd December 2010 – WHAT A SHAMBLES!

This recording session at Radio Tartasse was nothing but a shambles – it really was.

I can understand why it is that performers and other thespians and the like throw tantrums and have hysterics if they have studio staff like this to deal with.

Despite having told them on several occasions how the programme ought to be run they did it completely differently. They had us read out THE WHOLE of “Buying and Selling Property” in one swell foop with the idea that they would edit it into segments. 40-odd minutes of typed text!

Now it might seem logical to do that but there are several major disadvantages.

  1. you can’t physically read 40 minutes of documentation out loud without wanting to stop for breath, to clear your throat, to gather your wits (such as they are) and so on and so forth.
  2. after the first 15 minutes you become bored, your attention starts to wander, you miss your cues and the reading deteriorates rapidly
  3. Liz and I keep up a constant patter of repartee and ad-lib our way through much of our chats. And if I dare to say it, we do it very well. But after 15 minutes or so we are tired and confused and we don’t have the same spark or interaction and it spoils the show
  4. when it comes to ending our programme we finish off with a little impromptu chat. But they just want to cut it dead and it won’t work like that
  5. most importantly – if they want our topics “en bloc” and to cut them into segments themselves, how will we know when the topic is finished? How will we know when to prepare fresh stuff? I don’t intend to sit around on Sunday mornings writing stuff that won’t ever be used – I’ve enough to do. So suppose I decide not to do anything for a week or two and then find out that they’ve used up all the material?

No, it won’t work like that and I told them so, and I didn’t mince my words either.

It’s nothing but totally shambolic. The woman that does the technical stuff is a sham, and the old guy that does the organising – he’s a load of … errrr … rubbish.

So off to Montlucon to order my windows only to find that I’d forgotten the to bring the paper with the dimensions. And Terry, who had measured up “in case you forget” had also forgotten the measurements too. But I did buy the last 30 Brussels sprouts in the whole of France (a Christmas without sprouts is unthinkable) and in Brico Depot I had a most astonishing find – a beautiful faded-oak effect parquet flooring on special offer of about €8:00 per square metre. It’s gorgeous and just the thing for my bedroom, so I now have 18 metres of that downstairs and I wish that I had bought some more.

But an astonishing thing happened here while I was away. all day we had nothing but overcast gloomy foggy clouds that followed us around. Back in Pionsat this evening when we returned there was a clearish sky. But the statistics here – 100 amp-hours of solar energy, temperatures of 13 degrees, 12 degrees in my attic – told me that here while we had been away we had been bathed in glorious sunshine for much of the afternoon. And that is just so surprising.

But tomorrow, snow is forecast so we shall see.

-2

Saturday 11th December 2010 – I SPENT A FORTUNE TODAY …

… in the shops in Montlucon. Easily €600  reckon. And poor Caliburn creaked and groaned on the way home under the weight of 50 breeze blocks, loads of pine boards to do my wardrobe (and why is it that a 300mm pine board costs €5.75 yet a 600mm pine board costs … errrr … €12.15?), tons more insulation, a load of wire and trunking and (says he, hoping it does the job) a new wheel for his wheelbarrow.

Yes, forget your €15:00 in some shops and your €17.95 on the tool vans that come by, how about a Brico Depot special at €8:75? Much more like my kind of price.

But I had lots of time to spend all of this money as I was up and about at some ridiculous hour and was actually camped outside the door of the new Aldi in Montlucon before its 09:00 opening time. And that’s a change isn’t it? Normally I struggle to make my kitchen by 09:00!

>And it was a gorgeous day to be out as well. Not quite your Alpine winter day but as close as we can get and the solar panels here on the house racked up about 180 amp-hours of charge. That was quite welcome too. We’ve been struggling for a decent charge for the last few weeks and I’ve been on something of an economy drive as far as the electrical energy goes.

On the way home I managed to fit in a visit to the swimming pool at Neris-les-Bains. I didn’t stay long as it was perishing in there but I managed a decent soak and a good warm (not hot, unfortunately) shower so I feel all clean for a change – at least on the outside.

Tomorrow I’m told (for at Auchan I bumped into Michel from the footy club) that there might be some footy – Pionsat’s 2nd XI have a match at St Maurice and it might even be on – so I might even have an afternoon out.

I’m missing the footy. What with this weather there has been none for ages.

-1

Friday 10th December 2010 – I ALWAYS SEEM TO BE …

… talking about the weather just now.

And that’s because there’s such a lot of it. This morning when I woke up I noticed the beautiful clear blue skies. “Ahhh – a nice Alpine winter day” I mused, and hauled myself out of bed to see the ammeter run off the clock.

But no sooner had I arisen then the clouds blew themselves back in again and that was that. I lose count of how many days we’ve had like that now.

So as it wasn’t as cold as yesterday I spent the morning clearing out a pile of rubbish from Caliburn. If I wake up at anything like early I’ll be off to Montlucon for a pile of shopping including a load of stuff from Brico Depot. There’s tons of stuff that I need.

Once that was done (and still no satnav) I carried on emptying out the old roofing tiles from the bedroom. I’ve been up and down those steps like a yo-yo with probably 50 buckets or so and I reckon that another hour or so on Monday will see the job done. Once all of that is gone I can finish off the insulation and the plasterboarding instead of doing it bit by bit.

But that won’t be tomorrow – I’m shopping!

-1

Tuesday 7th December 2010 – I HAD A DAY OUT TODAY.

I was quietly drinking a coffee ready to go out and cut wood for this evening when Liz rang me. “Terry and I are on our way to Montlucon. Anything you want?”

Well, as it happens, this very morning I had been making a list of things that I want from Montlucon so I enquired “will you be going to Brico Depot?”
“Of course”
“Well, do you want an extra passenger?”
And so instead of working on my bedroom, I went to Montlucon instead.

I tried a couple of places but no wheel for Caliburn and I also bought a few useful things, including a small coffee pot thingy to fit on my little stove (€25 in the Auchan but only €6 in Gifi) but what was so depressing about the journey was that blasted flaming perishing Brico Depot was blasted flaming well closed for perishing stock taking.

So 30 kms there and 30 kms back for me (and add on another 20 kms each way for Liz and Terry) and the place was closed. So no extra insulation, no bits to finish off the wardrobe.

GRRRRRRRRR at Brico Depot!

But the temperature is crazy right now. It was a grey hazy day with just the odd burst of sun through the clouds but the temperature reached 15°C today. In the heat exchanger it reached 22.3°C. In a space of just about 36 hours the temperature has increased 20°C.

There’s clearly something wrong with this weather right now. But I’m not worrying about it. I didn’t get much sleep last night so I’m having an early night.

-3

Wednesday 1st December 2010 – THIS WEATHER DIDN’T IMPROVE ANY TODAY.

heavy snowfall les guis virlet puy de dome franceI woke up to find snow everywhere – a good 6 inches must have fallen through the night and the temperature stayed below zero all day.

I was getting low on water in the verandah so I had to hammer my way through the ice in the water butts – the tap was frozen solid. Definitely a good idea it was to fasten the top onto the butts with wing nuts rather than screws.

wardrobe bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter the customary chopping of a bucket load of wood to replenish the stocks up here I carried on with the wardrobe.

And I’m definitely sick of Brico Depot wood. The horizontals I made out of the left-over demi-chevrons from the roof – those that I bought from the sawmill – but the Brico Depot demi-chevrons I was using for the uprights – they just split and collapsed. It’s the sawmill in future for me for my wood.

Much of the wardrobe is done but I ran out of light and so I went into the barn and carried on tidying up the wood that used to be the laths off the barn roof. The long bits or those with decent ends I’m saving at the moment but there are also tons of short bits or broken-off bits. I moved a few bucket-loads of those down to the lean-to where I’m keeping the wood that I’m burning. I’ll cut those up tomorrow morning and add them to the pile.

Yes, tomorrow. I can’t see me going anywhere tomorrow. I’m properly snowed in here and there’s no sign of a snow plough.  

-1

Monday 6th September 2010 – I just KNEW …

… that it wouldn’t be THAT easy.

clermont ferrand puy de dome franceI’ve been all the way to Clermont Ferrand today about this perishing driving licence. And here’s a pic of part of the centre of the city with the Puy-de-Dome towering in the distance. I hope you like it.

So I got to the city early this morning (well, early for me, anyway), found a parking space, paid for three hours parking and picked up a nice thick book (on the Treaty of Yalta, in French if you must know) as I know what these Government departments are like

puy de dome franceAt the prefecture I took my ticket for the queue and was totally astonished to find that the number of people ahead of me in the queue is … errr … NONE – now that’s a first in any Civil Service department anywhere in the world. What a waste of all of this parking money that I’ve just spent!

And so the woman at the counter went through my paperwork, and suddenly came to a dead stop.

clermont ferrand puy de dome france“What’s this?” she said, brandishing a document that she had found.
“It’s my medical statement that I had done on Friday” I replied
“I can see that” she said, “but why have you had it done?”
So I explained slowly and gently that it was for a PSV and HGV driving licence.
“I can see that” she replied “but who told you to do it?”
“I understood that this was the procedure and no-one has told me any different” I replied
“Well, the doctor should certainly have told you different. He ought to know that for all new French commercial driving licences, whether for a new candidate or a transfer in from abroad, the medical is done here by our official doctor!”

clermont ferrand puy de dome franceSo I explained that I needed the licence, and an International one to boot, by the end of September. She retaliated by offering me a medical appointment in, if I heard her correctly, the year 2016.
Yes, it was too good to be true. I knew it would be.

But after a lengthy discussion she did in fact become quite helpful in her own way. She promised to do her best to have my medical certificate accepted. And if she failed, she would send my Belgian licence back to me to take to Canada, but she would “make sure” that I received an International Driving licence.

pope urban II clermont ferrand puy de dome franceNow having had years of promises made to me by all kinds of Civil Servants the world over, my bitter experience is to reserve judgement until I have the paperwork in hand. But it was really nice to find a French Civil Servant doing her best to deal with a difficulty that is not covered by the rules and regulations, and doing her best to think around corners and find a solution.

So after that I went for a wander around. I had paid for all this parking and I wasn’t going to waste it. And in any case I hardly know Clermont Ferrand, even though it’s the “county town” of the area where I live.

cathedral clermont ferrand puy de dome franceThe most important place to visit in Clermont Ferrand is the cathedral. I went inside and managed to take one photo, and then we had an announcement –
“it is now midday and the cathedral is closing until 14:00. Could all visitors make their way to the exits”.
Yes, even God has his two-hour lunch break here in France. Heaven help the sinners in the meantime.

I can’t be doing with this.

So  had a good wander around until 13:15 and then off to the Footy offices where they gave me some log-in details for the website so that I can see my programme. And I am indeed refereeing on Sunday as announced earlier.

Then to Brico Depot for some wood for Terry, followed by a stop off at the Carrefour at Riom for some shopping. But I didn’t do much as I was waylaid at the computer counter. I have a couple of printers here – the very old first-generation printer/scanner/copier that won’t work on Windoze Vista and so I have to copy it onto the old laptop to print it, and the little DJ540 that swallows expensive ink cartridges at an alarming rate. And I need a working printer to print out my refereeing stuff and stuff for the local history group, so I was pricing up another load of cartridges for theDJ540 when I was interrupted by a pile of Epson SX115 printer/scanner/photocopiers reduced on sale to just €49. And the ink for them is the cheapest on offer. So I bit the bullet and purchased one of the aforementioned.

At Liz and Terry’s I gave Terry his wood and inspected our new toy, the Ifor Williams trailer, which isn’t half a mega-beast and well-worth the money that we paid, and then back here to pull more caterpillars off my brassica – I’m in the middle of the second round of the cabbage-white infestation.

It was my turn to animate the Anglo-French group this evening and I had everyone discussing DiY tools and words that derive from them. It went down rather well.

And in other news, terrorists have attempted to bomb a Primary School packed with children, and an 8 year old boy discovered the primed and armed bomb, picked it up and took it into the classroom to show all of his classmates. The carnage that might have been caused can only be imagined.

Now where did this outrage take place? Iraq? Afghanistan? Well actually, it was in Antrim, Northern Ireland, which for those of you who are geographically-challenged, is in the UK. Of course it is rather ironic about how the UK is going to war to deal with “terrorists” who attack armed soldiers who are trained to fight back and to kill, so I carefully scrutinised the news report for the expressions of outrage, horror and revulsion from the British Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition, the B liar and assorted American politicians who have criticised Scotland’s “interaction” with one of that ilk, yet do you know what? There’s not a word!

And I wonder what they would have said if it had not been the white-skinned Paddy O’Reilly who had planted this device, but the brown-skinned Abdul Mohammed?

And I’m waiting for the aforementioned Paddy O’Reilly to be uncovered and to be named as someone with an interest in the Irish Republic, because I shall be eagerly awaiting the Anglo-American invasion of that country to sort out that nest of vipers that are sending foreign fighters abroad to spread their messages of extremism and hatred amongst innocent children.

But I am not holding my breath as it isn’t going to happen. The Brits and the Americans, and the Irish, and most of the other white-skinned westerners are the biggest bunches of hypocrites I have ever encountered.

It makes me sick.

-3

Friday 30th July 2010 – I’m making progress …

roof collapsed lean to floor les guis virlet puy de dome france… with this floor in the other lean-to. I’ve done about two thirds of it and the only reason that I stopped (it was 18:42 when I did) was that I had run out of the wood that I had bought.

It’s 25mm planking and I might even have some more in the barn – some of that cheap concrete shuttering that I bought from Brico Depot. I need to go and have a look.

But I won’t be doing all of the floor – I’ll be having a kind of ladder-type of stair so that I can get up here from inside rather than climbing up the fence and in through the old window.

One of the two heavy beams in the foreground is to replace the broken one in the middle of the picture and the other one is to attach to the wall on some hangers that are there. The third heavy beam is sort-of in position at the low edge of the roof.

Once the floor is done and the woodwork is in position I need to build up the far wall and the low wall (it was the low wall I was doing when I became ill – that was the one that collapsed and I repaired it up to floor level) and then I can start to think about a roof. I hope I have enough recycled plastic slates left over.

This morning Terry was round and we built up the scaffolding and took the tiles off the roof. After lunch we knocked part of the wall down to fit the horizontal beam extensions and then started on the chevrons. And I managed to drop a huge rock onto Terry’s hand – right onto his scar tissue – and he wasn’t impressed. But them I have told him a million times that he didn’t ought to be working downhill from me. But his response was that he prefers it. If I do something he can simply grab my leg and yank me off the scaffolding. Ahh well.

But this roof is a mess – nothing is straight and nothing is sound. It’s not possible to work in straight lines as the more you dig into it the more defects you find. Replacing a chevron, we discovered that it had been rotten for years and all of the surrounding wood had collapsed. A new chevron went in straight (as they do if you don’t buy them from Brico Depot) and then we had to put a broadener onto it when the wood that fits under the tiles promptly collapsed under the strain of the new wood. Instead of a broadener we should have replaced the voltige back to the next chevron, but where do you stop? What would happen if we were to discover that that chevron was rotten too?

The only solution as I have said before is to replace the entire roof and make everything new. Patching it like this isn’t really the solution as it won’t be long before the bugs that are creating the ominously-huge cavities in the old wood move house into the new wood and that lot all comes crashing down.

-4

Friday 2nd July 2010 – Up until about 21:00 this evening …

… the weather was magnificent. In fact it was far too magnificent to work.

solar panel mounting kwikstage scaffolding barn les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis morning we put up a small scaffolding at the southern end of the barn and while Terry was drilling and screwing into the wall for the mounting brackets I was sawing and cutting scaffolding pipe to make a framework to mount the solar panels that are on the roof of the Luton Transit.

I’ll be fitting them permanently onto this end of the barn along with the wind turbine that we took down from the north end of the barn.

But we were defeated by that most unusual phenomenon – overheating batteries. When they went flat in the Hitachi SDS drill (and what a good purchase that was!) they were too hot to take a charge. Mind you, it was only 37°C today – the hottest of the year.

guttering barn roof kwikstage scaffolding les guis virlet puy de dome franceNot to be outdone however we started on the guttering of the barn as you can see. I told Terry that there are four classes of people in France

  1. the peasants – the ones with the leaky roofs
  2. the lower class – the ones with roofs that don’t leak
  3. the middle class – the ones with guttering on their barn …

    4. “What’s the fourth class?” asked Terry

  4. “The ones with drains to take away the water!”

But having seen how dry the house walls have become since I put guttering up, then my barn will have it too. I’m sick and tired of being up to my neck in mud. But I’ll have to wait a bit for the drains though.

The chevrons are much too short for the roofing (I went for a long overhang) and so a fascia board is out of the question but they did have at Brico Depot yesterday some galvanised straps with the facility for a sliding attachment. If you bend the straps so that the sliders are at about 60° there’s still a good 9 inches or so on the straps and they fit nicely onto the chevrons and you can bolt the gutter mounts to them and they are then perfectly vertical.

We did what we could bearing in mind that we had no joints (moving the scaffolding out to give us clearance was fun) but by 15:00 it was no longer possible to work up there. The combination of a searing hot metal roof, blinding sunlight and tools too hot to touch made us call it a day.

I did a little some while later and then history was made by my not only having a solar shower  (and this LIDL garden shower thing needs some attention) but a solar shave as well. And no surprise – the water temperature was a phenomenal 46°C

We had a barbecue round at Clare’s tonight. Esther hosted it and very kindly invited me, and of course Strawberry Moose met some of his admirers. James and Julianna drew some good pictures of him too.

But by 21:00 we were having thunder and lightning and we even had some rain. But nothing like as much as we need. And right now the sky is a clear cloudless starry night promising much more sun for tomorrow. I have to go to Commentry to look for joints and downpipe and then it’s a toss-up as to whether I come back to do the guttering or go for a swim.

We shall see.

-7

Thursday 1st July 2010 – I mentioned yesterday …

roofing sheets barn roof les guis virlet puy de dome france… that one side of the barn roof is finished. And so, here’s a pic that I took this morning not long after I woke up.

It’s quite impressive this roofing stuff isn’t it?

I’ve been quite busy today, although it might not seem much like it. I started off with a little gardening and then went into Pionsat for 11:00 to meet Max the secretary of Pionsat’s football club who had to sign a document or two for me.

Then it was back to gardening again and everything that is going to be planted this year is now planted and that is that.

That took me until 13:10 when I went chaud-pied into Montlucon. First stop was LIDL as they were selling some more 12-volt LEDs and at €3.99 too – I bought a pile of them. And then to Brico Depot for the guttering, the nails and stuff. No downpipes and no joints (it’s a rather familiar lament isn’t it?) but tons of other stuff, including a pile of drawers (not THAT kind of drawers, Rhys!). Yes, here I am planning to build myself a fitted wardrobe and a fitted kitchen and there they were with some end-of-range drawer kit – deep 40mm ones at €3.50 (you can’t even buy the sliders for that) and deep 60mm ones at €5.00. I now have 8 of each which is impressive.

Following that was my test d’effort. They put me on a running walkway thing for 7 minutes and attached a load of electrodes to me. I ran about 2.5km in that time (and in that heat too – it’s been glorious today) and the verdict is “very good condition for his age”. I sound like a horse or an old Ford Cortina.

I’d missed the post by then and so I had to drive all the way to Clermont Ferrand to deliver my file to the Referees’ Association, taking in a visit to the Auchan on the way. And I can’t find my satnav now – another thing I’ve mislaid.

But the highlight of the day had to be in the doctor’s this afternoon. He was helping me fill in the medical form –
“Sex?” he asked
“Put down ‘yes’ for that” I replied.
“Errrr … I think they wan’t you to put down ‘M’ or ‘F’ there” said the doctor.
“Okay – put down ‘M’ then” I said. “It’s been years since I’ve had an ‘F'”.

-2

Monday 21st June 2010 – Sometimes when you do house clearances …

foot forward tandem bakfiets les guis virlet puy de dome france… you strike it lucky – although it’s not all that often. Most of the stuff that Kate had to dispose of had already been disposed but she did keep a couple of things back for me, including this magnificent “foot forward” tandem, for which I’m extremely grateful.

It’s a home-made effort made up of bits of bike cobbled together and although the idea and the design look sound enough, the workmanship is somewhat rudimentary and it needs finishing.

But what is extraordinary about it is that I’ve been looking for a bakfiets for years and having a good look at this, I can see that parts of it actually started out as a bakfiets and so it will be a comparatively easy task to convert it back.

I could be on to something here.

But the move was exciting in more ways than one. Due to Guillaume’s van having broken down I was asked if I could deliver Rebecca’s stuff to her. But a constant change of plan meant that the boxes and so on for her were in and out of the van on numerous occasions before Karl and Lou ended up taking them. For most people this constant change of plan wasn’t an issue but for one person, who wasn’t even involved in the move and who spent most of his time standing around and watching, it was a total crisis. If it had been anyone that I had known, he would have had a smack in the mouth long before we had finished. I dunno how people put up with behaviour like this.

So I took my leave of Kate, which was disappointing because I quite like her and I wish that I had got to know her better, and I went off with Karl and Lou to look at their house. It’s a nice little place in Lapeyrouse. we’re having a chantier there on Saturday to help progress the work

. At the moment they are living in a caravan with a huge awning and I can safely say that it is the first time ever that I have seen a caravan awning with a fitted kitchen. Definitely a step up from the days of the camp camp.

This afternoon after unloading Caliburn I did some gardening. I’ve planted out a few more plants and I’ve done some more succession sowing.

Those of you who have been following my adventures will know that all of the water consumed on the premises is from the rain that falls on the verandah. It drops down a pipe into a sump that catches the stones and heavy rubbish and then backs up into a pipe that goes through a mesh filter into a 203-litre water butt with a tap for water out. The tap is situated about 10cms off the bottom to allow anything that falls into the tank (sticks, stones, leaves etc) to sink to the bottom.

There’s another 203-litre water butt that is connected to it. Of course all water destined for human consumption is boiled beforehand.

But an examination of the water butts the other day showed that the water in the “in and out” water butt is not as clean as I would like it to be whereas the tank in parallel is spotlessly clean because nothing ever drops into it – it’s all fed in by the connector pipe which is at 10cms off the bottom of the other tank.

rainwater harvesting home made filter les guis virlet puy de dome franceThat situation can be altered by feeding into the rearmost tank and drawing the water out of the front tank and it’s a modification that I’ve had in mind for a while.

But at Brico Depot on Saturday they had the bits I needed and so I cleaned the mesh filter, cleaned out the pipework, swapped the lids over and routed the rainwater pipe into the rear tank.

The bits that drop into the water will stay on the floor of the rear tank and the front tank should stay quite clean.

But there are two other mods that I can do. I’m going to build an in-line filter and fill it with puzzolane, the volcanic lava rock that has impressive water-filtering capabilities, and seal the two tanks so that nothing can creep in underneath the lids.

And this morning I went to the medical centre at St Eloy les Mines for my medical for this refereeing lark. I passed pretty much although I have to go to Montlucon for a test d’effort and an ECG. But the doctor told me that he thinks that my blood pressure is up.
“Well, so would yours be if this weather has done to your garlic what it’s been doing to mine”. But having to have a tetanus injection is exciting. I was given a prescription to go to the chemist’s to buy the injection, and then I have to go back to see the nurse to get her to give it to me.

Tomorrow Terry has another engagement so I’m going to do Bill’s starter for him.

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Saturday 19th June 2010 – Now is the winter of our discount tents.

now is the winter of our discount tents camping exhibition montlucon allier franceWell, it was something like that that Shakespeare (or Bacon) wrote in “Richard II” – and quite right too.

If you click on the pic to enlarge it you’ll see exactly what the weather was like today – miserable, grey and overcast. And in a desperate attempt to drum up business the local sports shop in Montlucon was having a tent demonstration. I suppose the idea is that you go and have a look and choose the one that has let in the least water.

The end of season sales are going to be exciting stuff – all these shops having bought all of this summer and camping gear and no-one will have bought anything. There will be tons of stuff on offer.

I also went to the tyre fitters to have Caliburn’s new tyres fitted. And seeing that I’ve spent so much money in there this last week he let me off the puncture repair from the other day which was nice of him. But I’m not too impressed with the scrapyard at Durdat.
“Have you got any 15-inch wheels for a Ford Transit?”
“No we haven’t” replied the manager
“Not even on that one there?” I said, indicating a late-1980s Transit that was partly dismantled down in the corner but still had its 4 wheels on.
“No. Sorry”.
You can’t even give money away to people these days. It’s too much trouble for someone to go down the yard with a trolley jack and a wheel brace. Of course in the good old days before Health and Safety you could go down the yard yourself with a trolley jack and a wheel brace but Central Government has put paid to that.

It’s quite ironic really – they talk about saving natural resources and energy and so do all that they can to encourage recycling, and then another Government department comes along and does its best to stop you recycling anything. Car scrapyards has been one of the earliest forms of recycling and is sooo environmentally-friendly yet they are doing away with it so that you have to buy new stuff thatnks to the arm-twisting that the Auto Lobby applies to politicians. I spend a lot of time in scrapyards – many things that I use in my Renewable Energy projects are from old cars – 12-volt clocks, cables, fuse boxes and the like and I don’t really know what I want until I go down a yard and have a nosey around.

But I digress.

I had no plans to but anything in Brico Depot and so the bill of over €160 took me by surprise. But it’s all useful stuff, including the huge drum of wood-treatment for the new barn roof timbers, 4 sacks of cement in case we need it for the roof and three sacks of chalk for me to do the end wall.

I drove off from LIDL with my two cartons of orange juice on the bonnet of Caliburn and when I got to the swimming baths at Neris les Bains there was one still on. How about that?

And I’m nice and clean now for a change, and talking of change I’ll be changing the bedding too so that I can make the most of it. Tomorrow I was supposed to help Katie at the brocante but she’s called it off – apparently they’ve announced a torrential downpour all day. But so that I wouldn’t be lonely, Bill rang me up. His car has broken down and if it’s not a simple repair he will need me to tow him back from St Eloy les Mines tomorrow.

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Friday 18th June 2010 – One of the major advantages …

caliburn caravan chassis trailer les guis virlet puy de dome france… of having a trailer is that you can buy a huge load of wood all at one go and move it back home without any problems.

It might have cost a fortune in tyres but I shudder to think of how many loads to Brico Depot, at 70kms per round trip, I would have had to have made instead of just one trip to the sawmill at St Gervais d’Auvergne.

The wood is much, much better quality than at Brico Depot, and about 60% of the price too. Mind you, he cottoned on that he had underquoted me so I replied “well I did try to tell you the other day”. And as a reward he heaped on a few more demi-chevrons.

I’ve had good value from the sawmill and I’ll be going back there again.

The trailer pulled nicely with this load on too. Although the trip back was slower, Caliburn never struggled at all, not even going over the Font Nanaud.

Once I’d unloaded the trailer I had to take it back to Terry’s. They have finished with the scaffolding on that chantier and it needs collecting. I’m busy now until Tuesday so Terry will take the trailer round there and load it up and then either he can bring it here next time he’s passing or I can collect it next time I’m passing.

It’s a really useful idea having a trailer.

And the weather? Only 4.5mm of rain today and I’m running out of dry clothes.

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