Tag Archives: radio anglais

Monday 27th April 2015 – THE WEATHER …

… was much improved today. We only had 30.5mm of rain.

And after everything that I have said just recently about good nights’ sleeps, I was awake at 06:30 and I couldn’t go back to sleep. In the end I got up (before the alarm too) and vegetated on the sofa for a bit.

Mind you, I’d been on my travels again during the night. I can’t remember who I was with but she was tall and quite well-dressed in a flowing black skirt. We were watching the Grand National and had to cross the course in front of the horses (I had memories of suffragettes and being trampled to death by the King’s horse) and they obligingly split into two packs to have a better go at getting us.

After the horses passed, we climbed into the car to head around the course and into town but we must have missed the course and instead ended up straight in the town. Parking the car, we had to find a cafe so we walked through an old granite building, formerly a cinema but now let into little shop units, and as we passed down the stairs we commented that this would make a good little theatre area.

We were having a coffee on some tables at the side of the street and there in a cafe just a couple of doors down was someone who, in real life, I haven’t given any thought at all but who has appeared a few times just recently in my nocturnal voyages. So what is going on here then? This is the biggest mystery in all of this.

At Radio Tartasse, Violette forgot that we were coming so I had to phone her, and we ended up running quite late. But a coffee afterwards warmed us up and then I came home.

Back here, I’ve done nothing. The weather is cold and miserable and I ended up crashing out for a couple of hours. This led to a very late (like 17:00) lunch and so I’ve had no evening meal again.

I did manage to shin up the scaffolding in the middle of the torrential downpour in order to check on the guttering. Mind you, judging by the speed at which the water was cascading out of the overflow in the waterbutts, everything must have been working fine.

And indeed it was. Everything was nicely aligned and all of the water was flowing right where it ought to flow. I can glue it all together now whenever the weather allows.

Now I’m off to bed to see if I can summon up a better morale and more incentive for tomorrow.

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Sunday 27th April 2015 – I WAS ON MY TRAVELS …

… last night too.

If you’ve ever seen the film Smokey and the Bandit you’ll remember the scene where the car transporter rips the door off the Sheriff’s car. Now I was at a similar site in an area of similar vegetation – a flat-bottomed river valley with a river (as you might expect), a road, a strip of vegetation of about 100 metres width and then a steep slope upwards with a winding side-road going up to the top.

I was here with a small army – a hundred or so men – and we were the rearguard installed here to hold off an advancing army. Every now and again, a lorry would come down the hill, take away more of our personal possessions, until in the end we had just the clothes that we were wearing, and some weapons and that was that.

What surprised me about all of this was the silence. I’ve never been anywhere or in any situation where there was such a complete and utter silence as we waited for the enemy to show up.

All of this goes to show just how deep my sleeping is and how comfortable my new bed is.

My lie-in lasted until about 08:50, which was nothing like enough as far as I am concerned, but again, I must have had a good night’s sleep.

After breakfast, I made a start on writing the radio programmes for the next series of programmes but my heart wasn’t really in it and I didn’t last long. I ended up watching Bala and TNS on the laptop and doing some more editing of old radio shows to extract more soundbytes.

So that was my Sunday – apart from the rain of course. 33mm fell during the course of the day and as I said yesterday, the big benefit of having the bedroom is that I can’t hear the rain falling on the roof when I’m in bed, like I could when asleep on the sofa bed in the attic. That’s definitely an improvement.

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Saturday 25th April 2015 – IT RAINED DURING THE NIGHT

And here’s an added advantage about having a separate bedroom on the first floor, and that is that the rain cascading down on the roof doesn’t awaken me. And that’s certainly a bonus. I slept right through it, and as a result, the washing that I did the other day and which was hanging up outside had an unexpected rinse.

Now I’ll have to wait for another week or so for it to dry.

The 5mm of rain that we had filled up the water butts, and I do have to say that I’m catching much more water than I ever did before, since I repositioned the guttering the other day. That’s good news.

During the night I was on the move again – in a 2-door Cortina MkV saloon although while the main part of the body was MkV cortina, the roof was off a BMW 1602 or 2002 and the car didn’t ‘arf look weird. Being yellow and black, like my old taxis, didn’t help matters too much either.

I was in Crewe, driving up Market Street (before they closed it off) from Badger Avenue past the old Co-op place there and the left-hand lane was colsed off with crowd barriers, meaning that we were having some exciting incidents with cars and buses coming round the corner by the Grand Junction pub. There was a fire or something over on the left at the back of the Old Vine pub Right at the top of the hill (by now, in Stoke on Trent) I turned left and drove down a dead-end road onto an area of demolished houses and below me I could see a big factory with clouds of smoke billowing out of it. Chatting to some people, it turned out that the factory was burning a pile of wood and cardboard dummies as it didn’t need them and had no place to store them, and a group of people were heading off on foot down an old back-entry to go down to the factory for a closer look.

After another good night’s sleep and breakfast, I spent the day in the house and I’ve hardly been out. I’ve had a football day, watching Watford win promotion to the Premier leaguen by beating Brighton, and Barnet winning promotion to the Football League by beating Gateshead.

As well as that, I’ve been hacking bits more out of old radio programmes to make up some more soundbytes and I’m building up a nice library of them to slip into the radio programmes every now and again.

Now, I’m off for an early night and a long lie-in. I intend to make the most of my new bed and bedroom.

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Friday 24th April 2015 – APART FROM HAVING …

… to leave my nice comfortable bed for obvious reasons during the night, I had the best night’s sleep that I have had for a century. It was wonderful.

I was out like a light, and was off on my travels too. I was at a Gothic cathedral somewhere in the UK auditioning singers to choose one to front a huge concert and trade show. And after having listened to all of them, I had the very disappointing task of announcing that there wasn’t one of them sufficiently good to be given the task. That was not a popular decision by any means.

From there, I went with Liz to the Trade Show. It was in a new all-glass exhibition hall and was on several floors, and packed to the gunwhales with people. We spent our time wandering around the mezzanine between the first and second floor looking at all the technology stands.

After breakfast I finished off the rock music radio programmes for the month of June, and then attacked the shower room. I’ve assembled the stud wall and screwed it into position. And I was right too – it’s much more solid than its predecessor.

I had to cut down a sheet of plasterboard while it was standing upright. I didn’t think that this would be very easy at all, to say the least, but clamping a long and heavy straight-edge in position where I wanted to cut – that simplified the task considerably and it’s not all that much more difficult than cutting it when its lying down on its back. It’s amazing how your technique adjusts itself when necessity is driving you forward.

So having screwed the first piece or two back on, I’ve made a start on constructing the new beichstuhl. This is going to be a permanent fixture instead of a “thunder box”, but the container can lift out and be taken downstairs to be emptied all the same.

I went to St Eloy for shopping this evening. There was no-one there whom I knew, and it was a comparatively cheap trip (apart from the fact that I treated myself to a couple of things in the “reduced” box).

And that is that. I’m off now for an early night in my lovely comfortable bed. It really is the business and I keep on sticking my head in there during the day, just to admire my handiwork.

That’s definitely a sign of contentment and, strange as it may seem to say it, I’m glad that I didn’t do it earlier as my technique a couple of years ago was nothing like what it is now. This is one of the reasons why I’ve dismantled the shower room and started again, and I do wish that I could restart the attic from scratch. Compared to the bedroom, the attic is something of a shambles.

I would love to do it all again.

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Thursday 23rd April 2015 – SO, HOW WAS IT?

My first night in my new bedroom, in my new bed with my new bedding?

The answer was that it was delicious.

It took me a while to settle in there. There was something of a smell of rubber from the new pillows and that took some getting used to, and then I found it difficult to find a position in which I was comfortable, but once I was in, I was away and slept right through until 09:00 – one of the best nights’ sleeps that I have ever had.

And I deserved it too. It was worth all of the expense and the hard work.

I managed eventually to crawl out of bed and after breakfast, I had – would you believe – a day off! Well, not quite a day off because I did a pile of radio stuff such as preparing another live concert for the rock programmes and also clipping bits out of old radio programmes so that I can make little insets to run within the rock programmes.

I’ve also done another machine of washing. This means that the washing is almost up-to-date now. There’s just a couple of items left to do but I’ll do this when I organise some clean clothes at the weekend.

I went and had another 15 minutes crashed out on the bed this evening and it was just as comfortable as in the night.

The one thing that I do appreciate about it all is that when I feel tired I can go to bed. There’s none of this 10 minutes or so tidying the sofa and making up the bed, or putting all of the bedding away in the morning. That’s the best thing about all of this.

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Wednesday 22nd April 2015 – HAVE A GUESS …

bed bedding mattress les guis virlet puy de dome france… where I’ll be sleeping tonight!

We now have acquired a mattress (which cost more than everything else in the bedroom combined), a new sheet, new pillows, new quilt, new mattress cover, new sheet and new pillowcases. And I shall be in there in a very short space of time.

I’ve even had a shower (5 litres of hot water at 69°C out of the home-made immersion heater that I use as a dump load for the excess solar energy and poured into the solar shower at 32°C and the result was gorgeous) and a shave too. I’ll be nice and clean in there.

And no alarm either. I’ll be sleeping in there until I awake and I don’t care if it’s not until lunchtime either.

Many thanks to Terry who helped me bring the mattress into the bedroom. It had to come in through the window and that was something to which I was not looking forward. But with Terry, we had done it in 2 minutes, and then spent two hours chatting and drinking coffee.

And that reminds me – talking of coffee – I had the percolator running again – and twice too. Once for me at lunchtime and once when Terry came round. The weather was such that I could certainly spare the electricity.

This morning, I had another go with the weedkiller and then I used the wood treatment to cover the stud wall that I had built the other day. At least – I’ve not built the wall but everything is cut and shaped, and it was the pieces that I covered in wood treatment.

So I’m off to bed in a minute, and tomorrow I’ll let you know how the bed is.

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Monday 20th April 2015 – WELL, I’M ALL SPENT UP NOW.

€790 in IKEA today, and I didn’t buy anything like what I was planning to do.

None of the kitchen worktops impressed me except for one – and that was a mere €399 per m², which is perhaps a little over the top and in any case, I don’t have the machinery to cut the marble.

I’ll have to see what’s on offer elsewhere.

But I now have my bed and a nice and expensive firm mattress, as well as a pile of new bedding, and a nice dark-brown deep-pile rug to go by the side of the bed. I’ve also bought some mirrors for the bedroom.

And that’s where all of my money has gone today. But it’s all good stuff anyway.

This morning I finally finished off everything for the rock music programmes that we’ll be recording next week, and I’m well on the way to doing the next month’s too.

Then it was off to pick up Liz and down to Gerzat to record the Radio Arverne sessions, and then we went to IKEA.

spectacular clouds st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceOn the way back, we had some spectacular clouds. This one over St Gervais really was impressive – much better than it looks in the photograph.

And the town over there, bathed in the sunlight, looked quite good too. All in all, it really was a beautiful evening to be out and about. We could do with a few more of these.

buds on apple trees les guis virlet puy de dome franceDown at Riom and Gerzat, the trees are already in full bloom, so I was quite impressed to see that the fruit trees that I have in buckets outside the front door are now blooming too.

It’s all of a couple of weeks late of course, as I have said already, but it’s still as beautiful as ever when it does arrive. It’s a sure sign that summer is on its way.

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Sunday 19th April 2015 – I HAD A NICE LIE-IN …

… this morning – but I nearly didn’t!

When I woke up, it wasn’t even 08:00 but if anyone really thinks that I am going to heave myself out of my stinking pit at that time of a morning on a Sunday, they are mistaken. I turned over and went back to sleep – and it was a much-more-respectable 10:30 when I finally awoke from the dead.

First job, after the usual offices, was to make another load of muesli, seeing as how the muesli drum was empty. For the benefit of my readers, it’s a pile of porridge oats with cornflakes and bran sticks mixed in. And then a bag of nuts, some trail mix (you know – the dried fruit, raisins, coconut shavings and the like), some dessicated coconut and anything else around here that looks nice. Sunflower seeds, sesame seeds and so on.

After breakfast, I finished off the live concert that I was engineering and I do have to say that it’s the best one yet. Tons of stuff has been hacked out, tons of stuff added in, and now that I’ve worked out how to overlap tracks and dub sound effects and so on, it comes out really well.

Working under pressure is a great way of pushing back the boundaries of knowledge with a computer program. When you know that a task is useful and that it seems logical for people to want to do it, then it’s sure to be there in a program somewhere and you need to spend the time to ferret it out.

When I first started to work with Audacity, the program that I use for sound engineering, I remember posting at length about how disappointed I was with it, and how I wished that I had the older program that we used in another lifetime – Polderbits – back again. But credit where credit is due. I’m becoming much more used to Audacity and each week I’m discovering more and more facilities and functions, and I’m now a quite happy little user of the product.

For lunch, I made some hummus again. A pile of chick peas, tahini, water, olive oil, turmeric, cumin and garlic. I remembered that I had fetched from Marianne’s an ancient electric stick-mixer and with that I made a hummus 10 times easier than I have ever made by hand.

The I sat down to watch the football. Next week is the final match of the Welsh Premier League season (already!) and Bangor are playing Rhyl. There cannot be two clubs anywhere in the footballing world that hate each other more than these two, and Rhyl will be going for the throat. They’ll do Bangor no favours whatever in their battle to avoid relegation. And Cefn Druids have an easier match against Carmarthen Town.

So today’s match against Prestatyn is vital to Bangor. Bangor are just two points ahead of the Druids and this is their match in hand, so they must get at least a point from this match to be safe. And of course, it’s being streamed live on the internet.

For once, the Bangor players remembered to turn up and while in the first half they were struggling a little (even conceding a penalty, but the Bangor keeper saved it) in the second half they came good and raced into a 3-0 lead before I’d even settled down.

Towards the end, Lee Beattie for Prestatyn scored what must be a contender for the Goal of the Decade – you won’t ever see a better goal than this one.

I was round at Liz and Terry’s later. We’re recording the Radio Arverne programmes tomorrow afternoon and so we had rehearsals to do. And Liz made a nice meal too.

Now I’m going to have an early night – I deserve it.

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Saturday 18th April 2015 – I WAS ON MY TRAVELS …

… again during the night.

It was supposed to be in Brussels but not the Brussels that I knew. However I was with Laurence and Roxanne and we were moving from an apartment to a big 1930s-type of semi-detached house in a cul-de-sac somewhere, a house that was situated down in the far corner. And I had a collection of Cortina Mk111 saloons, all different colours such as yellow, white, bronze and so on, and I used to leave a different one outside the house every day. From here, my friend (he who lives in Stoke on Trent) had to go home and I had to go with him to the edge of the city to put him on the correct road to the coast. Of course there was a huge traffic queue at the roundabout so we were there talking when someone came around the outside of the traffic on a kind-of motorcycle which was coughing and spluttering. So I made my excuses to my friend and went off to see if I could be of any help to this guy.

And on that note, I woke up – or rather, the alarm woke me up. And I’ve spent most of the day on the radio stuff. Finishing off the additional notes was not anything of a problem but I’m STILL doing the editing for the live concert and I’m nowhere near finished with that.

But it is a difficult one as all of the tracks are scattered about here and there and the lead-ins for one track are on the end of the previous one (something of a regular occurrence these days) so they have to be cut off and grafted into place. It’s going to take me for ever.

To give you an idea of how much interest the players of FC Pionsat St Hilaire have in their club, there were about half a dozen of them missing this evening – attending a party so I was told (and how true this is I really don’t know). And that’s with the club battling desperately to stay up in Division One. There were half a dozen from the 2nd XI out there tonight and young Vincent was in goal. They lost 4-0 to Sayat Argnat and while it looks like a heavy defeat, Pionsat had their moment with two shots that hit the woodwork, one kicked off the line and a couple that went close.

In fact, had Pionsat had a full team out there tonight, then they could have dealt with this opposition quite comfortably, but if the players themselves don’t care, why should I?

But credit where credit is due. Those players out there tonight played with fire and spirit and two or three of them, who probably never ever dreamt a year ago that they would be turning out in Division One, had the matches of their lives. So never mind the defeat – the performance is the thing and it was a good performance tonight. The only players who let down the team were the ones who couldn’t be bothered to turn up.

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Saturday 4th April 2014 – THAT’S MUCH MORE LIKE IT!

Indeed it is. I turned over this morning to look at the clock and … 09:00. “Badger this for a game of cowboys!” I told myself and curled back up underneath the quilt.

10:30 was when I finally heaved myself out of my stinking pit, and quite tight too. Nothing wrong with a good long lie-in, especially as I’m on a nice Spring break for Easter. No danger of me working on a Bank Holiday weekend!

Having said that however, it’s not all beer and skittles. Saturday isn’t officially a Bank Holiday and so seeing as I do have some work to do tht didn’t involve me leaving the settee, then after breakfast I set to work.

By the time the battery went flat in the laptop (this 5-hour battery life in my little Acer Aspire notebook is really the business) I’d written 5 weeks’ worth of radio programmes and a 1500-word text for the main topic on our Radio Anglais programmes.

Just a little finishing off and then I can start the rock music programmes, and that will be the radio organised. 5 weeks of programmes too – that takes us right up almost to the end of June. I need to forge ahead because I don’t know what the future might hold for me as yet. I briefly mentioned a while ago that there were a couple of things simmering away.

And that’s it. I’ve not set foot outside except to take the stats, and ask me if I care. The weather is miserable – it’s been 8 days since I’ve seen the sun and that’s quite depressing.

If I didn’t have so much to do around here, I’d have upped sticks and cleared off to the sunshine ages ago. Suffering from Cabin Fever in January is nothing new, but in early April it’s unthinkable.

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Monday 23rd March 2015 – THAT STRANGE ROUND GOLDEN THING …

. .. that I glimpsed in the sky yesterday was there for all of the day today. It was the nicest day of the year so far, beautiful and warm, and down by Chatelguyon all of the trees are now in blossom. Spring is definitely on its way, and a couple of warm sunny days will see it here too.

Liz and I were radioing today, starting off at Marcillat and Radio Tartasse. I was there at 09:30 to record the rock programmes and then Liz joined me for the information programmes that we do. Violette was back in charge of the studio today, and you could tell that she’s not quite with it following the passing of Henri.

I had to go to Pionsat on the way back to drop of Simon’s superb floorboard machine (and I gave him a bottle of wine for his trouble) but the boulangère who I wanted to see – she’s back from holiday now but of course Monday is her closing day, so that was a waste of time.

Liz made a salad for lunch and then we went down to Gerzat and Radio Arverne for the next round of programmes there – and it was as we dropped out of the mountains at Chatelguyon that we noticed the trees and the blossom.

We did 5 programmes for Radio Arverne – I need to start to get ahead for the summer or I’ll be catching up with muself if I’m not careful.

Back here, I crashed out for an hour or two. This is becoming something of a habit now.

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Sunday 22nd March 2015 – A STRANGE ROUND GOLDEN THING …

… appeared in the sky today. Only for a minute or so, but it was there nevertheless. I have a vague recollection of seeing some thing similar before, but it was so long ago now that I can’t be sure. but we did have rain and hailstones and probably the odd plague of locusts somewhere in the vicinity. I certainly didn’t want to leave my nice warm bed so it was no surprise that I didn’t crawl out until 10:30.

I’d been on my travels too during the night. I’d been talking with someone about a journey I was planning to take into Canada’s high Arctic and the map that I was showing to them was marked with various different routes. I then boarded a train that took me right up into the wilderness and there I was, clutching the giant pizza that I had brought with me as food supplies for the journey. However halfway along, we werre shuned into a spur line to let a freight train pass by heading south. I alighted to take a few photos of the freight train. My train suddenly took off without warning and I had to chase after it, scrambling aboard as best as I could. It took me ages to find my seat and when I did, I found that someone had eaten my pizza.

Back in the Land of the Living, I did some tidying up after breakfast. Not very much but some, and you can actually see the floor in one or two places now, which is astonishing around here, and then I did some editing of the radio programmes that we are going to record tomorrow. I had the fire on for an hour or so too – it was rather cold up here.

After a rather late lunch I went round to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse the programmes, and Liz cooked a lovely tea.

Back here, I’ve finally edited the Christmas Special that we recorded in December 2014 and you can hear it HERE.

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Saturday 7th March 2015 – THE EXPERIMENT …

… of leaving the fridge running through the night worked just fine. The voltage in the batteries dropped to a minimum of 12.47 volts, which is quite acceptable and so it will have another run-out tonight.

As I said yesterday, leaving it running for 24 hours per day is something that I do from about mid-May to mid-October. I’ve never had it running 24 hours so early in the year.

It was nice to have freezing cold orange juice, soya milk and soya yoghurt for breakfast. That was well-worth waiting for. And after breakfast I cracked on with the scripts for Radio Anglais. I’ve ended up doing 5 weeks for our recording session at the end of the month because, believe it or not, my services as a long-term live-in carer for the sick might once more be in demand, if an e-mail that I’ve received recently is anything to go by.

I also found time to tidy up in here and on the ground floor a little, and to empty and clean out the beichstuhl. Such exciting jobs that I have to do these days.

Cecile rang up too. Apparently she’s coming back on Thursday for a couple of days, so on Thursday I’ll be spending the afternoon away from here warming up her house for her.

And the football season has restarted after the winter break. Pionsat’s 2nd XI were playing Charensat and ran out 4-1 winners. And that despite playing with just 10 men. Yann, who has been out injured for about three years and has just made two or three 10-minute cameo appearances during that time, played a full match. Clearly not yet match-fit, still nevertheless it was good to see him play the full 90 minutes.

There was a new player too. Almost as old as I am and … errr … somewhat larger than I am. I was told that he had played for the club years ago but had come out of retirement to have another run-round. And despite his lack of match-fitness, it was quite evident from some of his touches that he had played at a much higher level than the Puy-de-Dome league Division 4. He’ll be an asset to the club when he finds his feet again.

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Tuesday 3rd March 2015 – I HAD A GOOD DAY …

… at work today, for a change. Although, as usual, you wouldn’t really notice.

I was up early enough and after breakfast had a good crack on at the laptop. As well as the Radio Anglais programmes, I’ve restarted work on my website again. I’ve done almost nothing on it during the winter but now Spring is here and it’s time to come out of hibernation and get a wiggle on

upper doors fitted wardrobe bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceIn the bedroom I spent some of the morning finishing off the second door on the upper part of the wardrobe, cutting out the lets for the hinges and fitting them, and then fitting the door handle and the magnetic catch. Once I’d done all of that, I could hang the door.

And then take the door off, file down part of the edges so that it would fit better and then rehang it.

Off to Caliburn next, to fetch another pack of floorboarding and bring that upstairs. Then I could make up a board out of seven planks, ready to cut down to make doors 3,4,5 and 6.

After lunch, I cut two strips 770mm wide out of the board that I had made. 770mm is the height of the upper doors (give or take a millimetre or two) and these two strips will form the four doors that I mentioned just now.

One of the strips I cut down to make two doors of exactly the right width for doors 3 and 4, and then fitted the reinforcing battens. I had to cut down some wood for the battens, and the table saw that I bought in Commentry a couple of months ago did the job expertly. In fact, I was running the electricity and power tools today (the circular saw, the belt sander and the table saw) until 18:40 today without significantly draining the batteries and I’m well pleased with that.

So now the two doors are ready to be hung tomorrow morning, and then I can crack on with cutting down doors 5 and 6. When they are done, there will be just door 7 to fit, and then the upper fascia panels and then I can varnish the wardrobe.

Tonight, I didn’t light a fire. 17.8°C in the attic it was, which was impressive for this time of year. I cooked tea on the single burner camping stove that I use for making coffee and as well as working perfectly (a good plan making these huge curries and packing them into individual portions – they don’t take much heating) it warmed up the place by 1°C.

On the subject of electricity, I noticed that at one stage we were having 42 amp-hours of surplus electricity. It didn’t last long but it pumped uop the heat in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load.

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Monday 2nd March 2015 – I DIDN’T GET …

… as much done as I wanted to today – but then I had quite an interruption round about lunchtime.

I struggled to get out of bed this morning, but nevertheless I cracked on with my stuff about Algeria and managed to finish that, at least, even though I was late going down to work.

I managed to fit all of the framework for the upper doors, although one piece had to be recut after it split while I was malleting it into position. All of that took much longer than I anticipated, due mainly to my having to cut a couple more fascia pieces as the ones that I had set aside were not strong enough.

Once that had been done, I went out to fetch a pile of floorboards from Caliburn and then made the first of the upper doors.

But this was when I noticed the smell of burning.

We had a brief patch of sun today and I ended up with 45 amp-hours of power going down the cables to the home-made 12-volt immersion heater. It seems that the connector on the positive cable wasn’t up to that and the connection was arcing out. I ended up having to cut it off, fit a new connector, cut off the insulation and then solder it using the new gas soldering gun that Terry bought me for Christmas.

My soldering is total rubbish as you know, but it has to be better than my crimping, so it seems. and it was then that I noticed that the thread appears to be stripped in the heater element. I had to remove the screw and do my best with a nut and bolt, but that’s not looking so good and I’m going to have to deal with this.

All in all, I ended up having lunch at about 16:30.

Back at work I carried on until 19:00. All of the hinges are in place but the door needs trimming down. That’s not the kind of thing that you can do when you are tired and so I’ll be dealing with that first thing tomorrow.

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