Tag Archives: st eloy les mines

Saturday 30th June 2012 – IT’S POURING DOWN …

… with rain outside.

The first time we’ve had a really decent downpour for a few days, and you can see how much I’ve become embedded into the local agricultural way of life with my potager – looking forward to the rainstorm.

This morning I slept through the alarms for a change. I was having a nice dream about a former friend and his family and it’s a long time since I’ve had a really pleaant dream.

But anyway after breakfast I did some more work on the laptop and then went out shopping.

I’ve bought a few new toys too. LIDL was selling Brother PC label-makers a while ago and I was tempted at €20 but I didn’t bite. Anyway, they were reduced to €10 today and so I grabbed one.

I also met Rosemary and we went to Cheze where they were selling 510-litre water butts for an incredible €32. Rosemary wanted one, and I’ve decided to buy two of them.

What I shall be doing with mine is that when I take the scaffolding down after I’ve finished the wall of the lean-to, I am going to put up some guttering to catch the water off the lean-to roof and sink a large tank into the ground to catch it all.

But meanwhile I can link these two together and use them as settling tanks with the take-off for the subterranean tank about half-way up the side. That will still leave 250 litres of water at the bottom of each tank.

If I put a tap at the bottom of the first tank, then I can use the water in there (which will be pretty dirty) for watering the vegetable plots. That will help empty the dirt out of the tank.

But I’m getting more and more fed-up of Brico Depot.

We went for the guttering for Rosemary’s barn yesterday but what they had on offer was all badly-damaged rubbish sold by surly staff.

At Bricomarche in Commentry she paid a little more but got everything she wanted and in pristine condition too.

There was some stuff that I wanted too but Brico Depot don’t sell it. They suggested a work-around, but that would cost a fortune.

However, Cheze had exactly what I needed. They also had an inner tube for my wheelbarrow, that has saved me a fortune on a new wheel.

Tomorrow I’m off out with Marianne. She did tell me where we are going but I have forgotten. I suppose that I will find out soon enough.

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Friday 8th June 2012 – I WAS UP …

… this morning at 08:30.

That was surprising seeing as how it was well after 04:00 and starting to dawn when I went to bed, never mind to sleep.

What was the spur to my leaving the depths of my darkest pit was a phone call telling me that I was going to have a brief visit. I had a few things to do before then, tidying up being not the least of them either.

menat gorges de la sioule puy de dome franceAfter that, it was off to visit Rosemary. She’s had car issues and needed something sorted out at the garage, but didn’t understand what the guy there was telling her.

And so yours truly was summoned to appear …

Rosemary lives in one of the most beautiful parts of the Gorges de la Sioule and the view from the road up to her house is phenomenal – it’s well worth the price of the drive up to visit her.

But anyway, we sorted out her garage man and that part of the story ended happily ever after.

Seeing as I was out and about and I am going to be busy this weekend I nipped to LIDL in St Eloy-les-Mines and did some shopping for next week – no sense in me going out tomorrow if i’m out today.

This afternoon I steam-cleaned the kitchen area of the verandah. Well, some of it anyway. It was in a pretty sorry state.

But I think that I ought to spend some time in my busy schedule doing some kind of cleaning up. The place is looking unhealthy after my long absence just now.

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Saturday 2nd June 2012 – I FORGOT TO BLOG …

… before I went to bed last night, so I’ll make up for it right now while I have my Sunday breakfast coffee.

But then again, it wasn’t as if you missed anything important because I hadn’t done all that much to blog about.

We did of course have the usual sleep issues – the issues from which I always suffer whenever I’ve been away on a long journey, but nevertheless I did manage to tear myself out of my stinking pit and of the house and go into St Eloy-les-Mines for some food.

And it was just as well that I did that too because there wasn’t anything in the house worth eating.

After that, it was back on the sofa and that was that.

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Sunday 15th April 2012 – Here’s a good photo.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire montel villosanges puy de dome football league franceOr, at least, it would have been in the goalkeeper of the Chimps had been wearing a more visible kit and the weather had been so much better. It’s not every day that I’ve been able to catch a keeper in full flight.

The difference is that I’ve recently upgraded the memory cards that I use. I still have the cheap rubbish but I’ve spent some money buying two 4gb cards of the quickest writing speed available and while the difference between 1/250 of a second and 1/40 of a second might not be very much, it is enough when it really counts.

But it was a miserable day at the football. Cold, wet, grey and windy. But that’s enough about me. The weather was the same. Everyone was soaked to the skin, even the three spectators in the stand. The result was nothing to cheer about either. All in all, a bad weekend for the club.

In fact, this will be the last time that I see them this season. Matches next weekend are cancelled due to the General Election, and the following Tuesday evening I’m on my way. I hope that they can manage without me.

computer laptop external speaker mp3 player lidl puy de dome franceNow you might remember this thing. I’ve told you about it, but I haven’t shown you a pic of it. It’s the external speaker thing for the notebook, the one with the built-in battery. It also has a slot for a micro-SD card as I might have said, and in a flash of inspiration I remembered a mis-order that we had made a few years ago at the 7-Day Shop and ended up with a couple of 1gb micro-SD cards.

Much to my surprise I managed to find them amongst all of the rubbish here (and finding the missing blank 4gb full-size card as well) and so I recorded a pile  of music onto them. Did you know that you can fit about 35 albums onto a 1gb memory card if you record at 56kbs, by the way? Anyway, the machine reads the cards and plays the music, impressively too, I have to say. No menu, just one ofter the other, and it won’t recharge while it’s playing. Minor problems, seeing as it cost just €9:99 from LIDL. This will be coming with me on the ‘plane.

In other news, I lit the fire up here tonight, with the temperature a very damp and wet 13.6°C. I was debating about doing it, and then I remembered that it was Sunday night – pizza night – and I could cook the pizza and the garlic bread in the oven up here. And so I did. And with the wood having been up here for three months drying out, it burned a treat as well.

But it’s like flaming winter again here. 12.5mm of rain today. Whatever next? 

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Saturday 14th April 2012 – I’ve been busy today as well.

I managed to wake up with the alarm today, for a change. And an early breakfast too, for once. After that, I spent a lot of time working on a project that I’m doing for Dave at Hexham. Only problem with this though is that I’m struggling for creative inspiration at the moment. Margaret Thatcher once famously said “anyone can do a good day’s work when they feel like it. The key to success is to be able to do a good day’s work when you don’t feel like it” and I don’t disagree with those comments at all. I really need to summon up the inspiration from somewhere.

I’ve also started to make a list of things that I need to do before I go away. It’s going to be a flaming long list, that’s for sure. And it will certainly stop me feeling listless.

In St Eloy I bumped into Clare and Keith doing their shopping, even though I wasn’t there long and had a rather minimalist €23 shopping bill. Nothing special was on offer. Never mind.

Tonight, I was at the football watching Pionsat play the Chimps. And I’m not going to be talking about the match on here because I have a feeling that I shall be talking about it elsewhere.

maison ducros maymat rue de la poste pionsat puy de dome franceBut I did go to see the Maison Ducros in Pionsat, the building that I photographed the other day and about which there has been so much controversy just recently.

As you can see, there won’t be any more controversy about it now, is there? It’s a tragedy and it was all so unnecessary.

For an hour or so, I did manage to see some of the classic film Ben-Hur starring the famous Charlton Athletic, he of the cold dead hand. But never mind any of that, guess who was the stunt co-ordinator and second unit director? Yes, none other than our old friend who has featured in these pages on several occasions, the legendary Yakima Canutt. He gets about a bit, doesn’t he?

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Saturday 7th April 2012 – I managed to get out today

Yes – I made it into St Eloy for some shopping – such is the highlight of my life. Mind you, I spent a few bob. Another plant sale, and so I bought three soft fruit bushes – two redcurrants and one blueberry – a tray of 12 cauliflowers and a tray of 12 lettuce.

Another thing was that a few months ago LIDL had on sale a kind or remote speaker that looked like a mushroom. It takes a micro-SD card, but also there’s a small jack that fits into a small headphone socket and there’s also a USB connector for charging up the internal battery and running the sound system off a laptop computer. They were on sale for €12:99 and I was humming and hawing about one, but today they were reduced to €9:99 and so I bought one.

And honestly, I’m impressed with it. The sound is really good, much better than I expected. And I’m looking forward to trying it with a micro-SD card when I’m working somewhere. But the main reason for having it is that the phone that I bought in Canada takes a micro-SD card and so I bought a 16GB card, recorded all of my music onto it, and used the phone as a walkman-type of thing. I wasn’t impressed with the earphones though and so I can plug this speaker into the phone and listen to it like that.

And so back home, in between the phone calls, I planted the cauliflower, the fruit bushes and 6 of the lettuce. I’ll give the other lettuce to Liz on Monday for her to plant.

This morning though, I went through the magazine that I received in the post and made a list of potential radio programmes that I can do. There must be a good half-dozen that I can squeeze out of that. And then I finished the one that I was doing, adding a bit more stuff that I came across that was relevant, and finishing off the additional notes for June. I’m cracking on with this.

Another thing that I needed to do was to transform a few radio programmes from *.wav format to *.mp3 format. And it took ages to find a freeware utility to do it. I had all sorts of difficulties doing that.

Now here’s a thing. You may remember that a few weeks ago I bought a copy of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
and so I went to watch it tonight on my new TV. And what surprised me is that the list of languages for subtitles available on disc is English, French and Dutch, whereas the spoken languages available are English, French and …. errrrr …. Flemish. Now I have never seen that before. The difference in language between Dutch and Flemish is far, far less than, say, French and Québecois, and usually a film company will go with either Dutch or Flemish – confident that those who know one will not notice the difference in the other – but to have them available as a mixed but exclusive option like this is totally bizarre. I’ve a good mind next time to listen to it in Flemish but read the Dutch subtitles and to see if I can spot the difference.

Ja, zeker!

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Saturday 31st March 2012 – WELL, I’VE SEEN SOME …

… bad football matches in my time, but I was totally taken aback by the one that I saw this evening.

Phone call at 19:00 to tell me that the floodlights at Pionsat hadn’t been fixed and so FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s game planned for this evening is to be played tomorrow afternoon instead.

That had me at a loose end this evening and with no footy at Marcillat-en-Combraille, a quick glance at the scheduling told me that there was a Regional Elite game at St Gervais d’Auvergne where the home team was to play Orcines.

I’d never seen a Regional Elite game and so I went for a wander down there, and to be quite honest I’m not sure that it was worth the effort.

St Gervais were pretty dire and Orcines weren’t much better, even though they had a couple of veterans playing up front who had clearly done this kind of thing at a much higher level a few years ago, although these days their zimmer frames were something of a danger to the other players on the field.

Add to that the fact that the St Gervais keeper was having a real off-day (he surely can’t play like that at this level each week, can he?) and a 3-0 victory for the visitors was almost a foregone conclusion.

After that I popped round to Liz and Terry’s where some ginger cake needed eating, and then back here.

This morning though, I had to write the text for two radio shows. It’s getting all exciting with a new series of programmes, but it’s much more work than I ever imagined it to be.

I popped into St Eloy-les-Mines for shopping, and excelled myself here.

6 small shrubs that will (I hope) grow into a hedge at the back of the raised beds, 6 rose bushes to make a hedge just outside here, some rosemary and thyme plants and a couple of lavender bushes. I can’t believe that I’m buying things like this.

It isn’t like me at all to buy flowers – I suppose that it is symbolic of how much I am becoming settled here.

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Saturday 24th March 2012 – JUST FOR ONCE …

FCPSH FC PIONSAT ST HILAIRE football club de foot lapeyrouse puy de dome france… The 2nd XI of FC Pionsat St Hilaire had a little bit or two of luck in a football match.

On several occasions Loubeyrat’s forwards broke clean through the centre of the Pionsat defence with only François to beat – a rather regular occurrence unfortunately – and twice they hit the woodwork and on a couple of other occasions they either put it wide or over the top.

They did actually score two goals, but so did FC Pionsat St Hilaire, and the match ended 2-2. It’s the first point that they have won in an age, and considering that Loubeyrat are second in the table this is a good result for Pionsat.

This morning though I was working up here – preparing for a radio programme or four. Doing the gardening bit and also the French expressions.

Tomorrow I have to do the main part of the programme – the information.

We’re running out of stuff to present but I collared Max at the football tonight. He’s the part-time secretary at a couple of mairies and he did promise me to let me have copies of the arretes prefectorials – the local by-laws.

But he keeps forgetting.

And so I have to keep on reminding him.

And seeing as it was so nice today not only did I have a solar shower (35.5°C and with a saucepan of hot water from the dump load thrown in to warm it up even more) I did a load of washing.

“Up-to-date” I hear you say, and it’s true that everything that was hanging around, as well as what needed washing from this last week has now been attended to, but of course I found some more stuff lying around that I had overlooked and so the pile hasn’t diminished any.

What was nice about the wash was that the temperature of the water was well over 70°C. What I did was to run part of the clothes through the wash at 70°C and then left them to soak while I went off to do a quick bit of shopping at St Eloy les Mines.

When I came back the water had of course cooled down and so I put the woolly jumpers in from winter and gave them a run round in the machine. That will have sorted them out.

But what with one thing or another there seems to be plenty of surplus energy around. I think that I’m going to have to switch the fridge on for 24 hours every day so that the batteries can run down a little overnight.

If it’s a miserable grey day I can always unplug it in the morning.

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Saturday 25th February 2012 – AFTER MY TRIUMPHS …

… of yesterday, I celebrated by doing … errr … badger all.

That’s right. A nice lazy days today.

And I reckoned that I deserved one after all of the hard work that I have put in over the last week or so on my presentation.

Mind you, I didn’t quite do nothing at all. In fact I managed a little (but not much) tidying up and later went down to St Eloy les Mines to do the shopping this afternoon around Carrefour and LIDL. A couple of hours out around the shops and even that wasn’t exciting because I met no-one whom I knew and didn’t buy anything out of the ordinary.

And back here, I carried on with the rest of my Day of Rest – and see if I care.

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Saturday 11th February 2012 – IT WAS COLD …

… this morning … "ohh what a surprise" – ed … 9.5°C or thereabouts up here at 10:00 am this morning.

But that really was no surprise really because at that moment outside it was a mere -12°C. This weather certainly is ridiculous.

Anyway a blazing wood fire had the temperature up to 18.5°C within an hour and that was the important bit.

I stayed in and cracked on with the presentation about the Trans-Labrador Highway that I’ll be doing for the village, and by 14:30 it was done.

At least the text and the graphics are. I just have to make a powerpoint presentation of the photos, and that won’t take too long.

From there I nipped into St Eloy-les-Mines and did some shopping. And I excelled myself. Some potatoes to cook in my oven, and also some more oven chips.

Saturday night might be curry night and it has been for as long as I can remember, but not when it’s cold enough outside that half a packet of frozen oven chips will stay frozen for a couple of days while I had the rest with a veggie burger and baked beans.

But in Carrefour there were some young kids running amok, nominally (but not actually) under the control of a young woman with earrings and piercings through the nose and chin and the like.

And when she spoke – yes, it was in English. and we came out here to keep away from people like that, snobs that we are. Jarspur and Hooray Henries one week, chavs the next week.

I picked my way delicately to Rosemary’s after that, eventually, and we had a good chat for a couple of hours.

and so back here where I have a big fire going and I’m not moving.

The word on the streets is that things shall warm up dramatically on Monday night. The bad news is that we shall be covered in snow though. If it’s not one thing it’s another.

And once you get started, you’ll be surprised at just how many other things there are.

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

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

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

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

So much for the winter break

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Saturday 21st January 2012 – AND A QUIET …

… day today.

Which, after the hectic weekend I had last weekend, is no surprise.

For most of the day I was writing the scripts for the next few months-worth of radio programmes.And Liz and I will be spending most of our time talking rubbish.

I know that that’s what we usually do, but this time we mean it.

I was at a loss as to what subject to choose, but then on Tuesday I received my Puy-de-Dôme en Mouvement magazine in which one of the topics was the Departement’s plan to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill.

Then on Thursday I received my monthly magazine from the Bank, in which one of the topics was donating unwanted goods to charities and good homes. A subject therefore immediately suggested itself

What with my thesis for my Open University Diploma in Pollution Control where I wrote about waste and landfills, I’m perfectly qualified to talk rubbish and many people have suggested that I’ve had plenty of practice over the years, so that was that.

I had an interruption at midday on Saturday for a shopping expedition to St Eloy-les-Mines where I spent nothing exceptional and bought nothing exciting, but that was that.

Saturday night was football.

Not at Pionsat as the Puy-de-Dôme football leagues are on a winter break – and doesn’t this weather make a mockery of the idea of a winter break? Six weeks with no footy in the Puy-de-Dôme with some of the mildest weather I have ever had in winter, and when the season restarts next weekend – just you watch _ we’ll be snowed in for a month!

Instead, I was at Marcillat just across the border in the Allier where their 1st XI took on Chantelle. This was a match that is nominally in a division one step higher than FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI but the standard of football in the Allier is total rubbish and it was an appalling match.

I’m not sure why I bothered.

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Saturday 14th January 2012 – SATURDAY IS SHOPPING DAY.

And so it was today.

But in a dramatic change to my usual habits, shopping day was a quick one-hour thrash down to St Eloy les Mines late in the afternoon just as it was starting to go dark.

Yes, I woke up this morning (-ish) to a beautiful bright blue clear sky and that meant “sod everything else – up on the roof!”.

I wasn’t intending to miss this unexpected stroke of fortune, even if it was freezing cold and everywhere was covered in ice that started to melt and soaked me to the skin again.

aspire recycled plastic roofing sheets lean to les guis virlet puy de dome franceIn not all that much time, comparatively speaking, I had another 6 rows of tiles on the roof. They aren’t particularly pretty but they are on, and that’s the bit that’s important. The weather was far too good to miss.

But do you like the IKEA bags? Very useful they are, for all kinds of purposes. And I have one fastened to the top of each ladder and they are used for holding the slates and nails so that I don’t have to keep on going down to the scaffolding.

And two ladders? The scaffolding is in two bays and each ladder is tied to the handrail of each bay. The difference with the metal planks that I have bought compared to the wooden planks of the other scaffolding is that the ladders don’t dig in – they slide across the metal.

So you need to tie them onto the scaffolding to stop them sliding off and of course if they are tied, then they can’t be moved from one bay to the next.

The other ladder hanging off the scaffolding is part of the side of the decorator’s platform that I have in the house. That came in useful when I was working lower down the roof – I could hook it over the uprights and work off the top but now I’m out of reach of it.

On the way to the shops I realised what a good buy this LIDL quilted overall was. In order to leave here I had to switch on the wipers on Caliburn in order to to clear the screen because they were frozen on to it – that was how cold it had been during rhe day, but I hadn’t noticed because I was curled up as snug as a bug in a rug in the quilted overall.

I’m well-impressed with that as well – almost impressed as I am with my galvanised steel dustbin in fact

But by the time that I was finished I was absolutely whacked and aching everywhere.

To such an extent that on the way back, when I noticed way across the valley that the floodlights were switched on at AS Marcillat’s football ground indicating that there was a match on tonight and that would ordinarily have been the signal for me to go over and watch, seeing as there was nothing on at FC Pionsat St Hilaire tonight, I was aching far too much to even consider it.

Instead, I just came in here and crashed out.

That’s a rare event too.

But then again, I said that I would pay for the effort that I’m putting in on this roof, so it’s not unexpected.

But now there are just three or so rows left to do, and they’ll be for the morning of the next working day.

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Saturday 7th January 2012 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… my money again.

And it’s not as if I have too much to spend either, but there you go.

In Carrefour in St Eloy les Mines I spent a mere €12 or so, most of which went on a jar of coffee seeing as I seem to be rather down on that at the moment, and won’t that be a catastrophe if I run out?

In LIDL I spent €25 or something – with nothing much to show for it except some wire brushes for the angle grinder. I’ll always pick up a few packs of those when I see them.

But there I met a couple of people whom I knew – some friends of Bill’s whom I had met at one of his soirées, and Jasper and his mum (who have featured previously in these pages) were also there.

But then  went to Cheze – the hardware shop where the Intermarché used to be when I first came here.

The bread box was trashed in the hurricane so I need to make something new, and Cheze was the likeliest place to find some bits. I didn’t find what I wanted but I still spent €52 in there.

Yes, it was sale time there and even more importantly, a clearance sale. There was a big bucket of hardware like door knobs, adjustible feet, special bolts and so on, at 50 centimes a pack. I had tons of stuff out of there.

There was also a LED spotlight with a dusk-dawn sensor, powered by a solar panel, reduced to €8:00. That will make a handy work light or torch for when I’m down the garden late at night.

low wattage chop saw cheze st eloy les mines puy de dome francePride of place though went to this beautiful machine – a chop saw.

I’ve been after a low-powered one of those for ages and I’ve hunted high and low but without success. But here at Cheze were three or four end-of-range chop saws, quite small and all rated at 1200 watts, all for the price of €34 each.

At that price I just had to have one, especially as there’s a 1200-watt inverter winging its way to me in the post even as we speak. After all the time I spend chopping wood by hand, and how easy it was doing the tongue-and-grooving back at Expo when I had the battery-powered one.

The width of the blade and the instability of the machines means that they aren’t ideal for precision work, but where precision cutting isn’t 100% essential, this wil ldo just fine, so I hope that it does what it says that it will do.

BUt I didn’t stay out long. It’s rained non-stop today, all grey and drizzly and depressing. I took advantage of the morning by writing the additional text for the radio programmes we shall be recording at the end of the month, and I’ve watched the odd film or two.

Tomorrow I’m going to start my presentation for the Trans-Labrador Highway.

I have to do that on Feb 24th, so no time like the present to get going.

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

… out as I had wanted it to do.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coincidence or what?

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