Tag Archives: les guis

Tuesday 10th April 2012 – I planted my spuds today.

Yes, that’s two raised beds worked over and thankfully they didn’t need much. I realised in fact that I’d dug them through a couple of times in February and so one needed just a once-over with the fork whereas the other one managed with a quick hoeing. And that made a change – usually it takes an age to dig over one of the beds.

There was some garlic from last year growing away quite happily in there too, and so I’ve left that for now. No point in disturbing it when it seems to be doing so well. i’ll pull that up when I pull up the spuds in the autumn.

The shallots and onions that I planted earlier this year are doing well too. Nice regimented rows of shoots bursting out of the soil. This year’s garlic and the leeks aren’t doing anything though – I suppose it’s too early for them.

I also planted another row of peas and another of beans. The earliest row of peas looks like it might be doing something although the rest – and the beans – are not doing anything yet.

But that was all that I did in the garden and I knocked off early – at 18:00. It was teeming down with rain on and off and I ended up soaked to the skin and thoroughly miserable. I sat up here, watched a film and wrapped myself up in the quilt to try to warm myself up. It wasn’t very nice.

But this morning I was up before the alarm and breakfasted before the second alarm went off. And I’ve been working on my website again. High time I caught up on that. But the next time we have a sunny morning and I can run the inverter early on, I’ll update the Radio Anglais blog now that I’ve finally managed to find an mp3 converter program that seems to work.

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Sunday 8th April 2012 – Well, apart from the fact …

… that I have a splitting headache and I’ll be off to bed in an instant, I had another afternoon out. If I’m not careful I’ll be making a habit of it.

But with it being Easter I had a day off and did absolutely nothing at all. Highlight was watching a DVD of a Nosby Stills and Crash concert that has been hanging around here for years. I’m going to have to find a good program on the internet to rip the sound-track to use on the radio programme.

But before anyone says anything, because it has been mentioned in the past, there are no issues with doing this – ripping sound tracks and the like – because with it being a bona fide radio station (in fact, all of those for whom we contract are) they pay a licence to the Performing Rights Society or whatever the French equivalent of that, and so whatever they broadcast (which includes our programmes and the contents thereof) is covered. Just so that you know.

In fact it rather reminds me of the time back in the 1980s when I was driving a tour bus for Shearings Holidays and showing a copied video-cassette of Carry On Camping to the passengers. This passenger came up to me and said “I’m going to report you”
“Why?” I asked
“Isn’t that a pirated video you are showing?”
“Well, as a matter of fact it is”
“Well I’m going to prosecute you!”
“No you aren’t” I told him
“Why not?”
“Because what you do is that you report me to the copyright holder and the copyright holder sues the owner of the coach – as they have the vicarious liability of the actions of their employees”
“So who owns the copyright of the ‘Carry-on’ films?” asked my passenger
“The Rank Organisation” I replied
“And who owns this coach?”
“The Rank Organisation”
Mr know-it-all then went and sat back down again, suitably deflated.

I hate doing this kind of thing to people, but sometimes, it does have to be said that anyone who sticks his head above the parapet deserves to catch all of the flak.
This afternoon, Marianne rang me up. If you remember from last year, the town of Pionsat has bought a derelict art-deco maison de maître in the town with the aim of demolishing it and building a new salle de fêtes. We went round to have a good look at it at the time.

It seems that they have now started to dismantle it and Marianne noticed that the rear door had gone so that people could now enter into it without the key to have a good look around. Was I doing anything?

Needless to say, I don’t need to be asked twice, so off I shot into town and we went for a prowl around.

I took loads more photos to add to the huge stack that I took the last time I was here, including this splendid one of the village of La Cellette right across the valley with the magnificent La Cellette viaduct on the long-abandoned Montlucon-Gouttieres branch of the Paris-Orleans railway in the background

After our little clandestine wandering we then went for a wander around the outskirts of the town looking for the traces of the ditch that brought the water from the river down to the old water-mill as the owners of the mill want to restart the water wheel.

After much protracted searching we managed to trace the entire track all the way back to the river. It’s been fairly well damaged and needs quite some expense to bring it back to a decent state.

As well as that, Marianne also gave me a pile of press cuttings from the local paper – all stuff that I had contributed over the last year or so. I keep a file of that kind of stuff – you never know when it might come in handy.

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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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Friday 6th April 2012- I’ve had another day of being indoors

Yes, I’ve been hard at it today.

And I’ve been working as well. I mentioned briefly last night that I needed to look around for another subject to discuss on the radio for when we finish “speeding convictions” and as chance would have it the Postie brought me one of these little magazines that the bank sends me every so often.

This month there was tons of stuff in it, and there was also another little magazine that comes out every few months as a supplement, entitled “Family Matters”. And by ‘eck wasn’t there some good stuff in there too?

They did one a year ago which was “40 typical situations in France – true or false?” I copied those out and embellished them quite considerably, but I noticed in this magazine today that there were several readers’ questions. I’ve selected a couple of those and added them to the list of qestions – by the looks of things I can keep that going for ever if it keeps on like this.

But there were two subjects in there concerning important matters of everyday life in France that are treated quite differently from in the UK. So what I’ve done today is to dash off a quick 31kb of information about one of them. That took most of the day and there’s more to add as well. We normally do about 3 or 4 kb of information per programme so that’s about 8 programmes, plus whatever else I can haven’t added in yet. That should all keep the ball rolling for while I’m away and also for when I come back too for the first month. I’ve also made a start on the additional information for the recording session when I come back.

Then, of course, there’s the second topic. I won’t do that right now though – I’m going to have a rest for a bit once I’ve finished what’s on hand. I deserve it.

But I tell you what – sitting here with a pile of papers, extracting relevant information, turning it into a play for two actors – we were discussing on a “social network” the other day the benefits that we gained from studying with the Open University. I wouldn’t have been able to do too much of this preparation for the radio without having had the kind of preparation that I was taught at the University, that’s for sure.

And another small matter that is worthy of note – all the paperwork that I receive is in legalese French. I have to translate it all into vernacular English in my head while I’m doing it. I just thought that I would mention that.

And that’s not all I did today either. Liz rang me up and asked me to run an errand round to some clients of Terry’s who live nearby. Then Percy Penguin (who doesn’t feature half as much in these pages as she might) rang up for a chat, and then Dave from Hexham rang up with further information from yesterday and to give me a job of work to do for Sunday.

And to think that I came to live here for a rest! Still, it keeps me out of mischief.

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Thursday 5th April 2012 – I’ve not been out much …

… today either. It’s another day where I’ve been working on radio stuff – this is fast becoming a full-time job.

With the aim of getting as far ahead as possible, I’ve been concentrating on the Radio Arverne programmes. As you know, these are in four parts – namely the events (organised by Liz), the selected track of the week (just grab the nearest CD and look for something about 3 minutes long), the practical information, and the additional notes – namely useful French phrases, a recipe and gardening hints.

What I did today until about 16:30 was 6 weeks worth of the additional notes. Get those out of the way.

After that I went outside for a few hours in the garden. I made up some tubs for the lavender, cleaned a few of the herb beds and planted the thyme and rosemary that I bought the other week. There was some rosemary in there that looked like it had died so I pulled it up – but the root system still looked good and healthy so I planted it in the cloche – let’s see what it does there.

As well as that, I cleared out some of the space where I’ll be planting the rose bushes, and I did some more weeding. With all of the rainfall after the weeks of beautiful sunny weather the weeds are going berserk.

I had a couple of phone calls this evening too. One from this guy in Canada and another one from Dave from Hexham, who contributes every so often to the comments on this blog. He is working right now on a new business idea and so we had a long chat about that – that is, until his phone card expired.

Tomorrow will be another morning in. I need to choose a new topic for the practical information for the radio programme and then write a pile of stuff about it. I’ll have to go through a pile of magazines and journals that I have here and see what I can find.

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Wednesday 4th April 2012 – I’ve hardly been out …

… of the house all day. I’ve been busy writing radio programmes.

We’re launching a new series of programmes on Radio Tartasse on Thursday and Sunday evenings at 20:00 – what is known under the generic term of AOR, or album-orientated rock music. Two programmes every month – one which will feature just album tracks with some kind of chat in between the tracks, and the other which features a 5-minute introduction and then 55 minutes of one particular group doing a selection of live tracks that I edit and cobble together to make it a kind of live show.

It was the kind of thing that I reckoned would be pretty straightforward and easy seeing the size of my record collection and the amount of useless information that has collected inside my head, but it’s far from it. It’s taking much more time than I imagined. I’ve been at it all day from about 11:00 and I’ve managed to do 4 programmes.

We’ve already recorded four of them – for the months of April and May, but I want to get well ahead while the getting is good and so I wrote another four – two months’ worth – and we’ll be recording them in due course.

And that’s it, really. Nothing else. Doesn’t time fly quickly when you are enjoying yourself?

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Tuesday 3rd April 2012 – Remember the other day …

… when I told you about all of the trees in the garden bursting into life in that couple of hours? Anyway, I thought that you might like a photo of the blooming things.

It was taken out of the little window at the top of the stairs in the attic – a favourite point of view of mine for the garden. Just compare it with any of the other photos taken from the same spot just recently and you will see the difference.

Another thing that you might notice in the photo is the change in colour of the soil. There’s a reason for that – it was positively precipitating down outside – the first time for 13 days that we have had any kind of precipitation. Just as well too, because I was getting pretty low with the old water, but the 8mm of rain that we had – that filled up the water butts considerably.

Mind you, at one stage it was touch and go. A huge pile of accumulated dust and dirt just have been washed straight down the pipe and it blocked the filter. No water was getting through to the puzzolane filter, and the water was backing up in the system. I had to disconnect the pipe – emptying about 30 litres of water all over me, clean the filter and then reassemble it. It did the trick and allowed the water to circulate through the filters and into the water butts.

So apart from that, what else did I do? Well, emptied the composting toilet, such is the highlight of the exciting life that I live around here. And have I described the composting toilet? Basically, it’s a stainless steel 20-litre casserole pot with lid. I pad it out with shredded cardboard packaging and then line it with a biodegradable bin liner. At the bottom of the bin liner I put a pile of shredded telephone directory pages (nice and absorbent). You take off the lid, do what you need to do (the casserole is in a nice wooden housing that I built, cover it with a ladleful of mixed sawdust and wood ash, and then put the lid back on. When it’s full, the contents are emptied into the compost heap and we start all over again.I can do that because, as regular readers of this rubbish will know, I’m a vegan. You can’t do this if you are a carnivore

As well as that, I tidied up in here. With being so busy over the last few weeks I hadn’t tidied up at all and the place was looking totally depressing. I’m useless at tidying up, so it’s always quite an effort, but now at least it looks a little more civilised. And I found a few important things that I had mislaid so at the end of the day it’s always worthwhile tidying up.

But I wish that I knew the secret of how to be tidy.

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Monday 2nd April 2012 – Coming back …

… from the Anglo-French group tonight, I noticed in my rear-view mirror just how nicely Pionsat was looking this evening.

There’s a certain spot near the old Roman Road up here where there’s a good view down into the valley and I’ve had one or two decent photos from there.

In case you are wondering, which I’m sure that you are, although I live 5 or 6 kms from Pionsat there’s a height difference of about 140 metres – Pionsat being at about 530 metres and me being at 667 metres – and so just here at this spot there must be 120 metres of difference.

What caught my eye, and if you look very carefully to the left of centre, is the “tent” that is covering the exposed roof of of the Medieval chateau in the centre of the town. It’s being replaced at the moment and so they have this plastic tarpaulin thing over the top. There are a few lights burning away underneath the tarpaulin, and the whole thing looked from here as if it was some kind of Chinese lantern. It really was bizarre.

So this morning I was recording radio programmes again, and then I came home and did some gardening for the rest of the day. I had another fire of all of the dried weeds and so on, and then went round pulling up yet more to add to the conflagration. This place is looking quite a bit different from a couple of months ago.

I’ve also planted the new potatoes. They are where they should be for now, and I’ll be intrigued to see what they might do. They are churning up the large bed that I laid out this year – the one that will eventually be the home of the fruit bushes. I also wasted a few surplus watts of energy on attacking the hole that I’m trying to drill through the wall. but another half hour and I reckon that I’ve advanced maybe a millimetre. there’s something not quite right about this.

All of the plants that I’ve been buying these last couple of weeks – they are now in a plastic box that has about 20mm of water in it – to give them all a good soaking before I plant them this week.

But never mind the exertions – I stopped for lunch at about 14:30, had a sandwich and a coffee, and the next thing that I remember was that it was 16:05. All of this work is taking it out of me.

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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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Friday 30th March 2012 – WE WERE RADIOING TODAY …

… and so that involved a trip to Gerzat.

In the gorgeous glorious sunshine as well, even though it was less hot today.

This morning was therefore printing stuff off, and then going off to Sauret Besserve to pick up Liz.

We recorded 5 programmes, ao as to get ourselves well ahead of the game seeing as I’m having serious thoughts about going for a holiday again. I have the wanderlust, don’t I?

And then back home, via Liz’s to drop her off and for some coffee and vegan ginger cake.

On the way back I stopped off at the birdwatching site at the back of St Gervais d’Auvergne to take a few pics with the new zoom lens that I bought a while ago.

Again, it’s manual focus and that is causing a few difficulties.

And I’m beginning to realise that this was not the best of my decisions. Only one of the photos was worth keeping, and this was a shot of the church at Gouttières, about 10 miles away.

And you can see, running from to centre to mid-right the road that I take when I go home.

So, like the 50mm lens, it will work eventually and do the business once I can work out how to get it to do what I want.

Back here, I had the TV on again and watched a DVD of Steppenwolf Live at Louisville, Kentucky.

I bought this ages ago but the little DVD player didn’t go it justice. The new AKAI though is magnificent and the sound, turned right up as befits any rock concert, is the best CD-type of stereo player that I have around here.

I just hope that this TV lasts the pace. If I can get 5 years out of it, it will be excellent

But one thing about this Steppenwolf concert – there are only four musicians on stage. John Kay on vocals and guitar, another guitarist, a drummer and a keyboard player. No bassist.

But never mind how you can possibly play “Born To Be Wild” and “Pusher” (to name but two tracks) without a bassist, there is nevertheless a bass being played somewhere out there, and it’s not being done on the foot pedals of the organ, as I once saw the famous bass line of Darkness (11/11) played on stage by Van Der Graaf Generator when they didn’t have Nic Potter with them. It’s definitely a bass guitar

Overdubbing at a later date for the DVD? Perish the thought.

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Thursday 29th March 2012 – IT’S "NEW TOY" TIME AGAIN.

I told you the other day that I had ordered a new DVD player – an AKAI 12-volt television, 16″ screen, with built-in DVD player.

Anyway, it turned up this morning.

First thing that I did was to cut off the cigarette lighter plug (I hate these) from the 12-volt connector lead, wired a fuseholder into the lead and then wired it up to an American plug.

Regular readers of thie rubbish will remember, but for the benefit of newer readers, I have a 12-volt electrical circuit running around the house, using American plugs and sockets.

I use them for the simple reason that they take heavier cable and I use 6mm cable for the circuit – the bigger the better to avoid voltage drop.

Anyway, the cable works and so does the DVD player. It even played one of the DVDs that wouldn’t work on the old in-car DVD, and the sound quality is exceptional.

I’m really pleased with it.

Only downside is the remote control. The keys are moulded plastic with the symbols moulded in., the same colour (light grey) as the keys. And so it’s really difficult to tell which key that you need to press, especially in the dim light.

But that’s a minor point.

Apart from that, then besides another couple of hours on the computer, I was outside in the garden for much of the day.

Another bed has been dug over and the remainder of the onion sets were planted and a few lines of leeks were sown.

After that I did a little hoeing and planted the beans that I had soaking, some cabbage, sprouts and cauliflower seeds.

I’ve also planted all of the raspberry plants that Liz kindly gave me in exchange for the lettuce from the other week.

All in all, it’s been another busy day today.

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Wednesday 28th March 2012 – PREPARING THESE RAISED BEDS …

… is not as easy as you might think.

I did another one today and all in all it took me a good four hours to have it ready and planted.

This particular one has the shallots and also some of the onions. And I hope that I have better luck with them than I did last year. I didn’t find a single shallot and neither did I find a single onion.

Anyway, here’s a photo of the garden as it is at the moment.

Down the right-hand side you can see the land that I cleared a couple of weeks ago when I had my garden fire The framework for the greenhouse and the windows to fill in the framework are there as you can see.

You can see the drain to the right, and then right on the extreme right-hand edge is the stone wall that marks the property boundary.

There’s also a pile of gravel and a pile of broken bricks there too.

The white metal that you see is the remains of an old Ford Transit and in it is a pile of wood from trees that I cut down when I started to clear out this area, whenever that was.

The other pile of wood in the right foreground is from trees that I cut down this winter.

On the left side are the raised beds. Down at the end is the newest of the beds, which will have the new potatoes. To the left of it is the new compost bin.

The three beds covered in black plastic – they were last year’s beds. They are dug through and they will be having beans and peas in them.

Then, by the cloche are the two beds that I have dug out these last two days. The two beds that will be having the brassica and that I dug out last week are the two covered in black plastic by the old grey Ford Cortina.

So just four more beds to dig out, and two that need just a quick going over, and then everything will be ready for planting. But I need to put the early spuds in soon, and the cabbages will soon be past their planting date if I don’t get a move on.

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Tuesday 27th March 2012 – I DIDN’T DO …

… anything like as much as I wanted to in the garden today. And there is a variety of reasons for this.

it took longer than I was expecting to dig over the first raised bed that I needed to clear.
the framework of the bed needed some repair – and so I had to sort that out
I found some crops growing in there – leeks I think from some seed that I might have planted last year. Only baby leeks but leeks none-the-less, and so they needed careful handling.

And if that’s not enough to be going on with, I’ve been “revisiting” the sites that I have already cleared of nettles and brambles. Each time that I see something new growing, I pull it up.

I also am slowly advancing around the garden area as I clear it from generic weeds such as the aforementioned nettles ad brambles. I’m making huge progress with that and it’s all looking very good, but it’s taking my time to do and distracting me from clearing the raised beds.

Anyway, one of the raised beds is clear and it has garlic growing in it. Only another three to do this week – shallots, onions and leeks are destined for those.

But in something of a record for recent times, I knocked off work at … errrr …. 19:42. It’s been a long time since I’ve been out working that late, and enjoying what I’m doing as well.

Talking of records though, this morning though Liz and I were recording the Radio Anglais sessions at Marcillat-en-Combraille for Radio Tartasse. We’ve finished talking rubbish … "sez you" – ed … and so we’ll have to think of a new subject for May’s programmes.

I had a bad night’s sleep last night though.

There’s evidently a mouse or two that have been hibernating in the wall of the house – finding their way in by means of the place where there was no plasterboarding in the bedroom. Of course I fixed that a few months ago and now that the mice have awoken, they can’t get out of the wall and so go running around inside trying to find a way out.

So at 04:00 I was rudely awakened and had to listen to them clog-dancing around the ceiling for hours.

I wish that they would hurry up and starve to death or something.

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Monday 26th March 2012 – AND SO AFTER MY JOHNNY …

… Cash impression yesterday – you know, “I walk the line” – which is so much better than my impersonation of Glen “I am a linesman for Notts County” Campbell, I had a quiet day today and I hardly went out.

Seeing as I was in the mood – which doesn’t happen all that often – I wrote a huge raft of stuff for the radio programmes. As well as a few more of the 20 questions I did an article about how to appeal against a speeding ticket and also some more useful phrases in French for our non-French-speaking listeners.

That was really about it, I suppose.

But I did have a heated shower.

The temperature in the 12-volt home-made immersion heater that I use as a dump load went off the scale again and so I tipped 10 litres of the hot water into the solar-heated shower tank (which raised that up to a glorious 42.5°C) and put 10 litres of cold water into the dump load, which cooled that down to 62°C.

Tomorrow we are radioing in the morning and in the afternoon I’ll have a bash in the garden. I have garlic, onions and shallots to plant, as well as the shrubs that I bought the other week.

And not forgetting the raspberry plants that Liz gave me either.

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Sunday 25th March 2012 – THERE ARE NO PHOTOS …

… of FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 3rd XI’s match against Blot l’Eglise this afternoon.

I was busy doing other things.

Like running the line.

Well, walking the line actually, if it comes to that. It was a hot day and I’m not as young as I used to be.

“But surely the linesmen have to keep up with play” said Steve. Indeed they do, but that’s never an issue with FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 3rd XI. They aren’t as young as they used to be either.

But I did feel so sorry for them. Again, playing without anyone with any pretensions to goalkeeping, the first goal that they conceded was from a corner with the keeper stranded in no-man’s-land (or “no-person’s-land” as was once famously said by the legendary Turdi de Hatred on one memorable occasion quite some tiime ago).

Either come for the ball or stay on your line – don’t dither, otherwise you will be beaten by the looping header over the top.

Apart from that, the match was finely-balanced and although Pionsat didn’t offer much up front, the Blot l’Eglise team never ever gave the keeper anything serious to worry about, despite all of their possession.

The second half saw a different goalkeeper (said he, using the term loosely) and once again in this half there was nothing to differentiate either team. That is, until tragedy struck late in the game.

And not once, but twice.

On both occasions the Blot l’Eglise attackers had a decent fiery shot on goal. On both occasions the Pionsat keeper dived full length qnd got both hands to it. On both occasions he couldn’t hang on to the ball. On both occasions he dropped it – right at the feet of one of the Blot forwards. And that, I’m afraid to say, was that.

The big difference was, that I have said at great length on many occasions, that the Pionsat hierarchy is not doing enough to find a real goalkeeper for the 3rd XI.

And the fact that they went off to Blot this afternoon without anyone being asked to accompany them to run the line is something else about which I can rant for ever.

After that I shot off down to Menetrol to watch FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s Ist XI.

Menetrol have a decent side – not as good as Clermont Fontaine du Bac the other week but decent all the same, and they scored just as I arrived – some 20 minutes late. And they scored another later in the game.

Pionsat pulled one back late in the match but the referee then, inexplicably, blew for the end of the game with, according to Franck, 3 minutes of normal time remaining – never mind stoppage time.

And there were a couple of bizarre refereeing decisions made in this game, as well as a completely one-sided issue of yellow cards, to the detriment of Pionsat.

Apart from that. I had an early start this morning due to an urgent need to ride the porcelain horse,

And so with the hour’s difference today as well, I’m not feeling myself, which is just as well as it’s a disgusting habit anyway. But I did some more work on the radio programme before the early start to Blot.

After the football it was round to Liz and Terry’s to discuss the radio programmes and Liz cooked a gorgeous meal. Penne al arrabiata.

The recipe calls for two chilis but Liz only had small ones so she put in 4, forgetting that the smaller the chili the more concentrated the spicy effect is. But then again who’s complaining? Especially as there was ginger cake for pudding.

I also picked up a hitcher, a prisoner on the white lins of the freeway coming back from Menetrol.

I do that every now and again, really out of thanks to the thousands of people who have picked me up while hitch-hiking in the days of my youth.

But it’s a windy road from Chatel-guyon to St Georges de Mons and I bet he was glad when I stopped to drop him off. It’s doubtful if he knew how quickly a Transit Van can move when the driver has his foot down, and how well the aforementioned handles with decent tyres on it.

Caliburn is running quite well just now.

-2

EPIC HALL

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