Tag Archives: les guis

Monday 9th January 2012 – THERE’S NO POINT …

… in having an early night and going to bed early (well, 00:15 is early for me anyway) if you wake up again at 4:45 and can’t go back to sleep.

Mind you as day started to dawn and I knew that it was soon time to get up, I managed to fall asleep again, and it was 10:15 when I finally woke up. So much for my good resolutions for New Year.

First thing that I did after breakfast was to sort out a design fault on the electric board that I had made the other day. The wires to the inverter were bent at an unnatural angle and the live was touching the earth tag. I had to tape over the ends to insulate them and then drill a hole in the board to run the wires round to the back so that they are lying straight and parallel.

Once I’d organised that I stripped off some of the temporary roof on the lean-to, put some scaffolding up there and put a ladder up from there to the top of the wind turbine mast.

There I turned round the bracket that we had turned when we raised the mast last month and straightened out all of the guys.

I drilled into the wall, fitted a wall anchor with an eye, attached a turnbuckle and then fastened a guy to it all and wound it up to take the tension so that the last is held firm in that direction. That’s one out of the four guy wires sorted out.

After lunch I made a major advance – I started to put the plywood on the roof of the lean-to. It was flaming difficult too – it’s not easy pulling those sheets up on my own, I’ll tell you that, but I have three now fastened into position.

I’m being careful with the supporting chevrons, having learned my lesson from elsewhere where I’ve been working. I’m putting the sheets into position and then fitting the chevrons underneath them so that the sheets are supported in the middle and that the edges of each adjacent sheet meet up over a chevron.

I recall all kinds of bouncing sheets when I was nailing the tiles on when I did it in other places. I don’t want to do that here.

But starting to put the roof on the lean-to. Isn’t this progress?

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Sunday 8th January 2012 – SUNDAY IS …

… a Day Of Rest.

And quite right too. After my exertions of the last week or so, and with many more exertions to come in the very near future, I reckoned that I needed one.

So a lie-in until I don’t know what time, and I can’t even remember if I’ve set foot outdoors – it’s been one of those days today. No football, nowhere else to go, but ask me if I care.

I’ve sat by the fire, did some stuff on my presentation about the Trans Labrador Highway, read a book, watched a film or two, and that’s really about my lot.

I cooked a pizza in the oven in the woodstove, and the more I use it the more I realise what a good plan that was to buy it. €297 is about the equivalent of 15 bottles of gas at current prices and as my wood costs me nothing, I reckon that I will have paid for this in a matter of two years, not to mention avoiding the inconvenience of going downstairs to cook in the lean-to in minus 9°C.

In fact, all kinds of thoughts are running through my head right now.

So now it’s an early night, I reckon. I want to be on form for the week to come.

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.

Pride 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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Friday 6th January 2012 – IT’S BEEN …

… an exciting day today

Having been pondering over the battery situation here – to whit, the house batteries are losing charge when there’s no current and I had ample proof of that yesterday as I attached a little voltmeter to the battery bank and watched it go down and down – I decided to have a butchers at the battery bank.

I reckoned that there might be one battery that was overheating but I was wrong – there were in fact two of them all swollen up. No wonder the batteries were gently emptying themselves.

So I pulled those two out and I’m now down to just 8 batteries.

I’ve been suspecting that these 90 amp-hour batteries are just too small to handle a surge of about 50 amps on a regular basis and this seems to be confirming things. There’s four now that I’ve had to change, and it’s always been the one in the centre of the bank.

You may recall that I went to Paris to the supplier just before Christmas and they had some 200-amp-hour batteries on special offer and so I bought 8 of those. That will be a battery bank and a half.

Ideally I need even-bigger ones but an issue presents it self with that in that these 200-amp-hour batteries weigh 58kgs. While I can pick them up and walk with them, I can’t go far very quickly. Imagine twice the weight.

You might be wondering why I didn’t go the whole hog and fit them today. Believe me, it was my intention. But the battery cables that I have – 225mm – aren’t long enough. I’ve had to order some 375mm cables and they won’t be here until Thursday next week.

This afternoon, tired of manipulating inverters, timers and the like around, I made myself a plug-in electric board.

We start off with a two-pin American plug with 6mm cable wired into it. This goes to a 300-watt inverter screwed to the board. From there it’s into an electric meter and from there into one of the hour meters I bought in the UK.

Finally it ends up in a 13-amp UK socket.

All I need to do now when I’m carrying out some work somewhere around out of range of the main inverters is to take my little board with me and plug it into the 12-volt circuit.

After that I went to the bank to pay in a cheque, reorder my bread and then go for coffee and a chat with Marianne to catch up on the gossip.

It’s her birthday tomorrow, and that set me thinking about all the other people I know whose birthday it is in January. Krys, Marianne, Marianne from Brussels, Mandy. Those names spring straight away to mind and I bet there are loads more as well (so apologies if I have forgotten you).

It really is astonishing.

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Thursday 5th January 2012 – I THOUGHT …

…that you might like to see my Christmas present from Liz and Terry, before I started hacking it about.

Yes, it’s nice to have good friends, especially when they make you nice things for Christmas, like this absolutely gorgeous vegan Christmas Cake, isn’t it?

Anyway, today started off with the howling winds and gales and rain – that put the kybosh on any plans I had for working outside. I’m not going up a ladder in this weather.

So after a leisurely start and watching one of my films, I went about tidying up the attic. And what I’ve done is to change things around a little.

The bed is now on the other side of the room now by the books and music, which is much more logical, and I can actually see the fire in the wood stove from where I’m now sitting.

The wardrobe and a couple of chests of drawers have been moved around too. It looks like there’s more room up here now although that’s an optical illusion.

That took ages to do and so by 18:00 I knocked off and had a coffee – and tucked into slice 1 of the Christmas cake. It was well worth waiting for as well. Absolutely gorgeous. I can see me enjoying that for the next few weeks to come, and quite right too.

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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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Tuesday 3rd January 2012 – I WAS RIGHT …

… about one thing.

And that was the flaming weather.

Howling gale and pouring rain all night that kept me awake for much of the night. And when I eventually awoke, it was even worse.

It was a good job that I had abandoned my leisurely plan to drift homewards via a few of the interesting sites, because I wouldn’t have seen anything interesting today, that’s for sure.

So I left my little hidey-hole on the road to Chalons-en-Champagne and pressed on homewards in the cold, miserable and wet weather, stopping off the fuel up on the way back and do a little shopping.

Despite the weather, the way back didn’t present any specific problems so I was back reasonably quickly – to sunshine would you believe. But I had brought the miserable weather back with me and the rain and wind wasn’t far behind.

So now I’m installed in my nice warm attic where the wood stove is blazing nicely and I’m not moving.

The plan is that I’m going to be taking it very easy tomorrow. And if I crash out for a while, I couldn’t care less.

I’ve had enough exertion and hard work over the last 10 days or so. I deserve a rest.

Wednesday 21st December 2011 – I DIDN’T GET …

… my rice pudding for tea.

In fact, I was far too busy.

We had 25.5mm of rain throughout the day and during that time I was refitting the temporary roof back on the lean-to. I had intended to start to fit the new roof – the next project around here – but with no let-up in the rain, it was a case of doing what I could before I was soaked to the skin.

That took until about 14:00 when the waterproof overall became waterlogged that I couldn’t move in it (and me with a streaming head cold too). And so that was it – I called it a day.

There’s only so much you can do in weather like that if you don’t want to die of pleurisy.

The rest of the stuff from the UK was emptied out of Caliburn and then he was loaded up with the stuff I was taking to Brussels. As you know, I’ve been invited to spend this Christmas away from home and I need to take some stuff with me.

And having organised all of that, to the best of my ability, I came in here, dried off and warmed up in front of the nice hot wood stove until it was time to go.

Luckily I’d fuelled up at the Carrefour in Riom yesterday because I had no intention of leaving Caliburn’s cab in this kind of weather. The rain streamed down all the way without a break.

I made it as far as Varzy where I flaked out at the side of the road. I have a feeling that this is going to be a very uncomfortable night.

Tuesday 20th December 2011 – I HAD ANOTHER …

… lovely tea tonight.

Baked potatoes and tortilla wraps with spicy beans. And once again it was cooked in the oven on the new fire, and once again it did an excellent job.

So much so that tomorrow night I’m going to go for a rice pudding and see what happens about that.

This morning I awoke well on time thanks to this new alarm clock that I have. It has a projector light that flashes the time across the room and makes enough noise to awaken the dead.

But printing off the paperwork for the radio station didn’t work – the new computer doesn’t recognise the printer and I can’t upload the drivers. I’ll have to see if I can do that by downloading them (which I can’t because all of Epson’s European sites don’t work).

So Radio Tartasse was done and then we set off through the driving rain to Gerzat. And as we drove over the Combrailles I joked to Liz that everyone in Riom would be basking in the sun in shirt sleeves.

They weren’t, as it happens, but the sun was there, and some blue sky too.

At Radio Arverne I had a premonition about the music we were to play and sure enough, in what could only be a gazillion-to-one chance, we had both picked a track with the same title. How bizarre!

We did the programmes for January and then recorded our Christmas special. That was a bundle of laughs, and what we did for the carols – well, you’ll find out on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Home into the hills and into the driving rain again. I lit the fire in here and that was that. I had no intentions of moving and so I didn’t.

But tea was nice 😉

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Monday 19th December 2011 – I HAD A LOVELY …

… tea tonight.

I made myself a pizza.

And what was so exciting about that was the fact that I cooked it in the little oven on the top of my new fire.

With me having been in the house almost all of the day I’ve had the fire on all day. And I’ve only used three logs as well but the temperature reached 26°C, and that was what made me try out the oven seeing as how it was so hot.

it took an age to cook but nevertheless it all worked and I was impressed with that.

So this morning I was awake at 04:30 and reading a book. But eventually I was back under the quilt where I stayed until about 10:30 – I had no plans whatsoever to get up and fight the snow which was falling quite heavily.

but anyway now I have my new analogue electricity meter installed, as well as the hour meter that I bought in Radio Spares the other day – to see how long the inverter has been running. I’ve been looking forward to trying these

This afternoon I finished off the radio programme – just as well seeing as how we are recording it tomorrow, read a couple of books and that was that.

And not to mention being rung up God Knows how many times on the phone.

But I am quite impressed with this oven. I shall have to try some further experiments

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Sunday 18th December 2011 – I’VE BEEN CHANGING …

… the habits of a lifetime.

It all started this morning when I was up and about at 08:15 and that was without an alarm clock or a phone call as well – and on a Sunday too, the day after coming back from a long journey!

And so having lit a fire up here in the attic to warm myself up, I spent the morning writing the additional notes for the radio programme on Tuesday

Later on, I was out working, and that’s a rare event for a Sunday too!

I started to unload Caliburn but that really didn’t make much headway as there are space issues. But all of the scaffolding is off and stacked and much of the heavy stuff has been removed.

The weather clouded over too, and so I took advantage of what light there was to change Caliburn’s front tyres and now he has his winter boots on. And I’m glad I did too as the ones that were on there were rather thin to say the least.

Off to Terry and Liz’s next to drop off a load of stuff and you have no idea how much better Caliburn was handling with his winter tyres. And I’m glad that I fitted them too, because once I got to about Gouttieres it started to snow and it was snowing heavily by the time that I was back home

Now I’m going to bed as I still have this streaming head cold that I picked up in the UK and an early night cuddled up in this warm room (and aren’t I impressed with my new fire?) under the quilt will do me the world of good.

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Saturday 17th December 2011 – NEXT TIME …

… that I do this crossing, I shall book a couchette.

I enjoyed the trip – easily one of the best crossings that I have ever had and I’ll be doing it again. But it’s so uncomfortable to curl up in a corner – there just aren’t any corners in which to curl up.

And when I discovered that a couchette would set me back a mere £20:00 if booked in advance (they were all sold out on this trip – I did check), well, it’s a foregone conclusion.

This journey saves me a couple of hours and about 10 litres of fuel over driving to Calais, and it puts me in a much better position for going up to the Midlands and the north, missing out all of London and the M25.

A couchette would more-than pay for itself, I reckon.

We were decanted into Le Havre at dawn and at a leisurely pace, took me less than 8 hours to reach home. The roads are excellent, as are most French roads, but these were comparatively quiet. I even managed to fit a little shopping in on the way home.

I beat the snow home – but only just. A huge pile of it had followed me all the way from the coast. And it was taters in here. Absolutely freezing in my attic, although the wood stove soon sorted that out.

And while I had been away the place had been ravaged by 75 kph winds. That generated a few amps of electricity, I can tell you.

So I’m not doing much now. A bit of food – curled up by the fire, and here I’m staying to catch up with my beauty sleep.

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Friday 16th December 2011 – JULIE’S MUM …

… said to me that I could fit a few extra things in Caliburn, because her son in law (Rob) had told her that it would be quite empty coming back.

Well, absolutely. As you can see.

Shall we run through all of the stuff that isn’t there? Like no scaffolding for a start? No rolls of insulation?

As Clare said when she saw the photograph “it’s a good job that I forgot to ask you about the three-piece suite”. Plenty of room for that.

I left my hotel fairly early and did another trip around the supermarkets and tool supply places like Screwfix and Toolstation, all for stuff that I had forgotten.

Another trip down to my storage box and collect the last of the stuff that I had ordered. And my luck was in again – I managed to source another Ford Transit wheel for Caliburn’s winter tyres.

Northampton was next, and Michael very kindly sorted out a 98-litre immersion heater for me from his plumbing supplies place. This is for the solar hot water at home.

Rosemary had asked me to call at a place in London for 7 rolls of this space-blanket roof insulation, and then back out to Luton for Rob and Julie’s stuff.

No wonder I was exhausted.

I made it down to Pompey – Portsmouth – with time to spare – which surprised me totally. Enough time in fact to go to the chippy for another huge dollop of beans and chips all smothered in malt vinegar, just like the evening that I arrived, which seemed like a year ago.

Now I’m sitting in the queue for the ferry, which leaves at 23:59. I hope that there’s a nice corner for me to curl up into. I’m exhausted!

Saturday 10th December 2011 – SINCE WHEN …

… has one day’s blog started with a full account of what happened the next morning?

It’s not a very usual occurrence, I know, but it does happen to me now and again – usually because I don’t keep “normal” hours like everyone else. Years of working nights driving taxis and coaches means that I’m more “nocturnal” than “diurnal”.

My days usually finish when I go to bed, no matter what time that might be. And when there have been days when I haven’t gone to bed at all – which also happens very occasionally, I find a convenient break-point.

And so I hit the road tomorrow at 00:30 with still a long way to go before the day is ended.

Today though, I had a very desultory, leisurely day. Taking it easy due to the long night which I knew that I was going to have.

And my heart wasn’t really in the packing and I didn’t really do as much as I should. As a result, I set off on probably the most ill-prepared voyage that I have ever made. And I have made a few of those in my life as well, as you can probably imagine.

The road to Le Havre took me on a merry, mazy way via Bourges, Orleans and Chartres.

Parts of the road were really quick and I was able to make quite good time, whereas others were … err … not so quick, especially when it came to navigating my way through the cities with the endless strings of traffic lights.

Finally I found a service area about 20 or so miles beyond Chartres and that’s where I went to sleep.

And it was freezing as well – frost and ice everywhere – but I’m not that easily defeated.

A few years ago I stripped an old Volvo saloon and that had heated seat pads in it. And so I wired one of them up to one of these 12-volt powerpacks, and you’ve no idea how warm my feet were in bed.

That is – until the powerpack’s battery went flat.

Friday 9th December 2011 – I WON’T BE …

… here tomorrow night either.

I’m going to the UK next week as you know, and I’ve been checking ferries.

And to my surprise, the ferry from Le Havre (2 hours closer to here than Calais) to Portsmouth (nearer to the Midlands than Dover) and return for Caliburn and Yours Truly is a mere €129.

Only problem is that the sailing is at 17:00 which would ordinarily mean an early start but as you know, I don’t do early. My plan is to leave here the night before and getting a couple of hours on the clock.

Anyway, this morning was rather … errr … late and had I not had a spam phone call I would probably still be in bed right now.

And then I had another call – someone wanting to visit. That meant no work of course, and tidying up in here instead, tip that it is. That took me quite a while.

So Nan came around and we discussed the initiative that she is doing for some organisation or other about co-projects (car-sharing and that kind of thing) in the area.

That’s the problem with being a minor celebrity … “chortle chortle” – ed … – people are always sounding you out for things like this. Not that I mind, of course. It’s nice to have visitors.

This evening I’ve been buying stuff on eBay. And getting it shipped to my mailbox in the UK. You’ve no idea how much money I’m saving by doing that. It’s the best £25 a month I’ve ever spent.

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EPIC HALL

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