Tag Archives: les guis

Sunday 9th October 2011 – I HAD A …

… nightmare drive out to the footy today. I was hammering Caliburn on through the bends when twice the front end broke right away and I was all over the road and almost off it. I had a look at the tyres and although the front are quite worn they weren’t bald by any means but it didn’t half slow me down after that.

But a short way further on I found someone else who had been taken unawares and I came to the conclusion that the road must have been awash with diesel for some reason or other.

Mind you, I was lucky to be up in time for the footy and if Percy Penguin hadn’t have phoned me at 11:30 I would probably still be in bed now. That was because I was chasing a rodent around my attic at some silly time of the morning. God knows how the thing got in but I can see me having to check the defences again to see if there’s a mouse hole anywhere.

>Braving the rain (all 18 mm of it) and the hanging clouds that gave me hardly a moment of solar energy, I went off the St Angel to see the 3rd XI play – or at least, the 1st half of the match.

And what a transformation they were from last year. 1-0 up when I left, and they could have had a bagful with a little more luck.

The match at St Angel was so interesting that I ought to have stayed and if it wasn’t for the fact that I am now the official press reporter for the 1st XI so it seems, I would have done too for they won at a canter, 3-0

Meanwhile, the 1st XI went down 3-2 to a pretty mediocre Royat side. For once the Pionsat defence was mostly tight and in the right place at the right time for once, except in the left-back position and with a good left-sided defender on the bench, that was the only substitution that the trainer didn’t make.

For once though, the attack misfired and it was a log, hard game. It was only a couple of high “route one” balls into the box that gave them the two goals.

And so back here in the rain again and ready for tomorrow and starting work again.

But I still can’t get over this weird (lack of) substitution at left back. Franck the trainer has been making a few bizarre decisions lately.

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Saturday 8th October 2011 – WINTER …

… is definitely here now, just as I predicted last weekend that it would be.

Freezing cold, damp grey and depressing with hardly a drop of sunshine.

I was up before the alarm, which makes quite a change for just recently, and in Montlucon for the shops quite early. Disappointingly there was nothing that was exciting there and I spent almost nothing. Just a few Louis de Funes DVDs reduced in the Auchan.

But while I was in the Auchan in the TV section you couldn’t move for people watching the televisions. France was playing England in the rugby and had a pretty comfortable victory, much to the delight of everyone (including Yours Truly) in the shop.

I had to visit Monsieur Bricolage as well and they had two things that caught my eye – a two-storey wooden cabin – a display model – reduced to €5000 which is cheap, and also a small wood stove with a kind-of top oven for €275 – and I was sorely tempted by that.

The swimming baths at Neris-les-Bains has been taken by surprise by the cold spell. They didn’t have the heating on and so we all froze to death in the pool – all 10 of us in there. That’s a far cry from last week when it was packed out to the gunwhales.

At the footy, Pionsat’s 2nd XI played Aigueperse and won 2-1 in a hard-fought match.

In the first half they were all over the opposition and should have had a hat-full but in the 2nd half they went to sleep as usual and allowed the opposition back into the game. And they would have struggled if their opponents hadn’t missed a penalty.

>We had a floodlight failure too for about 20 minutes, to add some spice to the entertainment.

Overall, what with all of the drizzle it was all quite a depressing day. A foretaste of things to come, I reckon

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Friday 7th October 2011 – I WAS WORKING …

… on the lean-to wall again this afternoon

And I bet you are waiting for me to say that I was building it up. But you would be wrong for I was actually demolishing it.

Well, part of it anyway.

It all started off with me searching for stones, and that entailed rooting around on the floor in the corner near they might have fallen. To do that I needed to hack my way through the brambles and trees and so on and that took a while.

Once I managed to get over there, I uncovered quite a few as well, but I also uncovered quite a few cracks in the wall that I hadn’t noticed. And they are going to need dealing with.

So having rescued some of the stones I also set about rescuing the wooden beam that acts as a lintel for the support of the roof chevrons. That was bought new in 2002 or whenever it was but I never got round to positioning it. Anyway, it’s now roughly in place and tied onto the chevrons over where I’m working,so that it doesn’t fall down again.

But getting it up there led to knocking down a pile of stones that were there. But that’s not a problem – if they won’t stand a clout with a wooden beam they needed recementing.

But the tragedy was when I was reaching over to hold the end of the beam up – I put my foot on the wooden board that I’d used as shuttering when I started to repair the front of the wall all those years ago – but that broke free and fell taking a few breeze blocks and a pile of stones with it as well, and all in all it’s something of a mess.

But then again, that can’t be helped. I’m going to have to start lower down the wall on the outside I reckon and point all of that corner of the wall to hold it all together before I build up any higher. I’m going to have to do it anyway sooner or later but that corner is definitely melting slowly away and urgent attention is required.

>But what was impressive was that the concrete infill that I used back in those days to repair it – that’s all held up and it’s stronger than the actual stone wall itself. I’m impressed with that.

So having decided on something of a plan, I mixed a pile of mortar to start on the pointing, only to be denied by a torrential rainstorm. At least my tarpaulin roof is holding well up, and gave me some shelter while I used the mortar that I had just mixed to point the inside of the wall that I’ve been building up this week.

But talking of rain and so on, the temperature dropped to 5.8°C last night – the coldest for ages. I have all of the windows closed, the fridge switched off and a jumper on.

And I don’t know what happened to the cacophony of alarm calls this morning. I somehow or other managed to sleep all the way through it and it was 10:33 when I woke up. But all the photos are now up to date thanks to another morning session on the computer, and I can now turn my attention to other things.

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Thursday 6th October 2011 – THIS CONFRONTATIONAL THING …

… didn’t quite come off. One of the guys was over half an hour late, but that was nothing. The others were 2:40 late!

The first guy has been working for the company since 2008. Before that he was making jewellery with his father for tourists on a beach in the Caribbean. He very kindly explained how this project works, and this has explained absolutely everything to me about how this scam works.

For scam it is, make no mistake.

For installing solar panels on my roof, The charge is €24000!!!!!!! However I’m entitled to a government grant of 27% (about €6400) and this I have to pay to the company. And so I asked the salesman what I got for my money and so he told me, and I did a quick costing on this and the sum came to …. errrrr …. €6400 give or take a little.

For the rest, you pay €180 per month until the balance is paid off, which according to my calculations was just under 7.5 years even though they insisted that it was nearer 8.5 years.

Apparently you pay the €180 from your income from the Electricity Board’s payment to you, and so I asked what would happen if there was a shortfall. The answer for that, dear reader, was not forthcoming.

Anyway, he was turfed out and I had to wait around until 16:40 for the other people who were supposed to be here at 14:00

They turned up eventually and told me “sorry we are late but we had to go round to see farmer someone and he needs 7Kw of panels”. Following on from that, they tried to insist that my barn orients towards the south east (it’s actually about 5 degrees south of east) and how good it would be for solar panels – which is nonsense because the sun goes off there at about 14:30.

Anyway they were sent packing as well and I could carry on with my wall. But not for long though as it started to rain. That meant working inside and there’s plenty to do. I actually did some tidying up in the lean-to underneath where I’m working. And it needs it too.

Anyway the day wasn’t wasted what with these persons coming round. It got me to tidy up my room and also to tidy up the lean-to.

And the summer has gone too, just as I said the other day that it would. I have all the windows closed and a jumper on. I don’t like this at all.

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Wednesday 5th October 2011 – I DIDN’T QUITE MANAGE …

… the early start this morning.

It was in fact 10:20 when I roused myself from the heaving pit but then again, I was still up working last night at 02:30. No danger of that tonight though – I’ve already crashed out twice and I’ll be off to bed in a second.

So having breakfasted, I carried on with the match report from Sunday and that’s now on line. All 48mb of it – I can’t half write some rubbish when I’m in the mood. But I’m going to have to make much more of an effort to keep it all up-to-date this season and not let it slide like I have been doing when I’ve been overtaken by events.

After lunch, I attacked the second part of the wall on the lean-to. And I’ve cheated as well while building it up. It looks like a stone wall, that’s for sure. But it’s only the outer surfaces that are in stone, and then not very much of it either.

I’m just building up the front and the back of the wall with large flat stones laid on their edges, and then pouring a weak lightweight concrete mixture down in between them as a filler. That way, it can be done quickly, simply and effectively.

In fact I’ve made quite a bit of progress – much more than I thought that I would. And I would have made even more had I not leant a little too far over and knocked a large part of my wall into the next field.

What was surprising though was how carried away I was by it all. The only reason that I stopped was that it went dark – 19:25 when I finished and it’s a long time since I’ve been so enthusiastic about what I’ve been doing.

Other exciting developments today were that I had no less than FIVE phone calls in the period between 10:30 and 12:00. The result of some of those is that I have not one but TWO companies sending representatives to see me – and at the same time too – to convince me to have solar panels on my roof.

That will serve tham right. I can’t be doing with these cold-calling canvassers

But it does mean that I have to spend tomorrow morning tidying up for a change. Neitzsche famously said that “out of chaos comes order” – but of course Neitzsche had been and gone long before I was ever about.

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Tuesday 4th October 2011 – I’VE BEEN DOING …

… real work today.

I’ve been working on the back wall – the one adjacent to the farmer’s field – of the downhill-side lean-to this afternoon.

As you know, some of it fell down ages ago and last summer when Terry and I were doing the work at Lieneke’s, I used the leftover cement and concrete in the cement mixer to start to build it up again.

Today though, I built up the remainder of the rear half of the wall and now that’s more-or-less finished.

Not without some issues though – not the least of which was trying to find the outer demi-chevron, that had fallen off the wall sometime while I was in Canada. That eventually came to light in a pile of brambles in the farmer’s field.

I’ve even pointed part of the inner side of the wall to use up all of the mortar that was left. That means that tomorrow afternoon I can make a start on the front half of the wall and that’s not going to be easy because there is quite a bit of that missing. That’s going to need quite a bit of work to put that right.

This morning,I was up at some kind of respectable hour which was just as well as Liz and I were a-radioing at Marcillat for Radio Tartasse. We’re still doing “autoentrepreneurs” with them but we shall be moving on shortly to talk about other things.

I’ve also almost-finished my match report for the footy on Sunday and I hope that I’ll have that on-line tomorrow.

As an aside, we had storm clouds gathering today over here – first clouds I’ve seen for ages. It almost rained as well and that would have been a surprise – I can’t remember the last time it rained here. What an Indian summer!

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Monday 3rd October 2011 – WELL, IT’S BACK …

… to the daily grind now. Or, at least, it should have been, except that at instead of the early night that I had promised myself,I was still wide awake at 05:00. Sleep issues again – it must be my guilty conscience.

Obviously, 08:15 never happened and it was about 10:50 when I heaved myself out of my stinking pit ready to face the world.

This morning I spent writing up my notes for the match yesterday. I’m amazed about how much I wrote and it’s probably going to take me all week to do the web page for it. But I need to exert myself and not let things drag around like I have been doing.

This afternoon I moved a few things around on the car park and managed to get at the immersion heaters under the tarpaulin. There’s a newish 50-litre tank there that Bill gave me because it has a leak in it somewhere so I’ve connected it all up to all kinds of pipes so that I can fill it with water and then close it off. I’ll leave it like that for a day or so to see if I can see where it’s leaking from. Then I can fix the leak, fit a 12-volt element in it and then use it in the lean-to as the new dump load.

>A pleasant surprise at the Anglo-French Group tonight where we had two new members. Peter brought his ladyfriend along to take part, and Nan turned up, seeing as she has now moved to la Cellette. we had a really good time as well and we were all quite animated. It’s nice to see that kind of thing happening.

But that’s it basically and I really am going to be going to bed in a minute. These late nights are catching up on me and I need to be up early tomorrow.

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Sunday 2nd October 2011 – AT LAST ….

.. we managed to get some football in today. My withdrawal symptoms are over.

It’s League Cup week – round three as it happens – and this is why matches have been few and far between this weekend.

Pionsat has made it through the first two rounds without my help and today they were up against it – in the shape of Les Ancizes who play three divisions higher up the pyramid and who included two players who played in CFA2 (the 4th level of the French pyramid) last season.

>And what didn’t help matters was that they gave away three silly goals of the type that I have spent the last three seasons trying to get them out of – a lazy defence that won’t talk to each other, won’t track back as soon as they lose possession and no-one who will really dominate the bak line.

They also conceded a fourth goal that was quite a good effort, and not only that, Les Ancizes hit the woodwork twice when I’m sure that it would have been easier to score.

With Cedric working hard up front supported by Nico they huffed and puffed but they never threatened to blow Les Ancizes’ house down, but then Thomas came on as a substitute for Jojo, who was clearly not having the best of games.

I first saw Thomas play three seasons ago as a new kid on the block and how promising did he look in those days. But the last two seasons he never seemed to fulfill what he showed back in those days.

Today, though, he came on clearly with a point to prove and from that moment onwwards the match changed in character. Cedric and Nico scored a goal between them and Thomas ran riot down the inside right position and scored two magnificent goals to pull FC Pionsat St Hilaire up to within touching distance.
Pick of the pair from Thomas has to be this brilliant diving header, and that would not have been out of place on the telly in any league you might care to name.

Highlight though was definitely Pionsat’s equaliser. The two players that had been playing higher up the pyramid spent much of the time showing off on the ball and it was odds-on that it was going to end in tears.

One of them had already had a narrow excape when he tried to dribble around Cedric on the edge of the penalty area and although he eventually managed to keep the ball, his pass out rebounded off a Pionsat player and could have gone anywhere.

But his colleague was not so lucky. His effort with just 10 seconds to go rebounded off the referee of all people and fell to Cedric totally unmarked in front of an empty net and Cedric doesn’t miss those. Thank you very much.

And so we had penalties – and cool heads at Pionsat saw them through by 5 penalties to 4 and an extremely lucky victory that it was too.

It’s not often that Lady Luck smiles on Pionsat but she did today and the team can bask in their success here for the rest of the week.

It was also probably the hottest October day I have ever known. Absolutely beautiful. We are having most unseason-like weather just now and I expect that we will end up paying for this in a couple of weeks time.

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Saturday 1st October 2011 – ONE OF THE LOCAL SHOPS …

… burnt down last night. And good and proper too! It’s the one in Ronnet, just a few kilometres from here and is one of those little shops that does a little of everything.

I was on my way back from swimming at Neris-les-Bains and I noticed it. So I made a few enquiries and was told that it happened at 22:00 Friday evening and there is nothing at all left.That is really sad because there aren’t really all that many shops in the vicinity these days and local shops need as much encouragement as they can get

Yes, I’ve been swimming today. It was another gorgeous day and so I worked on the computer until lunchtime and then went to Commentry. There, LIDL came up trumps with boxes of metal joints for carpentry, a radio-controlled clock with the laser alarm, and a pile of max-min external-internal thermometers that I have been trying to find for ages.

Swimming was fun because even though it was a glorious day, with it being October there were few people in the pool. However there was some Grandad there who had shown his chubby 4-year old grand-daughter how to jump in the deep end of the pool. So we were treated to a non-stop session of the running patter of tiny feet, a loud squeal of delight and then an enormous splash, all the way through the afternoon. Clearly someone was having a whale of a time.

And no footy tonight – nowhere within a reasonable distance. It’s the beginning of October too. Whatever is the world coming to?

-1

Friday 30th September 2011 – YOU ARE PROBABLY WONDERING …

… why I didn’t blog last night before I went to bed. The truth is that in fact I didn’t go to bed.

Dunno if it was with crashing out the day before, or all the coffee that I drank, but I was still up at 08:00 and wide awake. So much so that I made myself an early breakfast.

I did crash out on the sofa at about 10:00 but not for long as the phone rang just before midday and it’s been ringing for most of the day on and off ever since.

This afternoon after I was roused by the telephone I did some more transcribing of my holiday notes and then I went outside and dug up my onions.

Well, such as they are because the crop is something of a disappointment. In fact I have more rogue potatoes than I do onions, and that’s sad.

And so I’m off to bed now to catch up on my beauty sleep. It’s shopping tomorrow and I’ve let the stocks run down a little just recently.

Thursday 29th September 2011 – THE PHONE RANG …

… at 10:00 this morning. And it’s a good job that it did too otherwise I would be still asleep even now.

So much for that early night!

It was Liz on the phone, reminding me about our recording session later doday. And had she not done so I would have gone there for 16:30 and not 14:30. No idea how come that time had entered itself into my head.

But anyway I was in plenty of time to pick her up and we made it to Gerzat with plenty of time to spare. And it’s a good job that we did too because my first task on arriving was to fix their computer which had stopped working. .

Once I’d organised that we could record our next four programmes.

We are using a different format from now on, though. We have 15 minutes rather than 10, and the programmes are divided up into four segments

there are the events
we have the supplementary information – for one week Liz does a recipe, a second week I do a gardening bit, and for the other weeks we discuss useful French phrases.
we have music – English-speaking songs and such-like
we have the legislation bit

And it was hot there too – the temperature displayed on the wall on the pharmacy round the corner was off the scale – more than 40 degrees and I could believe that too. We were sweltering. Late September too!

Liz cooked tea as well which was nice – it’snice being waited on hand and foot every now and again, especially with the delicious food that Liz produces.

Yes, as Golden Earring so famously said that beautiful evening on the beach in Scheveningen in the early 90s – “There’s one thing I want to tell you man – it’s good to be back home”.

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Wednesday 28th September 2011 – SO WHAT HAPPENED …

… today then?

The rather prosaic answer is “I don’t know”.

But I’ll tell you something, and that is that I know what didn’t happen. You were all expecting me to leap out of my bed at the crack of dawn all fired up with a new enthusiasm after all of this time in North America, weren’t you?

But really – as if there was ever any likelihood of that happening.

So I had a leisurely day, slowly unpacking the stuff that I had brought back with me, and also doing a few desultory bits and pieces with the photos that I had taken. Not that it was an awful lot, I hasten to add.

The day ended with me going to bed to have an early night. This jet-lag thing is difficult to overcome as you can imagine and my body-clock is all shaken about.

It’ll take me a day or two to get back into my old routine.

Tuesday 27th September 2011 – AFTER ALL OF THAT …

… I’m back home.

At least I think I am, but I’m not sure because I can’t actually see anything. I’m rather overgrown with weeds as it happens.

It’s not just the corn that is as high as an elephant’s eye.

Not only that, while I was away my famous home-made 12-volt immersion heater seems to have corroded itself through. It seems that this 50-litre drum which had been used for storing liquids isn’t rust-proofed after all, which s a surprise.

When I returned, all of the water had leaked away through the hole and as a result the electrical contacts have overheated and shorted out. That’s not done the element too much good either.

Still, it was a nice idea. Live and learn, say I. My next one is going to be a plastic one, I reckon. I hope that that will do better if it can withstand the heat.

Clearing away the cobwebs and the dust, I fought my way up into the attic. I suppose that I really ought to unpack, but I think that that will have to wait until I feel more like it.

I’ve had a tough couple of days and I need to recharge my batteries before I tackle anything else.

And thanks to Liz and Terry for lodging me last night.

Tuesday 30th August 2011 – DAY ONE OF MY VOYAGE

I’m not sure if this should actually count as Day One because firstly, there wasn’t much of it and secondly, I didn’t actually leave the country. It was however they day that I hit the road (or rather hit the rails) and so for that reason I’ve included it as a fair candidate.

Having said that though, I did actually hit the road rather early. I was all washed up, cleaned up, tidied up (well, sort-of) and on the road for 09:45 because today is the day that Liz and I record the Radio Anglais programmes for the month of September. We did the Radio Tartasse sessions in the morning and then I drove Caliburn down to Liz’s and left him there, piling myself and the baggage into Liz’s voiture for the journey down to Gerzat and the Radio Arverne sessions.

When they were over she heaved me out at the railway station at Riom and that was that. And only a wait of 75 minutes for the train. Good job there’s a coffee machine here.

This is the locomotive that pulled my train for Paris Gare de Lyon.

I sat next to a girl on the train up and we had a healthy conversation for at least 10 minutes before we worked out that we were both British. She was from Inverness and a student at St Andrews studying French for Scientists. She was spending a year’s exchange living in the language but she’d been in Aurillac for a month house-and-dog sitting.

Her family lives in the wilds and they have no mains electricity – just solar panels and wind turbines and so we had a good chat about that and I gave her a card.

We had the usual struggle across Paris with my giant suitcase and there has to be a better way to go to the airport than this – hitting the city in the evening rush hour with swarms of people and escalators out of order and miles to walk. I’m going to have to resolve this somehow.

At the airport, I dunno where this blasted shuttle bus has gone to – I have to wait about a year for it to turn up. And then by the time that I’ve sorted out everything at the hotel and gone for a walk, the only restaurant in this village here is closed. It only opens Thursday Friday and Saturday evenings and closes at 21:30. So that’s no use to me.

Nothing to eat tonight then. I hope that the rest of my voyage is better than this.

Monday 29th August 2011 – I had another early start this morning.

I don’t know why – but I was downstairs making breakfast when the alarm went off at 08:15. What’s going on there, then? It’s not like me.

And so this morning I packed everything up ready for going to Paris on the train tomorrow evening. The suitcase is all done – it just remains now to do my backpack and to sort out the camera and one or two other bits and pieces.

I’ve also printed off a pile of stuff that I needed to print – the radio stuff and also my rail tickets and so on. even managed to find the time to plant some winter cabbage. But talking of the garden – I planted some endives a couple of weeks ago when I pulled up the new potatoes, and covered the plot with a black plastic bin liner. When I lifted it off today, much of it had sprouted. That was good. Mind you, despite how warm it was today, the temperature last night dropped to about 9 degrees – the lowest so far this summer. Autumn is acumen in. Lhude sing the falling leaves.

Round at Liz’s we prepared our radio programmes for tomorrow and Liz cooked a nice tea. we also weighed my suitcase – 3kgs overloaded. I’ll have to do some trimming down of what I’m taking.

Now I’m back here chilling out. The next news that you have of me won’t be from here, that’s for sure.

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EPIC HALL

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