Tag Archives: bedroom

Friday 24th December 2010 – MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

And hasn’t the year passed quickly? It hardly seems like a moment since I rushed over the finishing of the stairs up to my attic and then locked myself in.

heavy snowfall les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo this morning was another late start, due in the main by my being confused about the time. And the darkness of the room was due to the skylights being covered in snow. 24 hours late, yes indeed, but it got here in the end.

And once I was up and about I did a little more in my bedroom with putting up some more framework.

But I didn’t stick at it long and after lunch and a wash and shave it was picking my way gingerly through the snow and ice to Terry and Liz’s for Christmas Eve, which was very nice of them. Liz cooked a gorgeous Indian meal and then we had a listen to our radio programme.

And even though it’s me who says it, we sounded really good on the broadcast – exactly how I wanted it to be – all nice and informal and happy and partying.

At 22:30 I came home and it took me over 45 minutes – the roads were dreadful. But I was armed with a Christmas cake and a prezzy – it’s really nice having friends like Terry and Liz.

But if you are reading this before Christmas Day evening, you might want to listen to our radio programme as it’s being streamed at 23:00 Europe, 22:00 UK and 17:00 EST – go to
http://www.radioarverne.com
and click on the link “Arverne en Ligne”

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Monday 20th December 2010 – I MADE A LITTLE PROGRESS TODAY.

plasterboard on bedroom wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceYes, I now have the first sheet of plasterboard on the wall in the bedroom.

Mind you, it wasn’t until late afternoon that I got as far as doing that.

This morning was … errr … rather a late start and after breakfast I went and cut up a huge pile of wood. The deeper I dig into the lean-to the worse the quality of wood seems to be and it’s taking ages for it to catch light, so I cut a huge pile of the old laths that were on the barn roof. They should burn like Billio. I want to empty the lean-to as you know so I reckon I’ll use a half-load of that with a half-load of old laths each time I fill up the woodstove.

I was just about to cut my hair, seeing as it’s all nice and clean, but Terry turned up. He’d been hedge-trimming at The Beguiled and so he came round to look at the bedroom. While he was here we measured up the windows for the bedroom and the bathroom and one day this week when Terry and Liz are going to Montlucon I’ll tag a ride and go and buy the windows.

After that, the hair-cutting recommenced but A DISASTER. I somehow managed to walk on my no1 fitting. And so after many hours of messing around with that I ended up … errr … shaving my head with the thing and that was that.

Lunch at 15:30 (I was rather carried away,  wasn’t I?) followed by finishing the odds and ends of insulation in the bedroom, and then fitting the first sheet of plasterboard. And then I lost the light.

But with the meeting of the Anglo-French group being in St Eloy and me needing some shopping, I went early into there and took the opportunity of doing a load of washing in the launderette. It’s going to be ages before I’ll have the weather conditions suitable to do any washing here.

And now it’s gone cold again. And they are talking of snow for Thursday. But at least I’ve now restocked with food, I’ve plenty of wood and gas, so what more do I need?

A few days of bright brilliant sunshine would be nice.

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Friday 17th December 2010 – FIRST JOB THIS MORNING …

… after making up the fire for this evening of course, was to shovel a foot of snow off the solar panels on the roof. Yes, we’ve had another pasting again through the night and isn’t this becoming monotonous?

And after breakfast it was more wood-cutting for the fire and I can see me needing tons of this as the cold weather and snow continues. I now have 5 buckets lined up in the queue and I’ll be cutting some more. I’ve also built a kind-of lean-to out of two old pallets and some offcuts of plastic roofing from when I made the verandah, and I’ve been slowly collecting the wood that’s been lying around outside and heaving it under there out of the weather.

Next task was to sweep the floor and clear a big space in the bedroom to lay down the plasterboarding for cutting. That seemed to take ages and I ended up with a huge pile of rubbish in the middle of the floor.

Going through it a few times with a magnet pulled out tons of screws and nails and the like and I need to sift that properly as I was finding all kinds of things that I had lost.

During this time the heavens opened again and we were treated to a thorough downpour of the white stuff – an incredible snowstorm. And I felt sorry for this guy who turned up – his company is a bigger liar than he is and he was not in the area at all – he had driven 260 kms from Lyon in the worst snowstorm of the year and his face was a picture when he saw my panels. 14:00 he arrived and despite this 90-minute presentation I was to have, he had gone by 14:15. And in all that snow as well.

But tonight the temperature plummeted all in a space of about an hour. From -2°C to -7.5°C and we have a brilliant clear sky with so much moonlight that you don’t need a torch down the garden. If this keeps up tomorrow I could have a record solar energy day and by heavens I need it, but I’m not holding my breath. We’ll have one quick promise, a change of wind back to the westerlies and then another shed-load of snow, all by 10:00.

I’m getting fed up of this.

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Thursday 16th December 2010 – I WONDER IF YOU CAN GUESS …

snow on verandah les guis virlet puy de dome france… whereabouts in the verandah the cooker is situated?

Yes, the weather has warmed up slightly today – it even managed to struggle up above freezing inside the verandah and so the heat that the cooker gave off while heating up my lunchtime coffee managed to thaw away some of the snow on the roof.

But of course, as you know, it isn’t snow at all but just several inches of severe frost.

And this evening we’ve had a dramatic change in the direction – and the speed – of the wind. We are now having a howling westerly gale blowing in that’s keeping the temperature up a little (not like the 11°C that we had the other day) but blowing all the smoke back down my chimney and suffocating the fire (and me as it blows all of the smoke back into my room).

Nevertheless I wonder if this might bring me some sunshine. It’s been ages since I’ve had any.

polystyrene insulation bedroom wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceThings are progressing in the bedroom as well. all of the long wall has been insulated and I could have done even more had I not … errrr … slept through the alarm and had I woken up before … errrr … 10:26.

It’s not quite how it ought to be though because with my wall being 2.65 metres high and the plasterboard being 2.50 metres high, I need to let in another horizontal batten in the appropriate place to support the join between the boards. But that’s tomorrow’s task as I ran out of time today.

I’m not going to have too much time tomorrow either. I had a telephone call from some society asking me if I would like to become an energy producer and sell my excess output to the Electricity Board. By pure coincidence they “just happen” to have a salesman in Virlet tomorrow and he will be delighted to talk to me about how I can become rich, at no obligation, and he will even give me a free estimate for the supply and fitting of some solar panels.

Of course this is a far too good an opportunity to miss and I’m eager to see exactly what he proposes with regard to selling me a solar panel system. He’ll be here at 14:00 so he says, and I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

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Tuesday 14th December 2010 – GOD IT WAS HARD THIS MORNING …

… to get out of bed. Not surprising really, as in my little room up here the temperature had fallen to 7.8°C and it was taters.

lowest temperature 2010 les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut that was nothing.

My hunch about the temperature last night was correct – and correct in spades as the temperature had dropped right through the floor to an incredible -10.5°C outside through the night.

That’s not just the lowest temperature this winter so far, it’s also the lowest temperature of the year. And it’s also the second-lowest temperature that I have ever recorded.

The heat exchanger recorded a temperature of -14.8°C, and that is pretty good going too.

Tonight the temperature outside was even lower at teatime than it was yesterday so I don’t know if that is significant, but I’ll tell you tomorrow.

Mind you, up here this evening after I knocked off work it was a mere 4.8°C in my room. But a huge blaze in the little fire sorted that out (although not as much as I would have liked). And as a side effect the little coffee maker thing that I bought – it managed to conjure up a cup of coffee, so intense was the heat in the fire.

space blanket insulation polystyrene les guis virlet puy de dome franceWork carried on apace in the bedroom – there was no way that I was going to work outside in the ridiculous daytime temperature of -5.4°C.

I fitted all of the battens to the long wall in the bedroom, fitted the space-blanket insulation and then put on the counter-battens. The first part of the wiring has been done as you know, and I’ve started to fit the polystyrene tiles over the top. If I put my back into it tomorrow I could have that wall finished.

What helped with the work was the set of overalls that I was wearing. They were on sale in LIDL last winter – a pair of XL-size quilted winter overalls rather like a huge ski-suit. They were expensive but today they were worth every penny and I would recommend a pair of them to anyone who intends to work around here in this weather. I could feel the heat as soon as I put them on and I was comfortable for all of the day. What I call an impressive piece of kit.

And I’m not going to hang around tonight either. it’s still cold and so I’m going to retreat underneath the covers and have an early night. I reckon that tomorrow is going to be even colder.

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Friday 10th December 2010 – I ALWAYS SEEM TO BE …

… talking about the weather just now.

And that’s because there’s such a lot of it. This morning when I woke up I noticed the beautiful clear blue skies. “Ahhh – a nice Alpine winter day” I mused, and hauled myself out of bed to see the ammeter run off the clock.

But no sooner had I arisen then the clouds blew themselves back in again and that was that. I lose count of how many days we’ve had like that now.

So as it wasn’t as cold as yesterday I spent the morning clearing out a pile of rubbish from Caliburn. If I wake up at anything like early I’ll be off to Montlucon for a pile of shopping including a load of stuff from Brico Depot. There’s tons of stuff that I need.

Once that was done (and still no satnav) I carried on emptying out the old roofing tiles from the bedroom. I’ve been up and down those steps like a yo-yo with probably 50 buckets or so and I reckon that another hour or so on Monday will see the job done. Once all of that is gone I can finish off the insulation and the plasterboarding instead of doing it bit by bit.

But that won’t be tomorrow – I’m shopping!

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Thursday 9th December 2010 – I WAS RIGHT ABOUT THE WEATHER.


heavy snowfall les guis virlet puy de dome franceI woke up this morning … "DAH DAH DAH DAH DAH " – ed …to -2°C and a covering of snow everywhere.

And perishing cold it was too. It snookered my plans of digging up the chicory and blanching it – I needed a hammer and chisel to get into the soil.

So instead, after cutting a pile of wood, I started to wire up the wind turbine on the barn to some batteries I had lying around. I may as well try to make use of some of the wind that we might have.

But that was a perishing cold job too and by the time that lunch came around and I still hadn’t finished and I was frozen to the marrow I abandoned that idea too.

After lunch I made a start on moving some of the old slate that is in the bedroom. And after about 50 bucketfuls up and down stairs you can just about notice the difference. I had no idea how much there is in that room. I’ll be here until next Christmas trying to shift it all.

But at least I’ve shifted enough so that I can get the next load of insulation onto the wall. I can do that tomorrow if we still have sub-arctic temperatures.

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Friday 3rd December 2014 – IT’S STILL SNOWING.

We had a pasting through the night again so the first job this morning was to stick my head out of the skylights and brush it off the solar panels.

Mind you, I needn’t have bothered – I had just over 1 amp-hour of solar energy today. Thick grey clouds and the odd heavy snowfall was the order of the day, and I’m still snowed in.

Freezing cold as well – it stayed negative all day, even in the verandah and that’s no surprise – the huge layer of snow on the roof is keeping any kind of heat away from the inside.

So I’ve tidied up a little more in the bedroom and fitted some temporary shelves in the wardrobe for putting the tools and so on. And then I fitted some more studding to one of the walls ready for some more insulation. I need to get a move on.

I’ve also started to take out the old slate. It’s going to take ages but it will take even longer if I don’t do it. I’ve decided to take two bucket loads with me each time I go downstairs – that’ll be a good plan.

When it was dark I went into the barn and did some more stuff in there until 18:00 and then I came in. I wasn’t going to hang around in that cold weather. 5.1°C it was up here but an hour of the little stove going full pelt soon put that right.

But when will it ever end?

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Thursday 2nd December 2010 – WELL THERE’S COLD …

… and there’s very cold, and then there’s .. errrr … -8.9°C. That’s what the temperature dropped to last night. No wonder it went cold in here all of a sudden at about 00:30, and why it was only 9.1°C in here this morning when I woke up.

First job this morning before I could cut my wood was to look at the batteries. Last night I noticed that the charge had suddenly dropped to about 11.8 volts and there was a smell of gas lingering around.

overheated battery burst les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo this morning a quick touch test showed that one of them was overheating and on a closer examination you can see that this battery has burst. I don’t know why either. Since I’ve had my water heater wired in as a dump load, there shouldn’t be any possibility of any overcharge, and this battery isn’t one of those that handle the input.

But changing the battery for another restored the current and then I went and chopped another huge load of wood – I had a feeling that I’ll be going to need it.

The postie came by this morning with a registered letter. Not very unusual, you might think, but she walked down from the end of the lane as I’m snowed in right now. I was impressed with her devotion to duty anyway.

Later I carried on with the wardrobe and it’s finished as far as I can do it. I’ve none of the wood for the sides and the shelves and so on. That’ll have to wait until I can get in to Montlucon, whenever that might be. But I also did a little clearing up in the bedroom too, so that I can make some more space for working.

I also managed to do some more in the barn as well.

Up here after knocking off work it was a mere 5.6°C. Not surprising because with all of the snow on the windows in the roof, no heat is getting in from outside. But this little heater is doing a very valiant job and I’m impressed that it can cope with these temperatures with just burning old scrap offcuts of wood.

Tea though is difficult right now. I cook in the verandah right now and the temperatures are impossible. I can’t cook myself a decent meal when I’m having to work in temperatures like -3°C. So it’s a handful or two of pasta, a tin of beans and some veg out of a tin. That’s the best I can do.

I just can’t believe this weather.

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Wednesday 1st December 2010 – THIS WEATHER DIDN’T IMPROVE ANY TODAY.

heavy snowfall les guis virlet puy de dome franceI woke up to find snow everywhere – a good 6 inches must have fallen through the night and the temperature stayed below zero all day.

I was getting low on water in the verandah so I had to hammer my way through the ice in the water butts – the tap was frozen solid. Definitely a good idea it was to fasten the top onto the butts with wing nuts rather than screws.

wardrobe bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter the customary chopping of a bucket load of wood to replenish the stocks up here I carried on with the wardrobe.

And I’m definitely sick of Brico Depot wood. The horizontals I made out of the left-over demi-chevrons from the roof – those that I bought from the sawmill – but the Brico Depot demi-chevrons I was using for the uprights – they just split and collapsed. It’s the sawmill in future for me for my wood.

Much of the wardrobe is done but I ran out of light and so I went into the barn and carried on tidying up the wood that used to be the laths off the barn roof. The long bits or those with decent ends I’m saving at the moment but there are also tons of short bits or broken-off bits. I moved a few bucket-loads of those down to the lean-to where I’m keeping the wood that I’m burning. I’ll cut those up tomorrow morning and add them to the pile.

Yes, tomorrow. I can’t see me going anywhere tomorrow. I’m properly snowed in here and there’s no sign of a snow plough.  

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Tuesday 30th November 2010 – WELL, I WAS RIGHT …

… about the weather last night. We touched rock bottom at -6.2°C – the lowest November temperature that I have ever recorded, and that by a country mile as well.

And as if to rub salt into the wounds, the temperature struggled up today to the dizzy heights of an astonishing November temperature of -1.2°C, the first negative maximum temperature that I have ever recorded in November.

heavy snow fall les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd that wasn’t all either – at about 12:00 or thereabouts the heavens opened and cascaded down a ton of snow and that stuff kept on coming for the whole afternoon.

The high winds that came with it, blowing in from the east, whipped the stuff about in a mini-blizzard and as a by-product had both of the wind turbines going round.

As for me, I spent the day working in the bedroom downstairs building my fitted wardrobe. It was impossible to work outside. I’ve done the three main cross bars for the front and the two central uprights. All the joints are cut and shaped.

Tomorrow, if the weather is still nasty I’ll be screwing it all into position. I need then to run some electric cable for a light over where the drawers and the mirror will be and then I can fit the last side wall inside the wardrobe. Once that’s all done I can carry on with the plasterboarding around the walls.

I knocked off at 18:00 as usual and made a coffee for bringing up here. And up here we had a balmy 6.7°C. But despite its faults, such as needing filling every 15 minutes, this little pot-bellied stove is doing the business up here. It’s really tiny as you might remember but it burns the offcuts of wood from joinery projects, old flooring, scrap wood that I scavenged, the old broken laths off the roofs that we did, old paper, cardboard and everything and brought the room up to a pleasant 18°C at a total cost of nothing for the fuel.

The stove itself of course cost just £85 new so that’s probably one of the best investments that I’ve made around the farm and I certainly appreciate it in this weather.

The long-term aim for the stove is to buy one of those Gobain stoves – wood-burners that also have a built-in oven and a back-boiler that heats the water. With the back-boiler I can heat an indirect hot water tank and run a little central-heating system with a radiator in the bedroom, another small one in the bathroom and a small one in the lean-to where I used to live.

With there being an indirect cylinder I can also use solar heat to heat the indirect water circuit in the summer so that’s the best of both worlds, and the surplus electrical energy can be used to power a small electric oven for cooking.

But summer is a long way off and the way things are around here just now I don’t think that we are ever going to have another summer. It’s permanent winter from now on.  

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Friday 26th November 2010 – THIS WAS THE SIGHT …

heavy snow overnight les guis virlet puy de dome france… that greeted me this morning.

Yes, we had a real pasting through the night. So first job was to brush the snow off the solar panels by reaching out through the roof windows with a large brush, seeing as I no longer have the scaffolding up.

It was something of a contortion to do it but I managed all the same. In fact it reminded me of a film that I saw when I was a small child and which left quite an impression on me.

There were some pioneers living in a log cabin with straw thatch, somewhere along the edge of the settled USA in the late 18th Century and to drive them out the native Americans set fire to the cabins (with the occupants inside) by firing the thatch with flaming arrows.

One scene that always sticks in my mind was a pioneer opening up a hatch in the roof and sticking a broom or something out to try to dislodge the flaming arrows. I just wish I knew what film it was.

Anyway, returning to my moutons, I made a lid for the compost bin, took off the segment with the opening lid and then closed it with the new bit, and used the leftover segments to make a second bin.

I’ve lined the base of it with brushwood for drainage and I’ll be starting on using that.

I’ve also been tidying up in the barn, sorting out the wood and identifying which bits to cut up, and I’ve also started making the wardrobe in my bedroom.

A couple of little repair jobs in the barn took me up to knocking-off time at 18:00 and then up here to find a temperature of just 7.2 degrees. But a huge blazing fire in my little stove has brought the temperature up to 20 degrees quickly enough and it’s nice and comfortable in here.

But outside, when I went down to make my tea, it was MINUS 4.4 degrees and that’s just ridiculous for November. And of course it’s only nigh on 6 and a half months since it stopped snowing – 5th May in fact. This year is crazy.

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Monday 22nd November 2010 – BACK AT WORK TODAY

And you have no idea how difficult it is, crawling out of bed at something like 08:30 in the morning when you haven’t had to do it for a while.

What made it worse was the weather – really a case of groping my way outside because we had a typical Auvergnat hanging cloud again and you couldn’t see a thing.

First thing that I did was to pull up my beetroot. That didn’t take too long and some of the roots are enormous. Liz is going to show me how to pickle them later this week and I’ll be looking forward to that.

home grown potatoes les guis virlet puy de dome franceNext was the turn of the potatoes and I seem to have rather a lot of them. I’ve had a cursory skim over about a quarter of the potato patch and I’ve pulled up a huge bucket full. But a few of them were damaged by the lifting so I reckon I’m going to have to make a huge potato curry.

I didn’t stay down there long because the heavens opened after about half an hour and it wasn’t very pleasant at all. And having to run up the field to answer the phone at about 11:30 or so, only for it to stop ringing as I put my hand on it – that didn’t help matters either.

But after that I fought my way into the barn, tidying up a load of wood as I passed, and sorted out a scaffolding pole to mount the wind turbine. That’ll be fixed to the fence for a while until I finish pointing the house wall, whenever that might be. And mounting it to the fence won’t be any time soon either as the weather is just impossible right now.

After lunch I tidied up a little in the bedroom downstairs to get ready to start work in there again, and I’ve used some of the old planks from the stairs to make a temporary floor in what will be the bathroom.

Now I have an inside toilet – a dry toilet of course, that’s made from a stainless steel waste bin (I bought two of those from IKEA) lined with a biodegradable bin liner and part-filled with sawdust. It’s only merely placed in the bathroom – it’s a long way from being fitted – but it’s a major advance as I don’t fancy trekking to the outside in the snow that we are likely to be having any time soon

I’ve also had a phone call from a potential customer interested in a wind turbine – that old guy who I met on an ALDI car park in Commentry a while back. He wants to power his house heating with it, which is rather optimistic, so we had a chat and if he wants to go any further he’ll call me back.

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Tuesday 24th August 2010 – Just look at the size of this!

monster courgette les guis virlet puy de dome franceNever mind the Winter of our Discount Tents, this is the Summer of the Monster Courgettes. This one has burst into life from being a cigar-shaped nonentity, is just a few days. Now it’s 44cms. I’ve got a luvverly bunch of coconuts indeed.

It’s so big that I only cooked half of it tonight, and with the spinach (out of the garden), carrots (ditto), beans (ditto) and chili (ditto) together with sone onions, lentils and garlic I made a huge mega-curry and there is enough to last for three days.

As well as the other half-courgette of course, and I don’t know what I’m going to do with that.

The pan was full to overflowing but as most of the courgette is nothing but water it soon simmers down to a reasonably size. And it was absolutely delicious.

Mind you, I’ll be eating courgettes until they come out of my ears. It’s the one thing that seems to do well here.

It was raining when I woke up and so after I let Terry and Simon into Lieneke’s house I carried on here – but not outside. The composting toilet will have to wait.

wardrobe back wall bedroom les guis virlet puy de dome franceWhat I did instead was to carry on working in the bedroom – the first time for about three months I reckon. And I now have the back wall finished as well as one of the sides of the fitted wardrobe that I’m building. That’s what is going down the far side just there.

I can’t do the other side of the wardrobe as it’s out of there that the electric wiring is coming and I need to work out how I’m going to fit it. But it’s nice to see progress all the same.

The weather brightened up this afternoon and so I reckoned on a shower, but the temperature has plummeted. 19°C it was outside, and the water temp was only 31°C. But not to worry – I tipped a kettle-full of boiling water into the solar tank. That took the temperature up to … errr ….45°C so a half-kettle of cold water took it back down to 42°C and that was my shower sorted. Delicious! Mind you,  won’t have to boil up water much longer as Simon gave me the boiler out of his van. It’s only 2.5 litres by the way but it will go nicely in the garage running off the excess charge over there. I’ve made a note of the maker and I’m going to see if they can do me a 50-litre one. That would be progress.

But the temperature is still falling, and with a clear sky, full moon and no clouds at all, it seems that the weather has turned (already!) and autumn is just around the corner. That’s depressing.

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Wednesday 9th June 2010 – Those of you with long memories …

… will recall the 11th of September 2008 when I had a whopping 48mm of rain in one day.

But that was an exceptional case – most of that fell in a brief half-hour period as the result of an incredible storm. Nothing that we have had since has ever come close.

caliburn parking harstanding flooding les guis virlet puy de dome franceThat is, until today. When it rained and rained and rained for the entire day non-stop. This horrible drenching rain that soaks absolutely everything and I don’t think that it’s ever going to stop.

And when I took the stats at 22:00 as usual I recorded 36.5mm of rain in that 24-hour period. And that’s the most rain that’s fallen here (apart from 11th September 2008) by a country mile.

My hardstanding has a river running down it right now as water cascades from just about everywhere in the neighbourhood. The whole of the ground is like a sponge.

Clearly working outside was impossible so after lunch I did some work in the bedroom but knocked off early as it was far too dark to see anything.

The weather really was that depressing.

fox les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut I did go down the garden to check up on all the plants, and my attention was drawn to some movement in the field.

We get to see plenty of wildlife here, deer and all that kind of thing. But I never normally have the camera with me. But today I did, quite luckily, and I was able to stand and watch, and reel off a pile of shots as a small fox played “pouncy pussy” with an object in the field.

fox les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo absorbed was it with what it was doing that it didn’t notice me there so I watched, getting soaking wet in the process, as it rounded up and then captured its latest meal.   I really don’t know who was the more absorbed, me or the fox. But it was interesting all the same.

I think that foxes are beautiful and I just don’t know why it is that people want to hunt and kill them. And in my book, huntsmen who dress up in ridiculous garments and set a pack of dogs on an animal like this and tear it to bits as a public spectacle are on roughly the same social level as paedophiles if you ask me.

I think that they are all thoroughly sick in the head.

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