Tag Archives: les guis

Saturday 7th November 2015 – IT’S ALL HAPPENING …

… at the swimming baths at Commentry.

Firstly, I forgot my cozzy and had to go back to Caliburn to find it. Secondly, the big pool was freezing. 29°, it said on the temperature, but I reckon that that must have been Fahrenheit, not Centigrade. Thirdly, there was a group of kids aged about 7-8-9 playing on a couple of foam-rubber rafts down one lane of the big pool. They were having an enormous amount of fun, trying to row, totally out of synch and quite often in opposite directions. As a result, every now and again there was a squeal and half of the kids fell off. They clambered back on again and a short while later we had another squeal followed by a splash. And so it went on. They were having a great time and it was quite amusing watching them.

But the fourth thing was the most interesting. There I was sitting on the jacuzzi steps and some young girl swimming past under water grabbed hold of my foot. I thought that my luck was in, but it turns out that she was aiming for her boyfriend sitting next to me.

Ahhh well 🙁

But you can see what the weather was like today. Totally glorious. And there I was, having disconnected the 12-volt immersion heater (I don’t want it to fire up until I’m there to see what happens). In fact, I went off to Montlucon where I spent a King’s ransom. And it wasn’t as if I had bought anything special, except for 2 inner tubes for the power barrow and a new heavy-duty wheel for the yellow wheelbarrow. It was cheaper than buying an inner tube and tyre and I must get myself organised.

But at least I’m stocked up with tins, macaroni, rice and the like ready for when the winter bites. As long as I have plenty to eat, plenty to read and a few good films to watch, I could be snowed in here for amonth and I couldn’t care less

I didn’t meet anyone whom I knew around the shops either, which makes a change. I’m not sure what happened there.

Pionsat had a really good match tonight against Mozac. They won 3-1 and we had four of the best goals that I’ve seen for ages. Peach of the night was Pionsat’s second, which started off with, would you believe, a one-on-one between a Mozac attacker and Matthieu in the Pionsat goal. The ball bounced off Matthieu’s leg and, just for once, went upfield out of danger. It was played forward to Cedric who rode a few good tackles and, surrounded by two or three Mozac defenders, laid it off to Frédéric. He sold a beautiful dummy to his marker and stepped inside, giving him half a yard of space and he coolly spicked his spot in the corner of the net.

For once, Pionsat had the rub of the green, the benefit of a few unclear decisions, and they played like they ought to have played for the last three or four years. I’ve complained about their “powder-puff” approach to the game in the past but tonight they put in quite a few crunching tackles to make their presence felt. If only they had done this in the past, their position would be totally different.

I was on my travels last night again. Once more, as just a couple of nights ago, I was trying to catch an aeroplane out of Canada but I was running really late. During my stay there, I’d used three cars but I only had one to hand back and I was desperately trying to trace the others, and time was running out. It transpired that one of the cars was “in the bodyshop” and wasn’t quite ready. And so, I thought, there goes my return flight home. I dunno why I seem to have this on my mind at the moment.

But tonight, it’s Saturday and there’s a long lie-in, I hope. I’m all clean with clean clothes and clean undies and so what I’m going to do right now is to change my bedding. A nice clean me with clean bedding and a long lie-in and I shall be in my elephant.

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Friday 6th November 2015 – THIS WEATHER IS WEIRD

Here I am, it’s the 6th November and I still have the fridge running 24 hours per day and not only that, at 19:00 this evening I was outside in the verandah with a bucket of really warm water having a gorgeous shower.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t with warm water out of the heat exchanger because the weather didn’t permit it. It started off quite well but round about midday we had a rainstorm and then it was clouded over for the rest of the day. The batteries didn’t charge right up and so we didn’t have anything going into the dump load. I ended up boiling 2 litres of water on the gas stove.

And that reminds me – I’m planning to go into Montlucon tomorrow so I ought to disconnect the dump load before I go. I want to see it in operation and make sure that it’s safe before I go off and leave it alone.

But with the rainfall and the lack of excess power I wasn’t able to cut any wood – once more. Instead, I started to tidy up outside somewhat (although it doesn’t look as if there is any difference). Once I’d sorted some of that out, I started on tidying up the ground floor in the house and I’ve made some progress in there. In fact, you can even see the top of the table now in places and you’ll be surprised at the things that I found. I know that I was!

I took the opportunity to empty some stuff out of Caliburn. In fact there’s some food in there still that I bought in August and seeing as it’s mostly tinned stuff, it can stay there for now. But taking some stuff into the barn I found quite by accident the big drill for which I was looking the other day. Isn’t it always like that?

And so I now smell nicely of coconut and my nice clean clothes smell nicely of hint of soap. On that note, having crashed out for a short while just now, I’m having an early night. I deserve it.

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Thursday 5th November 2015 – HAPPY BONFIRE NIGHT!

I hope that you all had a good bonfire. I’m gripping the edge of my seat waiting for the news, to see if anyone has managed to successfully emulate the feat of Guy Fawkes and his colleagues. The shambles that is in power in the United Kingdom deserves to have a barrel of gunpowder ignited underneath them so that we can replace them with a real caring, sharing Government that, instead of grinding down and kicking the poor and weak, gets to grips with the bankers and the ex-pats who have actually been responsible for the UK’s financial mess. Vietnam had the correct idea in this respect, but you would hardly credit the Conservative Government with solving the crisis in this fashion, no matter how much the bankers might deserve it.

And so I carried on with my studies this morning, admiring through the skylights the nice bright blue sky that was beating down upon me. And so no surprise as to what happened as I finished and went outside to work.

Yes- it immediately clouded over and that was that as far as chopping the wood went.

Instead, I attacked the 12-volt immersion heater again and now that is finished. And not only finished, but insulated, the thermometer fitted, the wiring in place, fitted to the charge controller and filled with water, waiting for the sunshine. I’m intrigued to see how this 6mm cabling holds up. I’m not too optimistic about this but at least it’s all properly soldered and bolted up, and the wire itself is in much better condition.

It’s been heat-shrinked too. I found my box of heat-shrink tubes and with the gas pistol I could heat it all up properly. And the wires are threaded through individual holes in the pattress that protects the ends of the heating element, so that they run very little risk of touching each other.

I even found time to make a wooden box to keep my fruit and veg. In truth I didn’t actually make it – it’s the old beichstuhl from before I fitted the permanent one into the shower room. It’s not been doing very much and it is in the way, so I fitted a new top, cleaned it out a little, and “hey, presto!”.

Rosemary was on the phone twice today too. The first time was for advice about oil to put in her chainsaw and the second time was to offer me a few words of encouragement and support as she somehow sensed that I’m not feeling all at the races right now.

but now I’m off to bed and a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow id Friday and I hope that the weather tomorrow afternoon is fine as I want to cut up more wood and I need a good shower too.

In other news, I’ve had two replies from acts whom I’ve contacted about providing live music for Radio Anglais. Ross Neilsen has sent me a concert and an Australian group, Alpha Omega, has allowed me to download one of their concerts from the group’s website.

Things are looking up!

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Wednesday 4th November 2015 – WELL I DIDN’T …

… cut up any wood today either.

Awake once again after the alarm went off, then after breakfast I cracked on with my studies and I’m making progress. So much so that I’m actually enjoying this course. It’s certainly making me think, which is what is the aim of it all, after all.

I had a phone call too. “Your order is now at the transport warehouse. To arrange an appointment for delivery, please call 0899 …..” But what kind of tree do these people think that I have fallen out of? For a start, I don’t have any orders outstanding. But secondly, I know all about these 0899 phone numbers. They are not free-phone numbers but uncontrolled premium rate lines and telephone companies should be censured for lumping them along with the other “08” numbers because a call to a 0899 number will cost you about €130 a time. It’s not free like you might be thinking, and telephone companies should identify them properly.

Beautiful and bright it was, this morning but by the time I went downstairs the sun had gone in and we were all overcast. Not enough power to run the chopsaw so that will have to wait for another time. Instead, I attacked the 12-volt immersion heater.

It’s all assembled now and there are no leaks as far as I can tell, and so I went to make uo the cables. And first off, I can’t find any 10mm cable despite turning the house and the lean-to upside down. In the end, I’ve had to use 6mm cable and that’s not doing to be enough.

I crimped the ring terminals onto the cables and then cut off the insulation because I’m going to solder them on. And so that meant hunting around for the solder and the little gas pistol. I eventually found them but the gas pistol wouldn’t work, no matter how much gas I put into it. In the end I dismantled it, only to find that the jet was blocked with a piece of solder. Pushing that out damaged the jet and so the subsequent flame was pretty much uncontrollable and took ages to solder up all of the cables.

So even though it was 18:55 when I knocked off, I felt as if I’d done nothing at all today what with all of this nonsense.

Tonight I’ve had a tea too – pasta with vegetables, boulghour and tomato sauce. I felt like it too, for the first time for ages.

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Tuesday 3rd November 2015 – I DIDN’T …

… manage to do any wood-cutting today. But there’s a good reason for that – in fact, 6.5mm of it. Yes, for the first time since I’m not sure when, we’ve had a persistent rainfall throughout most of the day.

So I was awake at 07:30 but it was about 08:15 when I finally crawled out of bed. And after breakfast I cracked on with my studies. I’m really getting into this.

I didn’t have lunch today either, but I was downstairs working. Or, at least, trying to work. But with more than 10 weeks away from work I can’t find half of the tools that I need, despite turning the house upside-down a couple of times.

But what I’ve done it to start work on the new Version 4 of the home-made 12-volt immersion heater. And I’ll tell anyone before we even start that this one is not destined to last very long. The plastic box isn’t anything like as strong as I would like it to be, and it’s rather brittle. It shouldn’t be brittle as that will be more likely to crack up under heat. I need a proper water tank or, better still, a copper-sided container of about 25 litres. I must look into this properly.

But at least the holes are drilled into it and the tap and element fitted. It’s now sitting on a dry dusty concrete floor so that I can check if there are any leaks.

But one design change that I’m doing (apart from the obvious one of repositioning the heater element so I’m not falling over the wires) concerns the element. It’s two x 250-watt elements connected by bridge pieces and held together by screws into captive nuts. You need to undo the screws to connect the wires and then screw it back together and this is one of the faults – that you can’t tighten up the screws sufficiently tight to prevent arcing.

What I’ve done is to do away with the bridge pieces so that I have the two elements separate. I’ve put nuts and bolts in through the holes on the elements and what I’ll be doing is to run two sets of wires, not just one, to the immersion heater, and bolting them up rather than screwing them. This will mean that the joints will be tighter thanks to the bolts, and that with two wires then there will be less amperage running down each cable so they won’t heat up as much.

Another advantage of this is that in the summer with all of the excess energy that we receive, I can start a second immersion heater and disconnect one set of wires from one of the elements on the first one and wire them to one element on the other immersion heater. That way I’ll have 50 litres of water and that will warm up quite steadily.

But these aren’t long-term solutions of course. I must have a proper immersion heater with proper joints and a proper element connection. But trying to find anything suitable is well-nigh impossible.

Back up here I sat down to watch a film but went straight to sleep for half an hour. And for tea, I had my lunchtime butties.

Now, I’m off to bed. See you in the morning.

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Monday 2nd November 2015 – WOW!

Yes indeed. We’re having one of the windiest days that we’ve ever had since I began keeping records. We’ve had gusts of up to 47kph and all of the wind turbines here have been going round like the clappers. We’ve not quite had record wind energy figures, but we aren’t far off it and it’s still cracking up (although I’ve taken the records now so the rest will be added to tomorrow’s figures).

As for today, I was up fairly early, and after breakfast I spent some time on the computer. This course on Hadrian’s Wall that I’ve started to study is rather different. It’s done on line with embedded videos and that’s going to cause a load of problems with my sad internet speed. But it looks quite interesting.

Not many people realise this but there are two wall systems in the UK. Hadrian’s Wall between Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Carlisle, and the Antonine Wall between the Firth of Clyde and the Firth of Forth. Some people think that both walls were built by the same Emperor but the Northern one is definitely by the Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius. Hadrian had only got one wall.

I didn’t have lunch today – I went out and started work instead and was rather carried away. We had beautiful sunny weather and with the wind we had a nice pile of electrical energy and with no dump load at the moment, I adopted plan B and fetched the chop saw.

I set up a workbench outside and started to attack the huge stack of wood that’s been building up outside over the past few years. Old branches and tree trunks that I’ve pulled up and cut down in the past as well as the old chevrons from when I replaced the roofs here.

The stack of wood doesn’t look much smaller but I’ve cut up enough to make a huge pile of wood. I’ve filled up the woodshed with some of it, and I’ve filled an IKEA bag to bring up here ready for whenever winter might arrive. But the chop saw idea worked in spades. With plenty of electricity to play with, it was 10 times quicker and 10 times less tiring than doing it with the hand saw. But there are some bits that won’t fit under the chop saw and so I’ll need the chainsaw for that, when Terry has finished with it.

But it does go to show. I once had a friend with whom I shared all of my hopes and aspirations about this place and my aims for the electrical system. I regarded him as being my best ever friend but then I found out that he was going onto a Land Rover forum on the internet and mocking my ideas, he and his friends having a really good laugh about it and a few offensive comments being thrown in for good measure. Of course, no friendship can withstand that, but it’s this kind of thing that is showing that I’m having the last laugh.

When I finished, I came up here to watch a film (I’m reverting to my old habits at long last) but crashed out instead. Once I had woken up, I cooked the pizza that I had forgotten to eat.

Tomorrow if the weather is good I’ll be carrying on with the woodpile. And if not, there are plenty of other things to be getting on with. High time I cracked on.

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Sunday 1st November 2015 – I WAS IN CANADA …

… last night, getting ready to leave Rachel and Darren’s in order to fly back home.But time was dragging on and on and I wasn’t making too much progress about packing. With 10 minutes to go before take-off I was still in the spare bedroom with all of my electrical equipment all over the floor still charging up. And somewhere along the line I’d been given some ready-mixed cake dough in exchange for some that I had. And I needed to keep it for a few months after I’d returned to France, something that I knew would be impossible.

And by 09:35 I was wide-awake and out of bed which is something of a surprise considering that it’s Sunday. And even more so considering that I hadn’t gone to bed until 03:30. Just as I was getting ready to fo upstairs to bed, I came across a website that was broadcasting some matches from the Football Conference so I sat back down to watch Gateshead v Altrincham, Telford United v Stalybridge Celtic and Havant and Waterlooville V Wealdstone.

Today is a Bank Holiday here in France and I celebrated by doing exactly badger all, as is normal for a Bank Holiday. In fact, I didn’t even go outside except to take the stats. I did however read a book, Man Who Mapped the Arctic, the story of one of the more famous of the Arctic explorers of the first half of the 19th Century.

Not only that, I mad enormous strides yet again with my 3D program and I’m advancing rapidly – much more rapidly than my lamentable internet connection.

So tomorrow I’m back studying again. It’s nice to be back in Education. Tomorrow night, I’ll let you all know how it went.

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Saturday 31st October 2015 – ALL THAT I REMEMBER …

… of my voyage last night was being in another grim little bed-sitter (rather like the one in Hong Kong the other night) but this time with a view over a large green open space that was being used as a public park. The boundaries of the park were a ridge with a stone wall at the top and then a road at one end, the road on which was my room on one of the sides, at the bottom was a kind of wood or copse, and I couldn’t see the other side of the park very clearly.

But I wish that I could remember what was going on.

I was up nice and early in the sunlight and after breakfast carried on with some work that I had been doing.

That took me up until lunchtime when I headed off to St Eloy and the shops. A kilo of grapes at €2:29 went down well – they really were gorgeous – but I didn’t buy anything else apart from the usual.

That was, until I went into Cheze. I bought most of what I needed (eventually after a good search) but no water tank. So I’ll have to make one out of a plastic box and hope that that can keep going. And I met a guy from the football club in there too.

On the way back I met Rob and Nicolette out walking the dog, and then I came back here and had a nice quiet evening – there’s no football this weekend.

So tomorrow will be a lie-in, and then I’ll see what tomorrow might bring me. Cold fruit juice, I hope, because I’ve left the fridge running all night again.

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Friday 30th October 2015 – ALL GOOD THINGS …

… come to an end. And today, the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump-load for the excess solar energy finally ground to a halt.

Mind you, I’m not surprised. What has surprised me is that it lasted as long as it has – about 4 years if I remember correctly. It’s a 500-watt industrial 12-volt water heater element that I can pick up by the dozen in the USA, fitted into the side of a 25-litre plastic storage box and sealed in with rubber gaskets, and a simple tap. The whole lot is stood on a thick sheet of polystyrene insulation, with some of this thick space-blanket insulation wrapped around it, and a plastic lid covered with an off-cut of a sheet of polystyrene-backed plaster-board. Down on the inside of the space-blanket insulation up against the plastic side is the sensor of a maximum-minimum thermometer.

It’s wired in (with a 70-amp fuse) to a 60-amp Solar charge controller that I have reverse-wired so that instead of being “on” and switching off when the batteries are fully-charged, it’s “off” and switches on when the batteries are fully charged – and so when the batteries are fully charged and the charge controllers on the batteries switch off, the current that would otherwise be lost is diverted down into the water heater element and so heats up the water in the immersion heater for washing up, washing, and all that kind of thing.

And so why did it all go wrong?

The answer is that it hasn’t really gone wrong. A year or so ago I noticed that the positive wire to the immersion heater was heating up dramatically, and so I rewired it. But the thread stripped in the connection on the element so I had to find a small nut and bolt. But I couldn’t really fit a spanner into it so that it wasn’t particularly tight.

Today, I went downstairs to the fridge to fetch something to drink, and I could smell the burning plastic. There was something or a record of 37 amps going down the cables and this was simply too much for the bad joint and the wire was so hot that it was melting the insulation.

I hadn’t designed it particularly well – I can do much better than this, and in any case I don’t have any rubber joints for the element which I’ll need to take out and remake the joint, and so that’s a task for next week if I remember to buy the things that I need tomorrow at the shops. However, I have plugged the fridge back in so that something is being done about the excess current.

And so what else have I done today?

Apart from work on the laptop, which you can take as read, I’ve been tracking down some wood. I went to rescue the wooden box that I used to use to keep my fruit and vegetables in, but I pinched it last year to store my potatoes. But that didn’t work as the potatoes all went off and the wooden box is ruined (but I did in passing cast an eye on last year’s compost and it’s brewing beautifully!) and so I need to make another one.

I found a 50cm pine plank and some 40mm aluminium angle and I’ll be using that on Monday to make my new fruit and veg box.

As well as that, I went to check over the Kubota mini-digger. The reason for that is that the battery in the Kubota tractor is finished and I need a new one, so if I’m ordering one it makes sense to order a second for the digger – after all, that hasn’t run since the end of November last year.

But much to my astonishment, the mini-digger fired up straight away with no difficulty. And so I checked it over and left it running for a good hour or so to warm everything up and top up the battery.

I spent some time downstairs tidying up the ground floor too. It’s now looking as if you might be able to see the floor if I keep up like this. But I need to make a great deal of room as pretty soon I’ll be starting work down there and I’ll need the space.

Last but not least, I had a shower. 33°C in the verandah and 59°C in the 12-volt immersion heater, and so I cleared a corner of the verandah, fetched a bucket of hot water with some cold mixed in, found the pouring jug, and hey presto! Now I smell like coconut. I finished it off with a shave too, so now I’m all ready for the weekend.

But I could have done with a shave and a shower last night, as I was on my travels again. It was Marianne who had the pleasure of my company, going to the airport for a flight to Portugal. At the last minute she asked why I didn’t come with her, so with three hours to go before take-off I nipped off to my apartment for some clothes and the like, and to run one or two errands.

Once I’d done all of that, I had to return to the airport so there I was, driving through North London (flitting in and out of another nocturnal ramble from ages ago) on my way to Brussels Airport. The road was certainly very familiar to me, but I wasn’t convinced that it was the road that I should have been taking. But I arrived at the airport and reached the security gate with just 15 minutes to take-off and I still had a long way to go, not to mention passing through the “security”. And here I was, panicking in case I missed the flight, which was looking more and more likely as time passed by.

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Thursday 29th October 2015 – AND THERE I WAS …

… in Hong Kong Harbour last night (except that it wasn’t Hong Kong harbour at all but an artificial kind of canal system running between two rows of impressive houses like the boulevard that goes up to the railway station in Montlucon. Right down at the end of it, where I had my small bedsitter, was a British battleship that had suffered battle damage and had been brought in for repair. Around the corner came a Japanese heavy battle-cruiser which saw the British ship, steamed up towards it and from a range of about 100 metres gave it two turrets’ worth of high explosive armour-piercing shells that caused the British ship to sit on the bottom immediately.Even more exciting that this was watching the battle-cruiser screech to a stop about 10 feet before colliding with the British ship.

I decided to make myself scarce for a while. As an enemy of the Japanese, I’d be the first into the camp if they came ashore, and I couldn’t imagine the Japanese ship sitting here for very long in this narrow waterway, impossible to manoeuvre against a determined aerial attack.

So when I came back, not only where the Japanese and their ship still there, they had rounded up the crew of the British ship and marching them back to their ship, and beginning to comb the town using dogs.

This was where I realised what a fool I had been. I had remarked on coming back that it looked as if someone had tried my door, and now I knew – it had been set like that after I had left so that the Japanese would know that I had returned when I reset the door handle (which was exactly what I had done) and they would be here any second.

And so I fled for the hills. I encountered loads of British people who lived in grey concrete apartment blocks up there. All of them seemed to be resigned, cheerfully resigned to being captured by the Japanese and all that came with it, but if anyone thought that I was going to sit around calmly and wait to be taken prisoner they were completely mistaken. I was off.

There’s absolutely no doubt whatever that whatever happens and wherever I go when I’m deep in the arms of Morpheus is much more exciting than whatever happens to me in real life, is there?

And there must have been something going on, for this morning I noticed a trail of blood leading to and from the beichstuhl. It seems that during one of my nocturnal visits to ride the porcelain horse I must have cut my toe on something, yet I don’t remember a thing.

Anyway, last night’s voyages (both of them) were certainly more exciting than what happened today. I had breakfast and then I set to work on my next magnum opus. I told you yesterday that Amazon had discontinued its A-stores after all the time that I had spent in creating one before I went to Canada. Anyway, to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … I’ve started to build my own from scratch.

And, apart from a few interruptions here and there, that was all that I’ve done today. I’e not even been outside, except to take the stats tonight.

And Rosemary rang me again for another chat. Just as I was about to make my tea. We chatted for about an hour by which time the edge had gone off my appetite and I decided,to go to bed.

So where else is there to go tonight after Hong Kong yesterday?

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Wednesday 28th October 2015 – THE ANSWER TO YESTERDAY’S QUESTION IS …

… the bathroom. That’s where I ended up last night on my travels.

And that was partly by accident too, because I had a very severe attack of cramp in the middle of the night and it took me ages to shake it off. And that didn’t work all that well either, because I still have a tense muscle in the upper rear of my right thigh.

But anyway, seeing as I was up, I went to the bathroom.

With nothing urgent that needed doing today, I didn’t exactly rocket out of bed, and then after breakfast I had a leisurely morning doing stuff on the laptop and sorting myself out. And then there was some housekeeping to be done about the records that I keep for Radio Anglais.

But here’s a thing. For the rock music programmes that we do, I keep a playlist of what albums are played during the month, like this one, and then a website where all of them might be seen, with an opportunity for interested listeners to purchase them. I spent days during July and the first part of August to set up this A-store, and now I find that Amazon has taken down all of their A-stores with effect from 31st August, just a few weeks after I finished setting it up.

I shall now have to think again, and make up an A-store of my own. That was all a waste of time and effort, wasn’t it? But one thing that I did learn while I was doing it – and that is that my CD collection is worth a fortune. I have a couple of CDs that would sell on Amazon for over €200 each, and several others that would bring in a pile of dosh too.

After lunch I took the bull by the horns and steam-cleaned the fridge. Plenty of bleach and disinfectant went into it and while I wouldn’t like to eat my dinner off it, it’s still a lot cleaner than it ever has been in recent times, and that’s good news. I also spent some time tidying up on the ground floor, although you wouldn’t notice the difference.

After a brief crashing-out, I made tea and, true to form, Rosemary rang up for a chat and we were on the phone for about an hour. So I finished off tea, which was Rice and lentils with mixed veg and gravy. And now I’m going to do the washing up and have an early night again.

I’ll see if I can make it past the bathroom tonight.

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Tuesday 27th October 2015 – TIMBER!!!!!!

I’m not going to be short of wood for the next couple of years, that’s for sure. Not after today, anyway.

I own a parcel of land next to Lieneke’s house and about a year or so ago, a branch snapped off and snagged in trees right above the pathway that she uses to go to her barn. She had a few words with me about moving it, which is no surprise as I wouldn’t like a branch like that poised right above my head.

Anyway, with it being so nice this morning, Terry came round to attend to the branch. We had a good look around the tree and we noticed that there were several other branches that were unsafe. Furthermore, the tree itself was swamped with ivy and there were few leaves on it. It really was in poor condition.

And you’ve no idea how much noise a 50-foot tree makes when it comes crashing to the ground. It certainly shook the neighbourhood. And once it was down (which wasn’t easy) we set to work to cut it into 30cm lengths. While Terry was doing that I was carting it all away with the powered barrow and I now have a huge stack of wood, much of which needs splitting.

It won’t be ready for another year or two as it will have to dry out, but when it is ready it will be astonishing. Not only that, we had a walk around on the plot of land and identified three or four other trees, much smaller, but wood nevertheless, that have almost died out and so they will be coming down next.

I bought a chainsaw from the USA years and years ago and so we had it out. It worked fine but after having been stuck in the tree as it fell over, it’s bent the rail and needs to be repaired. Terry is looking into that and when it’s done, there are piles of things that I can be doing with it.

While we were tidying up we had the threatened rainstorm and so Terry came in to measure up for the plumbing and then went home. I’m not as young as I used to be – in fact I was struggling with the power barrow – and so I came up here and crashed out.

No reason why I should be tired though – after all, I’d had a good sleep last night and I’d been on my travels too. I was driving a taxi quite a distance away and when I reached as far as Sheffield, I realised that I could call up my base on the radio from the hills around there, due to the atmospherics in the air. Up and down the hills through some really depressing scenery, and then suddenly I had the idea to go to another taxi office there where I could call back to my base. I immediately appeared in a taxi office in the cellar of a big building, called back home, and then went up to the ground floor and outside. I remembered that I’d been “transported” into this taxi office and this caused a problem in that I couldn’t remember where my taxi might be, and I had a good prowl around the area, even in the local scrapyard, but that didn’t help and I ended up wandering aimlessly around. And at a certain moment I even had Zero accompanying me on my travels, and I’m no idea what she was doing.

Tonight, I finally had my Sunday night pizza that I forgot yesterday, and now I’m off for another early night and see where I end up.

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Monday 26th October 2015 – AND THERE I WAS …

… deep in the arms of Morpheus, when the alarm went off. And I sat bolt upright and as I did so, all memory of where I’d been and what I’d been doing was completely wiped away.

After an early breakfast I reviewed everything that I’d written, collected up some music and then shot off to Marcillat, dodging the tractors on the way.

Recording the programmes didn’t take long, but what did take a good while was to find the events for the next month. We hadn’t been sent the dates by the tourist information office and the office was closed today. But scrounging around produced enough events to make up a decent programme or two.

Back at Liz and Terry’s, we had lunch (I had what was left over from last night) and vegan ginger cake, and Terry and I made some plans for the rest of the week.

Recording the Radio Arverne sessions was straightforward too and then Liz and I went off to do some shopping. With grapes at just €2:49 a kilo I bought a supply, but it goes without saying that they didn’t make it home.

In exchange for a coffee, Liz showed me how to use my mobile phone as a modem to power my laptop and now I can use my laptop anywhere in France provided that there’s a mobile phone signal, even if there isn’t a wi-fi signal.

Back here I had some work to catch up on and I made a quick meal too. But what has caught me by surprise was that with not having used the inverter at all today, of the 200 amp-hours of solar energy that I received today, 168 amp-hours of it went into the 12-volt immersion heater and the temperature went off the scale. Consequently I went and had a really good washing-up session of plates and dishes.

Tomorrow, what I’ll be doing depends upon the weather. If it’s raining, I’m off to Terry’s. But if it’s dry, he’s coming around here.

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Sunday 25th October 2015 – I’VE RARELY SEEN …

… such a one-sided football match as this. It wasn’t that Charensat were any good because they weren’t – it’s just that Pionsat were so flaming awful. For the first half, the whole team was asleep – their bodies were out on the pitch but the rest of them were miles away. For the second half, three or four of them managed to wake up and it was slightly better, but equally, three or four could have stayed in the dressing room for all the good that they did and no-one would have missed them. Pionsat, relegated from the 1st Division last season, are going to be spending several long, cold winters in Divison 2 if they can’t get it together.

Time and time again, Charensat swarmed right through the Pionsat defence as if it wasn’t there (which it wasn’t) and there were about 20 one-on-ones with Matthieu in the Pionsat goal. A few he saved, but by far the most of them were ballooned miles over the bar or miles wide of the post. The Charensat finishing was appalling. On one occasion Pionsat’s defence, such as it was, stayed around arguing with the linesman for not giving an offside instead of following up the ball while two of the Charensat players beamed down on Matthieu. He saved the first shot and had his defence been playing like grown-ups they would have intercepted the loose ball at the very least. But instead, the ball fell kindly to the other Charensat player, who blasted it about 30 feet over the bar, unmarked from about 10 yards out. This was totally embarrassing, from both teams’ points of view.

In fact several Pionsat players spent so much time arguing with the ref and the linesman instead of following the ball and it was totally unnecessary. Players of Pionsat’s experience should know better. In fact, one of Pionsat’s attackers, too busy arguing with the ref instead of concentrating on the game, was caught offside in what would have been a marvellous attacking position had he been paying attention.

Charensat did score one goal, and how they were limited to one is totally beyond me. They were completely in control of this match. And then we had the totally unbelievable. Matthieu kicked a long high ball right out of the area high up front. Cedric leapt up and headed it on over the defence, and Nico, running on, lobbed it over the keeper for the equaliser. The ball didn’t touch the ground until it was in the back of the net.

But like I said earlier, it’s going to be a long hard couple of years for Pionsat.

Now this morning, I would have had a lovely night’s long sleep except that Bane of Britain somehow confused things so that the reminder for the radio programmes went off this morning instead of tomorrow morning.

And I was on my travels too. I’d been in the far north of Labrador in a vehicle which was like a “Bigfoot” but with a car body of the late 1940s and how that cruised over the uneven roads. Back in civilisation I’d met up with Nerina again and we’d spent a while in a cheap hotel in some dingy town before I had to leave. Given the price of the return ticket on public transport, I went to the darker side of town to buy a really cheap car (I actually did this once in 1995 when I was in London and ended up with a £70 Ford Cortina instead of a Eurostar ticket, and on another occasion it was cheaper to hire a car and put the petrol in to drive from London to Bath rather than pay the fare for the train). Anyway, we had a good look around all of this area at the cheap cars for sale and one of the vehicles at which I was looking was a BMC MG-1300 in white and pale green. I was wondering whether I should ask her if she still had her Wolseley but I decided that it was best not to sho too much interest.

After breakfast I had a relax and didn’t do too much at all. But by about 13:30 the temperature in the verandah was 19°C, the temperature in the 12-volt immersion heater was 36°C thanks to the sun that we had and thus the fully-charged batteries, and so I had a tepid shower in the corner of the verandah with the warm water and a jug. And nice it was too, especially now that I have clean clothes too.

Still plenty of time before I needed to go and so I cut my hair and made myself some butties, and then I was off to Charensat.

After the football match I went round to Liz and Terry’s to rehearse the radio programmes that we will be recording.

viaduc des fades gorges de la sioule puy de dome franceThe way that I went is not a road that I take very often. It’s from St Priest down to the Barrage des Fades and for the first time today I noticed that at a certain spot there’s a stunning view of the Gorges de la Sioule and also of the Viaduc des Fades from an angle from which I’ve never seen it before.

We did what we had to and Liz made a beautiful vegan meal complete with ginger cake, and Terry and I made a few plans.

Back here, I haven’t done much and I’ll be having an early night. We have a lot to do tomorrow.

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Friday 23rd October 2015 – WELL, THAT IDEA WORKED!

Last night, just before going to bed, I switched on the gas heater and sat in front of it reading a book for 15 minutes. And in that time, the temperature rose from 10°C to 13°C on the thermometer right across the room, but it was roasting where I was sitting. And I was able to go to bed nice and warm.

Even better, it was one degree warmer next morning when I awoke, which was rather … errr … later than I had intended it to be, even with all of the alarms going off.

Mind you, I probably hadn’t returned from my nocturnal ramblings at alarm-time. I’d been to Stoke on Trent to meet a former friend of mine and we had to deliver some messages from an Accountancy firm to about 20 of their clients, But I had forgotten the name of the Accountants. No matter, I thought to myself. I’ll look at a map where all of the Accountants’ offices are all displayed and labelled, and I’d soon recognise the name. However I hadn’t counted on the fact that there were so many accountants labelled on this map that all of the labels overlapped and I couldn’t read any of them, never mind recognise the one that I wanted. And then we degenerated into part of a journey that I’d been on before on another nocturnal ramble where I was out on a part of Stoke on Trent that I know very well both in real life and on the nocturnal plane when it is in fact completely different. It’s been quite a while since I’ve been on an overlapping nocturnal ramble but the fact that they do exist helps to prove one of the points that this study – the one in which I participated – was trying to make all those years ago.

After breakfast I had another go at the radio programmes and I’m making progress. Not as much as I would like but progress all the same. I’m going to have to get my skates on.

And that’s all I’ve done today. Not very much, I know, but I can’t organise myself sufficiently at the moment and I’m going to have to do something dramatic about this.

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