Tag Archives: les guis

Thursday 7th April 2011 – I’m burnt!

Firstly by the sun. We had a magnificent day today, easily the best of the year. And I spent it in unloading Caliburn, stacking stuff wherever I could find some room (and that wasn’t easy – I’m beginning to feel the pinch here now) and then I washed out the inside of Caliburn where things had been leaking.

All the time of doing that, the sun was beating down upon me and I’m now a delicate shade of lobster. And cutting my hair (it had gone a bit wild just recently) didn’t help either as I’m now likely to get a suntan on there. I had to clean and overhaul my hair clippers as they were all clogged up, and now they cut as well as they ever did.

And when I knocked off, the water temperature in the solar shower was 40°C and I had a gorgeous shower. That really was nice.

But the best bit of news comes from the second way that I burnt myself – and that was with the washing-up water. And no, I didn’t leave the kettle on too long.

At 22:00 when I came to do the washing up, the water in the home-made immersion heater was an astonishing, incredible 64°C. It had gone off the scale (over 70°C) during the course of the day and that is down completely to the insulation.

This morning, the water was still 34°C after yesterday’s exertions – I could have had a shower ( and we aren’t talking the OUSA Executive Committee here either) in that. It’s proof positive that good insulation is definitely the way forward.

Electrically-heated washing water is a major milestone for me in my search for autonomy and I am glad that I’ve managed it. But this insulation is giving me another headache – with temperature over 70°C with 2 hours of sunlight left and a few more hours to come later in the summer, I’m going to be perilously near boiling up and I don’t need that at all. I’m going to have to rig up a proper immersion heater with thermostat and all of that – and then what will I do with the surplus electricity? But at least it is the right kind of headache.

And in other news, I now have a car transporter trailer. The company who makes them can’t build mine until July but they are building one for a dealer – exactly the one that I want – and he’ll sell it to me at the factory price if I go and collect it. The factory will keep it until the end of May when I’m in the UK and this is really good news

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Wednesday 6th April 2011 – What an exciting day.

Breakfast outside in 19°C on the pallets that I’m using as an impromptu terrace for the moment, interrupted by the postie bringing me a huge (and I mean huge) box of goodies from Amazon – my birthday present in fact.

And then the rest of the morning gardening. I’ve dragged the herb beds out of the smaller cloche (they are in large plastic troughs) and put them by the verandah so I can get at them for cooking, and then spend the rest of the morning clearing up some more raised beds and sowing seeds – putting tons of stuff out in fact. And it was beautiful weather to be out in, that’s for sure. Summer is well and truly back.

Lunch on the terrace of course, and by the time I was ready to resume, the water in the home-made immersion heater (that takes its energy from the excess solar power) had reached the magical 50°C (did I mention that I’d insulated it this morning with a load of the left-over offcuts of the bubble-wrap insulation?) and so that called for a washday, and now I’ve a load of clean clothes drying outside.

But isn’t it nice to have piping hot water for washing clothes without having to boil an array of kettles?

While I was in the washroom I made a start on tidying it up too – years of rubbish accumulated in there. Only a start, mind you. There’s a lot of stuff in there that needs to be sorted and a lot of it can be binned or burned as well. In fact it might be an idea to have a fire around here and dispose of a pile of stuff.

Once the washing was done it was back into the garden and planting herbs in the herb bed and delicate stuff into pots to warm up in the smaller cloche (which is why I moved the herb beds out). I’m now curious to see what my crops will do this year. Last year was rather disappointing as you may well remember, with snow in May that killed everything stone-dead.

18:10 when I knocked off too, and the water in the solar shower was at 38°C. That called for a shower (and we aren’t talking about the Executive Committee of the Open Unversity Students’ Association either) and so never mind the clothes – I’m clean too (well, at least on the outside anyway).

Back up here I had my coffee, watched the first one of the 41 episodes of Sherlock Holmes – Complete Collection [DVD] while I sorted through all of my purchases. I must admit I can’t wait to watch Bring Me The Head of Turdi de Hatred [DVD] [1974] sometime in the near future.

Switching on the computer, I found myself the recipient of some astonishing news and it’s the best news that I’ve had since Monday. I’m not going to sat anything about it as yet because it is too good to be true and I’m not going to believe a word of anything until I have a piece of paper in my sweaty little mitt. I’ve no idea why it is that my luck has suddenly changed for the better this last 9 months – it’s not like me at all. But things have certainly been turned upside-down just recently. So much so in fact that I’m convinced that there’s a huge banana skin waiting for me somewhere to compensate. But then again, if this news is as good as it seems to be then it won’t matter at all.

So now I’m listening to Made In Japan, and in particular “Highway Star” – the theme song for my trip to the Rockies and the Utah Desert in 2002 – at full volume before I go to bed. But no point in going to bed right now – I won’t be going off to sleep.

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Tuesday 5th April 2011 – I’m not going to be awake much longer

I’m absolutely whacked, even though I have done nothing today.

As I worked a decent shift on Sunday I decided that I would have a jour de recuperation, as they call it around here, to make up for my Sunday. And so when I woke up at about 08:30 I simply turned over and went back to sleep.

When I did wake up at 10:00 I had breakfast and started to tidy up in here. But my heart isn’t into tidying up – I don’t know how to do it anyway. And so I did a couple of pieces of really important correspondence but then a major snag – my printer wouldn’t print them. I was there for ages and even changing the ink cartridge didn’t work – in fact it comes up with an “I don’t recognise this cartridge” message. And so after badgering around with that for ages, luckily Clare’s husband Keith came to the rescue and printed them out for me.

So they are now sent off and I’ve done some shopping too. I’ve also changed the number plates on the Minerva and put mine on (Belgian numberplates belong to the owner, not the car) and that, dear reader, is that.

Well, not quite everything. I’ve also bought a trailer today, as I said I would yesterday, and I’ve also been taking steps so that my property empire can go west.

As I said, I have cunning plans. But right now, I’m going to bed.

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Friday 1st April 2011 – I’M OFF YET AGAIN

Today was the day when I had to go back to Brussels to rescue the Minerva.

This meant sorting out Terry’s trailer and then checking over Caliburn to make sure that he’s ready for the road. Once that was organised, I needed to check myself out to make sure that I was ready too, and then make a flask of coffee and a pile of butties for the route.

What with this and that as well, it turned out to be a full day’s work and I needed to clean myself up yet again before I was ready.

As a result, it was later than usual when I set off to drive the 700-odd kms to Brussels in Caliburn, and I couldn’t go as fast as usual either towing the big trailer behind me. There’s a speed restriction for vehicles towing trailers, although you would never ever guess it from the way that they move about here.

And didn’t I have an exciting time too?

Actually the drive was quite uneventful and nothing much happened until I crossed the Belgian border at Couvin, apart from stopping for fuel, a pizza and some coffee from the flask at Auxerre.

But at Couvin in the town itself there was probably a dozen or so officers from the “Flying Customs” having a meeting – in the middle of the road just round a sharp bend. And it was just like 10-pin bowling as they scattered all over the place as Caliburn and I came steaming around the corner. It’s a long time since I’ve had such a laugh.

The chief of the Customs told me what he thought of me, and seeing as it was late and I was tired and my patience deteriorates the more tired that I am, I told him what I thought of him and his persons as well and we had a “frank exchange of views”.

Anyway so he p155ed off as I suggested that he did, and I drove to Charleroi where I fell into a police barrage. Everyone was being stopped and their papers checked and the like. I was asked if I had had an alcoholic drink and would I mind blowing into this bag (random checks are permissible here). I replied that if he found anything in my breath I would give him €5 and of course my money is perfectly safe.

I made it as far as the motorway services at Nivelles and here is where I’ll be bedding myself down until the morning. I hope that I have a good sleep because I’m absolutely whacked.

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Thursday 31st March 2011 – I’m making loads of progress …

in the garden right now. Today the first task was to tidy the greenhouse seeing as I can’t even get in there, let alone find anything. A load of plastic pots and yogurt container thingies went into the bin – and that’s another thing – I now have 4 bins. One for plastics, one for metal, one for glass and one for rubbish (the paper of course is used as fire-lighters). That was something else that I did too.

And so with a tidy greenhouse I made myself some potting soil – 4 parts garden soil, 3 parts sand, 2 parts LIDL compost and one part wood ash. And when it was all mixed I planted some seed in pots – 2 types of tomato, aubergine, peppers. cucumber and leeks. I colour-code my pots as you know and I’m lucky in that my soya desserts come in so many varieties with different shapes and colours of pots. I keep the same plants together in the same colour pots.

“But isn’t drainage a problem with plastic yoghurt-type pots?” I hear you ask.
The answer is “not at all” because if you put 10 or so together one inside another and then heat up a baked potato skewer until it’s quite hot, it will go through the bottoms of 10 pots three or four times with ease

And so now I have my March seeds sown, this afternoon I tackled a few more raised beds. I’ve cleaned a few more out and there’s only 3.5 to go. Mind you, there’s not much hurry for those just now.

Tomorrow evening I’m going back to Brussels to rescue the Minerva and bring it back. And when I return I’ll be making a start on building the new greenhouse and the garden shed. High time I organised that as well.

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Wednesday 30th March 2011 – You can see …

… my apartment in Brussels on the internet if you like. But you’ll have to hurry. Someone has made me an offer already, and negotiations are proceeding.

That was quite a pleasant surprise at lunchtime, and it quite disrupted my flow of thought. What with crashing out yesterday late afternoon when I should have been catching up on my correspondence, I had to sped the morning doing just that. Until I was rudely interrupted, that was.

So while waiting for the Post Office to open I dug over another raised bed, and returning from my trip into Pionsat I planted my shallots and garlic. Well, not all of the garlic because I seem to have far too much. But I do know someone who can make use of it. But once that was out of the way I did some more digging over and I now have some sprouts, some carrots and some coriander in.

Tomorrow I shall have to make a start on making up some seed trays because there are a few things that need planting even though it’s too early to put them outside.

And then back up here and I crashed out again – it’s getting to me, all of this work.

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Tuesday 29th March 2011 – I’ve spent all day on the road.

We started off at Radio Tartasse to record their programmes for April. It was the usual disorganised performance there but we managed well enough.

Radio Arverne wanted us at 13:00 this afternoon and so it wasn’t worth going home. We went to Chateuneuf-les-Bains for a coffee instead. That was much more interesting.

At Radio Tartasse, which is much more organised we did 5 programmes in less than an hour, and then went off to the Carrefour at Riom for a butty, a coffee and a nosy around the shops where I bought some 100%vegan margarine for my garlic bread for tea.

Back here, I sorted out some screws and some of the seeds for the garden but my heart’s not in it right now. I’ve not recovered fully from the effects of digging all of these raised beds. It’s taking it out of me getting ready for planting. So with that in mind I knocked off at 17:30 and came up here for a rest.

I’ll have a lie-in tomorrow to see if I’ll feel any better, and then I’ll go out a-planting. I need to get the garlic and the shallots in place pretty quickly. And I’m away at the weekend too.

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Monday 28th March 2011 – It finally stopped raining this afternoon.

But not before I’d become soaking wet.

I’ve been gardening for most of the day and the first thing that I did, after digging through the beds again, was to plant the new potatoes – the important stuff.

And then I made two frameworks for some more raised beds, pulled up the large one that I made to fill a gap last year, laid these two down and dug them in. And that took ages as well for much of the soil where these beds are is virgin soil, full of roots and thistles and brambles and so on.

But anyway, they are in place now and I planted the onions. Some that I pulled up last year have sprouted and so they have gone back, and there were a couple in last year’s bed – they have been moved.

On Wednesday I’ll be planting the shallots and garlic – not tomorrow as we are in the recording studio. And that reminds me, if you want to hear our Christmas Special and the programmes for January and February you need to go here.

Tonight I had a gorgeous tea – the leftover veggie burgers from last night with potatoes that I discovered in the ground when I was relaying the new beds. And beautiful it all was too. I can’t wait to get going on food that I’ll be growing in my garden this year.

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Sunday 27th March 2011 – Today I saw…

…the worst football match that I have ever seen in my life.

I drove all the way to St Avit to watch Pionsat’s 3rd XI but when I arrived there I found that the match had been cancelled. And it was pointless going back all the way to Pionsat to watch the 2nd XI – I’d have missed the first half and then I would have to drive halfway back to see Liz and Terry. However I did see some action at Charensat’s ground and so I stopped off there, to see them play Marcillat in a 3rd Division game.

In the first half the score was 0-0, and the teams were lucky to get nil it was so dreadful. In the second half Charensat opened the scoring. The Marcillat keeper’s kicking was pretty dreadful and so after a while the captain decides to take the goal kicks. For his first effort he kicks it all of 15 yards, right to a Charensat forward who prompty volleys it right back into the goal.

Charensat’s second comes from a corner. A ball played right across the goal with everyone standing there watching it except for a Charensat attacker on the far post who just stoops to head it in. Simple.

And Marcillat pull a goal back. A harmless cross into the penalty area with no-one on the other side, and the Charensat keeper, for reasons known only to himself, puts in a really acrobatic climb-cum-twist and I’m still not sure how he did it, and he palms the ball into his own net.

With just minutes to go, a foul is committed and the ref gives it in the favour of Marcillat, even though he was the only one who reckoned it was in that direction. The Charensat trainer tells the ref what he thought of the decision, and the ref tells the trainer what he thinks of the Charensat trainer. The Charensat defence are arguing amongst themselves and still argue as the ref blows his whistle and they still argue as the ball is played over the top of them to an unmarked Marcillat attacker who heads into an empty net.

Marcillat, easily the worst team I have ever seen, have been let out of jail in no uncertain terms.

And it gets worse.

Charensat have a striker called Guillaume who is quick, speedy, skilful, with good ball control, and if he broke through the Marcillat defence once he did it a dozen times. And faced with innumerable 1-on-1s with a shaky Marcillat keeper, he blasted it over the bar every time. And with 50 seconds remaining, he’s through again, two yards out, the best chance of the game, and he blasts it 5 yards over. His trainer’s language is unprintable in what is a family show like this. It was appalling, but then again, so was the miss.

At Liz and Terry’s I was kindly wined and dined, and we rehearsed our radio programme. We are in the studio on Tuesday.

And it’s rained and rained all day too.

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Saturday 26th March 2011 – For those of you concerned …

about my physical welfare, I didn’t have a solar shower today.

And it’s my own fault anyway. Although this morning was slightly cloudy it didnt look too bad at all. I went into St Eloy les Mines and did some shopping there and (just for a change spent a few bob too.

And in the Carrefour they had trays of baby lettuce for €3.99, so I bought one. I was expecting about 10 or 12 but in fact there were 25 all told, and you can’t leave that many in the tiny tray. And so I thoroughly watered one of the potato beds and planted them in there, thinking that I can plant the spuds around them and they will be long gone before I need to uproot the taties.

And of course, that was the cue for a torrential downpour as you might expect, and that was the summer over. I came up here with a coffee, crashed out, and am I going to have an uncomfortable night as I spilled a mug of coffee all over my bed settee as I keeled over and now it’s all wet.

At the footy tonight there was just one match, the 1st XI against Montel Villosanges. And Pionsat won with a most bizarre goal.

A beautiful ball over the top of the defence that set up a chase – two Pionsat attackers against two of the Chimps defenders. But the keeper got to it first, just outside his area, and he fairly whacked the ball as hard as he could – straight into the face of a Pionsat attacker. The ball ricocheted off his face, went back over the keeper’s head and with one bounce it went straight into the net.

Yes, you can tell that things are going Pionsat’s way for a change when they can win matches by scoring goals like this.

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Friday 25th March 2011 – This glorious weather is continuing.

We had over 25°C today outside, and for quite a lengthy period too. Not a cloud in the sky in fact. I carried on down in the potager –

I cut down a couple of huge trees that had grown there (although I haven’t uprooted the stumps yet), dug out where the third bed will be, uprooted god knows how many smaller stumps from out of there, dug it all over a few more times, and then made the raised bed framework that will enclose it all.

That’s in place now and so to finish off I tidied up in the barn so that I can now get in and out without falling over things.

The water in the solar shower was still at 36°C (it reached 37°C at one point in the afternoon) when I knocked off at 18:00 and so I took advantage by having yet another shower. I’ll be washing myself away at this rate – it’s only the dirt that holds me together.

And up here in my room the temperature was at 20.1°C – by far the highest of the year in here.

What more could any man require?

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Thursday 24th March 2011 – Nothing really special happened at all today …

although I am fed up of the blasted French Air Farce. At 16:32 precisely this afternoon one of their jets flew over my house so low that it set the wind turbines going off. It was unbelievable – I’ve never heard such a racket in all my life. And what did I do to deserve it? I haven’t had a UN Security Council resolution made against me, have I?

So that’s me thoroughly fed up and I’m going to declare my house a no-fly zone. I’m going to see if I can’t track down a Stinger missile somewhere (the Taliban still have a few that the Septics sold them back in the early 1980s) and set it up in my garden. The next b@st@rd who thinks it’s funny to fly over my house at zero feet will get more than he bargained for when I light the blue touchpaper and retire. All I’ll need to do after that is to see if there are still a few Scud missiles left buried in the sand in Iraq (the Scud, by the way, is a direct descendant of the German V1) and drop a few of them onto the French Air Farce headquarters. See how they like it.

B@$t@rd$

But it wasn’t just the French Air Farce that set off my wind turbines. It’s been quite windy today here too and round about 12:00 we had a good half an hour of high winds. I had 2.1 amp-hours of wind energy off the old AIR turbine and I’m impressed with that.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I had a good day in the garden and I now have two new raised beds installed. The one on the left is for the new potatoes and the other one, together with a third new one that I shall be installing in early course behind the compost bins, will be for the old potatoes.

But while I was hacking away in there I came across one of my original apple trees in the jungle. It’s weighted down with brambles and scrub but it’s still going with loads of buds right now. It might be possible to save it and so I had a go at clearing away much of the rubbish that was dragging it down.

Another solar shower too – water at 36°C rhis afternoon although it had cooled down to 34°C by the time I knocked off. It didn’t feel that warm when I was standing underneath it having a shower but I feel that I ought to be taking advantage of the warm weather and keep myself clean.

It can’t keep up like this for ever, although of course I wish that it would. This time last year we had a few days of 20-odd °C, I notice, but the weather soon collapsed.

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Wednesday 23rd March 2011 – And if you thought …

… that yesterday’s events were spectacular, well you ain’t see nuffink yet.

I woke up at the silghtly earlier time of … errr … 09:44 and I’ve worked out that for the last two days I’ve managed to sleep through 4 alarm calls each day. That’s some going even for me. I must be tired.

Anyway after breakfast I carried on with the new plots. with the first one that I’m currently working on I’m having difficulties in that there are huge tree roots running right through it. After ages of digging, I gave up and went and sharpened the hatchet that I use for cutting firewood. That did the business – you can swing it in confined spaces like trenches – and now I have the one bed finished.

Tomorrow I might well make the framework for that and then carry on with the second bed.

After lunch, the water in the home-made immersion heater (powered by surplus energy from the solar panels) had reached the heady heights of 50°C and so that was my cue to get 20 litres of water out of it and do a load of washing. It’s rusting a little inside the drum that I’m using. Clearly I’m going to have to rig up one of the copper immersion heaters that I’ve scavenged

But never mind that – I’m impressed that it works at all – it’s nice to have done a load of washing that cost me nothing at all to do. Apart from the soap of course – the €12 that I paid for the machine has been reimbursed many times over.

Drying too is free – just hang the clothes outside in the sun and slight wind. what more do you want?

But that’s not all. The water in the solar heat exchanger was showing 34°C all on its own without the aid of any hot water added from a kettle. And so that was the cue for yet another shower. And you’ve no idea how pleasant it is to be all nice and clean and in clean clothes, and ready for bed in clean sheets.

And it won’t be long before I’m in those sheets either. I can’t last the pace these days.

After my shower I went round to Marianne’s for a chat. She wants me to do some research for her at Cambridge next time I’m in the UK. But she also needs a bit of burglarising and breaking and entering doing. My name came to the top of the list in that respect so it seems and it’s for that reason that she invited me round.

The things I get to do!

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Tuesday 22nd March 2011 – I knocked off early today …

… which might come as a surprise to many, seeing as it was probably the nicest day of the year and that I didn’t wake up this morning until … errr …. 10:20 and so I owe myself a couple of hours.

But once I was up and about I started on the vegetable plots, and not before time either. I cleared away some more of the jungle and that will be where I’ll be putting in another line of raised beds – the spuds will be going in there this year to start them off. You’ll remember that I have about 10 raised beds, in 5 rows of 2. I’ll be putting in a sixth row and also a third bed in that row – the extra bed going behind the compost bins. Ultimately there will be three beds in each row, but that won’t be this year.

I needed the pickaxe to pull up a few tree stumps too – there were in somewhat deep. It’s harder work the further down the slope I go because the further down, the longer the ground has remained undisturbed and the ground alder has got a severe hold down there.

Mark, who comes to the Anglo-French Group, gave me an idea too. He doesn’t use a chainsaw for chopping wood (neither do I) and while I’ve been struggling with all kinds of methods to cut wood, he says he uses an ordinary saw but one with huge teeth. A while ago I was in Brico Depot and saw exactly what he meant – a scie de coffreur – or joiner’s rough-cut saw. I bought one back then, and today I tried it out and I’ll tell you that there’s some mileage in this. It did an excellent job of cutting down overhanging branches.

And so why did I knock off early? Well with it being so nice just now (3 days that I’ve had the fridge running and 2 days that I’ve had no heating) I happened to look at the water in the solar shower tank at 17:00. 28°C. And seeing as there was no wind, it was 15°C outside and bright sunlight, I filled a kettle, boiled it up, made myself a coffee and tipped the rest of the hot water into the solar tank. That brought the temperature up to 42°C and I had an impromptu, unexpected but most welcome solar shower. In March as well. That’s a new all-time record.

And with the water temperature in the home-made immersion heater reaching 59.5°C today, I’m going to keep my eye on it. And if it gets up to that tomorrow, I’m going to do a load of washing using the home-made immersion heater to fill the machine.

That will be exciting.

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Monday 21st March 2011 – And if you thought …

that yesterday’s 260-odd amp-hours was impressive, then what about today’s 300 amp-hours? We haven’t had many days like that in June and July.

Not only that, the water temperature in the home-made immersion heater topped 60°C and that was impressive too. In fact, it was more-than-impressive – it was the highest figure ever recorded. And it’s only March as well.

You can guess the kind of day that we’ve been having today. Cold and windy but totally beautiful.

And what have I been up to today? Last night just as I was going to bed Terry mailed me. “I need to give you your stuff back as I need the van empty”
“Okay” I replied. “I’ll see what I can do. Come round as late as possible”
And so today I started to tidy up in the barn again and make a huge pile of space to put stuff. But then I had a phone call. “I need to come to see The Beguiled. Can I drop your stuff off in an hour’s time?”

So the tidying went out of the window and stuff was thrown everywhere to make a big space. Terry arrived and so did my furniture, and that is nice. There’s still lots of space too, which I’ll need for when I go back and fetch the rest of the stuff. But the barn where I want to put the Ford Cortina 2000E – that can be cleared in a day or so. I just need to move the caravan shell.

I was whacked after that (strange things go on around here) and crashed out – I almost missed the Anglo-French Group meeting but I awoke just in time.

But I’m thinking about this barn. It’s not going to be difficult to put a suspended floor in over the garage bit, you know I’m going to be looking into this

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EPIC HALL

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