Tag Archives: les guis

Wednesday 15th December 2010 – AWWWWW – BAMBI

I can’t remember now what it was that I came up to my room for this afternoon but a quick look out of the window revealed Bambi in all her glory, foraging for food in the field next door

You have to feel sorry for the wildlife just now in this kind of weather. Absolutely perishing, well under zero, and not a chance of getting anything out of the garden unless you use dynamite.

I’m struggling for water now. Today I had to undo the top of one of the water butts (luckily I expected this kind of weather and so I fastened the tops on with wing nuts) and smash my way in through God knows how much ice on the top of the water. I filled 4 kettles like this but of course at tea time they had all frozen up in the verandah because it’s well below zero in there too and has been for all of the day.

It’s almost impossible to go outside in this. Luckily I threw all of the wood into the lean-to in the summer so at least I’m out of the wind in there while I cut up the supplies for the evening.

And it’s emptying out quite well in there and when the weather eases I can definitely build the stairs that I promised so that I can climb up to the next level in comparative ease.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, I didn’t manage to finish the wall. Nothing like, in fact.

In between the phone calls I had to deal with the wiring for the second set of plugs and that took quite a while – most of the day in fact Threading it through the conduit is … errr … exciting and of course whenever I do anything involving electrical wiring there’s always a pause after each connection while I go round to see if anything has been set on fire. Not my strong point as you know.

>But at least the wiring on that side of the room now is all done and I can press on tomorrow assuming that I don’t have any more interruptions.

But this cold weather is starting to drag now. I’ve never known it as cold as this in December. Who said “Global Warming”?

-3

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.

But 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.

Work 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.

-2

Monday 13th December 2010 – AND AFTER A DAY …

… where I did nothing at all (and I mean nothing at all) it was back to work today.

First job was of course the fire and the wood but by way of a change I rearranged it all today as I was fed up of the heap collapsing every five minutes. it’s now in a bigger, deeper box so there’s more room for it to spread out and the place looks a little neater up here.

There’s another load of wood cut up for the next few days and the lean-to is looking emptier and emptier. If I put my mind to it I could do the stairs in there this week but the weather will have to warm up quite a bit before I venture outside for a long period.

Emptying Caliburn took a while too. The wood and the breeze blocks are still in there but everything else is out and put away as far as is possible, and so I was finally ready to start work.

Not quite though, because there was still some slate in the way. 9 bucket-loads went downstairs onto the pile and that was that. There’s some room to move about in there now although I still have much more stuff to sort out in there. Nevertheless I’ve managed to put all of the framework onto the long wall in the bedroom and I followed that up with another length of insulation.

But that was all, though, because due to my Sunday inactivity I had things to do – like make a start on the Christmas Special. That took a couple of hours and I reckon I’ve done about a third of it. At the moment I’m just writing down whatever comes into my head and I can edit it once I’ve got to the end of my ideas. But it’s coming together nicely and I reckon that I may well be on to something with this.

Tomorrow I’ll do some more work in the bedroom and a bit more on the Christmas Special unless the weather warms up dramatically and I can work outside. But not much hope of that as we are on course for another candidate for the coldest night of the winter. When I came home tonight after my Monday night conviviality it was -3.9°C outside. In the 45 minutes it took to make a quick tea and wash up it had plummeted to -5.1°C. Heaven alone knows what it is right now.

Sunday 12th December 2010 – JUST FOR A CHANGE …

… I did absolutely nothing today.

Not a tap.

It is Sunday of course and I’m still suffering from jet-lag and it’s cold outside too, so it was one of those days where I didn’t stray very far from my warm, comfortable attic.

A pile of books, some DVDS and some music, with a bit of desultory surfing on the internet – and a trip down to cook the Sunday pizza. That was about it, really.

But I reckon that everyone should have one day a week where he can sit around all day and do nothing at all without ever feeling guilty about it.

I mean – it’s not as if I don’t do anything for the rest of the week, is it?

Saturday 11th December 2010 – I SPENT A FORTUNE TODAY …

… in the shops in Montlucon. Easily €600 reckon. And poor Caliburn creaked and groaned on the way home under the weight of 50 breeze blocks, loads of pine boards to do my wardrobe (and why is it that a 300mm pine board costs €5.75 yet a 600mm pine board costs … errrr … €12.15?), tons more insulation, a load of wire and trunking and (says he, hoping it does the job) a new wheel for his wheelbarrow.

Yes, forget your €15:00 in some shops and your €17.95 on the tool vans that come by, how about a Brico Depot special at €8:75? Much more like my kind of price.

But I had lots of time to spend all of this money as I was up and about at some ridiculous hour and was actually camped outside the door of the new Aldi in Montlucon before its 09:00 opening time. And that’s a change isn’t it? Normally I struggle to make my kitchen by 09:00!

>And it was a gorgeous day to be out as well. Not quite your Alpine winter day but as close as we can get and the solar panels here on the house racked up about 180 amp-hours of charge. That was quite welcome too. We’ve been struggling for a decent charge for the last few weeks and I’ve been on something of an economy drive as far as the electrical energy goes.

On the way home I managed to fit in a visit to the swimming pool at Neris-les-Bains. I didn’t stay long as it was perishing in there but I managed a decent soak and a good warm (not hot, unfortunately) shower so I feel all clean for a change – at least on the outside.

Tomorrow I’m told (for at Auchan I bumped into Michel from the footy club) that there might be some footy – Pionsat’s 2nd XI have a match at St Maurice and it might even be on – so I might even have an afternoon out.

I’m missing the footy. What with this weather there has been none for ages.

-1

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!

-1

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

I 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.

-1

Wednesday 8th December 2010 – AND IN A MOST AMAZING PIECE OF NEWS …

… It’s just after 01:00, I’m about to go to bed, and I haven’t had the heating on all day.

When I came upstairs after knocking off work at 18:00 it was 13.8°C up here. What with me being in the room and the laptop on, it quickly rose to 14.4°C, reached a high of 15.5°C and now is down to 13.7°C.

I could have put the heating on, I suppose, but I was determined to stick a day in December without it because there probably won’t be another one. The weather has broken again – the south-westerly gales that have been keeping us warm these last few days collided with a north-easterly weather front this afternoon, we had a thunderstorm and it’s been a torrential downpour ever since.

It’s snowing in Paris and the temperature has dropped considerably outside and I reckon that winter might be coming back. That’s my forecast anyway.

So as it was so nice today, at least earlier on, I hung out my washing to dry it (and had to take it in at about 15:00) and dug up my potatoes. Not as many today as there were the other day. These beds that I have been digging up are the lowest in the run, they are fairly waterlogged and many of the potatoes have rotted with the damp.

I’m going to have to get some compost from St Eloy to raise up the level of the bed and I’ll also need to mix some sand in. That’ll help the drainage.

I’ve also made a start (well, sort-of) on pulling up the brambles and weeds and ground alder with the idea of letting more light into the bottom of the vegetable patch in the hope that any sun that we might have will dry things out a little.

I stopped the beds where they were because that was where the fruit trees began, but they gave me nothing at all this year and haven’t done for a while so I reckon I’ll pull them up too and put another row of raised beds in. Not that I want particularly to grow more crops – I just think that they can be spaced out a little more.

Tomorrow I’m going to have a go at getting my chicory to blanch. I’ll dig up a couple and crop the leaves, and then bury them in a large flower pot to see if they will push up some shoots. That’s something else I have never done before.

-2

Tuesday 7th December 2010 – I HAD A DAY OUT TODAY.

I was quietly drinking a coffee ready to go out and cut wood for this evening when Liz rang me. “Terry and I are on our way to Montlucon. Anything you want?”

Well, as it happens, this very morning I had been making a list of things that I want from Montlucon so I enquired “will you be going to Brico Depot?”
“Of course”
“Well, do you want an extra passenger?”
And so instead of working on my bedroom, I went to Montlucon instead.

I tried a couple of places but no wheel for Caliburn and I also bought a few useful things, including a small coffee pot thingy to fit on my little stove (€25 in the Auchan but only €6 in Gifi) but what was so depressing about the journey was that blasted flaming perishing Brico Depot was blasted flaming well closed for perishing stock taking.

So 30 kms there and 30 kms back for me (and add on another 20 kms each way for Liz and Terry) and the place was closed. So no extra insulation, no bits to finish off the wardrobe.

GRRRRRRRRR at Brico Depot!

But the temperature is crazy right now. It was a grey hazy day with just the odd burst of sun through the clouds but the temperature reached 15°C today. In the heat exchanger it reached 22.3°C. In a space of just about 36 hours the temperature has increased 20°C.

There’s clearly something wrong with this weather right now. But I’m not worrying about it. I didn’t get much sleep last night so I’m having an early night.

-3

Monday 6th December 2010 – WHAT A DRAMATIC …

… change in the weather!

The temperature in my room this morning when I woke up was a balmy 11.2°C this morning – a long time since it’s been this high. And outside it was positively pouring with rain – no surprise there.

But in the verandah we had a pleasant 8°C, and there was an even-better 9°C outside. These figures aren’t bad for a December, especially after the winter we have just had. And the change is dramatic – just a day and a half for the temperature to shoot up.

So after the usual firewood-chopping session (which is diminishing the pile of wood in the lean-to and it won’t be long before I can get to where the stairs will be going) and a long chat with Liz and Terry on the phone I came back up here and restarted on the bedroom

I’ve put another length of insulation on the wall and then I fastened the two conduits to the battens – one conduit taking the 230 volt power and the other one taking the 12 volt power.

Once the cable was in the conduits I made a start on putting the polystyrene insulation on the walls but I ran out of light. With this appalling weather it was dark at 16:26 this afternoon.

So despite the rain (we had 17mm today) it was quite warm outside so I moved one of the two huge piles of recycled bricks out of the way of the pathway down to the garden. They are all stacked up neatly against the barn wall now.

But I have noticed that with the dramatically severe weather followed by the equally-dramatically severe thaw, all of the brush has dramatically died down and I’m starting to find things that I mislaid around the garden. It won’t be long before it will be time to start on the landscaping, version 2011.

In this version I’ll be building the greenhouse, moving the two halves of the old Ford Transit, moving a pile of unwanted trees and digging a couple more beds.

It seems that work never stops around here.

Except on a Sunday of course.

-2

Sunday 5th December 2010 – I WOKE UP THIS MORNING …

… (and doesn’t that sound like the opening line of a really good blues song, but what with the Prozac and so on, I haven’t had the blues for ages) at about 07:00 to the sound of a fast car coming down the track at the side here and slamming to a halt.

A quick peek out of the window revealed no car at all so, somewhat puzzled, I went back to bed.

A couple of minutes later I heard another car do the same thing. And so another quick peek, and once again no car.

But one thing that I did notice, and which was probably the noise that I had heard, and that was that all of the snow had disappeared off the barn roof and fallen to the floor.

That’s the thing with tin roofs as I am finding out – snow doesn’t stick to them and the slightest raise in temperature is enough to melt the adhesion.

And the temperature did rise too, but brought with it the rain. In fact, it’s rained non-stop all day. A grey miserable depressing day indeed, but at least it was warmer than the last few days. Temperature reached 5°C today.

I finally woke up at about … errr … 12:00 and heaved myself out of bed. For most of the day I’ve been doing a little tidying up and reading a book while warming myself up with this little woodstove. It’s Sunday and it’s my day of rest.

And in other news, I see that one of the wikileaks documents states that Saudi Arabia is the major source of funds for Al-Qaida. This will come as quite a surprise to anyone except the regular readers of my pages, as I have been saying this for years. Bin Laden’s family is the fourth-richest in the whole country and the family-controlled companies have their fingers in so many multi-national projects of all types.

In fact, a brief scan of these pages over the last few years has produced about a dozen things that I have been saying for years that have been subsequently been confirmed by either the USA or the UK. The world ought to be taking much more notice of me than it does, I reckon.

-2

Saturday 4th December 2010 – IT TOOK ME WELL OVER AN HOUR …

… to dig Caliburn out of a snowdrift this morning. The weather broke and we had a glorious Alpine winter’s day for a change (at least until early afternoon) and seeing as supplies are getting low I decided to go into St Eloy and do some shopping.

But that useless whatever in the snowplough – he’s been down the lane and instead of coming down to me and clearing out, he drove past down the other lane to where there is absolutely no-one at all and left me with a big snowbank across the top of the hill.

So after chopping more wood and so on, clearing snow from the cloches, the heat exchanger, the solar water, the solar lights and the compost heater, I dug Caliburn out and he’s now mobile.

After a wash I limped gingerly into St Eloy (you have no idea how bad the roads are) and not only did I do my shopping I did a pile of washing too in the laundry. Quite a big stack had built up around here and there’s no possibility of doing it myself here in these conditions.

What with one thing and another, though, I was late getting to the shops and so I didn’t have much time to use the dryer there as I wanted to be back before dark and it starting to freeze again. So I have a huge pile of damp washing hanging up in the verandah and I don’t know when it will ever dry.

But back to this Alpine morning. I’ve noticed quite often that once a cloudy day ends and night falls, the weather front shifts by about 50 miles and we have a marvellous Alpine night with millions of stars. And as soon as it dawns the weather front shifts back down again and we are plunged back into doom and gloom.

This morning though the sky stayed clear enough for me to have a decent charge on the batteries for the first time since I don’t know when and tonight is clear again so who knows? We may even have a decent day tomorrow but I am not holding my breath.

In other news, I’ve had another letter from the car hire people. Having given up on the idea of trying to stick me for excess mileage they are now trying to charge me $110 for cleaning Casey, saying that I returned it in a dirty conditions.

I think that this is outrageous and I have a good mind to write and tell them so. Of course I would never ever hire a car and get in into an appalling state of (lack of) cleanliness. regular readers of these pages will of course be well aware that in matters of tidiness and cleanliness I am second to none.

Of course I’m several thousand miles away from being in a position to dispute the charge so I don’t know what I can do about it. It’s certainly not fair – as if I would ever get a hire car into such a condition.

-1

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?

-1

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.

So 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.

-1

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

I 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.

After 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.

-1

EPIC HALL

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