Tag Archives: les guis

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

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

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

And that wasn’t all either – at about 12:00 or thereabouts the heavens opened and cascaded down a ton of snow and that stuff kept on coming for the whole afternoon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-3

Monday 29th November 2010 – I’VE BEEN GARDENING THIS AFTERNOON

With the weather having warmed up today, I’ve covered over the beds of spuds and carrots with some of the black plastic sheeting that I used to cover them just after I dug the beds out. This will hopefully trap the “heat” (after all, 6 degrees is “heat” after what we have been having just now and help them to thaw out, as well as protecting them from the frost until I can get to dig them up.

I also wanted to put my herb beds under cover too so firstly I grubbed out everything in the mega-cloche and then moved the strawberry plants from the smaller cloche and planted them into the mega-cloche.

6 plants went into that cloche last spring, and 21 came out. I was impressed with that. They should do well in the mega-cloche and I might even have a decent crop this coming year.

The smaller cloche wasn’t big enough to take all of the herb beds so I had to tidy up the greenhouse and put the other herb bed in there. All of the stuff that didn’t grow was consigned to the new compost heap and now for once there is plenty of room in it.

But the plastic covering of the greenhouse has decayed and so I need to turn my attention to building the new greenhouse out of the windows that Simon gave me. Last year I made a space to put that, and the space where the plastic greenhouse is, I’ll build a garden shed there.

I’ve also given the inside of the back of Caliburn a bit of a clean-out too, and then I spent a pleasant hour or so crushing tin cans – I had a load of them lying around and so I’ve flattened some of them ready to take to the recycling. Plenty more to go, too, and I’ll spend some more time on that.

But this evening the temperature has plunged dramatically. When I went downstairs it was -3.3 and there was a really heavy frost. Seems like the temperature is in freefall tonight and we could well be on our way to the coldest night of the winter. And winter hasn’t started yet – it’s still November around here.

-2

Sunday 28th November 2010 – WE DIDN’T HAVE SUCH AN EARLY START THIS MORNING …

… that is, if you don’t count having to get up for a gipsy’s at 07:00. In fact it was after 10:00 when I emerged definitively.

And that was strange too. I’d had an exciting dream beforehand, but when I went back to bed at 07:05 and back to sleep I started on another one ( and I can’t remember a thing about the first one now even though it was so exciting). But in this second one, I’d been stranded on a pier and had to swim for shore and after giving the girl at the reception desk a piece of my mind about telling me to go on it, and then walking through the town, I suddenly realised that I didn’t have my camera with me. I was panicking about this, thinking that I had left it in my car which had now been submerged, and so I remember urging myself to wake up so that I could get back my camera.

And wake up I did – right on cue – and to a gorgeous blue alpine winter’s day – the type that I like to have for recharging my batteries after about 10 days of badger all. But that didn’t last and by early afternoon we were back snowing again.

GRRRRRRR.

But I’ve sorted out my receipts and paperwork from Canada and done a little more desultory tidying up. And that was that. But then again, it is Sunday and I can have a day off once a week.

-3

Saturday 27th November 2010 – THIS MORNING, I WAS UP …

… dressed, in St Eloy, done all my shopping and back home before I’ve usually crawled out of bed on a Saturday.

LIDL was having a special offer today – car radio CD players with SD card fittings, similar to the one I bought ages ago and which I fitted to Caliburn, but also with Bluetooth mobile phone connection.

Using a mobile phone in the van is almost impossible so a Bluetooth connection has to be really good. The oyster that I use isn’t up to it, unfortunately, so I’m keen to see how this works. And in any case I’ve been after a 12-volt CD player for the house for ages and I’ve not seen a good one, so ‘ll simply use the one out of Caliburn and fit it in a box.

So that was the reason I was up and out of bed at 07:50. These radios sell out quickly and I wanted to be there at opening time and luckily there were still a couple left. So what with this and the Ryobi stuff I bought in the States that’s my Christmas presents to myself all sorted out.

But the drive down to St Eloy was … errrr … difficult in -4.4 degrees and a heavy snowfall. we are having an impossible November, aren’t we?

And although the day improved a little and we even had a little sun, it’s still flaming cold and not likely to improve. I spent almost all of the day up here with the fire on, watching a couple of films and sorting some papers. And it seems that I spent much less than I thought in North America – what with the Canadian dollar being at about $1:39 to €1. That’s a nice surprise.

And I had the final bill from Avis Car Rentals about the excess mileage – I have to pay them the sum of $0:00 within the next 14 days.

And laugh as you might, I did know someone in Crewe in the UK who received a bill from the Electricity Board for £0:00 in the 1970s. He ignored it, and then 14 days later he had a reminder. He ignored that too, and a couple of weeks later he received one of the famous “red letters” saying that if he didn’t pay the sum of £0:00 within the next 7 days they would disconnect his supply.

He sent them a cheque for £0:00 and heard no more about it.

Perhaps I ought to do the same.

-2

Friday 26th November 2010 – THIS WAS THE SIGHT …

… that greeted me this morning.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-2

Thursday 25th November 2010 – WINTER HAS FINALLY ARRIVED

There was no snow when I woke up this morning, but it wasn’t half flaming cold.

So after breakfast I piddled off outside and dug up all my onions. There’s maybe about 50 of them and that’s not really enough for a year’s worth of cooking. I should have planted many more than that.

But with the temperature continuing to drop and with the heavy torrential rain that started to fall I called it a day in the garden and started to unpack the supplies that had come from the States and the supplies that Terry and Liz had bought me from the UK.

And while I was doing that, the heavy rain turned to heavy snow and that was that. It snowed and snowed and snowed and now we have had quite a pasting. It’s sub-zero outside and this snow is going to stick.

I went round to Rob and Nicolette’s too to thank them for keeping an eye on the premises. Nicolette said that she had had some of my beans and courgettes – one of which weighed 4.5 kilos! Courgettes grow well round here.

She had made a huge courgette and bean soup and had frozen some of it for my return which I thought was really nice of her. And in exchange I gave them a little something that I had bought in Canada and which was in the box of goodies.

Funnily enough, I went there at 18:00 for a quick chat and it was 20:45 when I left yet it only seemed like 5 minutes that I was there.

And now I’m holed up here in my room with a raging blaze from the little fire. The temperature was 7.4 degrees when I came up here but a good blaze for an hour or so brought the temperature up to 18 degrees, which is much more like it.

And I have no intention whatever of moving from here.

-3

Wednesday 24th November 2010 – WE HAD THE SECOND …

… snows of winter today.

A bit more than yesterday as well. And although it melted fairly rapidly we had quite a pasting early in the afternoon while I was on my way to Liz and Terry’s. That didn’t stay long either though but the temperature has now plummeted and I slid Caliburn on a patch of ice on the way home.

Winter is definitely here.

I’ve finished off fitting the wind turbine to the fence and it’s now wired in. And of course we are never ever going to have a breath of wind ever again.

It’s a weird place to put the wind turbine that’s for sure but it’s destined to go on the end of the house once the pointing is finished. And in any case that alley between the house and the trees is something of a wind trap and it’s going to be interesting to see what we can produce from it.

Meanwhile, of course, the wind turbine is being “run-in” so it’s a good idea to mount it, especially seeing as how we haven’t had a drop of sun for about three days now.

Round at Terry and Liz’s Liz showed me how to pickle my beetroot and I now have 5 jars of it simmering away. I also took along a few of my chilis to dry out but I seem to have forgotten them. I also gave Terry a hand to put up the scaffolding – he’s fitting windows into his barn roof and I have to sing for my supper.

Not that I’m complaining of course . We had an absolutely excellent stew with dumplings, complete with home-made bread.

Tomorrow if it’s fine I’ll pull up my onions and start to dry them. But if the weather is bad (and what are the odds on that?) I’ll work inside the house.

-2

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 – WE HAD THE FIRST …

… snows of winter today.

I woke up to find a light scattering all over the place. Not much, and it didn’t last long either but the first snows nevertheless.

It’s rather ominous.

So after breakfast I chopped a couple of bucketloads of wood. In the lean-to that I have been slowly repairing there’s all kinds of bits of wood in there so I’m slowly hacking it into manageable pieces for the little stove. I get through about half a bucket each day and there’s plenty to go at.

In fact this little woodstove heats up the place quite quickly burning all of the offcuts and I haven’t had the gas fire on at all yet.

I also noticed that the heavy chipboard lid that I was using to cover up my breadbin outside – that’s given up the ghost too. So I made a new lid to measure out of an offcut of waterproof plywood covered in a couple of plastic binliners.

This afternoon I fitted the wind turbine onto the pole and I’ve attached that to the fence. I’ve not yet wired it in as the light went, but that’s a job to do tomorrow hopefully. And I need it too. We’ve had no sun for a couple of days.

-2

Monday 22nd November 2010 – BACK AT WORK TODAY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-3

Sunday 21st November 2010 – IT WAS SUNDAY TODAY …

… and that’s traditionally a Day of Rest as you know.

And so we started with a little lie-in. Until about 11:00 or something like that. And that’s the last lie-in now for 7 more days as I’m back at work Monday with alarm clocks and 08:30 starts and so on.

So after breakfast I carried on with the tidying up up here in the attic and it’s looking a little more respectable. So much so in fact that I feel more comfortable in having guests around.

Which is just as well as Terry and Liz called by for a chat on their way past. And I was here too as there was no football this week.

I’ve also steam-cleaned the oven and fridge and they needed it too, having been unattended for almost 8 weeks. You’ve no idea just how quickly the condition of a fridge can deteriorate – or maybe you have, I dunno.

So tomorrow if the weather is okay I’ll be out digging up my vegetables. I need to organise them ready for the winter. If I leave them any longer they will freeze into the ground.

-3

Saturday 20th November 2010 – I WENT SHOPPING TODAY …

… for the first time since I’ve been back. Ist port of call was the cheapo car spares place in St Eloy. Despite his shop, he knows nothing about whatever it is that he’s selling and couldn’t understand amp-hours for batteries and the like. He ended up measuring the battery tray in Caliburn and trying to sell me a generic 95-amp-hour battery that would fit – for €109:50.

But of course anyone who remembers the discussion we had about tyres when we were building the trailer will recall this kind of performance, and from the same guy too. The big tyre and exhaust place in Montlucon will sell me the correct battery (a 92-amp-hour battery as it happens) by one of the leading makes of battery manufacturer, and for just €10 more and so I reckon that that is the route I’ll be taking.

Monday I’ll need to book Caliburn in for his service and order the battery so that it arrives at more-or-less the same time. I might even treat myself to a night in Montlucon while the work is being done.

Round the shops, Carrefour is getting worse and worse but LIDL is still the same. They were having a music sale this week and so I bought a guitar stand for the agnostic guitar. I’m still humming and hahing over an electric 6-string and I’m still regretting not buying that Hohner 6-string that I saw in that junk shop in Boulogne two years ago.

This afternoon we had the Annual General Meeting of Pionsat Patrimoine – the local history group. And for a change, for a body of intense and passionate people, the meeting moved along quite smartly.

I seem to have managed to have had myself elected to the organising committee (heaven help them) and we’ll have to wait and see what tasks we are offered once it’s properly up and running.

After that we went for coffee and a chat and much to my surprise I was there for a good two hours. Not like me at all, this. Normally I’m the first to bolt for home.

No footy either – it’s a bye week during which clubs might catch up with outstanding fixtures. But the season has run pretty smoothly so far, said Jean-Pierre who plays for the 3rd XI and who had his pizza van parked up on the square at Pionsat.

But at about 15:00 the heavens opened and it’s been pouring down all night. I hate this weather.

-4

Thursday 18 November 2010 – I MANAGED A WHOLE …

… day today.

Yes, for a change. Even though a 08:30 awakening meant nothing like a pre-10:00 rising. It was 10:03 precisely in fact, as I noticed the time on the clock as the phone rang. My “not before 10:00” seems to be working.

It was in fact this other radio station that wants to broadcast the radio programmes that Liz and I do. Would we be able to do it, and would we like to come around and inspect their facilities? I politely explained that just 7 weeks ago we had told them that we would and that we went round to check their facilities at that date.

Ahh the joys of dealing with people with memory issues.

>Rather like my own in fact. As I keep on saying to people, two things happen when you get to my age –

you lose your memory
I can’t remember what the other thing is

So I’ve now unpacked my suitcase and I’m well on the way to sorting out my clothes. And the place up here looks a little tidier.

I still haven’t managed to go outside properly yet but tomorrow we are recording and so we’ll be off out to Gerzat. I’ll need to buy a new battery for Caliburn as the old one is a bit creaky and didn’t hold its charge for the 7 weeks that I was away, and I also have two gas bottles empty which need filling.

It’s spend, spend, spend just now

-1

Wednesday 17th November 2010 – TODAY WAS …

… a little better.

Not only did I manage to wake up at a respectable hour, I managed to stay awake all day too. I’ve even done some tidying up in here and I’ve also managed to eat three meals, and all of that is something of an achievement.

My marathon adventure has clearly taken something right out of me and it’ll be a while before it finds its way back.

But never fear – normal service will be resumed in due course … "ohhh God!" – ed … it’s just hard to know whenever that “due course” might be.

But Liz reports that the mountains are now all white and a friend of mine who lives about 10 miles away has reported on her Social Media page that the first flurries of snow have arrived at her house. It won’t be very long before they arrive here.

Rather a chilling thought, that.

How am I off for wood?

-1

Tuesday 16th November 2010 – SO WHAT HAPPENED …

… today then?

I vaguely remember the phone ringing at 09:30 to say that my freight from the USA was about to arrive, so I had to wake up, leave my bed, dress myself and go downstairs to sort that out.

Usually the arrival of a parcel full of new toys makes me quite excited, but not much chance of that today.

I retreated back upstairs to sit back on the sofa but feeling myself drifting off again, I set the alarm for 13:00 to remind me to wake up to go and record the radio show.

However, I was woken by a phone call at 12:45 to say that the recoding session was cancelled.

The next thing I remember was about 20:00 when I woke up and had to go outside to fetch something to drink, and after that it was about 23:45 when I managed to stay awake for a whole two hours.

So that was Tuesday. all of it.

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?

Monday 15th November 2010 – I FINALLY …

… struggled back home at about 16:00 this afternoon.

I was not in much of a rush to rise this morning, and when I did, I took it quite easy.

But all good things come to an end and I set out for home in mid-afternoon.

I’m surprised that I could remember where it was, and I certainly didn’t recognise it. Even in September and October you’ll be amazed at the amount of stuff that can grow if you aren’t expecting it.

Freezing cold in here too after being absent for so long. And dust everywhere.

But there we are then. That was my great adventure – all done and dusted. And a couple of thousand photos to show for it too, which I shall have to set too and organise some time soon.

I won’t ever be the same again.

And neither will Canada!

-1

EPIC HALL

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