Tag Archives: bedroom

Friday 28th May 2010 – It further occurs to me …

… that you haven’t seen inside the greenhouse at all so far this year and so that was worthy of a photo.

It’s a cheap greenhouse from LIDL that I bought last year and it came complete with detachable staging. €49.99 if I remember correctly and that was a good purchase as well.

Most of the seeds have been planted in soya dessert containers. I learnt that from last year and the year before that – planting in seed trays just swamped me out all at once and having 24 lettuce all ready at the same time with none following on was bad news. Doing things like this – a few at a time – ensure a decent succession of crop.

You’ll notice plastic spoons and plastic knives in the pots. I write in pencil on them the name of whatever is in the pot so I don’t forget. Real plastic tags are quite expensive whereas plastic spoons and knives cost me 50 cents for 20 at the local cheapo shop.

In fact this isn’t everything – not by any means. It’s pretty crowded in the greenhouse as you can see and so a pile of stuff has been moved into the new mega-cloche where they can be hardened off ready for planting.

Some stuff, such as the borlotti beans (they are the only ones that have taken) and some more sprouts were even further-advanced than that and so they have already been planted in the appropriate raised bed.

I can see that I’m going to have to work hard to keep up with all of this succession planting. And I’m having to start weeding too. That’s a novelty, isn’t it?

Once I’d done the garden I did some more work in the bedroom and then at 18:00 I nipped into St Eloy les Mines for some shopping seeing as I’m out tomorrow at a chantier communal at Jean and Elizabeth’s. I met Julie and Rob in LIDL which was a surprise as normally I meet them at Brico Depot.

And I still didn’t get to the two new shops either. They both close at 18:30 and I had the privilege of having a door shut in my face on two occasions.

At the chantiers we have to bring along some food to share and so I cooked a huge aubergine and kidney bean chili, some of which I had for tea and the rest I’ll take tomorrow.

But it’ll upset the locals – it’s …errr… rather spicy.

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Thursday 27th May 2010 – One of the things I did today …

… was a job that I had been putting off for a while.

well, not exactly putting off but one that I keep on meaning to do but always forget about – until today, that is.

When I did the lean-to roof back in August I did the guttering but due to the lack of stock in Brico Depot I couldn’t do the downspout so I just had a length of pipe shoved in there. After several months of this I suddenly remembered about the downspout when I was in Brico Depot once not so long ago and as they had the stuff I stocked up.

I prmoptly forgot about it and the occasional flashes I had always seemed to occur when I was too busy to do it. Even the tempest blowing it down coincided with something else of urgence that I had to do.

But not today! I was wandering somewhat aimlessly around the place this morning after my customary 2 hours on the computer and so I searched out all of the stuff and did it.

I’ve not finished off the bottom as I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. I have it simply draining onto another piece of guttering and that runs away down the field as a temporary measure.

I’ll now have to think of more permanent arrangement to complete it because I can’t leave it like this. It’s a waste of water for a start.

I’ve also done some more gardening. I’ve put out some of the aubergines and planted some spinach and more radishes. I’ve also sown a few lettuce seeds in a pot to create some kind of succession. The radishes that I planted 6 weeks ago are looking good and I reckon that on Monday it will be lettuce and radishes from my own garden.

To finish off, I’ve started boarding the back wall in the bedroom where the wardrobe is going to be, and as you might expect, I don’t think that I have enough OSB boards left over from when I did the barn floor. That’s a disappointment.

Still, it’s almost the weekend and I can nip off into town and buy some more to finish the job. But it is depressing that I always seem to run aground just when I’m in the right kind of mood to press on regardless.

In other news, we were in the studio on Tuesday recording our programme for June. We didn’t have a guest because the guy I was trying to contact didn’t call me back. So of course, he called me back yesterday. Our programmes that we recorded are for the month of June so today I received an e-mail from a Tourist body telling me about events in the Puy-de-Dome in … errrrr … June.

You can’t make up this kind of nonsense, can you?

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Wednesday 26th May 2010 – It occurs to me …

… that we haven’t had a pic of the vegetable plots for ages. And so I remedied this this afternoon.

And don’t they look absolutely grand?

The bed on the left that is half-covered with a plastic sheet has some chicory seeds underneath it. I planted some of them this afternoon and under the plastic sheet (that keeps the weeds down) it’s damp, warm and humid, ideal conditions for germination.

Next to it are the leeks that I planted on Sunday and the weather has started to bring them along but in the next bed are 5 rows of garlic and about 15 rows of onions and don’t they look impressive? The garlic was actually last year’s and I dug it up to replant once I’d finished the beds whereas the onions were sets that I bought.

But clearly the plot and the weather are suiting them because I’ve never seen such luscious crops growing anywhere near where I might be in charge of a garden.

In the photograph above, you’ll notice the tree branch hanging over the onions. That wasn’t there a few weeks ago – it was up in the air but the weight of the foliage has brought it down.

At the moment it has some small green berries the size of large peas, just like the one in this photo here but they’ll probably develop into something impressive sooner or later.

At least I hope so – and I hope that I’ll be able to make some decent jam out of whatever the tree produces.

That’s not all the excitement either.

I went to have a look underneath one or two of the other plastic sheets covering the raised beds, and in the potato beds I noticed that the plants were sprouting and doing really well.

There was also a huge ants’ nest there too. The ants had somehow managed to bank up the soil a little against the underside of the plastic sheet and honeycombed it with burrows

So my question yesterday was to the effect of wondering what the weather might do. Basically we had 11mm of rain interspersed with a few sunny spells. I moved 200 litres of water as the water butts up at the top were overflowing and the ones down here were empty and it was a shame to waste the water.

Once that was completed I caught up with a load of succession sowing. The beans and the peas aren’t happening at all – neither are the peppers and chili but the cabbage and so on seem to be doing well. I hope everything will catch up.

You might think that that would be enough for one day, but I’ve even managed to find time to work inside the house.

Here in the bedroom on the first floor I found the time to finish lining the wall with polystyrene where I’ll be putting the built-in wardrobe. I’m falling behind with this so I need to get a wiggle on and do my best to finish it.

I must find some focus from somewhere and press on, or I’ll be finished before the bedroom is.

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Wednesday 12th May 2010 – You can see …

… what I’ve been up to today in the bedroom, even if the photo is rather blurred. I’ve fitted the two uprights (although you can only see one) for the front of the wardrobe and I’ve started to line the walls within the wardrobe with polystyrene insulation.

In fact a good day on this will probably see the wall finished, boarding included.

It won’t be tomorrow though. It’s yet another bank holiday (Ascension in fact) and there’s a footy tournament at Pionsat. And now that I have the appropriate qualifications, I’ve been asked to referee it. But it won’t be for long if the weather is anything like today. We’ve had another totally miserable grey wet depressing day again. Never mind November, it’s actually like a winter January day here. Even the cold is a wintry kind of cold.

In the garden though I noticed that a new potato plant is starting to appear so something is moving. And my onions and garlic are loving this weather – they have fine glorious bushy green leaves the sort that I’ve never seen on anything I’ve grown before.

And in other news, my SIREN number came today. I’m now a registered French tradesman and I can go out and look for work – which reminds me of an international conference that took place back in the early 1980s between Jimmy Carter, President Gorbachev and Queen Elizabeth II
Jimmy Carter ….”we transplanted a cows heart to a man and within three months he was looking for work”
President Gorbachev ….”That’s nothing. We transplanted a cow’s leg to a man and within three months he was looking for work”
Queen Elizabeth II …”That’s nothing. We transplanted a complete cow to 10 Downing Street and within three months there were three million men looking for work”.

But talking of looking for work, I’ve been roped in to a furniture removal on Saturday. At 09:00 would you believe? Still, I’ll get up early if there is the folding stuff involved.

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Tuesday 11th May 2010 – Not that it will be of any surprise to anyone, but …

… the good weather didn’t hold. The weather front that was slowly drifting across here last night seemed to have settled down for the day.

It was just like November here again. Patches of sunshine interspersed with torrential rain – another 12mm today – and not much point in doing anything outside. And it was like that even into the evening. As it was getting dark tonight at about 21:20 I looked out of the window to see another cloud rolling slowly up the mountain as you can see.

So it goes without saying – the torrential downpour that I heard when I woke up this morning prompted me to stick my head back under the covers and that was that until … errrrr … later. And after breakfast and a couple of hours on the computer I was a long way from doing anything. Lieneke came round for a chat and she stayed for ages. Not that I am complaining of course – it’s good to see her. We had a long chat and we looked at a couple of websites where she is featured. She also told me that my suspicions are true – Claude and Francoise have … errrr … left the area.

After Lieneke left I had lunch (well, more like an early tea) and then while I was trying to carry on working in the bedroom I had a whole series of phone calls, including a couple from Tracy which was very nice.

So I took the hint and knocked off at 19:00. No point in working if people won’t let you. I’ll try to have a better day tomorrow. But I know that the weather won’t be helping me.

-1

Monday 10th May 2010 – I was working this afternoon …

… in the bedroom. I’ve put the first layer of battens on the left-hand wall, added another strip of insulation (the last I have as it happens so I need to buy some more) and put all of the counter-battens on the back wall.

Tomorrow I’ll be putting some on the side wall and then starting to put the polystyrene insulation on top.

You’re probably thinking that it’s due to the weather that I was working inside, but ohhhh no. It’s true that when I first woke up it was raining heavily but by the time I had woken up definitively there was a beautiful blue sky and for much of the day it stayed like that.

This morning after working on the computer I planted out the first sprout plants, put the beetroot out to harden off and did some more sowing. I also noticed that the cauliflower are now starting to show themselves. And with the damp conditions in the greenhouse for the last few days followed by the heat today I’m hoping that a few more might take off.

After lunch it was working in the bedroom. I might have to go back to Brussels in a couple of months or so and I’ll be bringing a pile of domestic stuff back with me. I’ve nowhere to keep it as yet so getting the bedroom ready might come in handy so that I can use it as a storage space for now.

This evening we had just a couple of little showers and a thunderstorm as a weather front moved across from the East. But I hope this weather keeps up for a while – we need it.

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Friday 7th May 2010 – I’ve finished doing the fireplace in the bedroom.

I cut a piece of insulated plasterboard to shape, stuffed it in the hole over the top of the boarding and then screwed it in place. It was a perfect fit too, much to my surprise.

After that I filled in all of the joints with polyfilla stuff and that was that. Perfectly windproof and draftproof.

I’m not going to smooth it down or do a final filler coat for of course it will be covered by the space-blanket insulation, some more polystyrene stuff and then some plasterboard. In fact, if you look you can see where I’ve got to with the battening for all of that.

I’ve been working hard in the bedroom this afternoon, but in the morning I was out in the garden. I did some more succession sowing and then planted the main-crop potatoes. I’d left them in the sun and the warmth hoping that they could chit but they didn’t do all that much. But anyway I didn’t have enough so I went into the bag to get a couple more (there were about 30 left) and to my surprise those in the bag had chitted more than those in the sun. So I hastily prepared another bed to stick them in. No point in wasting them.

At training tonight they had a proper 6-a-side match seeing as how they had two goalkeepers. And I was ashed if I would referee it. Franck the trainer said that it would be a good opportunity for me to practise my technique but I reckon that it was more of a comment on my footballing skills last week. I’ve a lot to learn about refereeing – it’s easy doing it behind a desk in a classroom but it’s a different thing entirely on a pitch. But at least I got my positioning right. That’s always been one of my major gripes about referees.

In other, depressing news which will upset more than a few readers of these pages, Liz’s autopsy has now been published. It appears that while they were doing the surgery on her main artery they “nicked” another small artery nearby with one of the wires that they were using. Ordinarily that would have caused no problems but of course she had been pumped full of anti-coagulents so the cut didn’t clot and she bled to death.

Yes, medical manslaughter as we all suspected.

I remember just before the General Election of 1997 talking about the NHS with a friend of mine, a lifelong Labour supporter. Someone was extolling its virtues (it did have virtues then) and Nina replied grimly “yes, so they had better be careful in whose hands they leave it”.

Nina knew Liz. I wonder what she is saying now.

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Thursday 6th May 2010 – I boarded up the fireplace today.

I knew the offcuts from the tongue-and-grooving would come in handy sooner or later.

There’s a heavy-duty plastic sack at the back of this, and then a framework around the inside of the fireplace. Then the offcuts of tongue-and-grooving were cut to size and shaped to fill in the hole and finally I bunged up everywhere with filler.

Next step will be to screw some insulated plasterboard to the boarding and seal that all round and it should be a nice draught-proof seal.

This morning I woke up at 08:20 to the sound of the rain driving down on the roof. “Badger that for a game of soldiers” – and stayed in bed til 10:00. And after doing some work on my website I dodged the rain to plant out some more peas and beans and then to catch up with sowing some more succession seeds. I’ve a full greenhouse now and it looks impressive but nothing seems to be germinating. This year might be something of a washout in the garden in more ways than one.

But it stopped raining at about 15:00. Some blue bits appeared in the sky and by late evening there was even a sighting of that golden object that hangs around up there some time. But it’s still cold though and I had the fire on again up here tonight.

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Tuesday 4th May 2010 – I’ve been working inside today …

… and I’ve made an exciting discovery. In the bedroom there was a wooden fire surround with a small coal-fired stove and a metal backplate. So as my insulating of the walls is now about to move around the corner I need to remove the stove and the fireplace.

Once I had done that the backplate came away and a whole pile of dirt dust and rubble fell away with it leaving (after I had cleared it up) a big fireplace.

Including a fire basket too, When I think of all of the time I have wasted looking for a fire basket and there we are with one bricked up in a wall.

So why have I been working inside?
The answer is –
water bucket max temp 11; min temp 9.5. Solar energy in the barn 0.0
Yes, a full and heavy cloud that has stopped any sunlight getting through, and has stopped the heat radiating back into the sky at night.
There’s no need to tell you that rainfall was a whopping TWENTY SIX mm today. You’ve probably worked that out already.

And so there you are.

Tomorrow Liz Terry and I are going to the Chambre des Metiers. I rang them up first thing and the woman explained that she would have someone call me back that morning. Of course they haven’t so it’s doorstepping time

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Thursday 25th February 2010 – When I took the rain measurements just now …

… there was 1.5mm in the rain gauge. And if I had taken the measurements 10 minutes later it would have been completely different as we had the most terrific thunderstorm. Lightning, thunder, hailstorms, torrents of rain – you name it, we had it.

But I dunno what happened today but I was feeling quite enthusiastic – I haven’t felt like this for a while. I was up early and after breakfast I sorted out the seeds for this year’s garden. I’m throwing away all of the older stuff and starting afresh. I took the opportunity to plant a few lettuce seeds seeing as the weather has improved. I improvised a hot bed – a container in the verandah right over where I cook so the heat will keep the container warm.

So after that it was outside shifting piles of things around – like pallets, bags of gravel, that kind of thing. I’ve laid some corrugated iron roofing sheets down and I’m using one for storing the grave and some others for the rubble inside the house, starting with what used to be the bedroom wall. That led to some more pulling up of brambles and some cutting of wood. And that got me started on the wood and all of the remains of the trees thatI demolished last year and left lying where I’m hoping Bernard is going to flatten – I’ve started to cut them up into sies that will fit my stove up here.

After lunch I nipped down to the quarry to enquire about roadstone and delivery and so on for when Bernard comes to dig out, and then back here cutting wood until the rain drove me inside. I hadn’t finished then – in fact I carried on insulating the back wall until it grew dark. Working until 18:30! Whatever next!

All in all it’s been an impressive day and I’ve no idea how come.

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Tuesday 23rd February 2010 – I once knew a girl ….

…. called Summer (she had a sister called Sky – you have to feel sorry for kids with parents like that) and she had a boyfriend who was absolutely devoted to her. They used to have their own private little moments and like all teenagers they would get up to no good – in one particular way that pleased the young gentleman greatly.

After a while Summer moved on to pastures new and the young gentleman (whose name I forget) was devastated. No subsequent girlfriend that he found could make up for what he had lost. One day he confided in a girlfriend exactly what it was that made his relationship with Summer so special.
“That’s no big deal” she replied. “i have no inhibitions about that”
So a short while later, right after one of these private moments, she turned to him and said
“Has that helped you rekindle some of your enthusiasm for life?”
“Well” he replied, “one swallow doesn’t make a Summer”.

And that’s really the story of what has happened here this last few days. The temperature has warmed up dramatically and it’s feeling warm. I told you the other day about the temperature in the verandah. Yesterday it reached 30.6 degrees which is the highest total since October 30th.

Today though was not so impressive. The morning was fine and I finished round by Claude’s at 13:45. It’s sad to see the fruits of their 46 years of married life end up like this but age and ill-health catch up with everyone sooner or later. I got back the two huge armoured cupboards that I gave him back in 2002. He also gave me two kitchen unit bases – the 600mm size – and I’m going to put them upstairs in the barn with a plank or two across the top to make a joinery bench, using the two large cupboards to store my tools, nails, screws and the like. I’m glad I put a trapdoor in the barn floor when I redid it, so that I can lift stuff up and down.

This afternoon I carried on in the garden but the torrential rain that fell later on drove me inside. I continued with the insulation on the bedroom wall for a while until the light went – this torrential rainfall (we had 9mm in minutes) plotted everything out.

And the Parisian is nosing around the ruined house by here and hacking away at the undergrowth. He’s up to something, my nasty suspicious little mind tells me, and I wonder what it is. He had a whinge about the Passat and the Escort blocking the track. He’s right but there’s nothing much I can do about this until the local Mayor pulls his finger out and does something about my proposition about buying the communal land round here. I suppose I’d better go and have a chat to him on Saturday.

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Thursday 18th February 2010 – I got back into the swing of working today.

I’ve started to put the framing on the wall and I’ve attached the first row of insulation to the back wall. That’s the north side of the house so it needs a good cladding. Not for nothing will I be installing the wardrobe across that back wall either.

Mind you I think that the weather had something to do with it. For the first time in weeks it was warm in the verandah this morning and when you can eat your breakfast in the warmth and the calm it makes for a good start to the day.

Brilliant sunshine for most of the day too and I ran the heater up here for almost three hours to use up the surplus electricity.

So having lined part of the wall I needed to remove a pile of rubble to get at the rest. That involved fetching a sheet of corrugated iron from the garage and that involved tidying up a bit in there. And once I’d found a space to lay down the sheet it involved fetching bucket loads of rubble downstairs. But I didn’t do too many for the ground where I’m going to put my new raised beds had all dried out already even though the thaw is only about 24 hours on. So I set a big fire and spent the rest of the afternoon weeding.

With it being light until later I was still out working until 18:15 and I was quite enjoying myself.

There’s no doubt that good weather all helps to cheer you up.

In other news, seeing as I have nothing to lose I’ve written a stinking letter to Pentax. I’m thoroughly p155ed off with their after-sales service.

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Monday 15th February 2010 – Well, the Pentax is Kaput!

Or rather, no it isn’t but it very soon will be because I’ve just had the bill for repairing it. FIVE HUNDRED AND TEN EUROS. That’s about as much as it cost new and a new body only in the USA I can buy for FIVE HUNDRED AND FIVE DOLLARS – or less than €400.

Totally ridiculous – and why Pentax couldn’t have pointed this out to me and made me an offer on a new body I just do not know.

But in any case there’s a major sale on in a leading camera supplier in the USA and there is a Canon EOS with lens on offer at $499 (plus VAT when it gets over here) and I’m wondering if that might be the route to go down. They use lithium battery packs instead of AA batteries (and AA batteries was a major selling point) but if I buy a spare and keep it charged up that might be another consideration.

I can then flog all my Pentax gear and use the dosh to buy a decent lens.

The RRP of the Canon is $799 – Body only by the way so this looks like a good price to me

I’m giving this some serious thought.

It was absolutely taters this morning – I dont think that it’s ever been so cold at 09:15 so after breakfast I came back up here and warmed up.

Once I had reached a decent ambient temperature I dressed up – not in fishnets and stockings, basque and high heels Rhys – but in two pairs of trousers, two fleeces, two pairs of socks, my overalls and a coat and then went to seal off the fireplace downstairs so that I can run the woodstove up here.

I had a piece of leftover plasterboard that was a good size and so I trotted off to find the silicone sealant. And you might or might not believe it but it was frozen solid! In a tight-fitting plastic tube. It took ages for it to thaw out.

But it seems to have worked because the small fire that I lit in the stove burnt away to nothing in minutes without the slightest trace of a smell around the house.

I’m going to track down a sack of compressed wood pellets now and see how they burn.

This afternoon I carried on with the battening of the rear wall in the bedroom but the batteries in the power tools kept on going flat so I gave it up in the end. But with the sun shining gloriously and the day warming up (it reached 6.5 degrees in the verandah) and with fully-charged batteries in the house and barn I felt much better.

But once the dusk gathered the temperature plummeted and as I set off for the Anglo-French group it was already minus 4. But still – 18:40 and it was still daylight. So the days are lengthening considerably. It wasn’t so long ago that I was packing up at 16:30.

The roads were gruesome and the return journey was even more gruesome as the temperature has dropped to minus 8. A clear blue sky with thousands of stars and a strong easterly wind. The moment the wind drops the temperature will fall through the floor.

We could well be on course for the coldest night of the year.

And tomorrow we shall all be radio stars!

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Friday 12th February 2010 – I’ve not been feeling myself today

“Quite right too – filthy habit” – ed. I woke up with a headache and couldn’t get out of bed. And when I finally got up I couldn’t get my breath – even climbing the stairs left me quite exhausted. After breakfast I started on some more plasterboarding but it couldnt make much progress as it was wearing me out.

By 13:30 I had to call it a day and go and lie down. In fact I crashed out for a couple of hours. Liz rang me up to see how I was and Terry battled his way here through the snow (it’s carried on snowing non-stop and I’m up to my waist in it) to pick up some Ford Transit snowchains that are lying around here.

But I’m not moving. I fact I didn’t make myself any tea tonight. I’m going to just stay here and sleep it off.

In other news this webhosting thing isn’t going to die down any time soon and more correspondence has been received.

And as I said elsewhere –
1) having had an “encounter” with this webhosting service my own experience is that despite the manager’s verbal belligerence the truth is somewhat different and it was interesting to see how quickly the manager caved in when OUSA banged the big stick back in April last year. No question about legality, no question about defending customers’ rights and the privilege of free comment despite all of the previous hype from several years ago, OUSA banged the big stick and the manager jumped. And jumped by deleting files from the server, of course, without even notifying the owner of the files that they had been deleted. Now how illegal is that?
Now just imagine the situation where all of the OUSA branch files are in one place on one web server managed by one manager who has “previous” of caving in to OUSA. Any time someone posts something critical of The Powers That Be, all TPTB need to do is to wave the big stick at the manager and the manager is likely to simply remove the files with no warning if past experience is anything to go by. No court order necessary, no solicitors consulted, no right of appeal. Signing up to this offer is effectively giving OUSA the green light to censor all of your websites with no right of appeal. Editorial control of all of your websites in the hands of a OUSA Executive Committee sycophant – it’s an Executive-Committee dream come true.

2) I’ve also been told the price of this contract. It’s a commercial rate of £120. Now I reckon that there are over 200 sites likely to be affected by this – and all for £120. As you can imagine, its something that isn’t sustainable at that price. It won’t even cover the cost of the hard drive let alone the cost of the server and the administration. I give it four weeks at that price.
But on the other hand it could be £120 per site. And that’s not a commercial rate at all! My four sites cost me a total of £178 and two of them, as you know, are huge with tons of traffic. Hostgator will do you a website hosting for $4.95 per month – or about £40 per annum. When I managed OUSA Belgium’s website it was hosted on Bravenet for ZERO pounds per annum if you didn’t mind the odd pop-up every now and again. I don’t call £120 per site a commercial deal by any stretch of the imagination.
But do the maths – about 200 sites each paying £120 – that’s a turnover from OUSA funds of £24000, which is an awful lot of money when your organisation is struggling for cash to the extent of trying to ban disabled people from attending the annual Conference. It’s also a very healthy turnover for any company to show in its books and accounts, even if at the end of the accounting year it plans to hand it all back.

It makes you wonder what the purpose of it all is supposed to be.

-2

Thursday 11th February 2010 – One of the major problems …

… with doors that open outwards is that when there is a heavy snowfall you can’t open the door. And so with the …gulp…18 cms that fell through the night I ended up having to use the front door in order to visit the beichstuhl this morning.

Then it was to shin up onto the roof and shovel the snow off the solar panels again (and in fact I did that a couple of times throughout the day).

But the temperature was against me again. Last night it dropped to minus 9.1 and this morning it was minus 6 outside. In the verandah it was minus 5.4 and in the house it was minus 4.8. You can’t work in these conditions so I came up here, put the fire on and read a book for a while. By about 1100 it had warmed up sufficiently for me to continue putting the plasterboard on the false wall but I could only keep it up for a while before my hands froze on the metal tools.

What is interesting is that before I insulated the floor in here, a temperature of minus 9 outside caused the temperature in my room to drop to 2.8 degrees. After doing the floor a similar temperature outside would lead to about 6.8 degrees in here. With starting to tongue-and-groove the downstairs ceiling it was 9.4 degrees in here this morning. So the sooner I can do the entire ceiling the better. And, of course, if all of the insulation is keeping the heat inside the attic then it will also keep the external heat out and thats encouraging for when I start to heat up the inside of the house.

Doing the stats tonight I noticed that the total snow that fell today was 28 cms and that’s a record for a single day. I’m properly snowed in now and I can’t see me going anywhere for a while.

In other news I’ve been sent a … errr …. document (or copy thereof) about this webhosting thing that I told you about yesterday. The document is dated 4-6 December 2009, which is some seven weeks after I received an e-mail from the same webhost saying “We are yet again moving servers. This time for the last time as we are getting out of the hosting business …..The move will take place in November (2009)”. And so OUSA is somehow being asked to go into some kind of partnership with a company to provide a service that the company abandoned a couple of weeks previously. And, of course, money is to change hands in this respect.

Now leaving aside the self-expressed lack of technical capability to deal satisfactorily with the issues that arise and which I described yesterday, just what the hell is going on?
1) If the company is still conducting its business of webhosting, why is its manager telling me that it isn’t?
2) And if it is to restart its webhostiong business after having ceased (very unlikely as the last communication that I had with this company – in January 2010 – was to the effect that the cession was definitive), do the successors to the previous business know about this?
3) And what were the terms of the cession to trade which resulted in existing customers being passed over to the successor company? Will the webhost be hit with some kind of legal complication that could see each individual OUSA website being hit with a demand for more money under a service agreement with the successor company in respect of a “restraint of trade following cessation”? In other words, a sale of goodwill?
4) And given the self-expressed lack of technical competence and my own experience with this company, how will all of these OUSA webmasters react if all of THEIR files, e-mails and contacts lists were to disappear into cyberpsace?
5) And if the web host gives assurances that this won’t ever happen again, and I remind them that I received the same promise TWICE – a promise that was filled with empty air – how much weight will the webmasters attach to it?
6) And if the webhost does manage to fulfil its promises to provide an uninterrupted service, what reasons could the webhost advance that it couldn’t do it for me over the last couple of years and thoroughly messed up my service through a mixture of incompetence and petty vindictiveness?

And I note from the document that I have in my possession that the amount to be charged is “the current commercial rate and will be renegotiated annually when the 12 month contract expires”. I wonder if anyone would like to hazard a guess about what is likely to happen at the end of the 12 months, and how many websites and associated files are still going to be intact next January?

I smell one big, enormous rat in all of this. There’s something clearly not kosher about the events surrounding this company over the last couple of months. Kicking all its existing clients off, telling them that it’s closing down while at the same time negotiating a completely new deal with a whole new raft of clients.

Yes, sign the contract at your peril.

You have been warned.

-4

EPIC HALL

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

Tag Archives: bedroom

Friday 28th May 2010 – It further occurs to me …

Thursday 27th May 2010 – One of the things I did today …

Wednesday 26th May 2010 – It occurs to me …

Wednesday 12th May 2010 – You can see …

Tuesday 11th May 2010 – Not that it will be of any surprise to anyone, but …

Monday 10th May 2010 – I was working this afternoon …

Friday 7th May 2010 – I’ve finished doing the fireplace in the bedroom.

Thursday 6th May 2010 – I boarded up the fireplace today.

Tuesday 4th May 2010 – I’ve been working inside today …

Thursday 25th February 2010 – When I took the rain measurements just now …

Tuesday 23rd February 2010 – I once knew a girl ….

Thursday 18th February 2010 – I got back into the swing of working today.

Monday 15th February 2010 – Well, the Pentax is Kaput!

Friday 12th February 2010 – I’ve not been feeling myself today

Thursday 11th February 2010 – One of the major problems …

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