Tag Archives: barn

Thursday 12th May 2016 – HA HA HA!

Who was it who said something about “an early night” last night then?

For not only having stayed awake to watch a Mr Moto film (starring Peter Lorre in the title role), I stayed awake and awake and awake, and I was still tossing and turning at 03:45 this morning. So much for my predictions.

But I did manage to drop off to sleep at some point, and I was back at my old school, with a pile of girls, climbing up (not down) a rope of sheets trying to get in through a window or onto a balcony. And as for why I might be doing this, I’m afraid that I don’t have the foggiest. It’s gone clean out of my mind.

For the first time in ages I slept right through until the alarm went off and, resisting the temptation to turn over and go back to sleep, I went off for breakfast. Mind you, I paid for it later on in the day, crashing out at about 17:00 for an hour or so.

bio planet tiensesteenweg bierbeek kessel lo belgiumAfter breakfast, I went off on a prowl with the intention of exploring this famous bio shop in the Tiensestraat in Bierbeek about which I had heard so much. I’d driven past it the other evening but I didn’t have time to stop.

It’s certainly good at what it does, that’s for sure, but for me it was a little disappointing because there was none of the vegan cheese that I like. There was some – a kind of spreading mozzarella substitute – so I bought a couple of packs to see how it goes

knacker diabolique vegan sausages bio planet tiensesteenweg bierbeek kessel lo belgiumI also bought a beautiful seeded baguette for lunch (which tasted delicious) and a couple of raisin buns, but I’ll be passing on the Knacker diabolique vegan sausages though. No matter how nice they looked, I couldn’t cope with the name.

But here’s another example of me having to change my national stereotypes. This shop, the Bio Planet, is another establishment that offers free coffee to customers, and there are a few broken biscuits to sample too, so I’ve added it to my ever-increasing list.

Things are definitely looking up here in Belgium.

low energy consumption fridges krefel tiensesteenweg bierbeek kessel-lo belgiumAnd that’s not all either.

Just across the road is a Krefel electrical appliance shop so I went over there for a butcher’s. And I was astonished – really astonished. When have you EVER seen a standard-size domestic fridge that has a rated annual consumption of just 64 kilowatts per year? That is amazing.

And if you think that the fridge next to it, the one with freezer compartment, is equally astonishing at 98 kilowatts per year, there was one further down the row that had a rated consumption of just 93 kilowatts per year

low energy consumption freezer krefel tiensesteenweg bierbeek kessel lo belgiumAnd if that isn’t enough, the best is yet to come. Here in the shop was a standard-size freezer with an annual consumption of 101 kilowatts per annum.

This figure, and the one of 64 kw/A for the fridge, are figures that I have never ever seen for these appliances and had I been in a better place in my life right now, the fridge and freeze would be coming back home with me.

The fridge actually uses much less energy than the little 12-volt fridge that I have, and the freezer would go nicely in the barn running off the solar panels and wind turbine in there. I’d be set up for life with this lot.

vegan cheese carrefour tiensesteenweg bierbeek kessel lo belgiumYou may remember the other day that I was moaning that my vegan cheese had been “tidied away” from the fridge at Sint Pieters. I knew that I wouldn’t have time to go back to Brussels for more and how I’d be stuck for my next series of travels.

But no longer, because here in the Carrefour – a mainstream supermarket – they are now selling vegan cheese slices too, and at about two-thirds the price of anywhere else over here. I was equally as astonished by this.

Yes, things are definitely looking up in Belgium right now.

Back here, I’ve pushed on with updating the older bits of the blog. In a mad fit of enthusiasm I’ve done all of January 2011 and I’m stuck well into February. But I won’t be going much further than this for now because I’m leaving here tomorrow as you know. I’m going to have a check-up and then I’m hitting the road.

I did mention that I crashed out this afternoon, and I had a strange occurrence when I awoke. I had a dizzy spell and was staggering around in here for five minutes until I sat down and gathered my wits (it doesn’t take me very long these days).

And for tea, I had pasta and ratatouille followed by spicy loaf and soya cream for pudding. Now I’m off to bed and I shan’t say anything more because I don’t want to tempt fate.

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Thursday 2nd April 2015 – I’VE FINISHED …

… work for the next four days. Tomorrow is Good Friday and so I’m having an Easter Break. And I think that I deserve it too after the work that I’ve done so far this year.

I put my back into it today too. The living room is now emptied as far as I can reasonably empty it, and it’s now looking like it did last January and February after I had emptied it for the first time. Making a space in the barn to put everything was really a good move, although I’m not quite sure where i’m going to empty all of the rubbish. I’ll be dropping sacks off at each communal bin all the way to St Eloy.

It was all over by lunchtime too – a good couple of hours ahead of schedule. It’s not like me to be so far in advance, is it?

As a result, I had a couple of hours to spare and so I made a start on the lean-to – the one on the downhill side of the house. I’ve thrown out a good pile of stuff from there too, sorted out some space on the shelves for the gardening stuff and rearranged the gardening tools.

You can see floor in there too, and it’s been a long time since that happened.

I’d rounded up quite a pile of stray wood in there too (there’s still a huge mound of course that needs to be sorted) and that was just as well, for today has been horrible, cold and damp. Consequently, for warming up my tea tonight, I lit a wood fire up here. I may as well profit from the heat if I need it.

Now I’m off to bed. I’m going to have an early night to prepare myself for my nice long weekend off.

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Wednesday 1st April 2015 – I HADN’T FINISHED …

… with last night (or, rather, last night hadn’t finished with me). While I was boiling up the water in the gas cylinder in order to do the washing up before I went to bed, the gas ran out.

Considering that i’ve been using it to make coffee throughout the winter and also to cook and to heat the washing-up water when I’ve not had the fire on, that’s not too bad. I’m quite happy with this.

So this morning I had to boil up the coffee on the gas stove in the verandah (I later found the second cylinder of gas) for breakfast.

After breakfast, I emptied the ground floor of the house. As far as I can tell, all of the wood offcuts have been taken out, sorted into type and then stacked onto the bread trays that I had put on the floor of the barn.

The plasterboard offcuts too have been taken out and stacked in the barn now and we finally have some room in there. I’ve swept the floor as far as I could and the bit that I’ve done looks reaonably tidy. Tomorrow I’ll be carrying on the emptying and seeing where I can get to.

Another job that I had to do was to empty the beichstuhl, but that’s enough about that.

Finally, here’s some interesting news.

My friend Terry, who lives on the other side of the Combrailles, is an electrical engineer by trade but because his French isn’t good enough as yet, he works as a self-employed builder. Across the road from him lives a guy who is a maintenance engineer at the big steel mill at Les Ancizes, and he told Terry on Monday that the company had just take on two Portuguese engineers who don’t speak a word of French.

On the basis of “if they can do it, so can I” and he sent in his CV.

And the result?

He starts on Monday. So well done to Terry!

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Tuesday 31st March 2015 – I’M REALLY PLEASED …

… with what I’ve managed to accomplish today.

If you’ve never been in my barn, you simply won’t understand, but it’s a total devastation zone with stuff having been crammed in there without any form of organisation for the last 18 years, and then in 2011 we collapsed the barn roof into it.

Anyway, today I bit the bullet and set to work.

By the time that I had knocked off, I’d filled four more bin bags, moved a pile of stuff around (and which will have to be resorted in due course), sifted through the debris with a heavy magnet (and recovered a pile of misplaced stuff) and I’ve now cleared a space at the side of the Vanden Plas 1300 that is big enough to fit a small family car.

I’m really quite impressed with that, that’s for sure. And this has set me up for tomorrow’s work.

I had a pile of old plastic bread trays and I’ve put them on the floor (the floor is soaking in there) and tomorrow, I’ll be taking out all of the wood from the ground floor of the house and storing it all on top of the bread trays.

That should empty the ground floor of about half of the stuff that’s in there, and leave me plenty of room to move about and prepare myself for starting on the plumbing. I want to finish off the tidying up by Easter so that I can have a nice little break and then get myself going next Tuesday. I deserve a little break after everything that i’ve done just recently.

And for tea I made aother mega-aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit. And I remembered to put everything in it this week as well. That’s a first, isn’t it?

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Wednesday 17th December 2014 – THE WORST DAY …

… that I can ever remember having since I’ve been here.

By the time I took the stats this evening, we’d had 32mm of rain. It’s rained non-stop throughout the day, the ground is totally waterlogged, there’s surface water on the mud outside and the run-off has come into the verandah and the floor of that looks like a swamp.

If that wasn’t enough to be going on with, when I went back outside after (a rather late, it has to be said) lunch, it was so dark that the outside lights had come on. In fact, had I not been awaiting a couple of parcels still, I would have thrown a suitcase into Caliburn and gone off to find some sun somewhere, even if it had been Italy or Greece. Things are that bad here.

As far as the work around here goes, it was another somwhat later start. Hearing the amount of rain that was cascading down onto the roof made me rather unwilling to leave the comfort and safety of my warm little bed.

Outside though, I was in the barn working. More tidying up and repairing things that needed fixing. And I have also found, at long last, one of the 12-volt DC cables for the charger for the rechargeable batteries – something for which I have been looking for years. It just goes to show you what a bit of tidying up can do. And it was a nice change doing it all to music.It made me feel so much better just having the music playing in the barn again.

temporary connecting board les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’ve also made a temporary connecting board. I quite often have to quickly connect something to the DC ciruit to see if it works or to see if there’s a polarity issue (these IKEA LED striplights do have a polarity issue and the cables aren’t marked) and on the old power board I could touch the wires of any appliance to the connecting points of the terminals. Of course, with this new power board, the connecting points are behind the front panel and sheathed in pattresses, so I can’t reach them. I’ve therefore made up a wooden board with two wires connected to a plug that I can plug into a 12-volt DC socket. The other ends of the wires are connected to two bolts in the wooden board. One bolt is marked red (for positive) and the other one black (for negative) and there’s a warning light to tell me that there’s current at the terminals. This will do what I need to do.

After lunch, I carried out another long-term issue – namely replacing the final 12-volt flourescent light with one of the IKEA 12-volt strip lights. I do have to say that they are nothing like as good as the LIDL 12-volt striplights, but drawing 1.2 watts instead of the 7 watts of the flourescent light is a huge improvement.

I wasn’t in too much of a rush to knock off so it was 18:20 when I finished. And a little later I had to go to Pionsat to meet up with Liz and to give her the Christmas presents for them both.

And the rain is still cascading down. Since I’ve been back from Canada on 8th October, there’s been just one whole day when there has been no rain, and the weather forecast for the next 10 days is “more of the same”. I’m sick to the eyeballs of all of this.

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Tuesday 16th December 2014 – WHAT A DAY!

It’s deen yet another wet, miserable day today – rained non-stop from morning to night. It’s been 12 days since I’ve had any decent solar energy and aren’t I glad that I changed the batteries over at the end of October and put the new ones in otherwise I would be struggling.

I knew exactly how it was going to be. Even though I had another early night, I woke up to hear the rain pounding down on the roof so I turned over and went back to sleep for another hour.

After breakfast I was back outside – or, rather, in the barn. I’ve sorted out all of the tools that I’ve been using and also done some tidying up there. There’s a dustbin completely full of rubbish that I’ve sorted out. I have, as you might have expected, found a few things that I had mislaid in the past and that’s always useful.

Another thing that I’ve done is to change a few plugs over. You remember that I bought a job lot of North American plugs a while back, only to find that they aren’t handed, which is a nuisance. However, there were several lights of various descriptions that I’ve found and of course the polarity of lights isn’t important. Consequently I changed four of the plugs over and that enabled me to recover four handed plugs and use four of the unhanded plugs instead.

I’ve moved the Ryobi Plus One 12-volt charger into the barn and that’s wired into the circuit, and I found a USB socket on a cigarette lighter plug – one that I had thrown away a while ago. But I managed to make it work this evening and so that’s now wired into the circuit too and the little *.mp3 player is currently being charged up on it.

There is also a row of hooks screwed into one of the roof beams and I’ve been hanging stuff there out of the way where it will still be to hand.

That’s all that I’ve done today. And it”s not surprising. With the miserable day that we had today, anything at all was better than that.

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Monday 15th December 2014 – I’VE FINISHED …

solar energy control panel les guis virlet puy de dome france… the control panel in the barn. At least – it’s never ever going to be finished, as I know from bitter experience, but I’m happy with what I’ve done to date. Just one or two things missing – a timer and a charge controller for the wind turbine (although that’s not something that I’m planning on in the near future) and an electricity meter for the mains electricity, but I’ll have to wait until I go to the UK in order to find one of those as they are big, heavy things and cost a fortune to post.

Mind you, even the simplest thinhgs today were complicated. The hook and eye that I bought from Brico depot were the usual Brico Depot rubbish and I had to put the hook into the vice and compress it in order to stop it flying out of the eye. That was the top panel. The bottom panel is held up by a hasp and staple and the front panel is held up by a length of threaded rod through to the rear, and fastened by a wing nut.

Now I need to make the clock work, and to find the instruction book to find out how to configure the new data recorder.

I also made a start on tidying up, and found the Ryobi Plus One flourescent light that I had mislaid, and I’ve finally after much binding in the marsh managed to undo the giant hole cutter from the long spindle – that which jammed up when I was drilling that hole yhrough the wall 18 months ago.

I had a late night last night – about 03:45 and it was difficult to crawl out of bed at 08:00. I went to Marcillat and Radio Tartasse to record another series of rock programmes and then Liz and I did another month of the usual programmes.

And herein lies a problem. We had time to go for a coffee afterwards, but if you remember last time we were there when we heard that the hotel was closing down – well, it’s now closed. And there’s not another cafe open in the town. It seems that that which I had foretold last year, when Pionsat’s mayor announced his grand plans for that town, has truly come to pass and Marcillat is starting to wither on the vine.

This is sad.

Back here, I passed the rest of the morning working on another rock programme – trying to get myself well in advance, and being inerrupted by the postie who brought me the lights that I had ordered for the trailer. And then, after my butty, I went out and attacked the control panel.

Tonight I made myself another giant aubergine and kidney bean casserole thingy, with enough to keep me going for four days. I enjoy doing this as cooking for the next three days is simply a matter of warming things up. Much as I like cooking, I don’t want to spend too much time over it.

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Friday 12th December 2014 – AT 20:30 THIS EVENING …

… I was still outside working. And that’s something of a record, especially for winter when I usually knock off at 18:00.

The reason for this is that I’d finished my work on the front panel of the control board for the barn by 17:00 and as things can only be disconnected and disconnected when there’s no solar energy being received, I decided to attack it then and there.

It wasn’t easy either, helped by my losing everything that I needed, not finding what I was looking for, dropping everything else on the floor, finding that the holes in some of the terminals are the wrong size, finding that some of the cables that I cut aren’t long enough. And that was just for a start. There was much more as well.

Eventually, everything was installed and fitted, and most things seem to work. One or two things, however, aren’t doing what they should do, and I’ll have to have a closer look at them on Monday afternoon. But it’s been worth it all, and it’s really nice to have 12.8 volts in the barn late at night – this is an unusual experience.

Mind you, i’ll probably wake up tomorrow and find that the barn has burnt down.

Talking of waking up, I actually, much to my surprise, had a decent night’s sleep for a change especially as I had gone for an early night too. I slept right through until the alarm sounded at 07:30.

And I’d been on my travels too during the night. I was in a town near Lindau in Bavaria, and I’d met up with one of the women whom I’d met in Greece last year. She had found some rooms for us in a hotel in the town nearby, at €48:00, and although the hotel wasn’t too bad, she took me to see some hotels that she had rejected – at €18:00 per night – and these looked so much better than the one that we had reserved. I felt extremely disappointed about that, that was for sure.

While I was in my hotel room, I was trying to chat on the internet to a friend of mine but each time I switched on the chat program, it defaulted to one particular person, and that wasn’t the person with whom I wanted to chat. And I couldn’t remember how to switch back to the general chat so that I could see if the person with whom I wanted to speak was on line.

From there, I was wondering around and met a young woman with a child aged about 6 or 7. This woman had black curly hair, I remember, and she was planning on wearing a black dress and shoes to a dinner to which she had been invited. I suggested white tights too, and the little girl was all so enthusiastic.

All of this was so exciting that when the alarm went off, I turned it off and went straight back to sleep, and found myself exactly where I had been when the alarm had gone off. That’s not something that happens often.

But I really do wish that my life during the day is exciting as what goes on in my head during the night when I’m on my travels.

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Wednesday 10th December 2014 – I’VE BEEN OUT …

… this afternoon. An estate agent wanted to visit Cecile’s house in order to take some photos and as I have the keys, I had to let him in. And it was cold, wet and miserable too outside. I didn’t feel in the least like going out but I do need to become involved in civilisation a little more.

I had an early-ish night last night and so once again I was wide awake long before the alarm went off. And after breakfast O had a lot of work to do. Now that i’ve started on the mince pies, I eed to attend to other Christmas matters, such as ordering everyone’s Christmas presents. Christmas is sneaking up on me and I don’t want to be caught unawares like I usually am. I’ll have to go into Montlucon on Saturday too as there are more things that I need.

Back from Cecile’s and after lunch, I carried on with the front panel of the control board for the barn’s solar panel installation. The European and British 230-volt sockets are now installed and wired, and the two 12-volt sockets, one for the main circuit and the other on the overcharge circuit, are in place.

I’ve identified something that I’ve missed too. The overcharge circuit needs a fuse and I’ve forgotten to fit it. Still, it’s not a big problem and there is plenty of room for it.

I’ve also made a start dismantling the old control board. I had a dual cigarette lighter socket thing there, and that also had a digital DC output that could be switched to a variety of DC voltages and comes with assorted “ends” for charging low voltage DC appliances. That’s that I want for the new control panel – with a USB adaptor in one of the sockets and using the other socket for things that can’t be fitted with one of my 12-volt plugs – and so that’s the first thing to come off that old control panel.

And it won’t be the last either.

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Friday 5th December 2014 – IT WASN’T QUITE AS EARLY …

… as last night. Still, being in bed by 23:30 is still something relatively unknown around here, as regular readers of this rubbish will realise.

And as you might expect, I was wide awake by 06:00 and if this carries on, I shall be emulating Rosemary in that I shall be making myself a coffee early in the morning and then going back to bed. And I forgot to say that Percy Penguin – she who doesn’t feature on these pages half as much as she deserves – put in an appearnce during the night, as I was on my travels in Cheshire.

First job after breakfast was to empty the compost bucket that I have up here. And then second job was to empty the beichstuhl – such are the delights of my living habits around here.

Once all of those were out of the way I carried on with the power board. This involved making up a flying lead so that I can connect all kinds of things to it – including the portable power board, if ever the need arises.

Once I had done that, I had to make some cables to connect the dump load. This le to a good half an hour looking for the negative 25mm cable.

And hereby hangs a tale. This cable only comes in blue and red, and I use only red and black for the 12-volt circuits. So you can see an immediate problem. However, I have learnt, by serendipity, that the red cable, if left out in the sunlight, fades to a nice dull yellow. I therefore have a couple,of lengths hanging upoutside quietly fading, but it took me ages to find the length that had already changed colour.

Eventually I found it, and so I could make up a red cable and a yellow cable for thr dump load. As you know, my sldering is rubbish but I have a crimping tool for fastening the big aliminium terminals that I use, and then I finish off with half a dozen turns with the vice.

Cecile rang up too for a chat,and she was on the phone for a good hour. Terry rang up too for a chat. It is nice to be popular.

After lunch, I made up a couple of cables for the big Studer inverter. But I’m not at all sure about this. I bought it years ago off eBay and it’s never been installed, although when I gave it a whirl a few years ago, I found that the capacitor was faulty and I had to send it away to be repaired.

The cables were not much problem, but fitting the inverter certainly was. You have no idea how heavy it is, and it’s hel on by screws through bolt holes, rather that cutaways, so you need at least four hands. After much binding in the marsh, I fitted a shelf onto the power board in the barn and put the inverter on that so that it was in the correct place – and then I could screw it up.

I remain unconvinced about its effectiveness and I might end up taking it off again.

I spent the rest of the evening looking for the keyswich that I put on one side on Sunday. This is actually a keyswitched battery isolator and I need that in my circuit so that I can disconnect the batteries without disrupting the system. I had it in my hand on Monday and put it safe where I knew that it wouldn’t be lost.

And I have another three somewhere too – and could I ‘eck as like find one of those either. But this is the story of my life, isn’t it? I spend more time looking for stuff than I do actually using it or fitting it.

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Wednesday 3rd December 2014 – I WAS RIGHT …

… yesterday when I talked about this snow.

snow 2014 indespension plant trailer les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis morning there was about half an inch on the deck of the new Indespension trailer and other similar surfaces. There was also a layer on the leaves on the plants and so on, but it hadn’t stuck to the ground.

And as the day wore on, the snow gradually disappeared, washed away by the thin drizzle that fell throughout the day.

I’ve been working on the power board in the barn. I’ve found two melamine-covered chipboard planks that were part of an old cheap chest of drawers. They are 25cm wide and so, together, were about right for the 55cms that I need to cover the power board below where the charge controllers are. I’ve mounted them on 37mm laths so that they stand off the back part of the power board and the cables can pass behind.

I’ve invented a kind-of hinge set out of a couple of L-shaped joinery brackets, so that these smaller boards will drop down so that I can work on the cables behind if necessary, and the upper board is installed.

solar power renewable energy control board les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs for the lower board, that has the laths and the hinges, and I’ve also drilled 3x8mm holes in it. I then cut some 80mm lengths of 8mm threaded rod and passed them through the holes.

I’ve fitted some plastic pattresses front and back on each of the threaded rods. And if anyone wonders why it is that I have fitted the terminal connections within pattresses, then drop a spanner down the back of the power board with no pattresses and 660 amp-hours of batteries wired in, and see what happens.

solar power renewable energy control board les guis virlet puy de dome franceI bolted the rods firmly in place so that there is 25mm of threaded rod out of the back and about 35mm out of the front. Attached to the rear of the threaded rods will be connections for all of the electrical equipment that will be permanently in place, and in the front will be the more temporary types of electrical equipment.

Two of the lengths of threaded rod have been connected together with a negative battery cable, as I’ve found in the past that I need about twice as many negative connections than positive connections.

And why is this?

That’s because there’s a fuse box off a Vauxhall Astra wired into the positive circuit. I like these because they are easy to take off scrap cars, and have one thick lead in, four of the giant fuses, and four wires out. I have four 12-volt electrical circuits – an upstairs lights and upstairs power, and a downstairs light and downstairs power. These circuits feed off the fuse box of course, but each one needs to have the negative circuit connected to the power board individually.

So that’s as far as I have reached today. Tomorrow I’m out, and so I’ll crack on with the power board on Friday.

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Tuesday 2nd December 2014 – REMEMBER THE OTHER DAY …

… when i said that I reckoned that winter was just around the corner?

1st snow winter 2014 les guis virlet puy de dome franceWell, I wasn’t wrong. At about midday today it started to snow – the 1st snow of winter 2014/15.

It might not look like much, but it snowed steadily throughout the afternoon and when I knocked off at 18:00 there was a think layer that was doing its best to stick. And had it been light, I would have taken a better photo of it.

I wonder what it’s going to be like tomorrow morning.

portable power board les guis virlet puy de dome franceI finished off the portable power board this morning. Well, it’s almost finished because it needs a backing on it to keep the cables and the backs of the sockets covered up.

There’s the inverter on there of course, a 600 watt one, together with an electric meter and a timer. Then we have three types of socket – a pair of 12-volt sockets, a single European 230 volt socket, and a pair of UK 230 volt sockets.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I use British plugs and sockets on my 230 volt system because the plugs are fused, and that’s a useful thing to have.

This afternoon, I started on the new power board in the barn down at the southern end.

The bad news is that I dropped my Ryobi Plus One handlamp and broke it. That’s a tragedy because it’s the best light that I’ve ever had and I shall miss it very much.

The good news is that the power board is up and in position. The Xantrex charge controller that works the bank of solar panels is installed, and that wasn’t as easy as it might have been. I forgot how rigid the ware was and it took me ages to bend it into position and thread it through the series of holes through which it needs to pass.

Threading the wires through for the wind turbine was easier, and that’s in place together with the meter that reads the voltage and the amount of charge.

There was an hour left and so I settled down to connect up the new batteries to the system.

And here’s a thing.

Which company sells batteries that take a certain size of bolt that is supplied, so you can look at it and know which size of battery cable to order – and then sells you a meter that works off a shunt connected to the negative lead between the battery and the grounding circuit – and which takes a larger bolt?

Of course, you can’t buy battery leads with different-sized terminals on each end, so tomorrow I’m going to have to cut one lead in half and solder larger terminals onto the cut end. And my soldering is rubbish too.

I have to say that I’m not at all impressed with this company

With the snow, I lit the fire again tonight and made a mega-aubergine-and-kidney-bean whatsit. There’s enough in there for four days as usual and tonight’s helping tasted really nice. Somehow, cooking in the oven tastes so much better.

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Wednesday 6th August 2014 – I’VE SPENT ALL …

… afternoon looking for my special wall anchors. I’ve no idea where they might be and I’ve run out of places to look.

These are special wall anchors because they don’t have a standard bolt or a piece of threaded rod in them, but a bolt with an eye on the end and they are designed for fastening ropes and that kind of thing.

I’m not even sure that I have any, but I did at one time have one because it’s in the wall with one of the guy wires for the wind turbine fastened to it. However, I can’t possible believe that I only ever bought one of them. I must have at least another four lurking around somewhere. And I need one to use for the second guy wire of the wind turbine – one of the reasons why I’ve put up the scaffolding.

Mind you, in my quest for the wall anchors with eyes, I’ve found tons of stuff that I had lost (like a load of red wire terminals), stuff that I’ve spent ages looking for in the recent past (like one of the missing black jump leads), and stuff that I had forgotten that I had, like a toolbox full of the tools out of the Passat. And many more besides.

I’ve been tidying up too, and how, and repaired some shelves that I had built years and were about to collapse (it’s amazing how much my technique has improved). I’ve also ended u tidying all of the keeklamp fittings and sorted them out into sizes. I’ve also sorted out all of the ancillary fittings inclusing the turnbuckles and while most of them were size M12, I found an old one that was an M10.

And that gave me an idea.

I found a M10 wall anchor and took out the threaded rod, leving me with just the shaft. Then I dismantled the M10 turnbuckle and tried to fit the end with the right-hand thread into the empty shaft of the wall anchor. And much to my surprise, not only is it the same thread, it actually is just about long enough to reach down for the splitter.

home made wall anchor hook les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo now, about 15 minutes to knocking-off, I have my special Wall anchor. It’s not an eye but a hook which is not as good as an eye, but it’s the best that I can do and it might even work. I can fit that tomorrow and that will be the first job done, I hope.

Mind you, I’m impressed about all of the tidying up. I’ve not seen that part of the barn looking quite like this before.

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Thursday 23rd January 2014 – I FINALLY MANAGED …

… to pick up Cécile’s letter this morning, after all these weeks.

And so seeing as how I was going to have a morning out, I decided to make the most of it, especially as it was once again p155ing down.

First stop was the Mairie. I need a form to say that I’m still alive (and judging by the smell around here, you would be excused for wondering) and the best person to do that is the Mayor of the village. They have a nice big and official-looking stamp that gives a really impressive look to any kind of document.

Then off to Cécile’s. I need to put an accompanying letter with this form and so I typed one out last night and saved it onto a memory stick. Also, Cécile sent me an authorisation to collect her mail, and so both of these needed printing. I have three printers here – one stopped working when it fell off the desk, the second only prints in blue and only when it feels like it, and the third one, that I rescued from Marianne’s, that ran out of ink on me.

So round to Cécile’s and her printer and – guess what?

Quite right. Hers ran out of ink too but there’s an override button on it and so we ended up with documants in light grey ink.

Nevertheless, the authorisation was accepted at the Post Office and I collected the letter. And then off to Pionsat and the Post Office there. That’s a real Post Office and so I posted my letter and form, and also a packet for Malou. When I was stuck in Brussels with no ‘phone charger for the old Nokia, she very kindly sent me one. And she’s a big fan of Edith Piaf and Marianne had a German version of the film La Vie En Rose. Malou speaks German fluently, and so that’s now on its way to Luxembourg.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, that was the morning gone. And so I’ve spent all of the afternoon firstly, picking up the bits of wood from the construction project to use as firelighters, and then sweeping up the sawdust for the composting toilet. It’s impressive that I can actually do that.

Secondly, I started to load up the new shelves. The little cheap lightweight shelf unit that I put in the downstairs room as a temporary measure, that’s now completely empty. There’s a pile of stuff gone out of the barn onto the new shelves, and a pile of stuff out of the verandah has followed it. And, much to my surprise, the shelves aren’t even half-full. There’s tons of room for more stuff.

This evening, seeing as I was in a contemplative frame of mind, I watched The Wild Bunch. Peckinpah rather prolongs the violence unnecessarily, I reckon, but apart from that, it is one of the most magnificent films that has ever been made and the performances of William Holden and Ernest Borgnine have no parallel in anything that I have seen elsewhere. It’s a film that is in my Top 5 Films of All Time and quite rightly so.

So what’s the plan for tomorrow then?

When I dug out the flooring to put in a large battery box, I made the box the size to suit the Hawker batteries that I use. However, one or two of them are starting to creak a little and I can no longer obtain the replacements, and so I bought a while ago some massive 200 amp-hour batteries.

The battery box isn’t big enough to take them and so I’m going to be making a start on digging out some more flooring and enlarging the box.

And why 200 amp-hour batteries? Why not go for anything bigger? The answer to that is a simple question of logistics. I can just about manage to pick up a 200 amp-hour battery on my own. Anything bigger and it will be beyond the realms of possibility, and I have long-since given up the idea of doing anything that I’m not able to do on my own.

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Thursday 26th December 2013 – ALMOST TOO GOOD …

liz messenger vegan christmas cake les guis virlet puy de dome france
… to cut into, isn’t it?

And believe me, it tastes every bit as good as it looks – I promise you that. And the nicest thing of all about it is that I have no-one with whom to share it – it’s all mine!

So this morning I finally managed my lie-in. Even though I was awake quite early, it was 10:30 before I heaved myself out of my stinking pit, and quite right too. After breakfast I watched a DVD or two and then I had some work to do.

Now I know that I have said that I don’t work on Bank Holidays but there were one or two things that needed attention.

Firstly, I’ll very shortly be rewiring the electricity in the barn. And for that I need a new control panel on the southern wall. In order to make it work properly, I need to make a list of the items that are going to be wired into it. That’s not the sort of thing that one can do à l’improviste.
Secondly, my rock radio programme is getting a little out of hand. I’ve no idea what music I’ve been playing and, quite by accident, I discovered that I’d played the same track twice in three months and that’s not really on. Furthermore, I’m not on line all that often and I need access to band biographies and the like. I’ve already researched tons of stuff and so with all of this, it seems to be to be a good idea to create a database with all of the information on it so that it’s immediately to hand.

This evening I’ve had even more exciting things to do. I lit a fire and I cooked my Christmas dinner. Everything went according to plan and was cooked to perfection, even the sprouts (not overcooked) and the roast potatoes (done to perfection)

And it tasted magnificent too – but not as good as Liz Messenger’s cake.

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