Tag Archives: blot l’eglise

Sunday 25th March 2012 – THERE ARE NO PHOTOS …

… of FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 3rd XI’s match against Blot l’Eglise this afternoon.

I was busy doing other things.

Like running the line.

Well, walking the line actually, if it comes to that. It was a hot day and I’m not as young as I used to be.

“But surely the linesmen have to keep up with play” said Steve. Indeed they do, but that’s never an issue with FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 3rd XI. They aren’t as young as they used to be either.

But I did feel so sorry for them. Again, playing without anyone with any pretensions to goalkeeping, the first goal that they conceded was from a corner with the keeper stranded in no-man’s-land (or “no-person’s-land” as was once famously said by the legendary Turdi de Hatred on one memorable occasion quite some tiime ago).

Either come for the ball or stay on your line – don’t dither, otherwise you will be beaten by the looping header over the top.

Apart from that, the match was finely-balanced and although Pionsat didn’t offer much up front, the Blot l’Eglise team never ever gave the keeper anything serious to worry about, despite all of their possession.

The second half saw a different goalkeeper (said he, using the term loosely) and once again in this half there was nothing to differentiate either team. That is, until tragedy struck late in the game.

And not once, but twice.

On both occasions the Blot l’Eglise attackers had a decent fiery shot on goal. On both occasions the Pionsat keeper dived full length qnd got both hands to it. On both occasions he couldn’t hang on to the ball. On both occasions he dropped it – right at the feet of one of the Blot forwards. And that, I’m afraid to say, was that.

The big difference was, that I have said at great length on many occasions, that the Pionsat hierarchy is not doing enough to find a real goalkeeper for the 3rd XI.

And the fact that they went off to Blot this afternoon without anyone being asked to accompany them to run the line is something else about which I can rant for ever.

After that I shot off down to Menetrol to watch FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s Ist XI.

fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire us menetrol puy de dome franceMenetrol have a decent side – not as good as Clermont Fontaine du Bac the other week but decent all the same, and they scored just as I arrived – some 20 minutes late. And they scored another later in the game.

Pionsat pulled one back late in the match but the referee then, inexplicably, blew for the end of the game with, according to Franck, 3 minutes of normal time remaining – never mind stoppage time.

And there were a couple of bizarre refereeing decisions made in this game, as well as a completely one-sided issue of yellow cards, to the detriment of Pionsat.

Apart from that. I had an early start this morning due to an urgent need to ride the porcelain horse,

And so with the hour’s difference today as well, I’m not feeling myself, which is just as well as it’s a disgusting habit anyway. But I did some more work on the radio programme before the early start to Blot.

After the football it was round to Liz and Terry’s to discuss the radio programmes and Liz cooked a gorgeous meal. Penne al arrabiata.

The recipe calls for two chilis but Liz only had small ones so she put in 4, forgetting that the smaller the chili the more concentrated the spicy effect is. But then again who’s complaining? Especially as there was ginger cake for pudding.

I also picked up a hitcher, a prisoner on the white lins of the freeway coming back from Menetrol.

I do that every now and again, really out of thanks to the thousands of people who have picked me up while hitch-hiking in the days of my youth.

But it’s a windy road from Chatel-guyon to St Georges de Mons and I bet he was glad when I stopped to drop him off. It’s doubtful if he knew how quickly a Transit Van can move when the driver has his foot down, and how well the aforementioned handles with decent tyres on it.

Caliburn is running quite well just now. 

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Friday 11th November 2011 – I COMPLETELY FORGOT …

… about a sack of sand that I had in the barn. I’d bought it to use for storing the carrots and so I had put it on one side. But the carrots aren’t up yet and I can always buy another sack of sand another time.

pointing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceI hadn’t forgotten that it was a bank holiday today, but when I finally crawled out from underneath the quilt and saw what a gorgeous day it was (23°C in November?) then I changed the habits of a lifetime and decided to put in a day’s work on the wall.

This was too good an opportunity to miss, especially as I had remembered about the sack of sand.

And I’m glad I did as well because even though I was still working outside when the light went, I managed to finish the wall as far as I could reach and I’m ever so impressed by that. All that remains of the wall is the bit that I can’t reach from the scaffolding, and for that I can put a ladder up on Monday and quickly do that if I get a move on, and then that will be that.

Just the wind turbine to mount after that (I have some funny … "you said that the other day" – ed …), and to anchor it to the wall, and then I can get on with putting the roof on the lean-to. I’ll be really pleased if I can get that far this year.

I took the camera up the scaffolding just in case we had Part Two of Wild Boar Wars but of course, with the camera on hand, they were conspicuous by their absence. No surprise there, then.

Tomorrow I’m off on a photo safari around the local area, and then shopping in St Eloy. Tomorrow night it’s Pionsat’s 1st XI against Methanol and the 3rd XI against Blot l’Eglise.

Ohh the joys of footy!

Talking of which, you can see last week’s matches which I have now put on line.

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Tuesday 24th May 2011 – I know it’s not much, but …

home grown strawberry les guis virlet puy de dome france… it’s all my own and grown with my own fair hands.

Yes, the strawberries are coming into season and this evening for tea I had the four that have ripened so far. It’s impressive that I’ve got some as well after the devastating winter that we had.

It put the seal on the day too, because it was beautiful. Liz and I recorded our programmes at Radio Tartasse and Radio Arverne, and in between we went for lunch at the side of the River Sioule in Chateauneuf-les-Bains, in the glorious weather that we had.

We went from Chateauneuf to Gerzat by the scenic route through Blot and Charbonnieres and that was a gorgeous drive too – all in all it was an excellent day.

But there are changes afoot at Radio Arverne. As we suspected all along, SMADC has withdrawn its funding from our programmes. And it’s worse than that too because SMADC was leasing the radio aerial that transmits to the Combrailles, at €13,000 per annum. Radio Arverne can’t pay that and so it stops our programmes being broadcast to our own heartland.

However, all is not lost. There are a couple of other areas within range of the other transmitter that want to take the programme, and so could we continue the programmes but direct them there instead? We are open to offers, of course, but we can’t research any events to publicise because we have no contacts there. And so we’ve left it that we will still come, that we will produce our programmes, and that the regions that want to broadcast them will supply us with details of the events.

As well as that, they want us to prolong the running time of the programmes. Strangely enough, Liz and I were talking about that. We had the idea to talk about recipes, local Auvergnat ones for the Brits and British recipes for the French, and also some kind of gardening stuff – “what are you doing in the garden right now?”.

So we’ll have to wait to see what happens. it’s all confusing but then again nothing worth doing is ever easy to do.

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Sunday 5th September 2010 – One thing that I promised never to do …

franglais translations moulin de braynant gorges de la sioule puy de dome france… was to criticise anyone else’s attempts at foreign language translations. And for two reasons –

  1. people ought to be congratulated for making any attempt at doing their best to make themselves understood/li>
  2. of course, the stuff that I do is nothing to write home about and I wouldn’t like mine to receive the same kind of criticism

But be that as it may, my imagination isn’t half working overtime about the condition third from bottom on the list on the right, and all kind of images are floating through my mind.

I had a lovely afternoon out this afternoon though, although this morning was something of a disaster. It was about 04:00 when I went to bed, I was dealing with a computer issue for all of Saturday until then – and yet at 09:00 I was up and about and breakfasted. And on a Sunday too.!

“How did you manage that?” I hear you say.
That was thanks to whoever it was who rang me at 08:10 and said “C’est toi, Albert?” And when I told him that he had a wrong number, rang me back twice more until I finally convinced him.

And so with my Sunday ruined, I did some more website stuff for the rest of the morning.

blot l'eglise fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire ligue football league puy de dome franceAfter lunch I set out for the football at Blot-l’Eglise, a nice village up in the hills at the back of Manzat and Combronde.

FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 1st XI won 1-0 in a good, enjoyable match played in a very friendly atmosphere in beautiful weather conditions, but in all honesty Blot l’Eglise could still be out there now, all on their own attacking an empty net, and they still wouldn’t have equalised.

moulin de braynant gorges de la sioule puy de dome franceOn the way back I parked up for a while at the Moulin de Braynant (where I saw the above notice) and went for a walk along the Gorge de la Sioule, such a beautiful afternoon that it was. The weather was gorgeous, the scenery was impressive and it really was a pleasure to be out and about.

This is quite a touristy spot here and a very popular place for watersports, as Lee Potty-mouth and Rick Hollyoaks will tell you.

moulin de braynant gorges de la sioule puy de dome franceThey also hire out kayaks (and this is what the notice above refers to, by the way) and one day I’m going to have a go at this. It’s a long time since I’ve been in a boat – I used to canoe for my school back in the late 1960s, which is just as well as there are no lessons on offer here.

I asked them how beginners manage, and the response was that they have to paddle their own canoe around here.

moulin de braynant gorges de la sioule puy de dome franceThey need to make sure that they take all the correct equipment with them otherwise that they can find themselves right up the creek without a paddle.

The notice above, by the way, omits two of the most important rules of kayaking, and maybe I ought to repeat them here.

  1. you are not allowed to light a fire in a canoe. After all, you cannot have your kayak and heat it
  2. it is forbidden to make love in a canoe. After all, making love in a canoe is just the same as English beer – it’s f*cking close to water

And after all of that, I came back here and crashed out for … errrr …. four hours – now I can’t sleep.

In other news, something has happened this evening that I have been waiting 10 months to do. And just like a hurricane, you know that it is inevitably going to happen and you are totally powerless – there is nothing that you can do that will stop it.

Yes, I have finally, at long last, managed to spill a full mug of coffee all over the floor in my nice attic room 🙁

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Thursday 19th August 2010 – There’s no photo this evening, people.

The truth is that I was rather carried away with things and ran out of time.

It was 19:42 in fact when I knocked off. And that was after an early start too. Terry rang me as usual only today it was to St Gervais d’Auvergne to meet up, and then off to Blot l’Eglise to rescue the scaffolding. And was it heck dismantled – the people who had hired it were still using it. So we turfed them off, dismantled it and then loaded up the vans. Back to Terry’s to unload and then it was lunchtime already. But at least moving the scaffolding in two vans was a workable option after all of the excitement with the trailers we have been using.

This afternoon I was labouring for Terry who was on the roof and for Simon who was building framework and fitting plasterboards in the bathroom. It’s a good job that I suffer from schizophrenia so that both of me can manage with tasks like this.

And we didn’t finish there until 17:30 either, and with a full bucket-load of mortar I set off to attack my wall. It took ages of course, much of which time was spent hunting suitable rocks, but half of that wall has now been built up to the level of the chevrons, which is exciting news. A nice bucket of sloppy liquid gravelly concrete went on there a treat. For that half of the wall it’s now mostly a case of infilling with whatever rocks I can find and then concreting them into position.

And that took me until 19:42, as I said. And when I’ve been working like that I don’t feel like much else. But tomorrow is another day – in fact, it’s POETS day.

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