Tag Archives: CD

Thursday 16th July 2015 – NO PRIZES FOR GUESSING …

… what was the first act this morning.

With it being rather hot up here, I went to open the window at the head of the stairs. And there on the windowsill underneath the window – well, I’m sure that you can guess what it was that I found.

The irony of it all is that I can see the windowsill from where I’m sitting. How I failed to see Cailburn’s insurance papers, I really do not know.

This morning I was up early once again and after breakfast I had another marathon session on the laptop and that took me right through until lunchtime. I edited a load of pages from 2009 as well as doing a few album lists from previous Radio Anglais programmes.

But I’ll tell you what – having seen the prices at which some of my CDs are on sale (one is on sale at €199:00) my CD collection must be worth a veritable fortune. And the irony of it all is that I doubt that there’s very much for which I’ve paid more than €10:00.

suspended ceiling shower room les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter lunch I cracked on with the ceiling in the shower room. That involved drilling a few holes, sorting out the wiring a little better and so on, as well as having to find a few tools and things.

But I came to a resounding halt, mainly because I’ve run out of the tongue-and-grooving that I’m using for the ceiling and I’ll have to buy some more. I’m about 10 rows short, which is a shame. I’ll have another scratch around to see if I have any more, but I’m not very hopeful.

Rosemary rang up too – she’s planning on paying me a visit on Tuesday, and then Rob called. The head gasket has gone on his car and could I help him fix it?

Yes, it’s THAT time of the year again.

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Saturday 13th June 2015 – I KNOW THAT I SAID …

… something about all of the things that I was going to do today. Well, none of that happened at all. I was sidetracked quite severely today.

A short while ago, while moving some stuff around downstairs, I came across a box marked “LPs”. And having you told you all a while ago about the little program that I have discovered that enables me to download tracks off the internet, I brought the box up here to go though it, see what LPs are in it, see what I already replaced with a CD and then see what is available on the internet for the LPs that I already own and which I dn’t have on CD.

Anyway, to cut a long story short … "hooray" – ed … I lifted out the first dozen or so LPs, and that was all that there were. Underneath was a huge pile of paperwork. probably about half a tonne, I reckon.

It’s all stuff that I brought back from Brussels when I sold the apartment, and another pile of stuff that I had accumulated while I was living downstairs in the lean-to between 2007 and 2009. All of which I had completely forgotten.

So this morning, with a nice stiff mug of coffee I sat down and attacked version 2 of the European Paper Mountain.

By the time that I had finished, I reckon that about three quarters of it will be on its way to the great paper mill in the sky, and probably a lot more will follow it once I’ve closely examined it all. But I have found tons of stuff that is important, including all of the registration details for the Brian James car transporter that I bought a couple of years ago. As well as that, I’ve found a letter that I’ve been looking for for 3 years, a couple of instruction books that I need, and all of the Canada papers for my visit of 2012 and for my land at Mars Hill Road.

So, bingo!

Now, one thing leads to another as you all know, and once you start off, you’ll be surprised at just how many other things there are. Piling the waste paper into an IKEA bag, I decided to add another pile of waste paper – and then another etc etc.

And moving the box away from the wall left a space which was just the right size for the small set of shelves that Hans gave me last month when I was in Eching.

All of the food and cooking gear has now gone onto those shelves and at one swell foop this place looks a lot better than it did before (although there are still a hundred miles to go).

Now, I have a space next to the desk, so I moved my comfortable chair over there. I can now reach the external drives and the external DVD player simply by reaching out my hand. This led to a session of copying to my laptop the CDs that I bought in Canada and subsequently that have been sitting in a nice orderly pile on the desk. I’ve recorded 15 of them, which leaves just a mere 23 to go, but it’s a start.

This was hard work and so I closed my eyes for a little doze. and just as I was dropping gently into the arms of Morpheus, Rosemary rang for a chat. So there I was, for a good half hour.

I’d checked the clock at one moment and it was 17:57. Next time I looked, it was 20:18. Where did that 2 hours go? I must really have been engrossed in what I was doing.

But honestly, it doesn’t look any better in here. But then, I can’t do this tidying-up lark at all. All of this stuff heaved out or tidied up on shelves and the place just looks worse.

But you can see now why I didn’t do what I had intended to do today, and it wasn’t for lack of effort either.

Remember that yesterday I mentioned the rainstorm?

We had 40.5mm that fell in a three-hour period. And today, despite the good start, we ended up with another downpour in the evening and that gave us another 15mm.

That’s good news for me because my water tanks are full to overflowing. And as there are two tanks together – the rainwater falls into the top of the back tank, sinks to the bottom, passes through the connecting piece (which is at the bottom of the tanks) and into the front tank, with the overflow at the top of the front tank, then there’s a continual circulation of water in there and this is good for aeration. This means that it’s not just a stagnant pool of water.

And as I pull water from the bottom of the front tank, this is where the freshest water will be anyway. So a really heavy downpour like this is really good news for me.

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Saturday 23rd November 2013 – AND AS I SAID YESTERDAY …

… I had no plans to go out today. And so, in fact, I didn’t. Farthest I went was to Caliburn to fetch the frozen chips for tea. Chips and baked beans, with real vinegar! Yum yum!

First task was of course to shovel the snow off the solar panels. Not that I needed to bother because I won’t be going far with just 0.6 amp-hours of electricity, but it still has to be done.

But after breakfast I performed a task that I have been meaning to do for ages, namely to sort out all of the CDs into alphabetical order. That took me much longer than I expected, and I was surprised to see that it’s the “B” that has the most discs. Anyway now they are all done and labelled and I can see what I’ve got – or haven’t got, as the case may be.

Apart from that I’ve had a good tidying session up here. I’ve cleaned up the wood in here and swept the fireplace, and also cleaned up behind the TV unit, which hasn’t been touched in an age. I’ve also brought a huge pile of wood up here, and I’ve rescued the wooden box in which I used to keep the fruit and veg. Thats had a good clean-up and been put to use.

It’s looking a little more like it up here now but there’s still plenty to do to improve my quality of life. Still, every day and in every way it’s getting better and better.

And the snow is melting tonight.

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Saturday 25th May 2013 – There’s a strange round object …

… out there in the sky. It’s a golden orange colour and it hurts my eyes when I look at it. Also, the sky is a funny colour. There are parts of it that are a strange blue colour, not the usual grey that I am used to. It’s absolutely weird.

Not like yesterday, though. Fighting the snow and the rain, I emptied Caliburn. And while there wasn’t a great deal of stuff that I threw away, the fact that it is all tidied up inside means that there is tons of space inside. And that’s good news.

After that, I went off to Pooh Corner and sorted out Caliburn’s summer tyres ready for changing. He has his MoT on Monday morning and then I’ll be changing them over and putting the winter tyres in store. I found the mountain bike that needs to be taken over to Rosemary’s, and I also sorted out my CDs and started to fit the CD racks that I had bought in IKEA in Brussels. The first time I’ve seen some CD racks that actually do what I think that they ought to do.

Back here though, a bit of bad news. Cécile’s mother has had another funny turn and so after Caliburn’s MoT we are hitting the road, but to Fromentines, not to Brussels. I’ll have to drop Cécile off to catch the ferry out to her mother’s island and then I’ll have to head off to Brussels from there – a mere 880kms again.

It’s all happening here.

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Friday 26th August 2011 – I was up early again this morning …

… at about 08:30 in fact, even though it wasn’t until 04:30 that I went to bed.

Mind you, no-one could sleep with the amount of raid that was cascading down, and the noise that it was making. By the time that I had made my coffee, I reckoned that it was about 8 hours since I had taken the stats, and in that time 27.2mm of rain had fallen. And by the end of the day, we had had over 37mm all told. It never stopped raining and it was as grey as any November or February day that you might mention.

No possibility of working outside and so I started to collect together the tools that I’m taking to Canada. That led to something of a (very insignificant) tidying up on the first floor, and then a much-more-important tidying up up here and finding bits of paper.

But we did have a tragedy though. Do you remember the other week about the impressive media wall that I had built? Well, while I was sitting here drinking a coffee, the whole lot crashed to the floor and there were video cassettes and DVDs all over the place. Talk about chaos.

media corner attic les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis afternoon was spent therefore cleaning a load of old bricks, finding lengths of wood and then making some shelves.

You can see them in the photo – a nice cantilever arrangement at the top as well. That all works quite well and I hope that it lasts until I’ve finished the ground floor of the house and settled in, whenever that might be.

I was also interrupted – and very welcome interruptions they were too – by a series of phone calls. Dave from Hexham rang me and we talked about all kinds of things, including that he plans to come down here later this year and teach me plumbing. That ought to be exciting but I think that he’ll be plumbing the depths a little just there. I’ll definitely be out of my depth anyway.

Also ringing up for a chat were Bill and Percy Penguin. And that was nice too – I like talking as you know, and of course Percy Penguin isn’t mentioned in these pages half as often as she deserves to be.

I’ve also started copying some CDs to take with me to play in the hire car. I’ve done three just now, and having read this blog quite often just recently I bet that you can guess what they are.

Yes, Colosseum Live, Made In Japan and Liege And Lief. Say no more. It just happens that I’m listening to Made in Japan right now.

And it’s still raining as well.

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Monday 8th August 2011 – I’ve finished …

… my Halifax pages. You can read them here and find out why I think that Halifax is the most beautiful and interesting city in the whole of North America. You can always add your comments on this blog and let me know your opinion of the place. I’d go and live there if I had the chance.

Anyway, that took most of the day, but I wanted to get it all finished. And that’s not all I did either. I spent a while on the phone sorting out Terry’s windscreen (although we are no further forward) and then getting my French SIM card unblocked. Apparently you can’t use it outside the EU (that’s why I was having so many issues lst year in Canada) unless you tell them and ask them to unblock it.

eric hall renewable energy business signs new brunswick canadaMy Canadian phone number, that one I’ve had all of the issues with, is now up and working, and so I’ve ordered some signs from Vistaprint. They are magnetic and they will fit nicely on the hire car that I will be having.

No harm in a bit of publicity and after all, I’m going there to work. It’s not a holiday.

I couldn’t get yellow and black, would you believe? That’s sad. But I like this layout and even if they are small, they will still stand out, and that’s what it’s all about after all.

I’ve also had notification that my money has been paid into my UK bank account for the sale of Expo – my big apartment in Brussels – and so I’ve had to send a string of letters (snail mail too) to tell people what to do with it. With the stock market in freefall now is the time to invest before it starts to climb back up.

I also managed a couple of hours tidying in the barn, sorting a few things out and putting more stuff on the shelves that I built the other day.

Tomorrow I’m going to bring the radio blog up-to-date and copy all of my music onto my 8GB memory stick to take with me. I’ve done it all on to CDs but I reckon that with battery issues with laptops, some non-moving media will be better.

And then I’m going to do some more work on the guttering

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Sunday 31st July 2011 – While I was having breakfast …

… I was watching the Sherlock Holmes film the Golden Pince-Nez and in it is the immortal line, something like “he’s still in bed. If the weather is really bad he stays in bed until midday”. And that really started my day quite badly because it was the easily the most beautiful day for quite some time and and for reasons that I really do not know, it was 12:22 when I woke up.

No – what happened there I have no idea at all.

Anyway, after breakfast, instead of living in the middle of all kinds of boxes and so on, I revised the media corner and made a pile of impromptu shelves out of old bits of wood and some wine boxes, and now all of the CDs, videos and DVDs are neatly piled up properly where I can see them and where I won’t trip over them. There’s still a long way to go before this place here looks presentable, what with everything I brought back from Brussels, but at least it’s a start. You can’t say I didn’t work at all this afternoon.

barbecue isolde krejci espinasse puy de dome franceThis evening, just by way of a change, I went out socialising, and that’s not something that happens every day. I was invited to a barbecue by Isolde – the girl for whom we did a furniture removal last year. She was entertaining and there were loads of people there, including a huge pile of kids which was nice.

I spent most of the time chatting to Karl, Lou, Jean and Elizabeth – after all, it’s really nice to see them.

sunset espinasse combraille puy de dome franceBut as dusk descended on Espinasse I started to feel homesick like I usually do – I don’t do crowds as you know – and so in the best traditions of the News of the Screws, I “made my excuses and left”.

And I’m glad that I left before it went dark because it gave me an opportunity to photograph the sunset and tonight it was absolutely beautiful. It’s not very often that I really catch it exactly at the right moment seeing that I can’t actually see it from my house.

Tomorrow, if I remember to wake up, I’ll do a load of washing if the weather is as nice as it was today. It really was a glorious day.

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