Tag Archives: collapsed lean-to

Monday 10th July 2017 – AND AS FOR TODAY …

… this was one of the quietest days yet;

I was up and about as soon as the alarm went off, down to the magasin de presse for my baguette, and sitting on the wall at lunchtime with my butties.

Thrilling, isn’t it?

I’ve spent a lot of time doing hair washing too.

Not mine, I hasten to add, and not Randy Raquel’s either before you ask, Rhys. But it was something that I’ve been meaning to do for a couple of weeks now and each time something has come up to prevent me. This morning I was finally able to accomplish it.

For the rest of the day, I’ve been on the blog (that’s with an “L”, Rhys)

With something like a new record, I’ve done 23 pages today. My “7 pages per day” target being well-exceeded.

It’s quite interesting to read just how much I was being frustrated over the lean-to. The period that I’ve been doing covers my return from Canada in October 2011 and making a start on rebuilding the lean-to that collapsed in 2002.

I’m at the stage now, end of September 2012, where I finished it all amidst frustrations, cancelled holidays, bad weather, interruptions of all kinds. And personally, I reckon that I did pretty well.

I’d never touched a stone wall before October 2011 but by the time that the end of September 2012 came round, I’d not only completely rebuilt a stone building but I’d roofed it too – and all on my own.

How proud was I of that?

Tea tonight was something that I haven’t done in ages. I made myself a huge wok full of aubergine and kidney-bean whatsit. And it was totally delicious. Enough for another three nights too.

But when I buy my freezer later this year, I’ll be making stuff like this and then freezing it so I can rotate the diet around. That’s what I did when I lived in Expo – and it was bags of Aubergine and kidney-bean, chick pea and mushroom, lentil and green pepper.

Sometimes I’d do a potato curry, and of course I’d rotate the ingredients around too. And pies! I can do pies too, as we know. Every night would be a different meal instead of the same thing consecutively (not that I’m complaining too much, of course).

I can’t wait for a return those good old days.

But one thing that I have learnt is that the vegetable steamer is no good for cooking pasta. At least not in the 20 minutes that I allowed it. I had to finish it off in the saucepan;

That’s something else that I shall need to investigate

So tomorrow I’ll find myself in October 2012. Winter 2012 will be approaching and I have just 130 pages to go and a couple of personal tragedies to handle before it’s all brought up to date.

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Friday 21st September 2012 – 19:32 …

… it was when I knocked off this evening – on POETS Day too, would you believe?

collapsed lean-to pointing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut at least I have all of the stones in place in the wall and all of the joints have been filled in.

Dodging the heavy rain showers of course, but I wasn’t going to let a little water bother me too much.

There was a half-bucket of mortar left over too, and nowhere to stick it (no suggestions, please), I put that on the inside upstairs.

And such is the state of play today.

I would like to say that the wall is finished but of course it isn’t. And I’m not very happy with it at all.

I had the predicted avalanche of stones that wiped out a lot of today’s work and a good part of yesterday’s too but I’ve managed to replace it all.

What I’m going to have to do is to leave it for a week or two for the stones to settle and the mortar to cure. Then to go over it again to see if there are any loose stones or cracks in the mortar and seal them in again.

At least, it’s in far better condition now that it ever was before.

And do you notice the addition to the guttering? The 87° angle and the guttering offcut that takes the water well away from under the eaves and stops 10 litres of rain water going down the back of your overalls 30 seconds after the rain starts?

This morning though I went to Marcillat-en-Combraille to record the Radio Anglais rock music programme for Radio Tartasse but there was no-one there.

I tried ringing them at home but no answer so after waiting half an hour I came home. Maybe they forgot – or else maybe I mixed up the dates. That wouldn’t surprise me.

So I came back and worked on the website for a couple of hours.

And this evening? Nothing at all. I deserve a rest and I’ll be going to bed in a tick.  

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Thursday 20th September 2012 – I BET THAT …

collapsed lean to repairing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome france… you are fed up of seeing photos of this blasted wall.

But you are lucky – you only have to look at it for 30 seconds or so. On the other hand, I have to look at it every day from about 12:30 until 19:00, so imagine just how fed up I am!

It’s still not finished either. There’s about 2m² to finish off and then to dig out and clear away at the foot of the wall and seal that in.

And if you think that that is the work of just 5 minutes then think again because this is the crucial bit.

The stones are held in by cement which was pasted over the top of the sand and clay mortar, but that has been washed away a long time ago by the rain infiltrating down behind it when there was no roof on, and so there’s the cement with nothing behind it.

What I have to do is to knock out the cement, remove the loose stones one-by-one (which is about all of them I reckon) and then knock oversized ones into the gap to bind it all together and cement them in.

Doing it from the top down means that the ones above where I’ll be working are held in by the cement and by being wedged well in. But it’s still not comfortable and so if I don’t blog tomorrow night then it will be because the lot has crashed down on top of me.

And that’s not as far-fetched as it sounds.

It’s getting to me, though. For the first time in absolutely ages I overslept – clean through the alarms.

Missing most of the morning put me in a bad mood as I had lots to do, but I managed to record the music for my rock music programmes that I shall be recording tomorrow morning (assuming that I wake up).

No, I can’t wait for the weekend, a rest and a good, comfortable sleep.

-5

Wednesday 19th September 2012 – I TOOK DOWN …

… the scaffolding at lunchtime.

collapsed lean to repairing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceYes, the first time in over 10 years that there has been no scaffolding of one kind or another out there at the back.

I was working out there all afternoon but I’ve not made much progress because this isn’t as easy as it looks. The concrete mortar that they used to cover the gaps between the stones is taking ages to come off.

Usually, if the mortar is in good condition I’ll leave it on and put the chalk over the top, but what is happening here is that water has infiltrated down the back of the concrete mortar when there was no roof on the lean-to.

This has washed away all of the original sand-and-clay mortar, so that it’s hollow behind.

The concrete mortar needs to be hacked off, the joints raked out, stones hammered in to keep the existing stones in position and in tension, and then the whole lot mortared in with chalk.

Of course, sometimes 3 or 4 stones fall out, and so I have to find an oversize one to knock into the gap with a sledgehammer. This is important to lock the remaining original stones in their position so that the stresses are spread horizontally and not vertically.

This morning though I had a good session on the website dealing with the footy match on Sunday.

It’s not quite finished yet but round about 11:30 I had a go experimenting with my old digital dictaphone to see if I could make it work like I wanted. No such luck and so I decided I would have a good search around for the one I lost on Sunday.

In the end I found it – fallen out of my pocket and down the back of Caliburn’s driving seat.

But no phone though – I must have been mistaken about hearing it bleep as it doesn’t seem to be anywhere in hearing distance.

I’ve also had an angry phone call with one of these rip-off solar panel merchants.

Apparently if I have his system fitted, it will pay for itself in 10 years.
“How is that?”
“Well, it costs €19,000 (three times what it would cost me to supply the stuff incidentally) and the Electricity Board will pay you €1,800 per year for 10 years
“That makes €18,000 doesn’t it?”
“Yes”
“So how will if pay for itself in 10 years?”
“Because the Electricity Board will pay you €1,800 per year for 10 years”

So after much arguing and shouting, he slammed the phone down. Serve him right. Nothing but a rip-off

But I’m glad that I got my wood in anyway. In the short space of time that it took to make tea tonight the temperature fell from 12.1°C to 8.0°C – on course to be the coldest night of this end of the year.

That’s also why I’m glad that I stayed here to do this wall and not go gallivanting off to Canada just now. Finish this before the end of autumn and it will last for ever.

-2

Monday 17th September 2012 – IT ISNT HALF …

… going dark early these days.

collapsed lean to pointing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceI was still out pointing the wall this evening when the first of the solar night-lights came on.

19:40 that was, and long after my knocking off time of 19:00 when I’m on Summer Hours working.

Mind you, it wasn’t as if I was unaware of the time either – I knew almost exactly how late it was, but I’m falling behind again with this wall and I need to press on.

And I’m not going to be here tomorrow either.

This morning I had to go to help Rosemary unload this van with all of this new furniture.

Quite modern it is, but made of oak and in a period style that perfectly matches the type of house that you find round here. I’m not much of a one for aesthetics as you know, but it really is beautiful stuff.

The guy who delivers it was quite a useful person to know. He runs a business having articles delivered to him which he then brings down to France for the purchaser. We had a lengthy chat and I’ll be having a few more chats with him in the future too.

Then I had to go with Terry to the quarry for a trailer-load sand.

All in all it was 16:20 when I started on the wall, so you see why I’m getting all behind.

I had a couple more stones drop out on me when I was raking out the old cement – that part of wall really was badly damaged. Anyway, a few oversized stones hammered deep into the gap and that should hold it up, I hope.

So why aren’t I going up the wall tomorrow then?

Simply that Terry and I own a mini digger that we hire out and it was out at the weekend. The guy offered us cash, or a huge load of wood instead. Wood being more valuable than the cash, Terry ended up with a huge trailer load.

So tomorrow I have to go to help Terry cut it into 30cm lengths and then I can load up Caliburn with my share. Wood is a vital part of life round here, especially when it’s -20°C here in February.

I’ve still not found my dictaphone and neither have I found the mobile phone, but 1O minutes searching threw up a few other things that I’ve been looking for.

And I almost forgot to mention that I did go to LIDL this morning and they had 3 packets of those lights left. Or, rather, they did. So now I have enough for the kitchen, bathroom and bedroom, as well as for over the workbenches in the barn and the lean-to.

But I still need plenty more so I might go a little farther afield this weekend.

In other news, we were having a little chat about this affair in Annecy with this Iraqi family that was massacred. You know, the more I look at this and the more I think about it, the more it looks to me like something that MOSSAD might well have organised.

I smell a very large rat with all of this.

-5

Friday 14th September 2012 – I WAS OUT …

COLLAPSED LEAN-TO REPOINTING STONE WALL LES GUIS VIRLET puy de dome france… on the scaffolding working until 19:30 this evening and that’s a surprise, especially as seeing that it’s Friday – or POETS Day today.

Normally, if I’m out working after 19:00 it’s because I’ve been carried away by something that I’m doing, to the extent that I’ve lost all track of time.

But not this evening.

I was well-aware of what time it was but this wall isn’t ever going to be finished if I don’t put more effort into it. Hence the extra bucket of mortar that I mixed after hours.

There’s no possibility whatever of it being finished by the already-extended date of Tuesday, but I’ll try to have it done by next weekend if I can.

COLLAPSED LEAN-TO REPOINTING STONE WALL LES GUIS VIRLET puy de dome franceToday I was working round by where the wall collapsed back 10 years ago. That created this massive hole and gave me the opportunity to fit the window instead.

They don’t go much for windows around here.

The condition of the wall around here is really sad and needs some careful attention. I don’t want the lot of it to fall on me like it did last time.

But it’s astonishing to think – and I’m really proud to say, that I’ve built up all of that wall from the level of the large window to the roof line, and a good metre-high length of wall at the back, all on my own.

And I knew nothing about building fieldstone walls and pointing before I started – never mind building a room.

One thing though, that checking on the stuff on the other half of the wall that I’ve already finished, I’m even more convinced that ramming these larger stones into the gaps with a sledgehammer seems to be the way to go.

Thhe vertical cracks haven’t developed at all – the rammed stones are holding everything up in tension.

This morning though I made rapid progress on the website and I’ve now finished the walk along the city walls of Québec – the only walled city in the whole of the Americas north of Mexico City.

Tomorrow I’ll make a start on the walk around the town.

-2

Thursday 13th September 2012 – I THOUGHT FOR A …

… moment this morning, like I do occasionally, you know, that I was going to be in for a session of working inside.

For the first time for I don’t know how many months. I woke up nice and early after my very early night, and the first sound that I heard was the gentle pit-a-pat of rain on the windows in the roof.

And so I set to work to catch up on the website for a change just recently (I’m now at the old Quebec arsenal), but right on cue, at 12:30 the rain suddenly stopped.

That was the only indication that I needed. I grabbed my trowel and dashed outside to work. Dodging the rain showers, of which there were more than just a few.

collapsed lean-to repairing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceI’m rather pleased with the overhang that I built into the roof.

There were two reasons that I did that

  1. I didn’t fancy cutting the long sheets of plywood
  2. I wanted to keep the rain as far away from the foot of the wall as possible so that the damp doesn’t soak up into the walls from below.
    That seems to work, anyway. The ground was bone-dry about 15 inches from the wall which was exactly what I wanted.


And hammering stones into the gaps until they are thoroughly and tightly in is definitely the way to go

This is shown by the hairline cracks that are appearing in the mortar that I’ve been doing just recently (this is natural – as the mortar dries out, it shrinks). They are now running horizontally, not vertically.

Obviously this wedging of the gaps is holding the walls upright.

collapsed lean-to repairing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome france I’ve finished off the one half of the long wall of the lean-to, right down to, and in fact below the level of the ground as I’ve dug a trench about 6 inches deep and sealed the wall down there too.

But now I’ve started on the second half of the long wall – the last bit to do.

It’s not going to be finished by the weekend, or anything like it unfortunately

But there’s still two and a half weeks before I have to decide if (notice the “if” rather than the “when” – that’s a disappointment) I’m going away for a while in October.

So tonight I’ll sit here and recover for a while and then go to bed. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, and then it’s weekend.

-1

Wednesday 12th September 2012 – I HAVEN’T BEEN …

… on my website for the last couple of days. The footy has now started as you know and so I’ve been redesigning the footy website and doing the pages for the first two matches.

Those pages are now on line so that’s something accomplished.

collapsed lean to repairing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis afternoon, in between the rain showers, I’ve been driving myself up the wall again.

I’ve got down to the bottom on part of the wall at long last and I need to reach the bottom on the other bit that I’m working on. And it does look much better without the scaffolding in the way, doesn’t it?

That should be lunchtime or thereabouts tomorrow if I put my mind to it, extricate my digit and have a good start. Then I can start on the other half of the wall.

But anyway, banging a few of these oversize stones in really tight seems to have helped the wall settle, although of course the proof of the pudding …

In other news, never mind the temperature, I have all of the windows closed tight and I’m wearing a sweater. The temperature has collapsed and winter is on its way.

Tomorrow I’ll have to start wearing clothes underneath my overalls and won’t that be a novelty?

-2

Tuesday 11th September 2012 – IT’S RAINING!!!!!

First time for 10 days as it happens, and aren’t the plants (and Yours Truly) grateful for it?

I woke up at about 05:00 due to the mouse in the roof doing his usual clog-dance, and I could hear a pitter-patter of rain on the skylights here.

That was it until lunchtime when we had a another quick 5 minutes or so, but this evening at about 22:00 we had a torrential downpour and wasn’t it pleasant to hear the water cascading into my water butts?

What was even nicer was that on the lean-to the water was cascading down the roof, into the guttering and out of the hole where it’s supposed to go. I can’t wait to install the water butts and to start collecting all of this.

collapsed lean-to repairing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd so I went back out on my wall, but I’m not convinced at all about what I’m doing.

Although I made some progress today, it’s definitely not going to be finished by the weekend, much to my dismay, and not by a long way either. It’s taking ages.

The problem is that all of the sand-mud mortar behind the large cracks has totally flaked away so it all needs to be raked out completely.

This means that some of the stones are loose so they need to be prised out, something that causes the wall to sag a little where you’ve just cemented – because you start from the top and work down, of course.

You then need to find a slightly larger stone which you then hammer into the gap until it’s solid – which causes the bit of wall that you’ve just done to rise up – and then wedge in with loose stones, and cement it in.

And then of course, the bit that you did earlier that you moved about just now needs re-cementing.

And this is how it goes – it’s taking ages, but then again if it had been so easy it would have been done properly long ago.

Then of course I need to keep raking away all of the sand and cement that falls out.

mean, it’s not as if it’s difficult – just time-consuming. So I’ve no idea when it might be finished.

The Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival started in Fredericton today so I clearly won’t be going to that.

-1

Monday 10th September 2012 – OH DEER!

Oh deer indeed.

And to the deer that ran out in front of Caliburn somewhere between St Gervais d’Auvergne and Gouttieres on the way back from our Anglo-French Group meeting, Caliburn and I are really sorry.

But it’s a good job that I’m a vegan otherwise you would be in the pot right now.

Caliburn has a slight mark on the front bumper, which shows that he’s much more solidly built than the Chevy Malibu that I hired in Canada in 2003 (mind you, it was a stag that I hit back then) but I’m very much afraid that the deer went in all directions.

Ahh well 🙁

So apart from that dramatic end to the evening, what else?

After the usual bits and pieces on the computer, I went out and attacked the wall again.

collapsed lean to repairing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut astonishingly, only 3 buckets of mortar went into the wall. And for a whol assortment of reasons.

  1. I had to take down part of the scaffolding. That’s major progress in itself
  2. But before I could do that, I had to move a pile of stuff.
  3. Once that had gone, I had to hack down a pile of brambles and small trees to make some working space
  4. I had to clear away all of the sand and cement  that I’ve raked out of the wall and was piling up against the foot of the wall. That took ages, and I DO mean “ages” too


But I did make two startling discoveries

  1. I knew that I had another garden rake somewhere, a big heavy duty proper one with real metal prongs.
    And I would love to know what I was doing with it because it was under the stones that fell when the wall collapsed back all those years ago.
    The handle has long since rotted away but I’ll buy a new one on Saturday at Cheze.
  2. I now know the secret of why the lean-to is collapsing.
    There’s a whole network of tree roots from the walnut tree that has infiltrated into the wall below ground level. Much of the day was spent extracting them, and I need to think of a permanent solution to deal with that issue.
    Also, this is the bit where the wall is really bad.
    Rainwater has infiltrated and washed the old mortar away and many of the stones are loose. They need extracting where possible and replacing with larger stones/
    Either that or they need to be well packed in with other stones so that they can’t move and the forces above them are spread out horizontally.

So now you know why that’s why it’s taking me ages.

But anyway, at 18:45 I called it a day and had a quick a solar shower and following that, legged it to St Gervais d’Auvergne where we had the biggest crowd for quite a while.

And that is always pleasant.

-1

Friday 7th September 2012 – WHAT A GORGEOUS …

… tea 😉

New potatoes, beans and carrots straight out of the garden and into the vegetable steamer, all cooked with all my own surplus electtrical energy.

Then a veggie burger, onions and garlic fried in a mustard sauce with the vegetables and tipped, for the first time in I really don’t know how long, onto a plate.

No eating out of the saucepan for me tonight!

Yes, a meal fit for a king – with all of this surplus electrical energy from the glorious day that we had today, I had to do something with it. Cooking sounds like a good plan, and it’s one in the eye for my critics back in the UK.

I was up early today but somehow I couldn’t find any motivation for the website – no idea why. I’ve not advanced very far along the fortifications of Québec today.

collapsed lean-to repointing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut outside I cracked on and I’ve done quite a bit. Tons of progress today.

So much so that before I restart on Monday I need to take down half of the scaffolding. The half nearest the fence is now totally surplus to requirements so I need to remove it.

When that’s out of the way I shall rake out the soil to remove the stones, bits of cement and so on, and so I can kneel on the ground and finish off the last rows on that bit.

You’ve no idea how much I’m looking forward to taking down the scaffolding. There’s been scaffolding there of one sort or another since 2002 – that’s how long I’ve been trying to organise this lean-to.

Give me another 7 or 8 days and with luck the scaffolding will be gone completely.

It’s still rather sad though. This week I should have flown out to Canada for the Harvest Jazz and Blues Festival at Fredericton.

But like I said the other day, if I do that, and then go back out to Canada next Spring too, this lean-to won’t be started again until next June and that’s far too long to wait.

I’m pretty-much determined that I want to finish the outside before I plan any trip anywhere. Finish it all off this year and that will be that – one of the most important projects around the house all finished off

So, where shall I go to in October? That is, of course, always assuming that I will have finished this blasted lean-to by then.

-1

Thursday 6th September 2012 – I DIDN’T GET MUCH …

… done on the wall today either. This deadline of next weekend is looking less and less likely

The effects of all these early mornings proved too much for me today. I vaguely heard the alarm clock go off, but it was 09:10 when I set foot out of bed.

Had It not been for the fact that I needed to go for a ride on the porcelain horse (or what passes for a porcelain horse around here) I would probably still be in bed right now

collapsed lean to repairing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceA good few hours on the website and then outside at 12:30 and I managed to bung two really good bucket-loads into the wall.

Even better – after lunch, even with rearranging some of the stones, I still heaved a couple of bucket loads in by 16:30. However, such is the condition of the wall that all of that chalk mortar isn’t advancing me very much.

And 16:30 though saw me come to a rather shuddering stop.

According to my weather reporting, weather comes in five grades

  1. overcast
  2. cloudy
  3. clouds
  4. scattered clouds
  5. cloudless

We started to day with scattered clouds but by 16:30 we had progressed to a cloudless day. The water temperature in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load was 63°C, the batteries in the barn were fully-charged and there was a good wind blowing.

There was also a big pile of dirty clothes to be washed up here in the attic and the bedding needed changing – the kind of things that need doing no matter what other plans you have, and so I stopped work on the wall and dealt with the washing.

Put all of that out of the way.

While this was going on, I did a few odd jobs around here, like changing plugs on appliances and so on.

As you know, I don’t use Continental plugs and sockets here but British ones, for the simple reason that the plugs themselves are fused and so any issues with my system won’t damage the appliances.

‘ve also wired in the new media trolley that I assembled on Sunday. It now has a 4-way 230-volt socket that plugs into the wall – I can plug all of the external drives and so on into it, and it also has 3 x 12-volt DC sockets for things like the DVD player, the video player and so on.

Finally, even though the water in the solar shower was quite cold, I bunged 5 litres of hot water out of the dump load into it and had a shower myself – clean myself up.

And so now there are clean sheets, clean pillowcases, a clean quilt cover, and a clean me. I’m quite looking forward to that and it won’t be long before I’m in it either.

And then tomorrow I really must get cracking and no mistake.

-3

Wednesday 5th September 2012 – IT’S NOT EVEN …

… 23:00 yet and I’m absolutely whacked.

2 early-morning starts have done for me and so I’m off to bed in a minute

One thing about a … gulp … 07:30 start though is that you can do tons of work and I’m well round the fortifications of Québec City now.

Mind you, there’s still a long way to go before I can leave the place, let alone finish my voyage from earlier this year.

As well as that, there are the journeys from 2010 and 2011 that have yet to see the light of day and I need to deal with them. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.

collapsed lean-to repointing stone wall les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis afternoon saw me up on the wall again.

I had to rearrange the scaffolding and then I raked out underneath the horizontal beam over tbe windows and cemented that in properly.

From there I cemented in one of the window frames that I fitted the other day and then did a big pile of touching up. Not that I would ordinarily bother but this new trowel is just so good. Short, narrow and very springy, it makes a lovely finish on the wall.

For the second part of the afternoon it was much more complicated.

There is a huge crack in this wall too and a few of the stones are quite loose. I’ve been moving them out, cleaning out the mud and sand that they use round here for mortar, and then finding slightly bigger stones to fit in the holes.

It’s like a jigsaw puzzle and needs to be done very carefully, but I’m getting there. Finishing it all by next weekend may well be a tad optimistic.

So for tea I cooked rice in the electric steamer and had a helping of the pepper and lentil curry I made last night. Rosemary rang me up in the middle of it all for a chat too which is nice, even if my tea did go cold.

And right now, 23:06 it is and I’m off to bed. I can hardly keep my eyes open. 

-1

Sunday 2nd September 2012 – ONE THING THAT MAKES ME …

… appreciate how lucky I am with my friends is that they appreciate and respect my little foibles and peccadilloes.

Of course these days, nobody respects my little foibles quite like Percy Penguin, and then nothing like half as often as I would like, and as for my little peccadilloes, I bet that you didn’t even know that armadilloes and peccaries could mate

But back to the plot – having rung me at 09:00 a couple of Sundays ago, someone must have had a quiet word with Rosemary because it was at 12:30 this afternoon that she phoned me.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t matter how you wrap it up, it still comes as a hell of a surprise, if not a disappointment, when you yourself are still wrapped up in the arms of Morpheus in your comfy little bed at the time.

So after my rude awakening and my breakfast, I turned out a corner of my room here – the corner which was the likeliest to be the hiding place of my mobile phone.

No such luck with the phone, as I was half-expecting, but I did find another pile of missing stuff – something that always happens and something that is always a great comfort to me.

I’ve also rearranged a few things over there, put the printer in a more-permanent home, and sorted out all of the stationery too

After lunch, by which time I mean about 17:30, I assembled the desk-on-wheels thing that I bought the other day at Centrakor in Commentry, and that was no mean feat as the instructions for that were wrong too and I had to work it out myself.

It’s quite a nice piece of furniture, excellent value for €19:99. I’m well-happy with this for a purchase. I’ve loaded everything onto it now and it works quite well.

The downside of it all is that I seem now to have lost the remote control to the AKAI 12-volt DVD player.

So that’s the sum total of my day. I’m off now to have an early night to catch up my beauty sleep. I need an enormous amount of that.

But before I go off to sleep, let me just confirm something that you might already have gathered from a couple of comments that I’ve already made.

When I went off to Canada at the end of April I planned to go back again this autumn. Especially so, seeing that I left all of my winter clothes there when I came back.

But I’m making rapid progress with this lean-to as you know. I’ve accomplished so much since I came back from Canada last October and the end is in sight. I’m still all-fired up to carry on and if I stop, I might not have the momentum, the motivation and the weather to be able to continue.

It’s a shame to stop now when I can finish it off in a couple of weeks, and so Canada is now officially cancelled and I’m going up the wall.

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Saturday 1st September 2012 – IT’S HARD …

… to believe that not so long ago, I was up here in my attic melting away to nothing, totally unable to move with the heat.

This evening, not two weeks later, there were about 150 of us shivering to death on the terraces of the football ground in Pionsat.

Yes, it’s that time of the year again. The footy has restarted.

veterans teams fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire football puy de dome france We had a little competition between a few of the local sides followed by a friendly match between two veterans’ XIs – one of which represented the old team of Pionsat and the other the old team of St Hilaire before the fusion.

And believe me, some of these veterans cut still mutt the custard in the lower leagues of the Puy-de-Dome District Football League.

The final match of the night was the final friendly of the season (if any match with the Miners can be called “a friendly”) between FC Pionsat St Hilaire and Nord-Combraille.

mattthieu malnar wins the cup fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire puy de dome franceFC Pionsat St Hilaire won that encounter at something of a canter thanks to a blistering 3-minute spell midway through the second half when they stuck three into the Miners’ net.

What was even more interesting was that FC Pionsat St Hilaire had no recognised striker on the field. Cedric wasn’t there, and it appears that Jérome (who is probably the best player I have seen in Division One) and Thomas (who on his day is as good as anyone) have left the club.

But there were two players out there new to the team, one of whom I’ve seen playing at AS Marcillat last season, who took the Miners apart.

There was another guy called Rene, who I saw play once last season and who looked thoroughly unfit back then, who seems to have been working hard in close-season and ran the opposition ragged throughout the game.

les guis energies renouvelables fcpsh fc pionsat st hilaire puy de dome franceWhat is even more interesting from my point of view is that my signboard is up, as you can see on the perimeter fencing.

I’m something of a sponsor of the club, not in a big way of course, and that gives me the right to have a signboard.

I don’t expect that too much will come of it, but it’s advertising all the same and no advertising is ever wasted.

Furthermore, it shows solidarity with the local community and that is also very important in my opinion. Participating in the community means that you are no longer an outsider and in my opinion, all ex-pats should make some kind of active participation in the community.

As for the weather, I closed all of the windows on Thursday evening which is just as well as the temperature has taken a dramatic plunge. Last night it bottomed out at 5.5°C, a far cry from nights that didn’t drop below 30°C just 12 or so days ago.

What is even harder to believe is that despite it being Saturday, I’ve been working outside – on the lean-to in case you haven’t guessed.

This morning I wrote up the additional notes for the October radio programmes (I intend to be well ahead in the future) and then I went into St Eloy-les-Mines to do the shopping.

I spent absolutely nothing extra although I did go into Cheze, the DiY place, and buy the glass that I needed (€4:80 – made me wonder why I bought that sheet of perspex in the week).

I managed to bring the glass back without breaking it and then trying to find a safe place to put it until Monday, I reckoned in the end after much reflection that the safest place to put it was into the window frame.

And hence the work on a Saturday.

till, it’s in now. One less thing to worry about and one less job to do on Monday and I can have an extra 15 minutes in bed to compensate.

Tomorrow is Sunday, my first Sunday off for ages. And I’m going to have a lie-in and then do nothing all day.

Just you watch someone ring me up at 10:00 and spoil it!

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