Tag Archives: combrailles free press

Wednesday 28th April 2010 – Today was busy.

This morning first thing I had to go round to Michael’s. He’d just come back from the UK and bought me 10 kilos of oats. And as he was off again this afternoon I needed to rescue them (and pay him) before he went.

Back home I had time to plant some of the seeds that Clare had given me before leaping aboard Caliburn, my trusty steed, and heading off to St Gervais d’Auvergne to meet Liz and go on to Gerzat to record our radio programme. And of course to meet this photographer guy who wanted not just to photograph us but to interview us too. It seems that in the Combrailles we are becoming major news and our publicity is reaching its height. Yes, we are going to be the feature article in … errrr …. a free advert-type newspaper in the Combrailles with a circulation of about 350.

Not quite Le Monde or Paris Match I know, but we remain confident that one day we will be there. I’m eagerly awaiting the day that we will be asked to open our first brocante or be the guests of honour at a concours de belote.

Back at St Gervais d’Auvergne Liz and I went for a coffee or two and discussed our plans for next week. We are going to hit the Chambre de Metiers et de l’Artisanat in Chamailles and get all our business affairs in order. Neither of us has received our formal inscription of our business registrations despite having had an acknowledgement almost a year ago. High time we did something about it.

Back here I planted all of my early potatoes. And I think I’m going to run out of room for the lates and so I’ll have to invent something about that. And I should have gone to football training this evening but today was the hottest day of the year and it’s still 25 degrees up here even with all of the windows open. That’s not a temperature for someone of my age and my level of fitness to be running around. But the weather is supposed to break tomorrow or Friday morning, with rain (the first since April 9th) and a major drop in temperature. If that holds, then training at the Friday night session is a distinct possibility.

Now where have I put my footy boots????

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Wednesday 24th March 2010 – I must be off my head

Yes – at my age (which I shudder to think about) I’ve restarted football training! I’m out of condition, I realise that, and it’s one of those things that if I let it drag then it won’t ever improve. It’ll just get worse and worse. It’s probably 25 years since I last played a football match and 10 years since I last did anything serious in the way of fitness. When I lived in Brussels I used to go running every night and I could run for miles, but when I moved from Duysbergh to Expo in 2000 I stopped as the terrain was not suitable. And since I was ill and lost all my energy I’ve just not been able to do a thing.

Three laps round the football pitch tonight finished me off and then we had a 7-a-side game for 30 minutes each half. But after about 10 minutes I went to play sweeper as you don’t have to run around very much.

At least I managed to get a shower out of it (and we aren’t talking about OUSA here!) – but it’s a hell of a way to do it. I’ve a feeling that I’m going to regret this tomorrow morning and I can already feel my leg muscles tightening up.

This morning I went round to discuss this newspaper thing. Apparently there’s going to be a committee of three running it – an owner/editor, a financial consultant, and a typestter/website manager. You can guess which role I’m earmarked for. Two years of doing General Electric’s training leaflets followed by 11 months redesigning The Conference Board’s documents has sttod me in good stead as I knew it would. I also took the opportunity to rustle up the deatails of events taking place in due course – we need to pad out our radio programme with stuff.

And while we are on the subject you might remember a photo that graced these pages a while back – that of Le Quartier all lit up with Christmas lights. I sent it to a friend who is the reporter for that area for the local newspaper. She sent it in to the paper and apparently they featured it in glorious technicolour as “photo of the day”. Now how about that?

In other news, back at the ranch I don’t just have my radishes coming up, I also have my marjoram and my spinach. This garden is looking impressive if it all works. And I put in my fourth raised bed today.

But somehow I have a feeling that I won’t be doing too much tomorrow. Ouch!

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Monday 22nd March 2010 – It’s 23:11 right now …

… and I’m absolutely shattered. I crashed out at lunchtime, I crashed out when I knocked off, and I’ll be crashing out any moment now at this rate.

liz ayers memorial orchard les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt’s not as if I’ve done anything major either, so I don’t understand it. This morning I finished off repotting the Liz Ayers memorial orchard – the trees are now all in fresh soil with a light scattering of wood ash over the topof the soil and covered in gravel to prevent weeds from settling. The bottoms of the plastic buckets have been crocked to allow for drainage.

I was also going to go into St Eloy for LIDL’s gardening day but I passed on that. In fact I couldn’t really justify the expense of buying the stuff and I’m on another economy drive.

seeds sown in pots greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceSo instead I sowed my Brussels Sprouts seeds and that’s now everything for March. I can have 3 weeks off before I need to do the April planting.

But talking of Brussels Sprouts I noticed that the ones I planted last year now have a decent look about them so I had some of those for tea. It’s nice to eat your own food. After all, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing, and what the garden is supposed to be doing too.

aluminium frame greenhouse les guis virlet puy de dome franceThis afternoon I extracted the bits of aluminium greenhouse from the shrubbery. This is one that someone gave me – it’s a 3×2 metre with no glass so I need to organise that somehow, and I also need to find some of the aluminium screws and nuts to fasten it together. But at least I have it in place (which meant that I had to saw away several inconvenient branches) so I can work out where to put the next beds.

And I’m in demand! The English-language newspaper that spectacularly collapsed back in November has been put up for sale by the owner (some people have quite a cheek – it made nothing but losses throughout its entire existence) and a French person I know is interested in buying it (there’s one born every minute you know). She needs an English-language technical adviser and yours truly has been roped in for that. We have a site meeting on Wednesday morning.

As if I don’t have enough to do. Who said that the rural life was quiet and boring?

But I’m off to bed now before I fa ………..

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

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