Tag Archives: courgette

Thursday 11th July 2024 – I’M LATE AGAIN

and if it carries on like this they’ll be calling me “the late Epic Hall” long before I officially earn the title.

And for a change, I don’t mind being late at all for I have very good re son. It’s “Europa Cup” night tonight and while Connah’s Quay travelled to Slovenia and Y Bala to Estonia to follow on from the game that TNS played against some Albanians, Caernarfon made the long trip down the road as far as Nantporth Stadium on the outskirts of Bangor to take on those giants of European football … errrr … Crusaders from Belfast.

Late nights seem to be the norm these days and instead of moaning about them, I’ll just have to say nothing and celebrate the early nights instead, so there was nothing to celebrate last night.

In fact it was long after midnight when I hit the hay and I settled down for sleep for what was left of the night. And I awoke in the middle of it and took an age to go back to sleep again

Mind you, I was dead to the World when the alarm went off and it was a rather ungainly stagger into the bathroom to sort myself out.

There was blood on the floor too, but I’ve no idea where it came from. It could be anywhere.

Back in there I had a listen to the dictaphone to find out where I’d been during the night. We were all going flat out in pursuit of this monster . We had a good idea of where it would be and where it would strike next so we put a cordon round with people just doing ordinary things, nothing suspicious, hoping that whatever it was would pass within this cordon to pick a victim and we could all close in behind it. I was in charge of course but there were lots of other people who were quite willing to take responsibility. My job was the big tree that was the focal point of this little community, which was where probably the most important person would expect to be and that was where you’d expect the final battle to be so they left that responsibility to watch that area to me. And now we just waited around for things to begin.

This looks as if it’s a continuation of the dream from the other night when we were chasing monsters around. And it’s quite rare to have two episodes of the same dream so close together like this. Usually they are months, if not years apart.

And later on I’d gone down to Virlet for a look around and for something. While I was in the house I heard a noise as if a couple of people were searching around in te lean-to. I picked up a blunt instrument and just as I was going to go outside to catch them in the act a guy came through the door into the house. He looked so shocked to see me so I just said “can I help you?”. He just stood there totally open-mouthed as if I was the last person he was expecting to see.

And it would be a shock too if it were to happen, but I’m not likely ever to go down to Virlet again. That’s a chapter of my life that is well and truly completed unfortunately. Someone else can take over down there when the time comes.

Finally I was making a salad. I didn’t really have all that much to go in it but I was listening to the local radio and there was a bring-and-buy sale taking place at the church at Audlem. Someone was selling picked courgettes. I thought that that sounded interesting for a change but I couldn’t really summon up the enthusiasm to go all the way to Audlem. They kept on talking about one or two other things that they had and it all sounded perfectly tempting to me but there were all these excuses popping up about why I shouldn’t go but I kept on finding out answers to these questions and still pointing out (… fell asleep here …)

For the benefit of new readers, of which there are more than just a few recently, when I say that I “fell asleep” I am actually asleep when I’m dictating. I’ve been working as part of this project for almost 30 years. But when I say that I “fell asleep” what actually happens is that whatever I’m dictating tails off into a mumbled silence and then sometimes you’ll hear a little snore or two and I’m sorry for doubting you about that, Percy Penguin.

But courgettes in the Auvergne – they were the only things that seemed to thrive down there. You’d check your courgettes over, think “they look nice, I’ll pick them in the morning” but you’d have a downpour during the night and end up with half a dozen enormous marrows.

Everyone was sick to death of courgettes after a while. We used to pass around recipes (and courgettes) and I for one don’t ever want to see a courgette ever again.

It’s Isobelle the female nurse for the next week or so and she usually brings the sunshine and warmth with her (although I have seen another side of her once or twice that I didn’t realise existed). She nicely and cheerfully informed me that on Saturday she’s going to take a blood sample.

There’s another sample to be take too, so she’ll leave me a little pot on Friday. I have a feeling that she’ll be taking the p*ss too.

After she left I had breakfast and then a look through the notes for today’s lesson. Unfortunately I didn’t get as far as I would have liked and so my enthusiasm tailed off towards the afternoon.

The hospital rang me up about registering for my operation on Tuesday – right in the middle of a crucial point and so towards the end of the lesson my concentration (such as it was) was broken and I was all at sea.

Mind you, nothing new there. I’ve been all at sea for years, up a creek without a paddle for most of the time.

After the lesson finished I sorted out the music for the next radio programme and began to write a few notes. And then we had the football.

Y Bala didn’t do too well, going down 2-1 to Paide Linnameeskond but Connah’s Quay performed brilliantly, winning 1-0 in Slovenia and being set up nicely for the return match next week.

Then we had Caernarfom playing in front of a packed house at Nantporth. And the Cofi Army burst into song after just four minutes when Morgan Owen picked up a pass 20 yards out from the Crusaders goal and walloped it home

They had even more to sing about after 35 minutes when Danny Gosset found Darren Thomas whose delightful through ball was inch perfect for Zack Clarke to pounce on and slot home for the second.

The game though wasn’t a particular spectacle. It was rather agricultural at times bordering on the desperate at the end as the Crusaders threw everything, including the kitchen sink at the Cofi goal but Caernarfon held out to record a famous victory in their first ever match in European competition.

But these results are really good news for Wales because the more successful they are, the higher their coefficient will be which means that they could have more teams in club competition and maybe even enter the tournaments at later stages.

Not to mention of course the money that’s on offer for doing well in Europe. The prize money from UEFA is well-worth having for a small club. A team that’s defeated in Round One will receive €150,000 and if they make it through to the next round they’ll receive at least €350,000.

And then there’s sponsorship, TV revenue, all of that kind of thing.

After the final whistle I threw some pasta into a pan with some frozen veg and tomato sauce. That will keep the lupus from the porte as they used to say in Ancient Rome.

So on that note I’m off to bed ready to kick off nice and early tomorrow morning.

But talking of courgettes reminds me of the guy in the Auvergne who was determined to protect his courgettes at all costs so one night he slept with them. And instead of the fine weather for which he was hoping, it snowed instead.
They found him next morning and he was frozen to the marrow.

0

Monday 6th March 2023 – JUST FOR A …

… change, I had something different for tea tonight.

With not having gone to either Carrefour or LeClerc this week I didn’t have any of the small cheap peppers that I usually buy. At LIDL they just had the monster-size ones that would do me for a week so I decided to pass on those.

However my friend Esi in Brussels had posted the other day the details of her favourite quick meal – a courgette cut in half, cooked for 3 minutes in the microwave, layered with some cheese and then put back in for another 2 minutes.

The other week I’d found some melting fondant vegan cheese in LeClerc and I’d bought some. So instead of the peppers I bought a courgette at LIDL and went to have a go with that.

It sounded a little bland to me so I coated it in tarragon and black pepper before cooking it and made some pasta and veg in a spicy sauce to accompany it, and it was actually quite delicious.

Furthermore, there’s another half of the courgette waiting for some other time, but I’m thinking along the lines of making a curry with that and the left-over mushrooms.

That is, if I wake up tomorrow because I didn’t have much sleep last night and I’ll need all that I can get. I was in bed quite early ready for my early start today, but I didn’t get much sleep. It took an age to drop off to sleep what with one thing and another and then I kept on waking up.

Mind you, when the alarm went off at 06:00 I was in a deep sleep so somethign must have happened at some time to make me drop off at some point.

Having checked the mails and the messages and the like, and having had my medication, I attacked the radio programme that I’d recorded yesterday. I edited it, joined it up together, added the final track, dictated the final speech, added it in and then edited all down to one hour exactly. It didn’t really take all that long.

And then I had a listen to the one that I’ll be sending off for broadcasting this weekend to make sure that it was complete and had no faults.

It won’t be long before I have to think about what I’m going to do for my 200th broadcast. I’ll need to do something special for that, I reckon. For my 100th I did a rock festival of a dozen live concerts but I won’t be doing that this time, I reckon. I’ll have to think of something else.

Once I’d finished that, I had a few phone calls to make. And as a result I have an appointment at the bank on Thursday morning and the visiting nurse is going to come to see me on Monday and restart the injections.

There’s some other stuff that needs to be done for this visit to the hospital in 10 days time and that involves a trip to the pharmacy. I’m hoping too that they will accept the Belgian prescriptions that I have. Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that by the time that I’d finished at the hospital last week, the chemist was closed.

Anyway, I’ll find out the answer to that question on Thursday morning because I’ll drop in there on my way to the bank. Yes, I’m planning, for my sins, to actually walk there. Let’s hope that I can walk back too.

And apparently I’m supposed to have another appointment at Leuven on Monday but it’s out of the question that I’m going. I need to telephone them and ask them to postpone the appointment. I have asked them on many occasions to schedule all of my appointments on the same or adjacent days to save on the travelling and I’ve no idea why they wouldn’t do it, especially when they have plenty of time in advance to arrange it.

With all of that out of the way, I’ve been dealing with more radio stuff. Choosing another pile of music for another radio programme in the near future, and then tidying up a few of the databases that I keep. I’m constantly revising then as experience leads me on to change my way of working, to add new features into the programmes and to revise the basis on which I make them.

In fact, I could have done much more than I did but unfortunately I … errr … had a little repose during the afternoon. Not that that’s any surprise.

There was some stuff on the dictaphone again from last night, so I must have gone off to sleep at some point. There was a dream that I didn’t understand at all. It was something to do with travelling around etc. I ended up somehow talking to a girl who was with us on this trip. I had to go to the doctor’s. We went to the doctor’s surgery. Much of what he was doing was done in the open air in public. he was interviewing these people, giving out remedies and prescriptions. I was hoping that I’d have the chance after everyone had gone to go and have a talk to him, tell him about my symptoms, have an injection in the right leg to ease the muscle pain that I have and take it from there but for some unknown reason closing this meeting seemed to take for ever

Later on I was back home asleep when the alarm went off in my dream. It awoke me so I dived out of bed and dashed over to where the phone was but I couldn’t see it there at all. I wondered what was happening. I had a search but couldn’t find it. In the end I had a look and it was only 01:42 or 42 past the day and at this point I fell asleep and I apologise for doubting the word of Percy Penguin (who doesn’t appear half as often in these pages as she deserves) who used to complain that I snored when we slept together and I always denied it and that was easily what was happening to me. I was fast asleep. Sure enough when I looked at the watch it was 01:42 and I fell asleep in the middle of dictating it.

So if you can make any sense of that, then good luck to you.

Finally there was something going on with our Welsh class at some point during the night where we all had to be on call to do something over the weekend for 4 days, Friday – Monday. We were allocated 3 hours each. Everyone was complaining about the time that they were given. Mine was from 11:00 to 14:00 which would seriously disrupt my plans. We started to have a bit of a discussion about it.

There was something else happening as well but I’ve no idea what that was. I was in the middle of a dream and the alarm went off at 06:00 and awoke me. Everything in this respect simply melted away out of my head immediately.

Tea, as I mentioned, was delicious. I’ll have to remember this meal again. It was quick and simple, and quite tasty too. I hope that LeClerc will continue to stock the cheese because that’s the thing that will improve my diet.

Tomorrow I have a Welsh lesson so I need an early night so that I can be ready, fit and able to actually concentrate on some preparation and organise myself so much better.

The physiotherapist will be here tomorrow too and he’ll want to know how I got on on my travels, so I’ll have to have a shower too. I must be at my best for visitors.

0

Tuesday 28th April 2015 – I STARTED BACK …

… to work again today. And I felt a little better, especially as the weather wwas better. Mind you, during the night the temperature outside had dropped to 2.5°C and so I’m back in a jumper.

I’ve finished off cutting and shaping the shelf that will be the top of the beichstuhl – the composting toilet. The lids have been cut out and the “porthole” cut into the larger lid.

I’ve had to put quite a large amount of reinforcement under the lids as the pine isn’t as strong as I would like it to be. Having saved the offcuts from the heavy floorboards that I used as the under-layer in the shower room, I had a good supply of decent reinforcement too.

The hinges were not a success though. This is due mainly to the thin-ness of the pine shelving. Discreet, hidden shelving is not really possible and so I’m going to have to go for intrusive tee-hinges, which is something of a let-down.

However, a couple of things that I wish is that –
1) I wish that I would stop cutting bits off the top of my old Workmate every time I wield the circular saw.
2) whenever I cut myself with a tool, I wouldn’t bleed all over the clean pine shelving.

For tea, I made a courgette and lentil curry – enough for four days. And it took longer than planned because I had to dismantle the cooker. It seems that there was something growing in one of the jets. It’s amazing at just how much better the gas is burning now. It must have been blocking itself up for a couple of years.

-1

Monday 19th May 2014 – I FORGOT YESTERDAY …

fcpsh football club de foot pionsat st hilaire female footballer as charensat puy de dome league division 4 france… to post this photo of the football, and it was only when talking to Cecile that I remembered.

This is Charensat’s first goal but never mind that for a moment – look at Charensat’s n°12 on the extreme right of the photo.

You’re quite right – it IS a girl. Charensat brought with them a couple of substitutes, one of whom was female. And with there being no official from the Puy-de-Dome league present, no-one saw any good reason why she shouldn’t be allowed onto the field.

That’s one of the good things about playing against Charensat – people are out there to have a good time. Not like the thugs from down the road at Montel-Villosanges who appear regularly (and always in a bad light) in these pages.

Having forgotten to switch on the alarms this morning it was 08:45 when I heaved myself out of the stinking pit. And after breakfast and the compulsory couple of houes on the web pages, I went outside to tackle an urgent job.

Just before I went away, bank two of solar panels in the barn began to lose its charge and finally it gave up the ghost. I hadn’t had time to look at it though.

When I returned, everything working off bank two was thoroughly dead so I resolved to look at it today.

I ran all kinds of exhaustive tests and eventually came to the conclusion that there must be in “incident” in one of the cables that runs between the junction box on the panel mounting bracket and the charge controller.

So after lunch I disconnected all of the wiring and then went to hunt down a new set of cables. Eventually I had a brainwave. I had some 10mm exterior pair cabling in a waterproof sheath. I’d used that to connect up the wind turbine when it was on the other end of the barn, so I went to track it down.

That wasn’t as easy as it should have been either, but I found it and installed it (and that wasn’t as easy as it sounds either) and now it’s all connected up.

And, much to my surpsire, working fine.

So I wonder what has happened there. I can’t think that a mouse has eaten the insulation on the old wiring as it’s sheathed in flexible trunking, but one never knows.

Just as I knocked off (I took 10 minutes to plant my courgettes) Cécile rang up. Perfect timing. We had a chat for an hour and I made tea.

And now I’m off tobed – to see if I can finish this dream from last night where I was in an old wreck of an American convertible that pulled to the left quite savagely when I braked.

-2

Saturday 19th April 2014 – I’VE JUST SEEN …

… one of the best football matches for ages. No football at Pionsat tonight so I went to Marcillat en Combraille who were playing Mercy-Chapeau. An excellent game that finished 3-3 but Mercy can consider themselves robbed of a victory. 2 of AS Marcillat’s goal came from free kicks, one of which I wouldn’t have awarded and the second I would have awarded, but in the other direction.

And I have at last seen a player in the Allier who I would pick for FC Pionsat St Hilaire. Mercy-Chapeau’s n°5, playing at the heart of the defence, was big, quick, intelligent and commaanding and if Pionsat could find a player like him, they wouldn’t have anything like the issues that they are having now.

Apart from that, after breakfast I tidied up in here. Not much, it has to be said, but just a little but at least the table is clean and tidy and I’ve vacuumed the floor round by where I sit. Not with the new vacuum cleaner – I’ve yet to try that out – but with the 12-volt cylinder vacuum cleaner that I found again the other day.

In St Eloy les Mines, I did the shopping and at Carrefour they had 12 lettuce for €2:60 and the brasica was reduced to €3:95 for 10 so I bought some sprouts to go with the cabbage I planted a few weeks ago. They will be in the garden on Tuesday when I restart work.

I noticed today as well that the lettuce seed that I sowed in a tray – there’s signs of life in there as of this afternoon. That looks quite optimistic as I was beginning to think that I’ve been wasting my time with the gardening effort this year. Only the courgettes (and then only some of those) seemed to have done anything.

-2

Wednesday 9th April 2014 – IT’S BEEN A WOODY DAY TODAY.

Yes, I’ve been dealing with some timber issues.

But first, I was up even before the final alarm sounded. I’d made breakfast and coffee and was back up here with my food by the time it went off.

I was on the web pages at 08:45 too and that has to be something of a record and I did two full pages before finishing at 12:00 and then it was off outside. And first thing that I noticed was that two more courgette plants are rearing their pretty little heads.

Now, if you remember the story of the raised bed that will contain the soft fruit, that was hacked out a few years ago of what was the jungle. But with all of the old weeds dying off and the new ones not quite established, it was possible to clear quite a large area around it, and so I attacked that today.

Surrounding the bed are lots of those horrible ground elder trees that sprout up like forests in just a year or two. I’ve hacked down about a dozen of those and they are stacked out to dry for a couple of years. One day, I’ll pull up the roots too.

Now, the sunlight streams onto the soft fruit bed almost all the day, which is what should happen.

There was an apple tree that had been flattened and was growing horizontally. I had a couple of tree stakes and so I’ve now staked that tree upright in the vertical – and it’s blooming now.

When I cleared the ground for the bed, I stacked some of these ground elder trees and od course they are now bone-dry. I ended up with two barrow-loads of small kindling that will do me for much of next winter and there’s still plenty to go at. I need to clear some space though in order to have a decent garden fire.

Final job was to water all of the plants in the garden. A hot day today, so they needed it.

And I can see that I’ll have to start some weeding soon.

-3

Tuesday 8th April 2014 – WHAT A WAY TO START THE DAY

Downstairs nice and early for a change, and … no gas. It must have run out just as I finished cooking last night and I didn’t notice.

Good job I’d bought that cylinder the other week. First job this morning was to couple that up so that I could have a coffee.

After the website, second job was to empty the beichstuhl. Such delightful jobs I have here. And just to prove that it never rains but it pours, the shredder packed up. And why a shredder? The answer is that you need something to absorb liquids in a composting toilet and the best thing ever designed for that is old telephone directory pages. Works like a charm when it’s shredded and I wonder what I’m going to do now.

les guis virlet puy de dome franceNext thing was to check the state of affairs with the plants that I sowed the other week. I told you yesterday that a courgette plant was raising its pretty little head. So here’s a photo of it and its brother too, because we now have two courgette plants springing to life.

Still nothing doing in the carrots, parsnips and radish bed, but before lunch I sowed another row each, together with the beetroot seeds that I had soaking overnight

Talking of soaking overnight, I put pile of pea seeds in damp paper in a plastic bag. They’ll be okay in there for a while to help them germinate.


plastic greenhouse shelf unit seed traysles guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter lunch I carried on sowing and theres another pile of seeds now in the little plastic greenhouse helf thingy that I bought the other day.

It does occur to me that you haven’t seen it yet and so here it is in all its glory. You can see the bushes that I bought a couple of weeks ago, and all of the seeds that I’ve sown. In the plastic bag are the peas.

So what did I sow today?

  • Gherkins
  • Tomatoes
  • Sweet corn – but I’m not going to be optimistic about that. I found a packet with an expiry date of 2009 so if I was going to throw them away, I might as well throw them in the soil and see what happens

Thee was also quite a mixture of seeds floating around in the bottom of the box in which I keep the seed packets. Seeing as there’s an empty bed that won’t be used for a while, they all went in there and we’ll see.


herb bins les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter all of that I started tidying up outside, seeing as there was still some time to go. You can now see the herb bins in their pristine glory before they are all overwhelmed again.

It doesn’t look much like I’ve done any tidying up, but there’s a lot to do as you might expect. I can see the difference, but I doubt if anyone else could.

I’ve also cleaned the old “Westwood” ride-on mower. An ex-friend of mine found this for me and I never ever had it running because there are some bits missing. It’s sat here and not mooved wince 2002. Anyway, some time next week, it’s going. Someone is coming to pick it up. And you won’t believe the story behind this – you’ll just have to wait.

But whatever did happen to Paul? He was the best friend I ever had and he would do anything for me any time without question, something for which I was eternally grateful (and it goes without saying that I returned the compliment). But then he had his accident and he was put on medication, and that changed him considerably.

Finally, they changed his medication for another and I just couldn’t cope at all with the new personality. We were in Birmingham once, trying to make out which way to turn when a car (not unsurprisingly) blew its horn. He was straight out of the car going to thump the other driver and it was at that moment that I realised that I couldn’t keep this up.

I have enough problems dealing with my own issues without thinking about dealing with anyone else’s.

What a shame.

-3

Monday 7th April 2014 – I DON’T BELIEVE IT!

strawberry plants raised bed les guis virlet puy de dome franceWell, I suppose that I ought to really. It should be something that I’m used to by now. But do you remember me saying that I replanted 4 strawberry plants the other day? I had a look today and there are now only 3, with a hole in the soil where the 4th one was, as you can see in this photo.

I’ve no idea what happened there. I suppose some local bestiole has taken a fancy to it.

But you can see the soil just there – clay with a barrow-load of sand worked in. That should lighten it considerably.


garlic shallots raised beds potager les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs for the garlic and shallots though, I don’t know if you can really see them here in this photo but they have mostly done the business.

One or two garlic bulbs seem to have failed but I have some of last year’s crop to plant in there to replace them. And one or two of the shallots needed reseating, but otherwise they are fine. The onions in another bed are pushing up too.

Nothing stirring with the carrots, parsnips and radishes yet. I’m not surprised about the parsnips, but the carrots might have done something by now and I’m bewildered by the radishes. They should be almost ready.

I have a courgette plant about to rear its ugly head out of its pot too. And where there’s one, the others shouldn’t be far behind.

So today after website work I went out and the first thing that I did was to empty out all of the herb beds. I have a row of flower boxes and I use them as herb beds and they were all overgrown.

If anyone wants some mint and thyme cuttings, let me know as I have tons of the stuff here. It really did run wild while I was away last year. Anyway, everything is now rosy in the herb beds and I even had fresh rosemary from my own garden in my onion and mushroom gravy tonight.

For the rest of the day I’ve been sowing seeds in pots. And here’s a list of what’s gone in –

  • Aneth
  • Coriander
  • leeks
  • cucumbers
  • lettuce
  • aubergines
  • basil
  • chives
  • cayenne peppers
  • mixed peppers
  • broccoli

They are all in pots in the little greenhouse thingy that I bought the other week.

I also have some beetroot seeds soaking ready to plant tomorrow, and I’ll also look at the rest of the brassica to see what I have an what I need.

All that needs doing then is to make some more pea and bean frames and then start some of those off, and to sow some more carrots and parsnips.

Mind you, that’s not all that I’ve done. I went to St Eloy at lunchtime and spent a whole shed-load of money, in fact the only time that I’ve ever spent more money than this was in buying Caliburn and buying my various houses and apartments. Yes, there will be a new arrival here shortly, more of which anon.

And I forgot two pieces of news from yesterday. Firstly, the mystery of Matthieu’s appearance on the football pitch Saturday night is now solved. He had no intention whatever of playing, so it seems, but someone couldn’t make it at the last minute so he went out rather than let the teamplay short-handed. If that’s not courage and devotion to duty after all he’s suffered with his injury, I don’t know what is.

And Nane rang me up for a very long chat, in the middle of which she announced that a mutual acquaintance of ours had died on Saturday. It’s never nice to hear of a death, especially of someone that you know, but this friend and I did have some issues between us that have been the subject of a considerable rant from me in the past. Nevertheless I wish her bon voyage to wherever it is that she wishes to go.

-3

Monday 31st March 2014 – I WASN’T SO GOOD …

… at getting up today. It took a great deal of effort to haul myself out of bed, but once I was out, I wasn’t so bad.

After the customary couple of hours on the web site, I went outside. This furniture removal is now postponed until tomorrow so I had a look at a couple of petrol-engined appliances that had been hanging around here for a couple of months.

Of course, they didn’t work and so I wen into Pionsat for some clean fuel. I also nipped to Cecile’s as apparently there was a bird stuck in the window.I was too late for the bird unfortunately and I can’t take it out as it’s fallen behind some shutterings that we spent a day or so fitting, and I didn’t have the tools with me.

Back here, giving everything a clean and draining out the fuel tanks and carburettors and the like, I finally got everything to work and I even managed to mow a bit of grass.

The new plastic greenhouse thingy is erected and I’ve put the pots with the courgette seeds in it, those that I potted last week, and also the shrubs that I bought. And while I may not have carrots and parsnips and radish, or even courgetttes, the garlic is going well, and the onions and shallots are close behind.

I fell asleep again at lunchtime but when I finally did make it outside, I did another raised bed. I must push on with those.

But I also had a visitor. Someone at the footy had seen me – or, rather, Caliburn, and he made an effort to track me down as on his farm he has a wind turbine that hasn’t been functionning for a few years and he wondered if I could get it to work for him.

So that’s another half-day out when we have some wind. This vehicle advertising really pays.

-4

Friday 21st March 2014 – LAST NIGHT WAS THE FIRST NIGHT …

… that I had left the fridge running right through the night.

Consequently today was the first day for fifteen days that we had heavy overcast skies and rain. It’s par for the course, isn’t it?

And normal service resumed with a vengeance too. I can’t remember what it was that I was doing – it was certainly nothing of any importance – but I happened to glance at the clock and it was after 03:00. Sleep issues are back again.

I can’t think why, though. I should have been exhausted after what I was up to during the night.

I’d been away from home for a while and when I returned my partner told me that she had bought a house down in the South-West of France to let as a holiday home. Even though it was late Saturday afternoon we got into the car and drove off to see it. The house next door to it was really two units but they shared a very big kitchen. There was work going on in there and I asked the owner about it – whether he was going to divide up the kitchen and make two bathrooms so that these two units would be self-contained but he didn’t give a coherent answer

My partner asked me what I thought of her house and I told her that she had done exactly the right thing. Investing money in property was never wasted if one took the long-term view.

We went out for a walk around the town in the evening and there was the wreck of an LDV minibus at the side of the road so we had a good look at it. But back at our hotel I had a memory stick and this kept on flashing to say that it was receiving mesages – and an icon of a man was flashing on it. So I plugged the memory stick into the computer and it showed me a couple of Youtube films sent to me unsolicited, one of which was looking down the slope from the town centre of where we wee to the cross on the edge of the town and the other showing the accident that had involved this LDV minibus- It had overtaken someone on the inside by going over the verge and on the grass.

We went outside to check on all of this but it was clear from the light and the position of the shadows that the action in the film had taken place a few hours earlier than the current time.

On the way back to our hotel we were stopped by the passengers of yet another LDV minibus – a couple of adults and a load of children all dressed in a bizarre but uniform way – jackets with red white and blue tassels that kind of thing – and they were looking for a camp of some kind. I had an idea where it might be – an old abandoned hotel where things went on in the grounds – but wasn’t sure so I told them to go to out hotel, because I knew that it was still open – and ask. The hotel was called the Lion d’Or of course. “Round to the left on the Rocade, rejoin the main road and it’s there on the left”. They repeated the directions a few times, with plenty of hand movements, to make sure.

Some way further on we passed a huge hotel on the right. Someone with a Landrover crew cab and dog cage on the back was leaving and they were lowering thos huge dog – a St Bernard – from their hotel window on the 7th floor by means of a rope and harness. They had cats on leads, several other dogs and I remember saying that I was glad I wasn’t going to have that hotel room after them.

This was another one of those occasions where the dream was so absorbing that although I had to get up in the middle of all this to go for a gypsy’s, I got back into bed and stepped right back into the dream more-or-less where I had left off.

After breakfast and the traditional couple of hours on the website I started work. And such exciting jobs that I had around here – I emptied the composting toilet. Lovely, isn’t it?

having cleared a bed for the onions yesterday, I planted out the onion bulbs into the bed. 75 went in – probably about 3 will come out if I’m lucky. And after that, I planted some courgette seeds into pots. For some reason that no-one knows, courgettes grow like stink here and everyone always has far too many. That means of course that I shan’t get a one this year now, having said that.

After lunch, I went off to Cécile’s to let this other estate agent view her house. This one didn’t stay long and didn’t seem to be half as professional as the one from the other day.

Back here I tidied out some (but not much) of the veranda so that I can create a space on the shelving to put my courgette pots, and finished off the day by attacking another raised bed – one that will take the shallots, garlic and leeks. That’s not finished yet – it needs abother hour or two so I’m sorely tempted to have a go at it tomorrow.

Always provided that it soesn’t snow, of course.

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Friday 22nd June I DIDN’T HAVE …

… such a good day today.

I was up and about by 08:00 and that’s not something that happens too often as you know. And by 09:00 I was busy on the laptop writing up my notes from Canada.

Anyway, I became somewhat side-tracked, like you do …”like YOU do” – ed … with an exciting little story that I managed to piece together and which shows just how much of a role coincidence seems to play in people’s lives.

There are two neighbouring villages, St Sulpice and Lavaltrie, on the north shore of the St Lawrence.

In Lavaltrie is a man named Riel who has 14 children and as his farm is far too small to support them all as they grow up, the younger children disperse westward to where Canada is expanding.

Meanwhile, in St Sulpice is another family, the Lacombes, who also have too many children and the younger ones likewise disperse, one of them becoming a missionary to the Blackfoot Indians in Saskatchewan.

In 1885 a rebellion breaks out in Saskatchewan and the Missionary Lacombe is sent to persuade the Blackfoot not to join in the fighting. When he arrives he finds that the leader of the rebellion is busy trying to incite them to join in and butcher the Government forces.

And the name of the leader of the rebellion? Yes, he’s Louis Riel from Lavaltrie.

What a small world!

Of course the story is far more complicated than that, but I only have a small amount of space to write it. Anyway, you can see why I’ve been side-tracked for most of the morning.

This afternoon, when I finally did manage to go outside, I checked on the beans and peas. The peas are slowly coming to life but now there are about 20 baby bean plants busy battling their way out of the soil.

I definitely need some more climbing frames for them and so I’ll have to see about some wire netting tomorrow.

After that, it was up on the roof and put the second layer of lime mortar on the roof joint. Hopefully that won’t need any more attention. It should be watertight anyway as there’s plastic membrane there anyway and there is an overhang off the house roof that will shade it.

I used the rest of the mortar to fill in part of the gap in the rendering. There’s still quite a bit of that to do as well.

After that  did some tidying up in the lean-to and noticed that I had some cucumber, courgette and gherkin seeds that are okay to plant in the beginning of June. As we are still a few weeks behind with the weather right now I hoed and raked an few empty bits of a couple of the beds and planted a variety of seeds there.

They have two chances now, whereas in the packet nothing would ever be likely to happen.

I also made up a few pots with lettuce in. I’ll see what happens to that lot.

When I was down checking over the beans and peas I happened to look up the slope across all of the other beds that I had set out, and with all of the plants happily growing away in them I really did have a moment of pride.

With the drastic weeding since I’ve been back, I have to say that my vegetable garden looks the best that it ever has. The new climbing frames for the beans really do set it off.

Tomorrow it’s Commentry shopping, seeing what I can find for wire netting, and then maybe I’ll go for a swim at Neris-les-Bains. I must look my best for the village fête and evening walk tomorrow night in Virlet.

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Wednesday 11th April 2012 – It’s been another …

… busy afternoon on the gardening front. First job was to make some potting compost to plant my seeds into. This ended up being 12 measures of sterile compost from a supermarket bagful, 4 measures of dry sand and 2 measures of dry wood ash. And if anyone has any better ideas about making a compost for sowing seeds I would be absolutely delighted to hear it.

So once I had done that I went and collected a load of those plastic pots that soya desserts come in. Already nicely washed, I piled them together in heaps of 10 or so, heated up a baked potato skewer until it was red-hot, and then poked it through the heaps of pots four or five times to make drain holes.

Once the drain holes were pierced, I washed the pots again and then filled them with my seed compost, and planted all the “fragile” seeds, like aubergines, peppers, chilis, cucumbers, courgettes, gherkins and a few other things too. And with what was left, I prepared a few seed trays and put leeks and lettuce in them.

There is a reason for all of this. For a start, why the soya dessert pots? The answer to that one is that they come in all varieties of shapes, sizes and colours. And I am heavily into colour coding. I can tell by the different colours, shapes and sizes of the pots that the seeds in them are all of the same type of plant.

The second reason is much more interesting. I’ve decided that I need a holiday, and so I’m planning to go away. And while I’m away Liz is going to babysit my plants in exchange for half the crop, which I think is a good deal in anyone’s terms. That’s why there’s the rush to do the potting up.

And so this morning I was planning my holiday, and the logistics of it are proving to be a nighmare – it’s nothing like as straightforward as it ought to be. But then this evening while I was tidying up, I had a brainwave about my trip and so I’ve spent most of the evening sitting here with an atlas. And I reckon that I can do this in another fashion.

So tomorrow I’ll be scrapping everything that I have done so far and starting again.

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Tuesday 16th August 2011 – It’s quite useful …

… being up early in the morning because you can get so much more work done.

And up early I was as well for last night I had an early night. It wasn’t planned, but the internet crashed here quite early on as I told you and so I profited by going to bed early. And that surprised everyone, I bet.

This morning I was up, breakfasted, washed and dressed long before 10:00. And after working on the website again I was finished by 12:30. It was time then to attack the pointing again and I managed to do quite a lot.

thunder box beichstuhl composting toilet les guis virlet puy de dome franceI finished one load of mortar by 13:45 and ir wasn’t worth starting another load prior to lunch so I fitted the toilet seat to the composting beichstuhl. It’s cut like that for a special purpose and that’s why I needed a wooden one.

You can see how the beichstuhl works. There’s a huge 20-litre casserole saucepan in there, complete with lid. Inside there is a compostable bin liner. So you lift the white top of the box (you can see the hinges), take off the casserole lid, put in some sawdust (you can see the blue sawdust container behind the beichstuhl) close the white lid, do what you need to do, put in some more sawdust, lift up the white top and refit the casserole lid. When the bin liner is getting full, you dump it in the compost heap and fit another. It’s as simple as that.

Recycling, self-sufficiency and closed-cycle environments is what it’s all about. The water consumption is zero and I shall have tomatoes as big as your head next year.

This evening the temperature in the solar shower was at 39°:C and so I had a gorgeous shower. That was quite enjoyable too. And to round off the day I was down the garden getting a huge courgette, a pile of beans and a pile of new potatoes and made a huge curried stew that will keep me going for the next couple of days as well.

All in all it was quite a good day today.

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Friday 12th August 2011 – What a lovely tea …

home grown potatoes beans courgettes puy de dome france… I had tonight. And not only cooked with my own fair hands but grown with them too, for everything that you see came from out of my garden. I used my own herbs as well, but as for onions and garlic, I used shop-bought stuff because I had them and they need using. There’s no reason not to use my own though.

But it’s all exciting, isn’t it? Starting on the harvest of crops out of my garden. But I’m having a struggle to find them as the weeds have gone berserk I wish I had time to do the weeding.

This afternoon anyway, after another morning session on the computer, I restarted at last on the pointing of the end wall, and I’ll post you all a photograph tomorrow when the cement has dried so that you can see where I’ve got to.

Regular readers may recall that I started this at the beginning of last summer but doing my barn roof and then Lieneke’s roof, followed by my trip to Labrador put an end to my progress. And with having to empty the apartment in Brussels and make it ready for sale (which included clearing out the barn and the lean-to so that I can store everything in there), that took up most of the summer so far.

I want to get one side of the wall finished before I go back to Canada because when I come back, I want to put the wind turbine up there. Seeing how the anemometer is doing up there – about 3 times the wind down at ground level, I might even have enough wind to get the turbine to work.

And so I need to get a wiggle on.

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Monday 18th April 2011 – I’ve been gardening today.

Well, after all it is the full moon. Before lunch I planted all of the main crop potatoes – I put 64 into two of the raised beds – the last two that I installed the other week. I’ve had to be careful how I planted them because the baby lettuce that I bought the other week – they are in one of those beds and I’ve had to fit the spuds all around them.

After lunch I planted this week’s seeds – things like cauliflowers, broccoli, carrots, courgettes, beans, peas and so on – they all went outside and into place. In the smaller cloche I planted into small pots some more peppers, chilis, cucumber and gherkins. And there are already some of those sprouting up from a fortnight ago. I’ve also weeded out the strawberry patch in the mega-cloche. That’s doing really well in there and it’s a mass of flowers, looking like there might be a bumper crop, and quite early too. But then again, this magnificent spring has a lot to do with that.

But there is a down-side to this magnificent spring. When I finished weeding and planting, I gave everything a thorough watering. And with no rain for 14 days, all of the casual water, that in buckets and bins and tubs about the place, that’s all gone. All that’s left is my rainwater for household use and there’s just about 150 litres or so of that remaining. I’m drying up and this could make things difficult here. I shall have to start a rain dance if it carries on like this.

But there’s still some water for a shower and at 36.5°C I had one as well. And then off to St Eloy and the Anglo-French Group where I set everyone an exercise – I’d found some old notes that I had made, with useful French phrases that are used in everyday life. And so I set everyone to translate them from French to English, to keep them out of mischief.

And so apart from working on the Newfoundland web pages this morning, that was my lot. Tomorrow we are in the studio at Radio Tartasse again. Don’t the months come round quickly?

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