Tag Archives: french air force

Tuesday 5th May 2015 – HAVING CURSED ORANGE TELECOM …

… with what can best be described as “an expletive-ridden rant” on Saturday, it’s only fair that I report on my visit this morning to the main Orange Telecom shop in the centre of Montlucon. And apart from not being open unti 10:00, I do have to say that the personnel in the shop could not have been more helpful. It was a stark contrast to Saturday, and had I had today’s treatment then, I would have been delighted.

So now, after having been to Montlucon and back, reconfigured the new Livebox and made a couple of phone calls, I now have a proper working home telephone, a proper working mobile phone (and one of the guys in Orange helped me configure it so that I could access the internet) and my e-mail and website back up. So it’s all systems go here in Pooh Corner.

As for the website, I finally managed to speak to someone at the Danish Domain Registration Service, and they were so horrified about my two-hour hold yesterday that they extended my domain renewal by 12 months free of charge. So all’s well that ends well there too.

So having done that, I propped Caliburn up on axle stands, removed the spare wheel (and checked it over) and then made a start on rustproofing the underneath.

rustproofing underneath caliburn ford transit les guis virlet puy de dome franceAs you can see, what I have done so far has come out quite well.

The wire brush on the angle grinder was far too savage so in the end I cleaned it off by hand, and the rustproofing paint went on quite easily, giving a lovely finish. I let in dry for a couple of hours and then put the spare wheel back and dropped Caliburn back off the axle stands.

I’ll be doing the rest of the floor bit by bit (there’s nothing cluttering the rest of the underside) and then going round to give it all a second coat. Once that’s been done and it’s all stabilised, I can underseal it all and that will keep it good for another 8 years.


When that had been done, I checked over Caliburn to make sure that there was enough oil, water and so on and then gave the back a really good clear-out.

french air force place low flying over les guis virlet puy de dome franceWhile I was starting to load up Caliburn, I had spectators. The French Air Force came for a look around to see what I was up to. They’ve come round to check up on me a few times

But in Caliburn there’s now about half of the stuff that I need to take with me, and I’ll do all of the rest tomorrow before I go. It shouldn’t take too long, I hope, and then I can clear off.

I’m taking the horizontal axis wind turbine with me too. I’s never had a decent run out yet, and I reckon that parked up on the side of the autoroutes, or by the side of a big lake, it ought to do something, and this would seem to be a good time to try it.

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Tuesday 25th March 2014 – I WOKE UP THIS MORNING …

… as all of the good old Blues songs begin, but I woke up this morning to darkness.

Yes, we had another fall of snow during the night. However it didn’t last long as it’s been raining for most of the day – at times quite heavily. In fact we’ve had over 20mm of rain so far.

So as is usual now that I’m on summer hours, I worked on the web site until 12:00, and then I went outside to work. And despite everything that happened today, I’ve finished another raised bed.

The rain didn’t help. It was raining more-or-less steadily, with a few sunny spells, until about 18:15 when the heavens well-and-truly opened. It took me another 10 minutes, bu which time I was looking like a drowned rat, to finish the bed, and then I gave it all up and came in for an early finish. I would have been finished earlier too except that I … errr … fell asleep up here for half an hour after lunch.

french military aircraft turbo prop flying low les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut I had a couple of visits too. This missing Boeing 777 airliner from Malaysia – the French Government clearly thinks that I have it somewhere hidden about the premises because from about 13:15 until about 14:30 they had two huge transport aircraft flying low and circling around my property.

I’m certain that it isn’t anywhere round here, but they clearly seem to think so.

How bizarre.

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Thursday 24th March 2011 – Nothing really special happened at all today …

 although I am fed up of the blasted French Air Farce. At 16:32 precisely this afternoon one of their jets flew over my house so low that it set the wind turbines going off. It was unbelievable – I’ve never heard such a racket in all my life. And what did I do to deserve it? I haven’t had a UN Security Council resolution made against me, have I?

So that’s me thoroughly fed up and I’m going to declare my house a no-fly zone. I’m going to see if I can’t track down a Stinger missile somewhere (the Taliban still have a few that the Septics sold them back in the early 1980s) and set it up in my garden. The next b@st@rd who thinks it’s funny to fly over my house at zero feet will get more than he bargained for when I light the blue touchpaper and retire. All I’ll need to do after that is to see if there are still a few Scud missiles left buried in the sand in Iraq (the Scud, by the way, is a direct descendant of the German V1) and drop a few of them onto the French Air Farce headquarters. See how they like it.

B@$t@rd$

But it wasn’t just the French Air Farce that set off my wind turbines. It’s been quite windy today here too and round about 12:00 we had a good half an hour of high winds. I had 2.1 amp-hours of wind energy off the old AIR turbine and I’m impressed with that.

raised beds les guis virlet puy de dome franceMeanwhile, back at the ranch, I had a good day in the garden and I now have two new raised beds installed. The one on the left is for the new potatoes and the other one, together with a third new one that I shall be installing in early course behind the compost bins, will be for the old potatoes.

But while I was hacking away in there I came across one of my original apple trees in the jungle. It’s weighted down with brambles and scrub but it’s still going with loads of buds right now. It might be possible to save it and so I had a go at clearing away much of the rubbish that was dragging it down.

Another solar shower too – water at 36°C rhis afternoon although it had cooled down to 34°C by the time I knocked off. It didn’t feel that warm when I was standing underneath it having a shower but I feel that I ought to be taking advantage of the warm weather and keep myself clean.

It can’t keep up like this for ever, although of course I wish that it would. This time last year we had a few days of 20-odd °C, I notice, but the weather soon collapsed.

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Thursday 25th March 2010 – God it was hard this morning …

… but that’s enough about Percy Penguin, who doesn’t feature in these pages half as much as she ought to.

It was agony in bed last night with the muscles in my legs tightening up continually. It kept me awake for much of the night, as did the French Air Force, who decided on carrying out night-time manoeuvres … “personoeuvres please” – ed … until gone 02:30. Getting up for a gipsy’s at 06:00 was probably the most painful thing I have ever tried.

Going downstairs for breakfast was interesting too, and I was clearly in no fit state to go out working so I came back up here and did a load of outstanding work on the computer – much of which was the preparation for our radio broadcast next week. I managed a fair bit too – but that’s enough about … “you’ve already done that” – ed … and that’s got me thinking.

When I was in Brussels I used to do my computer work from 11:00 until 14:00 and then work on the apartment in the afternoon and evening. Pretty soon the clocks will go forward and we will have more daytime daylight  so bearing this in mind I could easily work from 10:00 until 12:00 up here on the computer and then work until maybe 19:00 or 19:30 outside. That would be much more useful.

By about 12:00 I felt a little better so I went outside and did another raised bed. That’s 5 in position. But the weather has changed. It was blowing a gale when I went outside, so much so that it’s lifted the cucumber and tomato seeds off the shelf in the greenhouse and spilled them all over the floor so I needed to replant them which was a pain.

Now the weather has really turned and it’s pouring with rain outside. I have mixed feelings about that. I love the hot weather but I’m getting low on water and also the plants that I have sown need the water. This is the sign if a true rural peasant, definitely a distinction from the vacancier.

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