Tag Archives: new tyres

Wednesday 19th August 2015 – HERE I AM …

prevost orleans express bus montreal riviere du loup quebec canada… at 03:30 at Riviere du Loup, and this is the bus that brought me here – a Prevost.

It took that length of time for the bus to come all the way out here but to be honest I don’t remember all that much about it. I managed to have something of a doze.

But here, I had to change buses as this one that I was on is off down the Gaspe Peninsula. I’m waiting for the Coach Atlantic bus that will be here at about 04:00 ready to leave at 04:30 for Moncton, and that’s going to drop me off at Florenceville.

prevost coach atlantic bus edmundston new brunswick canadaAnd this is the Coach Atlantic bus, an older Prevost, that brought me to Florenceville. We’re at Edmundston when this photo was taken, stopping to pick up and drop off passengers and also parcels because the bus does a parcels delivery.

And that gave all of us the time to have a coffee and to visit the bathroom, which I for one needed after all of that drive.

Strangely enough, we arrived at Florenceville on time, and Rachel and Amber were there to meet me. And I’ll tell you something for nothing, and that is that I will do this bus trip again. It was extremely painless, and much more comfortable than I ever imagined it to be.

I was dropped off at the garage to pick up my new toy, Strider the Ranger, and then took it round for its safety check. It passed okay, but I’ve had a new spare tyre put on it. The one that was there was quite worn and in any case it was the wrong size. I may as well have it done first as last, and it gave me an opportunity to clean and grease all of the spare wheel fittings.

Armed with a valid safety certificate, I went off to the insurance and there I had to lie down in a darkened room while I recovered from the shock. North American motor insurance is horrendous, even worse than Belgium.

I took the certificate back to the garage so that he could have a copy and so that he could register the sale and obtain the number plates. At the moment, Strider only has a temporary registration certificate.

On the way back up here, I noticed that Strider has a chronic misfire on one cylinder so I’ve booked it in on Friday to have a full service – that’s something else that I may as well have done before I go too far.

The three of us (Darren and Hannah are tractor-pulling this weekend) went out for a meal later at Woodstock and a good old chat, to catch up with what we have missed since last October. And then I came back here and crashed out.

Hardly a surprise.

-2

Saturday 19th June 2010 – Now is the winter of our discount tents.

now is the winter of our discount tents camping exhibition montlucon allier franceWell, it was something like that that Shakespeare (or Bacon) wrote in “Richard II” – and quite right too.

If you click on the pic to enlarge it you’ll see exactly what the weather was like today – miserable, grey and overcast. And in a desperate attempt to drum up business the local sports shop in Montlucon was having a tent demonstration. I suppose the idea is that you go and have a look and choose the one that has let in the least water.

The end of season sales are going to be exciting stuff – all these shops having bought all of this summer and camping gear and no-one will have bought anything. There will be tons of stuff on offer.

I also went to the tyre fitters to have Caliburn’s new tyres fitted. And seeing that I’ve spent so much money in there this last week he let me off the puncture repair from the other day which was nice of him. But I’m not too impressed with the scrapyard at Durdat.
“Have you got any 15-inch wheels for a Ford Transit?”
“No we haven’t” replied the manager
“Not even on that one there?” I said, indicating a late-1980s Transit that was partly dismantled down in the corner but still had its 4 wheels on.
“No. Sorry”.
You can’t even give money away to people these days. It’s too much trouble for someone to go down the yard with a trolley jack and a wheel brace. Of course in the good old days before Health and Safety you could go down the yard yourself with a trolley jack and a wheel brace but Central Government has put paid to that.

It’s quite ironic really – they talk about saving natural resources and energy and so do all that they can to encourage recycling, and then another Government department comes along and does its best to stop you recycling anything. Car scrapyards has been one of the earliest forms of recycling and is sooo environmentally-friendly yet they are doing away with it so that you have to buy new stuff thatnks to the arm-twisting that the Auto Lobby applies to politicians. I spend a lot of time in scrapyards – many things that I use in my Renewable Energy projects are from old cars – 12-volt clocks, cables, fuse boxes and the like and I don’t really know what I want until I go down a yard and have a nosey around.

But I digress.

I had no plans to but anything in Brico Depot and so the bill of over €160 took me by surprise. But it’s all useful stuff, including the huge drum of wood-treatment for the new barn roof timbers, 4 sacks of cement in case we need it for the roof and three sacks of chalk for me to do the end wall.

I drove off from LIDL with my two cartons of orange juice on the bonnet of Caliburn and when I got to the swimming baths at Neris les Bains there was one still on. How about that?

And I’m nice and clean now for a change, and talking of change I’ll be changing the bedding too so that I can make the most of it. Tomorrow I was supposed to help Katie at the brocante but she’s called it off – apparently they’ve announced a torrential downpour all day. But so that I wouldn’t be lonely, Bill rang me up. His car has broken down and if it’s not a simple repair he will need me to tow him back from St Eloy les Mines tomorrow.

0

Saturday 13th March 2010 – What a night!

If you remember about a year ago I had a series of nights where I had some really bad attacks of cramp in bed. Last night I had another. I can’t think of anything more painful than that and in stretching my legs out to ease the pain I pulled mycalf muscles -both of them! It took ages for the pain to subside and another age for me to go back to sleep. No wonder I didn’t wake up until after 10:00.

I hope that this isn’t a portent for another series of attacks like last year.

I finally made it off to St Eloy for the shopping and spent quite a few bob there today. LIDL’s gardening sale was ongoing and I bought a 1.5×10-metre roll of black plastic mulching. My new raised beds are to be 1.5×1.5metres so I’ll cut this roll to size, make up a handy framework and use it in winter to keep out the weeds. Carrefour also had a gardening sale so I bought some seeds and a new lopper – €12.99 which is three times the price at LIDL but I hope it lasts 3 times longer. The LIDL ones have a weak spot, the aluminium jaw plate, but these don’t have that – just a simple scissor mechanism.

I popped round to see the European Cardboard Box Mountain that is Claude and Francoise’s apartment to see how they were all doing there, and then the final visit was to the new tyre place. They were advertising Caliburn-sized tyres for €70 each which isn’t too bad a price but by the time they had added on the valves, the balancing, the fitting and the VAT it came to almost €200 for a pair. I’m thinking that I may as well get the Goodyear tyres that were the original fitting seeing as they are only €50 extra for a pair all-in. One thing is certain – I’m not going to waste my snow tyres by running them through the summer. They’ve been invaluable in this weather.

-7

Saturday 13th February 2010 – I must have been tired last night.

Crashing out for a couple of hours and then going to bed early and then sleeping through the cacophony that is my series of alarm clocks and not waking up until 10:24. At least I’m feeling better though today. I think it must be all of these bad nights of sleep catching up on me.

This morning that strange gold thing put in a brief appearance up in the sky so I quickly climbed up onto the roof and brushed off the solar panels. I caught a few amp-hours of sun before the heavens clouded over again. But I also dug Caliburn out of his snowdrift and went for a spin up the lane to see if I could get out. Good job I have my new snow tyres because I did manage to make the public highway with a little bit of luck and perseverence. A wise decision to get these tyres, I’ll tell you.

So with a little tidying up I came up here and carried on reading my book. It’s called The 91 before Lindberghand it details all of the successful Transatlantic air crossings before “The Flying Fool”. It’s a fascinating book, especially for me, because as you know I have quite an interest in historic aviation and on one occasion while poking around on an old industrial estate on Long Island I came across a replica of the “Spirit of St Louis” and I had the extreme pleasure of being able to sit at the controls.

Furthermore the book recounts the early airship developments for Transatlantic flight that took place at Atlantic City in New Jersey – another place that I have visited – and then goes on to talk about the legendary near-miss between an airship and a four-masted schooner at Barnegat Lighthouse, yet another one of my haunts.

After that, seeing as there was a gap in the snowfall I went into St Eloy to do some shopping and pick up some gas. I was going to say “nip” into St Eloy but in third gear at 25mph all the way then “nip” it was not. It was an awkward drive but I managed okay and I’m now stocked well up for whatever else this weather can throw at us.

In other news, it’s the 25th anniversary round about now of an event that could have got Nerina and yours truly five years inside without the option. We’d seen a house that we liked and so we put Gainsborough Road on sale and priced it for a quick conclusion. Unfortunately the owners of our dream house wouldn’t reduce the price by very much and the only offers we were getting for Gainsborough Road would have left us with a shortfall.

Now you might think that a mortgage or a bank loan would be the answer but we were both self-employed running my taxi business. And with taxi businesses being what they call “cash businesses” the cash had a tendency to … errr … evaporate long before it made its way into the accounts so the accounts only bore what might be described as “a passing resemblance” to the true state of affairs of our business. We could easily afford the kind of loan that we needed but the accounts didn’t seem to bear it out.

So what we did was that we scratched around for work – any kind of work at any price and it didn’t matter at all if we were never ever going to be paid to do it as long as it looked good on paper – and heaved it into the accounts of the taxi business. It vastly inflated our “recorded” turnover and made everything look so impressive. So much so that the Bank loved our figures and started to heave huge wads of cash at us.

Luckily – and I mean luckily – the chain collapsed. The house we were interested in was taken off the market and so we took mine off and handed the cash back. And why “luckily”? For the simple reason that going to dubious, if not spurious means to inflate your company’s turnover for the purpose of getting an additional loan from a bank or a building society almost inevitably guarantees you a one-way ticket to Shrewsbury nick (or in Nerina’s case, Styal) because sooner or later your little fraud and deception will be uncovered.

Running my taxi business for eight years taught me an awful lot and many of the things that I learnt I would have been better off not knowing. But then again what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and I had a few incredibly lucky escapes. When I realised all of the risks that I had been running it completely spoiled my appetite for nefarious activities and I certainly wouldn’t do it again. It’s not something that I would advise anyone else to do. If you need to go to these lengths to support your lifestyle then you need to change your lifestyle to one that you can support and if you can’t do that on your own then you need to find professional help.

-6

Wednesday 30th December 2009 – You may remember …

neris les bains allier france illuminations… a few weeks ago that I was in Neris-les-Bains looking for a shower (of course they were all in Milton Keynes but the less said about the OUSA Executive Committee the better) – anyway, here’s a pic taken there in the dark earlier this evening.

In the dark???

Yes, I had just come out of the swimming baths where I had a really good soak (and I’m not taling about anyone from the OUSA …. “you’ve done that already” – ed) but even so, I was only in there for an hour.

So what was going on?

This morning I braved the torrential rainstorm that we were having (we had 21mm of rain today and it’s still going) and went to Montlucon for Caliburn’s new tyres. And of course, now that we have two new ordinary ones on the back and two expensive snow tyres on the front it isn’t ever going to snow again, is it? That took me to midday and so I went for a wander around NOZ, the grot shop, where I bought a pile of cook-in sauces, and then to the Auchan where in between all of the shopping I bought 2 DVDs in the sale, at €2.99 each. One is the John Wayne classic Fort Apache and the second is the legendary Return Of The Pink Panther. Easily the best of the Pink Panther films and that by a long chalk too. So imagine my consternation, if not horror, at Christmas 2006 when I discovered to my chagrin that the film was for some unaccountable reason not included in The Pink Panther Film Collection (6 Disc Box Set). And here it is, at €2.99!

That took me to about 13:50 and I was planning to go home then but I was irresistibly lured to Brico Depot, and wasn’t that a big mistake? I was rummaging around looking for cable connectors as I’m not very happy using chocolate blocks. I saw some things that looked suitable and asked to speak to a vendor. And waited. And waited. And waited. eventually someone appeared, served a few other people, and then came over to me.
“Is it you who is looking for assistance?” she asked
“Yes, for about 15 minutes” I replied petulantly.
“Well, I’m all on my own” she said
“So am I” I stated “so why don’t we get married so that we can be together?” No wonder they all hate me in these French shops.

But that wasn’t even half of it. Every so often they have what are called “arrivages” – products that they buy in specially and are priced to sell. And on offer today were kitchen worktops – 1800×600 for all of €15:99 instead of the usual €49:99 or so. Most of the colours were pretty awful but there was one that caught my eye – a kind-of false marble effect of light grey, white and pink speckle. I need just under three for my kitchen but this is also the colour that will go nicely in the bathroom, which, you may recall, for reasons of other products having been bought in Brico Depot’s clearance sale and also a pile of second-hand tiles I have lying around, is going to be … errr … pink. Anyway, I need about four of these lengths all told – and they just happened to have four left.

I also need some 500mm pine shelving to make the bases of the units in the kitchen. Three of these in fact, and they just happened to have three left. So even though I am a long way away from making my units I now have a lot of the stuff that I need. I also have a wallet that is considerably lighter.

At the cash desk there was this ever-so-sweet young girl cashing up. She had a really difficult job looking for the barcode labels.
“They’ve been put on in the wrong place” she lamented.
“I bet it’s all Pierre (one of the guys who works there who plays football for Pionsat)’s fault” I replied
“Do you know him?” she asked.
“Ohhh yes, he plays football for our local team“.
“He was in my class at school” she chirped.
The world is getting too flaming small for my liking.

neris les bains allier france christms illuminationsAnd so, having left Brico Depot at 16:15 that was how come I ended up leaving the swimming baths at Neris at 18:20. And I encountered a cat – a huge black moggy – in Neris. it came for a stroke and a cuddle and even let me pick it up. It’s a long time since I’ve stroked a nice pussy like that and it was ever so contented and looked set to stay there for ever. I really must get a cat when I settle down. But then a car pulled up across the road, a woman got out and went through the gate and up the path towards the front door of this house, and Minou leapt out of my arms and legged it up the path after her. Cupboard love!

I was musing earlier, like I do every so often. In the comments section of this blog, yours truly (who lives in France and is white-skinned) was discussing with Rhys (who lives in the USA and is white-skinned) have been having a discussion about where is the best place to leave a bomb in a Boeing 747. Now just imagine if we lived in the UK and were brown-skinned? we would be hit with a “possessing information likely to be of use to terrorists” and “conspiracy” and hurled into Belmarsh before you could say “Al Qaida”. Such is the situation in the UK at the moment and it’s a reflection of the racist nature of the society that the UK has become due to the level of fear and of hate that Gordon Clown and the B Liar have stirred up. And they call it a “free country”. Doesn’t it make you laugh?

And in other news, hello and welcome to Kate who has found her way here. Kate was part of a group of miscreants which which I was associated back in days of yore in the Open University and we all had many exciting adventures in the OUSA Conferencing system. It’s nice to “see” you after all this time.

-8