Tag Archives: outside light

Tuesday 19th August 2014 – WELL I’LL BE …

Yes, absolutely!

Just about to go to fetch some cable trunking out of Caliburn this afternoon when a big red Honda motorcycle pulled up just outside here. A lady descended from the rear and smiled at me, which was a surprise – not something that happens every day – and then the driver came over, shook me warmly by the hand (which was also a surprise – regular readers of this rubbish will remember that most people who come here usually shake me warmly by the throat) and said “Jean-Marc”.

Well I am actually Eric, as most of you realise, but it turns out that the motorcycle rider was called Jean-Marc.

You may remember that several weeks ago on the way back from Munich, I called off at a village called Chasselas, near Macon, a village where I had stayed with a French family in my mid-teens. And now Jean-Marc, the son of the family, had come over to repay the compliment.

Yes, it’s totally astonishing. It’s 44 years since we have seen each other. And it was totally unexpected and I wasn’t in the least prepared, with stuff all over the place here. Good job that it was sunny so that we could sit outside. If it were raining, it would have been very embarrassing.

And sunny too – that’s about three days now that we’ve had some sun and I’ve had hot water. Too late to do much about it now – Jean-Marc was telling me that the grape-harvest in Macon will be a total disaster this year.

But this place is even more of a mess than usual. There’s stuff all over the place while I’m working out what to pack to take with me. And I also forgot to charge up the video camera so I had to do that as well.

I’ve also been trying to download off an old dictaphone some soundbytes – one of a Canadian diesel locomotive and and the other about a peal of bells from a Canadian church. But for some unknown reason, the lead that I have to connect the dictaphone to the computer isn’t picking up the sound. I’ll have to look further into this.

After Jean-Marc and his girlfirend left, I still had time to go up onto the scaffolding and throw piles of stuff off the top. That seems to be the usual practice these days and I was up and down the ladder for most of the evening.

But now, I have outside lights underneath the eaves to light up where I usually fall over everything when I’m out after dark. And they work too, much to my (and everyone else’s surprise). And all of the cables are in trunking made from 32mm water pipe and it all looks quite tidy, which doesn’t ‘arf make a change around here.

And no gardening today as I promised?

No, because Rosemary telephoned me to say that she might be round on Thursday. We can pull up the onions and everything else then.

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Thursday 14th August 2014 – I’VE BEEN SPENDING …

… my money again today.

I went out this morning to go to visit someone who was finishing off the work on his house as there were some bits and pieces up for sale. One of the items on sale was a solid, proper Indespension Plant Trailer – 4-wheeled close-coupled low-loader with built-in ramps, 3 metres long and built to carry a tank. It has low loader sides but they can be raised by boards so that the trailer can carry sand and gravel too and it isn’t half an impressive beast, especially when you consider that it will carry all of my scaffolding too as well as the Kubota tractor and whatever else is lying around here.

But not only that – it was what was on the trailer that caught my eye. I had a goot poke around at that and although it’s old, it was in good condition, not leaking and not smoking, and the price for the trailer and the load would have been what I would have had to pay for one of the brand new trailers that I had been looking at if I had to go to the UK to pick it up. Consequently, I bit the bullet and that was that.

I’ve got to go back with some money and then I can take a photo of my new toy and you can see what it is that I bought. UNtil then, I’ll leave you all in suspense.

Back here I put the second coat onto the fascia panel and the beams of the roof on the front of the house (at least, as far as I could reach). Then I went to lunch.

While I was eating my butty I was interrupted by a visit from a couple of people from the Mairie. They were newly-elected councillors familiarising themselves with the area, and they had a little moan about one or two things here.

And that was my clue. I explained firstly that the untidy and unkempt land isn’t mine but is actually the commune’s land. And why I can’t move my stuff around any better is that the commune hasn’t maintained the land for years so I can’t move stuff past it. ANd so if the commune wants me to do something, they need to do something first.

Furthermore, I had applied to the commune to buy the land. Readers with long memories will remember that I deposited my application on 8th May … errr … 2009 – over 5 years ago. And the commune has taken no action about my demand.

This led to an animated discussion that went on for an hour or two, and finally they saw my point. They promised that they would bring up the matter of my application at the next meeting of the council.

We shall see.

After they went, I spent a pleasant hour or so sanding down the facade of the house where I’d drilled through for the air vents and then filled it. That’s comparatively smooth now and almost ready to paint, but a sad discovery was that the crepi had dried out and so was no use at all. I need to buy some more now before I can paint the facade.

I then spent a while sorting out all of the electrical fittings and making a bracket to mount the outside light that I want to fit. And by the time I had everything ready, it was time to knock off.

It was a dull day today with just a couple of odd sunny spells – at least until about 22:30 when we had today’s torrential downpour. This summer is really getting on my nerves now.

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