… afternoon at the swimming baths in Commentry. Glorious hot weather, I was all sweaty, what more could I say?
The sides of the pool were open and people were disporting themselves on the terrace and on the lawn (picnicking allowed) and the pool was packed out. So much so that I was going up and down the pool in one of the swimming lanes.
I was there for well over two hours too which is something of a record. But then again, there was so much to see. Ohh yes – I can still chase after the women at my age. I just wish that I could remember why.
And why was I all hot and sweaty? That was because I’d been mauling about half a tonne of tiles and cement about.
Caliburn is now loaded up with tiles for the shower room. You can see in the photo what I’m having. I’m not having those joining pieces though. I’ve bought some “different shades of grey” mosaic tiles, the type where you can cut the string with scissors. That way, if I start from the bottom with the darker tiles and start from the top with the lighter tiles, the gap in the middle can be filled quite easily without the aid of a tile cutter.
Quite astonishingly, I’d been around all of the usual places, done two laps around Brico Depot and loaded up Caliburn by just 11:45. Having the Dawn Chorus wake me up in the morning is an excellent idea. I even had time to go and buy the glass for the window above the shower room door before they closed for lunch.
A trip around LeClerc (where I remembered to change the empty gas cylinder for a new one) and round the Auchan, and I was away from there by 13:45 and in the pool at Commentry by 14:30.
I’d seen a few old cars on my travels too. This is a Unic pick-up that I saw at a tyre-fitting place in Montlucon on my way around.
Unic was a popular French car-maker before World War II, and many of the taxis that took the French troops to fight at the Marne were Unics. After the war, the company was taken over by Simca, for whom it was the commercial vehicle arm.
In 1968 the marque was sold to FIAT and in 1975 was incorporated into the IVECO mark.
You can tell by the FIAT- like badge that This pick-up is from the period 1968-75 and so it’s doing really well to be still on the road and working. and I do have to say that I was impressed by the bodywork repairs on the cab corners, but you have to resort to tricks like this with such a vehicle, as I imagine that body panels are almost non-existent.
The second interesting vehicle that I saw today is almost certainly older. This is one of the Chenard et Walcker vans that were sold by Peugeot as the D3 and D4 series from 1950 to 1965 when the model was replaced by the J7.
This os one of the later ones, as you can tell by the snout at the front. The very first models were powered by a 2-cylinder flat-twin two-stroke motor but that quickly gave was to the 4-cylinder four-stroke engine out of the Peugeot 203 and later the Peugeot 403. The 4-cylinder engines were too long to fit in the body, hence the snout.
It is possible to tell whether this is a D3A, a D3B, a D4A or a D4B, but not by me at this distance. Still, it’s pretty old and quite an interesting curio.
All of the roads around Commentry were closed for repair and so I had to come back through the town. This took me past the Market Hall, the first time for ages.
I remember the market hall as being a dreary, dingy place when I first came past here years ago, but they seem to have done it proud with a programme of modernisation. It looks so much better now that ever it did before.
So that was my day – another expensive one, but loads of interesting vehicles and a lovely day at the baths. i’m off for an early night now to make the most of it.
, was the subject of some … errr … criticism and adverse remarks despite the way that she phrased her remarks. Had I written the book I would have expressed things differently.
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by Fairport Convention. It’s the best folk-rock album ever, and I bought it to replace an old worn-out tape recording. That’s another album that has not been off my playlist for 35 years, and the “additional track” of Sandy Denny singing “Sir Patrick Spens” has to be worth the price of the album alone.
by Deep Purple is another outstanding album. It’s one that impressed me back in the mid 70s when it first came out but the thing that got me was why I never ever owned a copy of it. It’s hard to imagine that it’s taken me 35 years to get my hands on a copy of it. That’s a long time.
for sale on the internet at a reasonable price and so I took the plunge. And I’m astonished! I can’t believe just how good this album is. It’s a proper jazz/blues album featuring jazz/blues played just how it ought to be played – nice long jamming tracks which – just for a change – are tuneful and meaningful and contribute to the whole. Chris Farlowe’s singing still grates on me but it actually fits in with the music, and his life performance and stage ad-libbing are just superb. “Take me Back to Lost Angeles” has taken my breath away. I can’t believe that I’ve waited so long to get to grips with this group and this album. 
book, Liz about to start work on the Memoirs of