Tag Archives: printer

Monday 22nd January 2018 – THERE’S NO TIME …

… like the present to start to change into some good habits.

And so I altered the alarm call from 07:30 to 06:45. Not quite the 06:00 of the last year or two, but it’s a change in the correct direction. If I’m having difficulty sleeping, I may as well have no sleep sitting on the sofa than lying in bed.

During the night I’d been on my travels too – I think. I spent it thinking about horses in warfare and how they pull their chariot or whatever behind them – and so they are most at risk from the enemy. But if you could put something in front of them, like a giant lawnmower, and had the horse push it, it would be so much better and much more effective. And so I went off on my travels experimenting. Of course there are countless difficulties in doing this, and I seemed to be having enormous amounts of fun trying to overcome them when the alarm awoke me.

After the usual medication and breakfast I had a few things to do, that took me much more time than it ought to have done, and then I got down to the correspondence.

I can’t remember now how many letters I wrote but looking through my correspondence directory on my laptop there hasn’t been a day when I’ve written anything like as many. Having to go back through my files of paperwork – that took the time as I kept on unearthing more stuff and yet more stuff that needed attention.

And then there’s the printing too, but luckily the printer seems to be working fine just now, which makes a really good change.

Next plan was to fill in these forms that I need for my replacement driving licence. That wasn’t easy because a couple of years ago all of the Groups for vehicles changed and now bear little resemblance to what is on my licence.

So I had to spend a while researching the new legislation to see exactly what new groups I am covered to drive. And it looks as if I’m covered to drive all of them. So I’ve ticked all of the boxes and they can decide if it’s appropriate.

And here’s an added problem – as if I don’t have enough to deal with. I need a “proof of residence” less than 6 months old. And with my electricity bills being annual, the one that I have is time-expired. So I printed off a receipt for my rent from just a week or two ago – and it seems that the Estate Agents have put the wrong address on the form.

The good news though is that when someone sends you a medical report listing a description of your illness and prognosis, they ought to do it in *.pdf format – not in *.doc format because documents in that format can be edited and that surely can’t be right.

I’ve had my to walks today, and my three meals. I need to make some room in the freezer as the peppers have run out and the peas are likely to follow them. So I had a frozen potato and lentil curry. Trouble is, with taking one of those out, there seems to be less room in the freezer than there was beforehand.

It’s an early start tomorrow and I need a shower before I set off, so I shall try for an early night. And – I hope – a decent sleep.

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Sunday 21st January 2018 – TODAY WASN’T …

… the day that I wanted either.

We started off with another depressing night where it took me ages to go off to sleep. And then I was awake again just before 07:00. Mind you I’d been on my travels during the night. Or, rather, someone else had. One of the football clubs whose results I always check is Greenock Morton in Scotland and someone from the club came to see me and chatted for three hours to me about the future plans of the club, all of which were very interesting.

But never mind 07:00 – it was more like 08:30 when I crawled out of bed – mainly for the reason that any male of my age will immediately recognise.

After medication and breakfast, I vegetated for quite a while (well, it IS Sunday) before I did anything. And when I felt like it, I put away the washing that had been drying in front of the radiator for a couple of days.

And having spent a couple of days looking for the little laptop that I take with me on my travels and which I couldn’t find it, I cme across it, in its little portable carry-case. What a silly place to leave it, hey?

Much of the day has been spent going through another portable external drive that I came across on my travels and discovering another pile of unsorted photos on there that relate to one of my trips to Canada.

They’ll need to be sorted at some time or other but I couldn’t face it this afternoon.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Going through the box that I was unpacking, I found two new ink cartridges. I’m hoping that they are for the Hewlett Packard that I have here (I can’t think why else I would have brought them from the farm) and they don’t look much like the old Canon stuff to me.

There should have been a football match at St Pair-sur-Mer this afternoon but with the depressing weather continuing, I decided to give it a miss. If last night’s games were called off everywhere I couldn’t see this match taking place with the additional downpour this morning and it’s a long way to go to find out.

But I’ve been for my two walks today all the same, and got myself pretty wet too in the process. It looks as if it’s never going to stop, doesn’t it?

And for tea, another pizza. And I’m going to have to stop buying the bases at LIDL. Last week’s was rolled backwards so it took all kinds of effort to get it out of the packet, and this week’s wasn’t any better and ended up being quite a mess. I’ll have to bite the bullet and buy the expensive stuff from LeClerc.

So back to work tomorrow, and I need to continue to write the pile of letters that are awaiting me. I’m out on Tuesday so I want to have as many as possible done for then so that I can post them off.

I shall take full advantage of this printer while it’s still working.

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Friday 19th January 2018 – MYSTERY SOLVED.

new harbour gates port de granville harbour manche normandy franceI now know what the shipping containers and the crane down in the harbour are all about. And unfortunately it’s nothing to do with a nes ship coming to the port.

I’ve always said that if you want to know the answer to the question you need to ask the question, so while I was out and about on my travels I went down to where everything was assembled and buttonholed a workman.

The harbour here is tidal as you know, but there’s the deep-water bit where the larger visitors tie up and that has a pair of tidal gates across it so that the water stays in the basin so the ships will stay afloat.

And it seems that we are going to hae new lock gates. All of the pieces are here, and the containers are simply tool stores and offices and the like.

So with the new gates we might be having some new visitors. Who knows?

I had another miserable night last night. I ended up watching a film – Austin Powers as it happens – and as you know any film normally sends me to sleep after 5 minutes. But not last night. I could have watched the film two and three times over had I so desired and I still would have been awake.

But I must have gone to sleep at some point, because I remember waking up. Still dark, long before the alarm. And by the time the alarm sounded, I was up, medicated and well on the way to breakfast.

It didn’t look very hopeful outside with yet more driving rain, but round about 09:45 the rain stopped and we had a very watery sun. “If I don’t go now I never will” I mused, and so off I set.

One of the places on my travels was the laboratory. There was an extra charge that I had to pay because they had to examine part of it again. Apparently I’m missing something in my body (and it’s not a brain).

And then to LIDL where I bought a baguette, some pears and some biros.

Now here’s a thing.

I need a black pen to fill in a computer input form, and there in one of the bins at LIDL were several packs of pens, some coloured blue and others coloured black. So I bought a pack of black ones, like you would – only to find that they have blue ink inside. How weird is that? I’ll go back tomorrow and buy some blue ones and see what colour ink they have.

On the way back, I called at the port as above, and then staggered (because it really was a struggle) back up the hill for a coffee.

This afternoon I made a start on the correspondence. And that wasn’t as easy as it might have been either because the last time that I updated my letterhead was in 2011 and a lot has happened since then. I had to redesign it completely from scratch.

Then I needed a pile of attachments so first of all I had to scan in a few documents. And then spend the next half hour looking for them in the laptop. But then I could write my letters (I managed three today) and print them, as well as all of the attachments.

And not only that, I could print off a few things. It’s a good job that when I received my French driving licence back in 2009 I scanned it into the laptop, because now I have a reasonable facsimile to use with my “declaration of loss” if I’m help up in a police spot-check. It’s good to finally have a working printer

It’s always a good plan to scan your official identity documents for cases such as this.

storm st pair sur mer manche normandy franceIt was then walkies time and as the rain was still holding off – just about – I went out for my afternoon walk around the Pointe du Roc again.

But look at that storm out there! Drifting along – and quite rapidly too – in the general direction of St Pair sur Mer. And as I watched, they got the lot too. It really was something quite impressive to see and I’m glad that it went over there and not over here.

Mind you, it did start to rain shortly after that, but nothing like what they had over there.

digger in tidal basin port de granville harbour manche normandy franceAnd down in the tidal basin the digger was out there again digging away. So I stopped to watch him for a while.

And to my surprise, there’s nowhere provided for him to dump the silt that he’s excavating. He’s just swivelling his jib around and dumping it elsewhere.

And so he can’t be dredging the basin then. It’s almost as if he’s looking for a body or something like that. I shall have to go for a walk down there sometime and see if I can find out what he’s up to.

Soup for lunch again, and tea, because I didn’t know what I fancied to eat, was baked potatoes and a tin of ratatouille. And that’s significant because that was the last tin of ratatouille from the European tinned food mountain.

Still plenty of other tins of other stuff from back then, but it’s all looking optimistic that ine day sometime soon I might clear it all out.

The walk this evening was punctuated my a couple of showers, and also by a couple of cats – I took a different route up on the walls to avoid the muddy footpath. So according to my fitbit I’ve done 113% of my daily effort today which is quite impressive.

In a short while I’ll be off to bed, and I’ve clearly earned it. I just hope that I can make the most of it.

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Wednesday 17th January 2018 – AS PROMISED …

repaired saucepan lid granville manche normandy france… yesterday, here’s a photo of my repaired saucepan lid.

I’m quite impressed with this – almost as impressed as I was with my galvanised steel dustbin. You can’t tell that it’s a repair at all and the knob actually matches the surround of the saucepan lid.

But ohhh! what an exciting life that I lead that this is the highlight of my week, hey?

As I said yesterday, today was going to be a relaxing day. And I was right too. In fact, when the alarm went off, I was in no hurry whatever to leave my stinking pit and it was more like 08:30 – never mind 07:30 – when I decided to arise.

I’d been on my travels too. In a car where the alternator light was flashing on and off. My father reckoned that the alternator was scrap but I checked it over all the same. The fan belt was fine, so I took the alternator off and started to dismantle it. It was then that I noticed that the rotor and points (on an alternator!) were rusted solid so I gave them a good soaking in penetrating oil and attacked them with a wire brush. That seemed to make the rotor turn and the points open and close so I asked my father if that might make it work. But he gave one of his usual evasive, non-committal remarks and that really was that. No chance of him ever giving any positive advice.

Once the medication and breakfast were out of the way and I had a little relax, I started to work. As regular readers of this rubbish will recall, there are several hard drives, either from old computers or external drives, going back to … errr … 1998 with all kinds of photographs on them, all confused and jumbled all over the place. So this morning I spent a couple of hours carrying on with the little project that I have on the go of sorting them out and trying to make one consistent and coherent library.

And it’s not easy either, because it wasn’t until 2007 that I started this current numbering scheme. You’ll see above that the photo of my saucepan lid is numbered 1801025.

  • 18 is the year
  • 01 is the month
  • 025 is the number – in consecutive order. And if it overflows, as it sometimes does, the first digit becomes an “a”, or a “b” and so on.

But prior to 2007 they were numbered in some kind of haphazard order, and sorting by date doesn’t help because on at least one old disk I seem to have saved them as “date modified” rather than “date created”.

So I’ll have to plod on

And that’s by no means all.

A huge pile of paperwork from last year was sorted and weeded through, and then filed away. Three or four of them actually need some kind of action, and rather smart-ish too. So tomorrow I really must organise the printer and find a way to make the cable plug stay in.

I went through my e-mails both on my server and on the EU’s intranet system and discarded well over 100 of them that were serving no useful purpose. And I’ll go back one day sometime soon and create a few directories to tidy them up properly.

The telephone has taken a bit of a bashing too. A few things there needed to be sorted out so I’ve done some of that too. There’s still a lot more that needs doing. And then there was the half-hour on the guitar, which ended with me dramatically remembering how to play the bass lines to “All Right Now”.

As the skunk said when the wind changed – “it all comes back to me now”.

For tea, my third meal of the day, I had mashed potatoes with cheese, vegetables and a veggie burger with gravy. And I think that I made far too much because I feel totally bloated.

Two walks too. It was nice when I went out this afternoon but there was a storm brewing in the distance over by Jersey and it started to rain when I was about 400 metres from home.

It rained for the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening too, but after I’d been out on my evening walk for 5 minutes, the rain stopped and the sky cleared.

So let’s hope that the weather improves because it’s Thursday, and my walk right across town and up the hill to LIDL.

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Monday 29th May 2017 – LAST NIGHT …

… we had the most tremendous storm that I have seen for years.

It started off at 23:00 exactly with the most terrific crash of thunder that rattled just about everywhere in the vicinity. And then the heavens opened and we got the lot.

I’m not sure how long the storm went on for but it was a good couple of hours at least – although I did eventually go to sleep.

And I was on my travels too. A Rock concert that I wanted to see and I ended up seeing it from backstage. A group of about five young men who should have been a rock group but it was more like a Boys Band with them dressed in suits. And I was horrified to notice that they were actually miming, not singing or playing their instruments.

After breakfast I headed off out, and had to swim across the entrance hall as it seemed that the whole of last night’s rain entered the building. Good job I’m on the first floor, isn’t it? It was still raining when I went to pick up the baguette.

Back here, I spent the morning shortening the lace curtains. Well, not exactly shortening them but measuring them and pinning them up so that they don’t drag on the windowsill. In time, I’ll sew them up and cut off the excess. That’s a nice job for a cold winter evening I reckon.

Apart from that, not much else. I rigged up a printer (and that was no easy task either) and printed off a form that I need to complete – which I duly did. It needs a rubber stamp from the Bank and that was my project for this afternoon but I wasn’t going out anywhere in this weather.

As for the oven chips, they were a disappointment. They had been in there for 30 minutes, not 20, and at 230°C, not 210°C, and they still weren’t cooked. It’s rather a disappointment if you ask me.

Another item of interest is that every now and again I develop a raging thirst. When I was in that hostel it was almost perpetual but I’ve not noticed it for a while. However today, I’ve had four or five mugs of coffee and demolished 1.5 litres of soft drink. Is this a sign of something?

So now it’s bedtime. And if the weather is better I’ll be off on a Great Trek down to the Bank and, subsequently, to the Post Office.

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Monday 24th April 2017 – REGULAR READERS OF THIS RUBBISH WILL RECALL …

… that on several occasions over the past years I’ve had to go out to look at some non-functioning wind turbines installed by a company that had its office in Montlucon.

And so today, it was more of the same. A 10Kw wind turbine installed on a mast just about 12 metres high (in order to sneak under the local planning laws but totally ineffective of course) and not functioning at all.

“When you switch it on and the blades turn round, there’s a pile of smoke that comes out of it”

One glance told me everything that I needed to know about it. There’s a water leak in the shed roof that drips right on top of the transformer. The transformer and all of the connections are thoroughly corroded and the corrosion is causing a short circuit. And that’s burnt out the inverter.

Furthermore, the owner has tried to connect up an exterior socket to the system and fractured the bus bar while he was doing it. Loads of other things too, and I could go on for ever … "not with a bayonet through your neck you couldn’t" – ed … about all kinds of things.

But anyway, I’m not getting my hands dirty fixing it.

He’s paid €32,000 for the installation, and he’s been quoted over €10,000 for the repairs from another company. But that’s not ever going to fix his problems – not until he can mount it about 30 metres higher. He told me that when it was working he had 7.5KW out of it, but I’ve heard that before, especially with the measuring equipment provided by the installers.

I had a bad night last night.

A nightmare, in fact that awoke me at 12:40. It concerned a group of women who had been condemned for some crime or other and the penalty was to walk towards a defending army well-dug in in the ruins of some bombed buildings, and the defenders were to hurl rocks at them to stone them to death. But their husbands or partners had to be handcuffed to them as they walked down the road, themselves running the risks of being stoned to death. One woman had no partner so I was chained to her. And the couples parted one by one, until it was our turn to leave the bus. And it was at that point that I awoke, sweating.

It took me ages to go back to sleep, but when I did, I was well away until the alarm went off. never felt a thing.

After breakfast I had a little relax (like I have to do these days) and then I went to tear to bits the load in Caliburn. I needed the printer (that I found) but couldn’t find the paper. In the end, the landlady let me have a few sheets. Then I could print off the letters that I had typed the other day.

For lunch I went down to Donville les Bains and the dunes where I was yesterday. I had a nice relaxing couple of hours lying on the sand in the sun while I ate my butties. It was beautiful there, and quiet too.

The tide was out as well, and consequently all of the oyster beds and whatever they are were clearly visible. A few tractors and trailers were out there harvesting, and presumably passing the produce around.

After all, you mustn’t be selfish with your shellfish.

Returning from my trip out into the wilderness at Hocquigny, I went to Brehal-Plage where we had been on Saturday and reclined amongst the rocks for a while to read my book.

And it was here that I had a sudden thought – I had an urgent letter to post and I had forgotten. Although the Post Office was now closed, luckily, the Super-U at Brehal sold those pre-stamped envelopes so I bought a pack of 10 and I could post my letter.

Mind you, I almost didn’t make it there. Some stupid old woman in a Mercedes pulled out of a side road right in front of me, forcing me to slam on my brakes, and then came to a stop 50 yards further down while she made up her mind which way to go. And so she had a double blast on the horn for good measure.

Tea was a kidney bean and mushroom tomato whatsit, with enough left over for another three nights. I’ll have an early night tonight and hopefully sleep right through without any nightmares to awaken me.

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Friday 2&st April 2017 – HAVING FALLEN …

… asleep early last night in the middle of the film that I was watching, I was wide-awake at 05:30 and up and about drinking a coffee at 06:20, long before breakfast.

Breakfast was another one of those discussion mornings and I’m really not up to that at all so early in the morning. I cleared off rather quickly into my little room where I had a few things to do, including to write a letter (and I’ll have to hope that the printer that I have brought with me in Caliburn is up to the job).

What with one thing and another, it was almost midday when I managed to leave here, and by the time I reached Bent-Tin Ci … errr … Netto at Brehal, all of the bread had gone.

But never mind. The Super U was around the corner and I bought a baguette there. 2 minutes to choose my baguette and about an hour to pay for it. And I’d probably still be there now had a woman not let me pass in front of her at the check-out queue.

plage les salines bricqueville sur mer manche normandy franceHaving organised lunch, I headed off for the tidal road and the sand dunes at les Salines by Bricqueville sur Mer where I went the other day.

There were quite a few people there today and several children, all of whom were having loads of fun in the sun and wind. I made my butties and I can now understand why they are called SANDwiches.

at least I had some more vegan cheese that I had bought in Leuven. Spreading paste or hummus here would have been interesting.

boat into water slipway plage les salines bricqueville sur mer manche normandy franceHaving eaten my butties and fruit I lay down out of the wind as much as I could to have a nice doze in the sun, because it really was a warm day.

However, my little doze didn’t last too long, and it wasn’t the kids who awoke me either. We had a big tractor that turned up on the slipway in mid-afternoon, and it was towing a rather large cabin-cruiser-type of boat

boat into water slipway plage les salines bricqueville sur mer manche normandy franceAnd that wasn’t the only excitement either.

Coming up from the southern direction from Saint-Martin-le-Vieux was another tractor that was towing another boat.

This wasn’t a cabin cruiser or anything like that but it seemed to be a small fishing boat. We’ve seen plenty of them out there fishing but I wouldn’t have expected them to have gone into the water at a place like this

boat into water slipway plage les salines bricqueville sur mer manche normandy franceThe larger cabin cruiser was however first in the queue to be launched, and the procedure gathered quite a crowd because it was really was quite a complicated procedure.

If you look very closely at the image, you’ll notice that the tractor that pulled the boat down the slipway has cleared off and we’ve acquired another, different type, something like the tractors that have big wheels and are high off the ground for working in the vinyards.

boat into water slipway plage les salines bricqueville sur mer manche normandy franceAnd so eventually the trailer with the cabin cruiser was shunted into the water and the cabin cruiser floated free and cleared off.

It really looked as if the fishing boat was to be next, but the tractor pulled it up the slipway and they cleared off into the sunset.

It wasn’t long before I cleared off in the sunset too. The sun started to go lower in the sky and the wind was going colder and colder. You can only stick it out for so long, as the bishop said to the actress, and I came back here.

It’s hard to read a book and drink a coffee when a cat wants to sit on your knee, and it goes without saying that the cat won in the end. But then I came back in here.

Tea was the last of the stuff that I had made the other night, lengthened with a tin of green beans. And now I’m ready for yet another early night.

And it goes without saying that the two phone calls from estate agents that I was expecting today – not one of them called me back.

What a shower!

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Sunday 14th June 2015 – THAT WAS AN EXCITING DAY …

… today, wasn’t it?

I’ve set foot out of the house twice, I think. And that’s no surprise because it’s been another thoroughly wet and miserable day today. In fact, had I not had to leave my bed to go for a ride on the porcelain horse at 09:15 I would probably still be in bed now, and I wouldn’t have lost one minute’s sleep worrying about it.

The day started as it meant to go on, with the gas in the little stove up here running out while I was making my coffee. What a way to start the day! And then I caught up a little with some work on the laptop.

From here I went on with the tidying up that I started yesterday and you’ll certainly notice a difference here today. There’s a huge area of empty nothingness now between the door and the back of the bed-settee. everything that was hanging around there has been moved into the bedroom or downstairs to be turned into rubbish.

This led on to another project too. I’ve always had printer issues here as you know, and I inherited an HP 2100-series all-in-one printer. No installation disk so I’ve had to configure it manually but that didn’t enable most of its functions.

Searching for something else on the internet (as you do) I came across a FAQ “I can’t find the installation disk for my HP 2180”. And underneath was the answer – “you can download it from ‘this link’ “. So off I went and sure enough, there it was. And I set to and downloaded it.

218mb, the drivers, which makes a mockery of the old days when I had a 40mb hard drive on my 386, or when I ran my taxi business in the mid-80s with an Apple II that ran everything off a floppy disk of 128kb.

8 hours it took to download, but it seems to work and who knows? I might even have a printer here for a while.

And so with that and the tidying up, you can’t say that the day was wasted.

-2

Monday 20th October 2014 – I’VE HAD SOME MORE …

… unexpected visitors today. I happened to glance out of the window this afternoon and there was an old woman and three kids, two aged about 8 and a girl aged about 13 or 14, staring at the house. Further enquiried revealed that the old lady used to live here years ago and she just happened to be passing.

She insisted on a guided tour, which was quite embarrassing given the state that the place is in, but I suppose that I couldn’t turn her down, and she went off quite happy. She says that she might have some photos of the house from 60 years ago, and she’ll let me have copies if she finds them.

It disrupted my afternoon considerably, but I know that had I turned up like this at somewhere where I had lived 60 years ago, I would have hated to have been turned away.

But I do wonder who is going to be the next person to turn up here.

This morning I was up and about comparatively early and after breakfast I dealt with a pile of paperwork and put a load of web pages on line. You can now quite happily follow my journey around the Saguenay.

I also wrote a couple of letters that needed doing. And after a good hour or so’s work, I finally have a working printer here. I’m not sure how long it will keep going because, as regular readers of this rubbish will remember, I get through printers here about every 3 months and I’ve no idea why.

I also loaded up Caliburn with all of the clothes that I’ve sorted out. I needed to go to the Post Office of course to post the letters so on the way back I went to the dechetterie in PIonsat to drop them off seeing as how they have a clothing skip there. I also picked up a couple of rolls of yellow sacks as there’s a waste paper collection in Pionsat next Wedneday.

Back here I attacked the waste paper mountain until I was interrupted, and once my visitors had left I carried on again until knocking off time.

You still can’t see much of a difference in here unfortunately, but I must be on the right lines somewhere with all of this stuff that’s being binned.

-2

Thursday 23rd January 2014 – I FINALLY MANAGED …

… to pick up Cécile’s letter this morning, after all these weeks.

And so seeing as how I was going to have a morning out, I decided to make the most of it, especially as it was once again p155ing down.

First stop was the Mairie. I need a form to say that I’m still alive (and judging by the smell around here, you would be excused for wondering) and the best person to do that is the Mayor of the village. They have a nice big and official-looking stamp that gives a really impressive look to any kind of document.

Then off to Cécile’s. I need to put an accompanying letter with this form and so I typed one out last night and saved it onto a memory stick. Also, Cécile sent me an authorisation to collect her mail, and so both of these needed printing. I have three printers here – one stopped working when it fell off the desk, the second only prints in blue and only when it feels like it, and the third one, that I rescued from Marianne’s, that ran out of ink on me.

So round to Cécile’s and her printer and – guess what?

Quite right. Hers ran out of ink too but there’s an override button on it and so we ended up with documants in light grey ink.

Nevertheless, the authorisation was accepted at the Post Office and I collected the letter. And then off to Pionsat and the Post Office there. That’s a real Post Office and so I posted my letter and form, and also a packet for Malou. When I was stuck in Brussels with no ‘phone charger for the old Nokia, she very kindly sent me one. And she’s a big fan of Edith Piaf and Marianne had a German version of the film La Vie En Rose. Malou speaks German fluently, and so that’s now on its way to Luxembourg.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, that was the morning gone. And so I’ve spent all of the afternoon firstly, picking up the bits of wood from the construction project to use as firelighters, and then sweeping up the sawdust for the composting toilet. It’s impressive that I can actually do that.

Secondly, I started to load up the new shelves. The little cheap lightweight shelf unit that I put in the downstairs room as a temporary measure, that’s now completely empty. There’s a pile of stuff gone out of the barn onto the new shelves, and a pile of stuff out of the verandah has followed it. And, much to my surprise, the shelves aren’t even half-full. There’s tons of room for more stuff.

This evening, seeing as I was in a contemplative frame of mind, I watched The Wild Bunch. Peckinpah rather prolongs the violence unnecessarily, I reckon, but apart from that, it is one of the most magnificent films that has ever been made and the performances of William Holden and Ernest Borgnine have no parallel in anything that I have seen elsewhere. It’s a film that is in my Top 5 Films of All Time and quite rightly so.

So what’s the plan for tomorrow then?

When I dug out the flooring to put in a large battery box, I made the box the size to suit the Hawker batteries that I use. However, one or two of them are starting to creak a little and I can no longer obtain the replacements, and so I bought a while ago some massive 200 amp-hour batteries.

The battery box isn’t big enough to take them and so I’m going to be making a start on digging out some more flooring and enlarging the box.

And why 200 amp-hour batteries? Why not go for anything bigger? The answer to that is a simple question of logistics. I can just about manage to pick up a 200 amp-hour battery on my own. Anything bigger and it will be beyond the realms of possibility, and I have long-since given up the idea of doing anything that I’m not able to do on my own.

-5

Friday 22nd November 2013 – WELL, WE HAD THE SNOW…

… and more than enough of it too. In fact, I don’t think that it stopped all day.

First job was of course to clear off the solar panels just in case the sun decided to show itself (which it didn’t, of course) and then after breakfast I had a play with the printer that I inherited from Marianne. I finally managed to get it to work but of course it ran out of ink almost immediately – par for the course I reckon.

I went round early to Liz’s seeing as the weather was bad, and I was helped on my way by the Parisian who brushed the snow off a few branches to let me pass. He was smiling and we had a little chat too – dunno what’s come over him, being sociable. I hope that he keeps it up – it’s so much nicer around here when everyone gets on with everyone else.

We had a quick lunch at Liz’s and then it was off to Gerzat to record the December Radio Anglais programmes, as the snow was falling quicker and quicker and the roads were becoming worse and worse.

On the way back, we made an executive decision and went to the Carrefour at Riom to do our shopping. We drive right past it and it would save both of us an unnecessary trip out on Saturday – not advisable if the weather gets any worse.

On the way back, the roads were more and more difficult and so I forewent my usual evening coffee. I dropped off Liz and her shopping, and made my way home – via the Intermarché at Pionsat because I remembered a couple more things that I had forgotten.

I made it home safely, which is more than two other vehicles did – slid sideways into ditches. And one of them was a 4×4 and that doesn’t surprise me because people who own them think that they can do anything and drive just as fast as they did before. That’s nonsense because these modern 4x4s are not built like an old “Series” leaf-sprung Land-Rover and when people hear stories of 4x4s being friven flat-out in all kinds of adverse weather conditions, they don’t realise that “flat-out” in an old “Series” leaf-sprung Land-Rover was 40mph.

So now I’m back here, battened into the attic with the fire going full-blast. I have everything that I need so i’m not moving until Monday afternoon.

-6

Saturday 22nd June 2013 – MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE …

les guis virlet puy de dome france… house I was confronted by vegetation the like of which I have very rarely seen.

It’s all very well with “the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye” but I bet that the weeds round here aren’t so far off that right now.

There was no path down to the house either and with nothing with which to hack my way through the brush I had to wade my way through the shrubbery, being nettled and brambled all the way.

Not very pleasant at all. and while I could just about make my way in via the verandah, it’s out of the question to go in by the front door.

I suppose that what I should really have done was to ask someone to nip round with the strimmer, or strim round with the nipper – one or the other. But it’s too late now.

As for the house itself, it’s as if no-one has lived there for a hundred years. Cobwebs and all kinds of things all over the place. All in all, very depressing.

However, I do have to say that I did feel at home there, more than anywhere else, and how I wish that I could go back on a permanent basis. I can’t wait for all of these issues in Brussels and elsewhere to be finished.

I also made a startling discovery too. I was looking for the keys to the barn and after a while I did discover them – in one of the barn doors, which was wide open.

Yes, and for about a month or so too.

I remember going in there to pick up a bottle of stuff to drink before setting off for Fromentine and then Brussels last time I was there. Ahh well …

Another depressing item is that my printer is not working. It’s already only printing in blue but now it’s not printing anything at all and I was there for half an hour trying to fix it.

I never seem to have any luck with printers – Pooh Corner is littered with all kinds of abandoned printers that have never seemed to keep going for long.

But at least I now know how I’m going to do the shower room. It involves the abandonment of one of the projects that I had in mind but it can’t be helped.

For that particular project, I need another 10cms on the width and while it is possible to invent a work-around, it involves all kinds of contortions with the plumbing and the pipework and at the end of the day, it just isn’t going to be worth the extra effort.

It won’t look as nice as I wanted it, but then again, since when did I ever care about aesthetics?

-2

Friday 16th November 2012 – I’M BACK HOME NOW.

which is something of a surprise.

What isn’t a surprise though is that it’s long after midnight, which is some kind of indication of how much I had to do today.

I nipped out at 09:15 to drop the football club photos off at the new printer’s in Pionsat and then to go to Marcillat-en-Combraille to record my Radio Anglais rock music programme for half an hour or so.

For once, the people at Radio Tartasse were properly organised and I managed to have everything finished by 10:25, and that makes a pleasant change.

From there I went round to Cécile’s, She was having problems with one of her electric radiators – it didn’t seem to be working – and wondered if I could help her out.

So off I duly went to find that lunch had been prepared, which was very nice of her. I’m all in favour of that as you know. I’ll do almost anything for a cup of coffee and a home-made vegan salad.

Anyway, as far as the radiator goes, the fuse seemed to be fine but there seemed to be no power to the appliance. I disconnected the radiator, fitted a standard plug and plugged it into a standard socket.

Sure enough, it fired up as it should so there must be a fault in the wiring in the wall somewhere. Either that or there’s a bad connection at the fuse box end.

So that was that, and then my attention was drawn to a couple of other things that a quick turn of a screwdriver would put right straight away.

But to be quite honest though, I think that we spent more time talking than working, and I didn’t return home until just now.

I’m really going to have to get cracking chez moi though if I want to make any reasonable progress.

-5

Thursday 15th November 2012 – THE SHOWER ROOM FLOOR …

… is almost up

SHOWER ROOM FLOOR LES GUIS VIRLET puy de dome franceJust two boards left to pull up but they aren’t going to be easy as I can’t get the circular saw in to trim them off the boards that run through the bedroom.

For that, I shall have to resort to some heavy engineering.

And I’m glad that I decided to take it up anyway, as two of the boards are pretty rotten. They weren’t going to hold much up.

All of that means that the beams will need to be treated with xylophene just in case there’s anything living there that shouldn’t be.

home made shelf unit stair cupboard les guis virlet puy de dome franceYou might be wondering where everything has gone, because the last photo that I took showed it all covered over with junk.

So here, while I have the camera handy, is the cupboard at the back of the stairs with everything arranged thereupon.

And you can see that there’s plenty of room left for more stuff – but that’s never going to be a problem around here, is it?

This morning though, I read through everything that I had written this week, made a few corrections and then printed it off. That takes ages with my sick little printer but at least it’s all done now.

I reckon that there’s enough stuff now in the pipeline for three months, which is just as well.

I’ve also been inundated with phone calls again. I don’t know what it is, but I’m clearly doing something right.

But as a result of all of this, tomorrow I have to go to the printer’s, then to Marianne’s, then to the Radio Tartasse at Marcillat-en-Combraille and then round to Cécile’s – all before midday.

I’ll be having my work cut out to do all of that.

-2

Sunday 1st May 2011 – I forgot to mention yesterday …

… that it pays to study my website, and study it in depth too. And I’m not joking either. Long-term readers will recall that back in 2002 I went to Cheyenne in Wyoming. While I was there I went for a wander around a xeriscape project, and I told you all about it.

Anyway , while I was in the Auchan on Saturday it was the gardeners’ fair and they were having all kinds of spot-quizzes. And one of the questions was “what kind of plant is a xeriphile?” Of course, having been to a xeriscape site, Yours Truly knew the answer to this – he was the only one in the hypermarket who did, and he won a tray of 12 marigolds. And so don’t let anyone tell you that what I write about is a waste of time and effort. You might win a tray of 12 marigolds too.

Meanwhile, Sunday is a day of rest – or so it ought to be if you dodn’t get these stupid “you have just received an important message – please ring …”. If I ever find out who is behind that kind of message they won’t ever play football again, that’s for sure.

And so eventually I had breakfast, and then finished off the auto-entrepreneur sessions for the radio – which took me up to lunchtime. And then, with the water temperature on 50°C, a nice windy afternoon with bright sunshine, that was the cue for a load of washing. And I’m glad I did it too because now the two water butts are empty again. That means that tomorrow I can install the new improved system of connections and not have to worry too much about wasting any water, although with just about 50 litres in store I’m going to be struggling if it doesn’t rain by the weekend.

In the evening I went round to Terry and Liz’s to return the trailer, pick up my roof ladder, get Liz to show me how to change the ink cartridges in the printer (which is flaming complicated for such a simple task) and run through Tuesday’s radio programmes. But it’s not easy seeing as it’s the final day of Liz’s grandson being there – he and his mum and dad go home tomorrow.

So with a working printer and a roofing ladder I’m now back home. But for some reason I’m having that feeling – you know – the one that you have when you put your foot on a step and it isn’t there.

-2