Tag Archives: pylon

Wednesday 17th October 2012 – I WAS LOOKING ….

…. through the stats for the past few years (the records that I have here go back to 2007) and one thing that I noticed is that this recent deterioration in the weather is occurring about 4 weeks earlier than in the previous years.

I hope that it’s not a forewarning because it won’t be very nice if it is.

Yes, last night was absolutely taters – temperature in my room dropped to 15.5°C. Hard to believe that this time last year it was still well into the 20s.

Anyway, a howling wind (good news for the wind turbines) brought the temperature up a few degrees.

This morning, after recording a few stats, I cracked on with my web site. At the moment I’m on my way to see St Andrews, the Scottish Protestant Church in Québec.

And when I finished that I went outside and emptied Caliburn of all of the pylons and the grillage that I had bought the other day.

After lunch I carried on moving stuff off the hard-standing – something that is going to take me years.

One of the difficulties I’m having is actually finding room to put stuff. But all of the old chevrons have been moved (back to where I moved them from 2 years ago) and I’ve also uprooted tons of nettles and entire root systems.

And tomorrow it will be more of the same, I reckon.

Totally frightening, what was growing in the hard-standing.

But there is an added complication in that part of the bank of the side of the hard-standing has collapsed, so I’ll need to dig that all out and then to secure it all somehow, otherwise it will just keep on slipping down and that will be a nuisance, to say the least

This tidying up of all of the nuts and screws and nails and so on is progressing apace. And it’s amazing what I’ve been finding.

It’s also turning out to be quite profitable – so far £0:15 and a token for the spin dryer in the laundry.

Spend, spend, spend, hey? 

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Monday 15th October 2012 – I HAD AN …

… exciting, if unexpected afternoon out today.

Not this morning though.

I put in a good stint on the computer and wrote the match report for yesterday’s game at Pionsat, which is now on line.

It makes rather depressing reading but nevertheless it needed to be done.

And it took me all the way through to 14:30 – there was a lot to write.

Meantime, I had had a phone call. It seems that the window that Rosemarie had bought had turned out to be the wrong size – Terry had given her the dimensions of the hole, not the window.

It meant that the window needed to be taken back and exchanged – involving some fairly hefty negotiation and it seemed that I was required for that.

And so rather like Janet in Tam Lin, round I went to Rosemary’s I duly went this afternoon, “as fast as go can me” and we loaded up the window.

Being somewhat … errr … financially-challenged at the moment (I can’t get to my Belgian bank’s Montlucon branch right now and remember, I wasn’t anticipating being here at the moment), Rosemary very kindly put some diesel in Caliburn, and off we went.

Changing the window was no problem (except that they didn’t have one in and so it needed to be ordered) but no refund of any difference.

I don’t suppose anyone could complain too much about that – Rosemarie was half-expecting an argument.

Never being backwards at coming forward, I took advantage of Rosemary’s presence and we went off to Brico Depot where I loaded up Caliburn with a pile of grillage – the mesh mats that you use when you are laying concrete onto a hard surface without any hardcore.

I also bought 4 pylons – the steel mesh reinforcing that you put inside hollow breeze blocks to support the walls so that they don’t fall down on passing children.

These come in 6-metre lengths and so we cut them down to 8×3-metre lengths that I can use inside these hollow blocks that I have here to make pillars and so on.

Nothing like having a handy volunteer, is there?

After a coffee and a chat, I came home. It’s cold and damp despite the beautiful day that we had, so I’m not going out again. I’ll save my strength for tomorrow.

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