Tag Archives: reseau rural combrailles

Wednesday 29th December 2010 – I FINISHED MY CD PLAYER THINGY TODAY;

car radio CD player transformed into domestic househild radio les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt’s made out of the old CD/SD card stereo out of Caliburn, a pair of speakers that I bought ages ago for the LDV, and then a pile of scrap wood I had lying around, the leftovers of various projects.

It’s really heavy and solid, which is just as it is supposed to be. No tinny rattles and reverberation, just good heavy and solid bass – exactly as I want, and it works perfectly once I worked out that it isn’t the red that’s the live cable but the yellow.

It does exactly what it is supposed to do and I’m impressed with it.

But before that I spent ages cutting up a huge pile of wood. It’s quite damp and airless but simply pulling it out of the lean-to is doing it a little good. And it won’t be long before I can start to use that room for what it is intended to be – a kind-of washroom and gas bottle store, the outside composting WC, some stairs up to the first floor and a general storage area.

It’s nice to see it emptying, and quite quickly too. In fact, if I knew where my huge sledgehammer was, I could demolish the concrete feeding troughs in there and get started on that tomorrow.

space blanket insulation plasterboard les guis virlet puy de dome franceAfter lunch I started on some more studding on the front wall and I now have another length of this space-blanket insulation on there. It won’t be long now before all of that is done, and then I can start on the plasterboarding. This will be done with the huge sheets that have the insulation built-in and they are not going to be easy to cut and manoeuvre.

But once it’s on, then that will be that indeed.

wood for firewood les guis virlet puy de dome franceFinally, I hunted around for more wood from the pile that I cut up 18 months ago and which was scattered to the four winds when we put the scaffolding up. A few more loads was recovered and piled up in the heap at the side of the lean-to and now that’s overflowing with wood with plenty more to come.

This woodpile is getting out of hand now – it’s amazing just how much wood you can have from just doing a bit of hedge-trimming.

And I’m in demand too. I’m wanted on Friday afternoon to help move a bed and then deliver it to Espinasse and then I’ve been invited to the Reseau Rural‘s New Years Day party on Saturday.

Yes, after all of the disputes that went on over the “Temoin de Whatsit” and the Teilhet goatslayers (for which I am still awaiting an apology by the way) a few years ago, you might think that my sudden surge to popularity is a sign of my own good character and likeable qualities that have been sorely missed by the members.

But the cynic in me tells me nothing of the sort.

In fact, following the spectacular collapse of the Reseau a short while ago and the general level of (dis)interest shown by anyone else, there’s only me doing anything (namely organising the Anglo-French Conversation Group) and hence there’s only me that has an active e-mail list of all the members.

And so if you want to hold a New Year party and invite everyone you need to come to me for the list of addresses. And you can hardly ask me to send out an invitation to everyone and NOT include me on the list of invitees, could you?

But then again, the definition of a cynic is someone who sees things as they are and not as they are supposed to be. And that’s me to a Tee.

Friday 26th February 2010 – I knew I’d pay for yesterday.

Yes, I wasn’t feeling anything like it today. But then again thats what usually happens so I have to make the most of it.

I started again on cutting the wood but not as quickly as yesterday. And I was interrupted for an hour or so by Claude who came round to visit, with two important pieces of news.
Firstly Beethoven has died. And that’s devastating news. He was an Old English Sheepdog and had reached the age of 16 with all his faculties more-or-less intact although he did have to burrow under the fence to escape after the young lady dogs of the area rather than leap over it as he used to in his youth. He had bags of character and was the only dog I ever took to. However this last few weeks he had developed an ulcer on his nether regions that turned out to be a cancer. The vet had given him antibiotics but it seemed that they failed to work.
The second piece of news is much more exciting. Claude hasn’t sold all his land here – he’s still kept the plot down in the forest with the ruined barn. And he tells me that yesterday when he was up here doing something or other at his old property he heard a chainsaw in the forest. So off he wandered – and caught the Parisian in flagrante delicto cutting down one of Claude’s trees. And who should be strolling down the lane right at that moment but one of the mayor’s assistants. Claude and the Parisian hate each other with a passion that goes off the Richter Scale – and I have to say that I find the Parisian gratuitously disagreeable, and catching him red-handed with an impeccable witness in attendance is an answer to Claude’s dreams. From here on in, the matter is sub judice, as you might say.

I went round to see my new neighbours as well to bid them welcome and to offer them a bottle of wine as a housewarming present.There’s no harm whatever in laying the good foundations of friendship. They are Dutch and have moved here permanently so I told them about the Anglo-French group and the activities of the Reseau Rural – even though I don’t get on with the organisers of the Reseau as regular readers will know, I still support the aims of the organisation and give it all the encouragement I can.

In other news, the first buds are coming out on the trees.

Sunday 21st February 2010 – Today got off to a really bad start.

Yes – someone rang me up this morning – at 09:41 would you believe. And what is worse is that this certain someone had already been told twice about ringing or trying to ring me on a Sunday morning while I’m having my beauty sleep – and with a face like mine I need as much beauty sleep as I can get.

The answer to this is of course simple – you transmit your message to the offender by beating it into his skull in morse code with a pickaxe handle. I have never known that to fail and it may well come to that of it happens again.

It was a gorgeous day today as well though – at least in the morning. So much so that I had the heater on in here and I also did a load of washing. But I have this magnificent way of summoning up the rain. Never mind your rain dances, or seeding clouds or whatever I just hang some washing up and down comes the rain. But not before we had 26.1 degrees in the verandah – the highest total since 21st November of our Indian Summer. Spring can’t be all that far away.

I caught up with the mailing that has been outstanding for a week and I also sent out the circular for the Anglo_French Conversation Group. And one person sent me a mail back saying “please take my name off your list”. This person is the webmaster for the Reseau Rurale – the organisation that co-ordinates the activities of the Alternative Community around here.

As you know I don’t see eye-to-eye with the Reseau following the events that I have described earlier surrounding the legendary Goatherd of Teilhet – so much so that they are refusing to e-mail me the details of their events so that I can broadcast them on my radio show (you’ve no idea how far some people will carry a vendetta – cutting their noses off to spite their faces is nothing compared to the activities of this lot).

But this takes the biscuit.

Readers of my outpourings in its previous guise will recall the events of September/October 2008 when the webmaster’s car broke down. I was out one night until after midnight trying to fix it for him and then when it was diagnosed as being irrepairable it was “run me here” “take me there” “fetch me this” “carry me that” every blasted five minutes. Not that I minded, of course – we foreigners out here are all in it together – but the moment he bought a car (and it was me who found it for him and made the appropriate enquiries about it) that was that and he hasn’t spoken to me since! That’s gratitude for you!

The answer to this though is of course “power”. You give some henpecked, downtrodden person a little bit of power and they can’t resist using it to the fullest, most extreme limits possible … and this blog is?” – ed … so really you ought to feel just a little sorry for people like that. But it makes you wonder what else goes on in their lives that they feel the need to behave like this. Still, I don’t care. I’m fed up of trying to “understand” people and “making allowances” for them – no-one does it for me after all. I think that at the end of the day the only answer is the pickaxe handle and the message in morse code.