Tag Archives: smadc

Tuesday 24th May 2011 – I know it’s not much, but …

home grown strawberry les guis virlet puy de dome france… it’s all my own and grown with my own fair hands.

Yes, the strawberries are coming into season and this evening for tea I had the four that have ripened so far. It’s impressive that I’ve got some as well after the devastating winter that we had.

It put the seal on the day too, because it was beautiful. Liz and I recorded our programmes at Radio Tartasse and Radio Arverne, and in between we went for lunch at the side of the River Sioule in Chateauneuf-les-Bains, in the glorious weather that we had.

We went from Chateauneuf to Gerzat by the scenic route through Blot and Charbonnieres and that was a gorgeous drive too – all in all it was an excellent day.

But there are changes afoot at Radio Arverne. As we suspected all along, SMADC has withdrawn its funding from our programmes. And it’s worse than that too because SMADC was leasing the radio aerial that transmits to the Combrailles, at €13,000 per annum. Radio Arverne can’t pay that and so it stops our programmes being broadcast to our own heartland.

However, all is not lost. There are a couple of other areas within range of the other transmitter that want to take the programme, and so could we continue the programmes but direct them there instead? We are open to offers, of course, but we can’t research any events to publicise because we have no contacts there. And so we’ve left it that we will still come, that we will produce our programmes, and that the regions that want to broadcast them will supply us with details of the events.

As well as that, they want us to prolong the running time of the programmes. Strangely enough, Liz and I were talking about that. We had the idea to talk about recipes, local Auvergnat ones for the Brits and British recipes for the French, and also some kind of gardening stuff – “what are you doing in the garden right now?”.

So we’ll have to wait to see what happens. it’s all confusing but then again nothing worth doing is ever easy to do.

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Tuesday 3rd May 2011 – What was so strange …

… about my posting last night was that the moment I pressed “send” there was a tremendous thunderclap outside and we had a storm – and I didn’t have any idea at all that one was brewing. We ended up with 7mm of rain and that’s about 80 litres of water in the water butts. I’m glad now that I worked on my day off.

And so this morning I needed to print off the papers for the radio programme and some other papers that I needed. Terry needed me to accompany him to the quarry for some intense negotiations, and that was effectively the morning sorted out.

At the radio station, they weren’t expecting us. According to the engineer, SMADC (the Societe Mixte pour l’Amenagedment et Developpement des Combrailles) are now not co-operating with the radio station. Nothing new there – the SMADC ceased to co-operate with us a long time ago – but I suspect some developments in this field in early course.

Back home I crashed out for a couple of hours yet again. I’m going to have to do something about this.

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Saturday 5th June 2010 – I was in Marcillat en Combraille this evening …

… for a meeting about tourism. I arrived promptly at 19:30 to find out that the meeting actually started at 17:30. At that time I was in the swimming baths at Neris les Bains.

But nevertheless I was well-entertained by the woman who runs the tourist board and towards the end of our discussion I realised why it was that I had been invited. It seems that the Allier’s equivalent of SMADC also run some kind of programme on local radio – in this case Radio Tartasse – and they are interested in an English-language programme. Of course, before I say anything I need to speak to Liz about it but I did suggest that they talk to Christian at SMADC and see about syndicating what we do for them.

donjon marcillat en combraille allier franceAfter the meeting I went for a drink with Marianne at the local hotel and in there drinking were Geoffrey and Francois from the Anglo-French group. We had a good chat about things while we were there.

On the way back to Caliburn, just as the sun was setting I couldn’t resist taking a pic of the village square and the donjon. It was just at the right time too – not too light and not too dark either – and it’s come out pretty well. It does help, having a good tripod.

new fence between field and potager les guis virlet puy de dome franceIt’s been probably the hottest day of the year today. The temperature reached as high as 35.8°, which is the highest temperature since 7th September last year.

Not much chance of having me working in that. I spent the morning watching the local farmer repair the fence at the back of the house here and then bring his cattle along, and then I spent the rest of the morning doing some work on the website.

This afternoon was shopping and nothing exciting, and then into the pool at Neris.

But I’ll tell you what – I’m noticing more and more tattoos on more and more people over here and I can’t do with tattoos at all. There was one woman in the pool, clearly in her early 50s and with a figure that most women half her age would die for – and she knew how to show it off to the best advantage too – and covered with tattoos. I just don’t know how people can do it and I don’t know what pleasure there is in it either.

There was another woman in there too – and as she went swimming past me on her back I thought of saying to her “for God’s sake don’t breathe in!”.

So here I am in my room tonight – it’s 00:20 and I’m shirtless and it’s still 27° in here, even with all of the windows open. In fact it reached 28.7° degrees in here at one point.

Heaven knows what it’s going to be like in August.

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Tuesday 30th March 2010 – Think of a well-known expression …

 … involving booze-ups and breweries.

bent coat hanger used as microphone stand support radio arverne gerzat puy de dome franceWe were in the studio this afternoon recording our radio programmes for the month of April and I must admit that I am impressed by the hi-tec equipment available here. Have a close look at the bracing support on this microphone stand. It’s terrific.

As you know, last Sunday evening Liz and I prepared our programmes for today so I sent to everyone concerned a notice telling them that I wanted their submissions by 28th March at the latest.

So having had our discussion and made our plans then of course on the 29th March we had a mail from the SMADC (Societe Mixte pour l’Animation et Developpement des Combrailles), one of these local QUANGOs, telling us about stuff we must absolutely advertise without fail!

So imagine my pleasure in writing back in saying that “these meetings are for the week 2/6 April and we recorded the programme for this week back in February so you are too late!” Some of these events also concerned communes to whom we had written requesting information and who couldn’t be bothered to reply and that got my goat too. So this afternoon I buttonholed the author of this famous mail to
1) remind him of our deadlines
2) tell him that if the communes of St Gervais and Manzat want their events published then they need to reply to MY e-mails first.
As you know, my normal method of impressing the importance of something into someone’s consciousness is to beat it into their skull in morse code with a pickaxe handle and I can see me adopting that method here if things don’t improve.

This evening it was the CREFAD meeting at St Gervais about these “cheques-service” so Liz and I turned up at the venue to encounter
1) Bill, who had been attracted to the venue by our publicity
2) a totally darkened and locked room.
The lady at the library opposite tried the door and confirmed that it was locked so we had a wander around the town to see where else it might be.

Answer = nowhere at all, but the door of the Mairie was open so we went in, and there was the Mayor. He looked at the agenda and comfirmed that the meeting room had indeed been booked by CREFAD for the evening.
“Ahhh – you must have gone to the wrong room” he insisted, and very kindly led us across the road.

But no – we had indeed gone to the correct room and yes, it was indeed locked and in darkness. That even surprised him. We even tracked down a leaflet advertising the meeting and he confirmed that we did indeed have the date, time and venue perfectly correct.

And to think that we had even advertised this meeting on our radio programme!

Anyway I’ve just written a stinking e-mail to CREFAD about this. I included the phrase “since our involvement in this radio programme and having sampled a few of the examples of the organisation of these kinds of Organisation I’m beginning to wonder if this ‘lack of seriousness’ is engrained in the region”. If they want us to advertise their meetings then they have to persuade us that they are serious. We don’t want our own credibility undermined by these sort of happenings.

And I can write mails like this now. I’m a Prima Donna … “you mean a pre-Madonna” – ed …   now so I can throw teddy out of the pram. I don’t know how they expect us to run a radio show if the kind of organisation that we have encountered today is typical of what we are likely to receive.

Honestly, you thought OUSA was bad, didn’t you?

And in other news, I have the fire on in here. It’s freezing outside.

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Tuesday 9th February 2010 – This radio programme is taking shape

We were out at the SMADC offices today – the SMADC being something like Syndicat Mixte pour l’Amenagement et Developpement des Combrailles – where we discussed our tactics for the radio programme. Christian was there with his floozy and I was there with Liz. I have plenty of ideas and Liz approves of them and as far as the SMADC and the radio station go, then I don’t imagine that they will care less as long as we do it.

Apart from that, this morning I cracked on with my plasterboarding and it’s all but finished now. All I need to do now is to join things up with the tape and then fill over it. Of course I have put my jointing tape somewhere safe – so safe in fact that I can’t find it now. That’s a badger! But as soon as I find it and tape things up I can start to do the ceiling – with tongue-and-grooving. I can do that on my own and I don’t have any inhibitions as to how it’ll look.

And Claude came round. Yesterday finished him off for good and he wants to pause until Monday. He’s getting his son up over the weekend to move the heavy objects ready for us to load on Monday. But on Monday Terry is giving blood, Tuesday Liz and I are in studio and on Wednesday we are all at the bank. This timetable for moving Claude is shrinking rapidly.

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Friday 29th January 2010 – Today was another day …

…when I didn’t do a lot. Sleeping through the alarms and waking up at 10:15 didn’t help for a start!

But then it was bright outside (well, whatever light was passing through the clouds) and nothing registering on the charge meters so first job was to shin up on the roof and clean off the solar panels. I can’t wait to get some trace heating wire up there so I can melt the snow rather than brushing it off.

And while I was up there Claude passed by. He wanted a good chat and he was here for ages so it was gone 12:00 before I could even begin to think about breakfast. But never mind – I started off again by doing some more weeding down the garden where my new vegetable plot will be. I couldn’t keep it up for long though because it was freezing outside – one of those damp biting colds that go right through you no matter what you are wearing.

After lunch I started on tidying out where I’m going to put this cupboard but Claude came back again to borrow the phone and for another chat, so I ended up doing not very much.

This evening I went round to Liz and Terry’s to take Liz to this meeting in St Priest. It was organised by the SMADC and the CREFAD, and there was someone from the BIRC (pronounced “BERK”) there, but no-one from the SPANC or the SMUT. It was to talk about tourist ideas and to discuss them with several practicioners and a few experts but like most of these meetings, everyone is there to promote his or her own venue. And of course, I’m no different than most of them. Networking is a vital part of community interaction.

But I’ll tell you something – if you were to program into a computer a list of all of the physical characteristics of my ideal woman and the girl (Katrine) who organised the meeting were to drop out of the slot at the bottom, I would not be disappointed in the least. It’s been quite a long time since I’ve been struck in such a way. I probably won’t be able to sleep tonight now! I’m now wondering when CREFAD’s next meeting is!

On the way home there was a blinding blizzard of a snowstorm and I inched my way back at 25mph (40kph) – that is, until I crossed the Font Nanaud, the pass through the mountains about 5km south of Pionsat. Once I was over there the snow dramatically stopped and there wasn’t a drop to be seen. It was astonishing.

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Monday 18th January 2010 – You can tell what today’s weather has been like …

… simply by looking at a few stats.

Firstly, outside the temperature made it up to 7 degrees, but in the verandah it was as much as 16. Secondly, while bank 2 of the solar panels on the house registered 29 amp-hours, bank 1 registered 89!!!

We’ve finally had the day I’ve been waiting for, with brilliant sunshine all day, the highest solar energy since 18th November and now the batteries are fully-charged. So much so in fact that I ran the fridge for an hour or so.

This morning I had an “office”day. I managed to get the printer to work so I sat down and wrote a few letters. I did the CV for this taxi company and then I had to write a letter to Pentax as I need to send my camera away for repair. For the past few months it seems like the battery life has been getting less and less but when I put the “empty” batteries into something else they work fine. Fiddling around with the batteries in the battery holder sometimes gets the camera to work again so its clearly a bad contact somewhere.

And that got me thinking. There’s a few things that I’ve bought that don’t work and are just hanging around here doing nothing much. I’m going to pack them up and send them back to the vendors with a letter of dismay and see what happens. Someone might decide to do something.

This afternoon was the drive down to Gerzat. The guy from SMADC and his sidekick sat in the front of the car and totally ignored me in the back all the way there and all the way back. At the radio station I worked out a format for the programme with the presenter. Basically it will be a cafe scenario with people popping in for a chat, talking about forthcomng events, new legislation and problems with French administration. We’ll record an hour’s worth of programme one day per month and they will edit it into four 5-minute slots. Blast-off is said to be the 1st of March and so we go into studio in mid-February.

If this isn’t going to get my name in lights, shameful self-publicist that I am, then nothing will!

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Sunday 17th January 2010 – There’s been a major change in the weather today.

I don’t just mean that it’s not rained, or that the sun came out, but a significant shift.

The temperature in my room was in double figures this morning when I woke up – the first time for weeks – and it actually felt warm. Outside the sun was doing its best to break through the clouds and on bank 1 there was almost 40 amp-hours of solar energy and on bank 2 about 26. And that’s significant. The charge controller on bank 2 is set to disconnect at a lower voltage figure (14.1 volts) than bank 2 (14.2 volts) and so the difference in amp-hours indicates that the charging circuit has been getting close to full charge, and that’s the first time since mid November.

It also stayed light after 18:00 and that’s the first time since November. Of course, spring is a long way off and we’ll have much more snow before then but at least it seems that the cold spell we’ve had for 6 or 7 weeks has gone away for now. It makes me feel much more enthusiastic.

I’ve done nothing at all today. It’s Sunday and my traditional day of rest and it’s been a long time since I’ve sat around and relaxed. But then again I think I’ve deserved it. I’m going to have an early night too. I have to get myself fighting fit ready for this interview thingy with this French radio station.

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Wednesday 13th January 2010 – It’s back up again.

Well, erichall.eu is, anyway. Lesguis.com is going to have to wait a while longer. So anyone who sent me a mail that bounced – you can resend it now and I’m sorry for the inconvenience.

Mind you, once more, my address book, research subfolder and the like have disappeared into the ether. That’s a real pain in the aspidistra and what’s worse, it’s not the first time that this has happened either. You’d think that I would learn.

In other news, that weatherman we have is still up to his tricks, having wild and unpredictable guesses that fall hopelessly short of the mark. He promised us overcast and cloudy conditions with rainfall, but yon golden object was in the sky for the whole day more-or-less and I’ve had another reasonable solar day. Still not earth-shatteringly marvellous but it’ll do for now. I’ve also been cracking on with the insulation but I’ve come to a stop, on the grounds that I’ve now run out of insulation. But at least I can move. I dug Caliburn out of a snowdrift and went for a run up the lane so I reckon that this weekend I’ll go and do a mega-shop in Montlucon and have a shower at Neris.

Talking of showers, I hear that the OUSA Executive committee are to go “on the road” and “visit the regions”. The East Midlands is the first port of call and the Derby/Nottingham area has been suggested for the location. Of course, someone has suggested that they stay in the town of Clowne – after all, it’s midway between the two and somehow quite appropriate.

This afternoon I cut my hair, had a wash and shave, and changed my clothes. Well, it was 8 degrees in the verandah. In fact it was quite a major operation and I hed to tell the water board that it was on its way. But I must admit – I am looking forward to a good swim and a good shower, and I’m not talki …. “you’ve done that” … ed.

I’ve also been in great demand today. Firstly, the girl who came round here with Francois the other day – she phoned me up to talk about this and that. There’s an eco-fair in Clermont Ferrand next weekend and she’s going with Francois. There’s a spare seat in the car and she asked me if I wanted to go. Most people who read this blog are of the opinion that I ought to get out more often and so I’ve decided to go. It’ll do me good.

Next it was the turn of Terry who wanted a chat about one of our long-term projects. It’s nice to hear from him and Liz and have a good natter.

Thirdly, the guy from SMADC (the Society for the Mutual Aid and Development of the Combrailles) called. We are supposed to be having a meeting with a producer from a French radio station, and it’s now been arranged for Monday afternoon. This is looking uncomfortably like it might happen, this idea of an English-language radio programme on French radio.

Finally (at least up to now) Antoine called. He has an idea for a business opportunity for himself now that he’s taken early retirement and wanted a chat about it.

Meanwhile, in other other news, the McCann Media Circus is back on the road, suing anyone and everyone who says naughty things about them. It’s becoming a right money-spinner for someone – this disappearing daughter – and it’s spawned countless imitations right across the globe with kids hidden in settees, kids being dragged away by weather balloons and the like. But the McCanns are really starting to take the mickey now. Over a million quid they want now for their hurt feelings. The money will of course be paid to the “Find Madeleine” campaign, which might well fund further trips to exotic corners of the globe to visit more law courts to sue more people to get more money to pay to the “Find Madeleine” campaign that might well fund further …. “that’s enough of that” – ed.

What the McCanns don’t realise is just how lucky they are. If Mrs McCann had been a single mother and black-skinned, leaving a baby home alone to face a tragedy would have got her 7 and a half years in prison without any trips to any exotic corners of the globe – let alone any charitable funds and any sympathy from a gullible public.

It’s high time someone put a stop to all of this.

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Friday 20th November 2009 – On my drive down to Liz and Terry’s yesterday …

gorges de la sioule sauret besserve puy de dome france microclimate… I stopped to take my traditional photograph of the Gorge of the Sioule bathed in cloud. Each time I go that way in the morning I always take a pic as the effects of the cloud are always different.

Yesterday we had an island – the peak of one of the hills in the gorge that was just peeking out above the level of the cloud. It looked like something that Roger Dean would have drawn for the cover of a “Yes” album.

After breakfast I telephoned this radio guy as requested.
“I’m sorry, he’s not here“
“Well, I’ll leave my number so he can call me back later“
“Actually he’s out all day“
“Never mind – he can call me on Monday“
“He has meetings all day Monday and Tuesday. So it won’t be before Wednesday“.
So much for urgency.

The weather is still unseasonably hot – the last four days have all been round the 20-degree mark. So I burnt a pile of rubbish in my galvanised steel dustbin, with which I am very impressed. But much of the paper is still wet and damp so it needs more time to dry out. It if keeps fine by Sunday I’ll have another fire and bake some spuds while I’m doing it. After all, there’s no footy on Sunday.

I’ve carried on with the tidying up too.

And earlier this evening I was sitting quietly in my room when there was a terrific crash from outside in the stairwell. I had 5 or 6 boxes of screws all neatly stacked and for no apparent reason they all fell down the stairs. There are thousands of screws everywhere now.

I must have a ghost, I suppose. My house in Crewe is haunted and the local vicar told me that he would come round and exorcise it. I asked him why. As far as I was concerned the ghost was one of the family and had just as much, if not even more right to be there.

And Lee Pottymouth lives in a flat that is haunted by two ghosts, and he reckons that they are homosexual ghosts. “They don’t half put the willies up me” he said.

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Tuesday 17th November 2009 – Today I’ve been fighting …

lean to wood pile… my way into the lean-to at the other side of the house. It was full of bricks and wood that I threw in there when I had a tidy-up a couple of years ago. The plan is to put my plant-pot beichstuhl on the inside to the left of the door, put all my gardening tools to the right, and fill up the rest with wood that I’ll be cutting through the winter and of course all of the scrap wood from the roof that is too bad to reuse. There’s tons of that.

It’s not quite working out like this though as the best-laid plans of mice, men and yours truly have a habit of going gang awa’, but at least I’m making slow progress.

If you have been following my website over the years you will maybe remember that it was into here that I was planning to move when the idea of coming here full-time was first discussed. But a casual survey of the roof showed that two of the beams had rotted and when I came to replace them it turned out that seven needed to be replaced and while I was taking some of them out part of the wall collapsed. And it was just after having rebuilt the wall that I was taken ill, and that was that.

In other news, following the collapse of the English-language newspaper, the SMADC – the French Government body charged with regenerating the Combrailles – has been looking at other ways to communicate with the English-speaking community over here and one idea currently being batted around is to have a 15-minute English-speaking spot every Sunday on the local radio station. They are looking for a radio presenter for the programme (if it goes ahead) and it seems that someone has thrown my hat into the ring.

In other other news, it’s been announced that a 90 year-old German is to be tried for a war crime dating back over 60 years. This follows the trial of an 88 year-old the other day. Can you imagine the scene in the court …
“How do you plead?”
“Not Guilty“
“What evidence do you have to disprove the accusations?”
“Well none, actually. The last of my defence witnesses died in 1972“
So what chance of a fair trial are these people going to get? It’s like the case of Demianjuk – even the Zionists found him Not Guilty of war crimes but he’s being hawked around country after country until someone can find a crime to pin on him. It’s a total disgrace.

These two guys are being tried for a handful of civilian deaths, yet night after night after night members of Bomber Command of the British Royal Air Farce flew over Germany deliberately targeting innocent civilians and massacred them by their hundreds of thousands. When is someone going to round them up and put them on trial for the horrific war crimes that they committed? And how many Russian soldiers were prosecuted for the atrocious war crimes that they committed against the German civilian population as they overran the Eastern provinces of Germany?

History is indeed written by the victors and never by the victims. Bah! Humbug!

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