Tag Archives: solstice

Tuesday 21st June 2016 – YOU WOULDN’T BELIEVE …

… that it’s the Summer Solstice today. It’s been a cold, miserable, grey wet day today from start to finish, just like a grim February day.

Well, that’s not quite true. The rain did ease off for an hour or so round about midday – just the right time for me to nip out and buy my baguette and a few other bits and pieces for lunch. I wasn’t back all that long before the heavens opened again and that’s how it stayed. Many people have asked why I don’t get out and about and go for much more of an exploration, but in this weather, who can blame me?

I had a bad night again. It was well after midnight before I managed to doze off, despite how tired I must have been after walking to and from the hospital. And I had the odd trip down the corridor too but I was wide-awake by 05:40. I did manage to stay in bed until about 07:00 before I made my start to the day, and I’ve had a little crash-out this afternoon.

So what have I been doing today then.

The short (and the long) answer to this is that I’ve spent most of the day working on my blog, doing a lot of the updating. I’m well into the month of May 2010 and I’m finding that the weather back then was just the same as it is right now – to wit cold and wet. We even had a snowstorm on 5th May 2010 when we were all on our way home from Clermont Ferrand.

For tea tonight I’ve been finishing off the mixture of stuff that I had left over from Friday night.It tasted just as peculiar tonight as it did then, but it wasn’t unpleasant.

The Vietnamese girl was in the kitchen too so I had a good chat to her. Unfortunately, she didn’t seem to be too interested in talking about life in Vietnam and that was what I really wanted to know. People of my generation were brought up with all kinds of tales about life there either in the Communist North or the corrupt American-backed South,and the unification of the country stopped our habitual flow of news. I was keen to have an up-to-date opinion, but it looks as if it won’t be any time soon.

And so tomorrow, I’m off gallivanting again. June and her husband are passing by on their way back to Germany and I’ve invited them to the fritkot for lunch. You can’t pass by Belgium and not visit a fritkot, can you?

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Sunday 21st June 2015 – HAPPY SOLSTICE

Yes, the longest day of the year today. It’s all downhill from here. Where did the first 6 months of the year go?

And so I celebrated the Solstice by having a lie-in, seeing as it was Sunday today. And in view of the late night that I had had (02:30 when I finally crawled in), it was a good 10:15 when I eventually crawled out and gone 11:00 by the time that I had finished breakfast.

As for the laptop, it had indeed run out of battery so while I was breakfasting, I put it on charge in the barn using the 12-volt power lead that I have.

After breakfast, I spend a pleasant couple of hours going through the hard drive on the 1st Aspire, deleting loads of things that I no longer needed, deleting all kinds of programs and editing the start-up memory. Now, it fires up in seconds rather than the 10 minutes that it used to take and all in all, it’s now quite a stable platform.

But here’s a thing. I remember when I bought it that it had just 2GB of RAM on board, and that’s what it says on the sticker. But when I checked the system, it clearly shows that there is 4GB there. I don’t remember upgrading it, but I suppose that I must have done at some point when I was in the UK. And that might account for how much better it performs when compared to any of its later brothers. Upgrading this one to 8GB might just work because if i can make this perform as well as the 1st Aspire, then I’ll be reasonably satisfied.

This afternoon, I’ve been tidying up in here and for a change just recently, it’s now fit to receive visitors. I’ve even scrubbed the oilcloth that I use as a tablecloth on the table which I use for preparing the food.

I did set out to have a shower too, but the weather was deceiving. Although it looked quite a nice day outside, it wasn’t that warm – and the water in the solar shower was a mere 30°C. The water in the home-made 12-volt immersion heater that I use as a dump load was only 54°C so I couldn’t put enough of that into the solar shower to raise the temperature sufficiently.

Mind you, that was my own fault. Feeling like having a coffee this afternoon, I had the electric coffee percolator going for half an hour. Coffee made in there tastes so much better than instant coffee, but it isn’t half energy-consuming.

So back to work tomorrow – fitting the worktop in the shower room and then starting on the door frame. I really will have a shower tomorrow if it’s warm, and if I can’t have it in the solar shower, I’ll use the corner of the verandah and a bucket of hot water from the home-made 12-volt immersion heater.

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Saturday 21st December 2013 – TO THOSE OF YOU …

… who believe in these things, a very happy Solstice to you. For those of us who are concerned with the supply of solar energy, then the days will start to lengthen tomorrow and personally, I can’t wait for that.

But last night anyway, not being able to sleep until 04:30 or thereabouts (shouldn’t have had all that coffee yesterday), it was pretty hard to be awake when the alarm went off at 07:30 and it wasn’t until about 09:20 that I crawled out of my comfortable bed.

The trouble with this sort of thing is that one doesn’t feel up to doing much when one is awake and after breakfast and cleaning out the fire, I was a little “distant” for a while. But then the shops were calling and I headed off to St Eloy. I bought nothing special except the fresh vegetables – Christmas isn’t the same without sprouts, broccoli and leeks to go with my seitan slices and roast potatoes, that’s for sure.

I didn’t do too much this afternoon either – I remember making a coffee when I returned home and then the next thing that I remember was that it was 18:15, so I made myself one of these home-made potato and onion pies for tea for the next few days, and that was that.

Outside right now, we’re having a howling gale. there has been plenty of wind just recently and I’m glad that I have my wind turbines.

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Thursday 21st June 2012 – I’VE HAD ONE …

… of those days that doesn’t happen very often, where I can sit back at the end of it all and say to myself “haven’t I done well today?”

Take the garden, for instance.

GARDENING RAISED BEDS les guis virlet puy de dome franceI was out there at about 13:00 hoeing at the raised bed that you can see in the foreground.

The front two rows are spinach, and I weeded and cleaned out a space behind them and that is where I planted 5 of the tomato plants that François gave me yesterday.

You can also see that I planted some bamboo canes there and I’ve tied the plants to them to keep them off the ground. And they needed it too – they are over 30cms tall.

As for the other 5 tomato plants and the chili, they are in the mega-cloche. You can see the bamboo canes that I put in there to hold up the plants.

If you look in the bottom left-hand corner you will see two old caravan windows covering part of another raised bed.

When I grubbed away a pile of weeds from in there, I discovered that half a dozen or so beetroot had taken and were busy growing away. So what I did was to clear a corner of the raised bed just there and plant a few more to see what happens

The carrots though have been a disaster. I planted a few rows before I went away and I have ONE CARROT. I hoed right through the part of the bed where I planted the seeds and I’ve put in another row to see what happens with that.

Everything that I planted, I covered with the caravan windows. It worked in spades for the leeks and spinach, covering them over while they germinated. It’ll do no harm to see what it does to the carrots and the beetroot.

bean frame les guis virlet puy de dome franceAt the bottom of the garden, the beans that I planted before I went (well, the four that did anything) are now really running wild.

As well as that, those that I planted the other day are bursting out of the soil like nobody’s business.

I had a rummage around in the barn and turned up with a couple of offcuts of wire netting and so I grabbed a few of the laths that we ripped off the barn roof in 2010 and made three climbing frames for the beans.

I’m going to need a lot more than three and so does anyone want to swap some brassica thinnings for any wire netting? Otherwise I’ll have to go into Commentry on Saturday and buy a roll.

You’ll notice too that the pea frame is doing fine too. The peas are finally starting to appear and the frame will give them something to cling onto too.

This morning I spent three hours on the laptop (I was up early for once) and I made an index page for my recent journey to Canada and uploaded another few pages.

I’m up to late morning of Day Four so far. It’s going to be a long, hard trip.

This evening I had a lovely, warm shower. The solar heat had pushed the temperature up to 37.5°C this afternoon but by 19:00 it had cooled down to about 34°C. However the hot water in the dump load was running at about 62°C and so 5 litres of that into the solar tank pushed that back up to 39°C and it was gorgeous.

musical entertainment st gervais d'auvergne puy de dome franceAnd so this new nice and clean me then then went and hit the road to St Gervais d’Auvergne to see this music extravaganza that I had been promised, and much to my surprise I met Liz and Terry there, as well as a few other people who I know.

That’s a group that features on keyboards the young guy who is the assistant at the controle technique. They weren’t too bad but the drummer wasn’t up to much.

But then I come from a background that is much different than here and I have greater expectations. Living in this part of the world, I have to bear in mind the words of Samuel Johnson, who once famously said “it is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all”.

However, all in all, a good time was had by all and if the temperature hadn’t have plummeted I would probably be still there now. A good way to celebrate the Solstice.

A very good day for a change.

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Wednesday 22nd June 2011 – I’m not going to be here much longer

I’ve already crashed out twice this evening and so I’ll be going to bed before I do it a third time.

I blame last night myself. With it being the shortest night I stayed awake to welcome in the dawn and so it was 05:30 when I went to bed. Up at 11:00 and then another day working up here. All the correspondence is now up to date except one quote for someone that I need to do tomorrow, and I had to spend a while on the phone sorting that out too. But now I know what I need.

I’ve also been researching and I’ve had loads of help from Canadian politicians again. Seems like they are a nice friendly bunch of people.

But the shortest night already. Where did all of the first half of the year go? It seemed like only yesterday that I was complaining about the short days. we’ll be back amongst them before we know where we are.

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