Tag Archives: st hilaire pres pionsat

Friday 23rd January 2015 – WE NOW HAVE …

… some nice and pretty beading around the window and the doorways on the stairs up to the attic. Yes, I’m going all suburban and pretentious, aren’t I? Whatever next?

The Ryobi mastic gun did the business here, along with a tube of contact adhesive. Cut the beading to length (remember to cut the bevels the correct way round – GRRRR!), stick some glue in the angle, press into place and then tack down with a couple of 25mm lost-head nails, and there we are.

And doesn’t it look pretty too? It’s not like me, is it?

In other startling news, we have also turned the corner. at least, as far as the plasterboard goes. I’ve put the first pieces on the stud wall for the stairs that go down to the ground floor.

This is quite symbolic progress. All that’s now needed is one more piece of plasterboard on the reverse side of the stud wall to the bedroom, three end-pieces, some filling and sanding down, and then I can wallpaper the walls on the landing and that will be finished too and I can start on the bedroom. I shan’t know myself.

I know that I said that I would be sanding down the stairs and vacuuming them ready to varnish them this weekend, but several things have conspired together to put an end to that idea.

Firstly, I’m not going out tomorrow. Cécile is having a visitor to her house in the morning tomorrow so I have to go round there early. That means that I won’t have time to varnish it before I go out.

Secondly, Mondays radio recording sessions have been cancelled due to illness at Radio Tartasse, so the third consecutive day that I need for varnishing isn’t going to happen either.

Thirdly, we’ve had a hanging cloud over the mountain all day today and I’ve received precisely nothing in the way of solar energy. There’s plenty of power in the batteries of course, but not enough to run a power sander for a couple of hours and a vacuum cleaner afterwards.

Fourthly, the temperature didn’t rise above freezing all day today and the next few days are likely to be the same. The temperature downstairs is just 4°C and the varnish won’t ever stick in that kind of temperature. It’ll just sit on top of the wood and freeze, and then break off when it’s knocked.

Accordingly, I left the varnishing for another time. Never mind. There’s plenty of other things to be going on with.

I was invited out this evening. It’s the annual dinner for FCPSH – the Football Club Pionsat St Hilaire, and I was invited to go along. I didn’t stay to eat because you can’t expect them to cater for my diet, but I was there chatting for a couple of hours.

And it really was freezing when I returned. I had a hard job to keep my feet on the concrete. And in my room the temperature had fallen to 9.8°C – the coldest for quite a while, but a roaring wood fire soon had that back up to normal again.

I’m glad that I bought this woodstove.

-1

Sunday 12th January 2014 – I’m a bit icky-poohs

All of the dust that I’ve been swallowing this last few days has got onto my lungs and making me cough like a smoker. And now my tongue has swollen up and it’s rubbing against a broken tooth, so I’m in agony right now, there’s a blister on my tongue and I can’t swallow. Consequently I’ve not eaten very much at all today.

Apart from that, it was 10:30 when I woke up this morning to the most glorious day I’ve seen since I was in Greece. If I had somewhere outside that wasn’t covered in rubble or junk I would have sat outside and had my breakfast there.

Today I read some more of my book, John Bourke’s On the Border with Crook

It’s a fascinating book and written in a style in which I would dearly love to write –
“X and Y were determined that thay would farm down in the bottom of the river valley. The Apaches were equally determined that they would not. Consequently X and Y were never lonely down in their little river valley”.

But what is interesting is Bourke’s account of his first visit to Tuscon. In 1848 when Mexico lost this area to the USA they withdrew all of their priests from the area. The Pope made an appeal throughout Europe for priests to go out there and one of the priests who volunteered was a certain Jean-Baptiste Salpointe. Salpointe was born in the “lieu-dit Salpointe”, which is just a few kilometres from here at St Hilaire près Pionsat.

Some people around here are researching Salpointe and his activities in the New World and here in Bourke’s book, written in 1891, is a mass of information about the time Bourke met Salpointe in a restaurant in Tuscon.

As I keep on saying, the world is a terribly small place.

-3

Saturday 13th October 2012 – I DIDN’T MANAGE …

… my quiet day at home today. It all went wrong from the very beginning.

The boulangère forgot to come this morning so in one swell foop I’ve gone from having far too much bread to not having enough.

That prompted a quick visit into Pionsat to stock up with bread, and to hope that the boulangère remembers me on Tuesday

Anyway, despite being considerably sidetracked all throughout today what with one thing and another, I managed to finish the Additional Notes for the radio programmes for the month of November.

With the Rock Programme notes already completed, I just need to choose a main text for the November programmes. There’s probably enough in the pipeline already actually but it’s as well to be sure. And when that’s completed I can start writing the Christmas Special

As there was no football tonight, I had a little pause and watched a football match on the computer. Now, Oldham Athletic? Isn’t that another good oxymoron? It’s almost as good as British Intelligence or Government Service.

However, not to be outdone, surfing the internet I discovered that the football in the Creuse is organised slightly differently than in the Auvergne, and there are league matches this weekend, not Cup matches.

And if that wasn’t enough, Auzance’s 2nd XI was at home against Dontreix-Chard in the 3rd Division.

It’s probably 15 years since I’ve been to Auzances and seeing as I think that I should get out more often (a sentiment with which many regular readers of this rubbish will agree) I set off into the unknown.

Quite a charming stadium in a nice urban setting, in what looked as if it might at one time have been an old quarry.

But the match itself was total rubbish. Dontreix-Chard were awful, but Auzances were even worse.

Even FC Pionsat St Hilaire’s 3rd Xi could have taken on both of these teams simultaneously and held their own – and everyone else’s too – quite comfortably, I reckon.

4-2 it finished to Dontreix, and the big mystery was how come Dontreix-Chard managed to let Auzances score twice.

Dontreix-Chard’s fourth goal was a calamity that came out of absolutely nowhere.

3-2 down in the dying minutes and having Dontreix-Chard (surprisingly) under the cosh, Auzances win a corner. It’s everyone forward, and even the Auzances goalkeeper decides to go up.

However, as he is about three-quarters of the way upfield, his team-mates take the kick, not having seen him advancing.

The Dontreix players have seen him though, and when they win possession it’s the long ball right upfield over the Auzances keeper’s head, and Goodnight Vienna.

The Auzances keeper throws down his gloves and storms off the field – “I’m not playing with you guys any more”. Reminded me of Roxanne at Primary School when she was about 7 or 8.

There’s a pizzeria right next to the ground, and so I treated myself to a take-away – second weekend in succession after all of these years of doing without. After all, it’s a 35-minute drive back home and who feels like cooking at 22:45?

And a nice pizza it was too, especially the spicy oil dressing

But never mind the Combrailles – how about the Creuse for The Land That Time Forgot? On the D988 out of Pionsat through St Hilaire and St Maurice près Pionsat, it’s a nice two-lane blacktop with clear white lines – a reasonably fast road considering the terrain.

But cross over the border into the Creuze – it’s like the lane up to my house from the bottom road. Narrow, grey gravel, no centre markings, potholes and patches.

It’s a whole world of difference. It’s just like turning the clock back 25 years, which is astonishing considering that here in the Combrailles we are 100 years behind the times.

I forgot to mention that I put out the washing today to let it dry off, and this time I did bring it in before I went out. What has reminded me of this is that it has just this second started to rain.

-4

Saturday 1st September 2012 – IT’S HARD …

… to believe that not so long ago, I was up here in my attic melting away to nothing, totally unable to move with the heat.

This evening, not two weeks later, there were about 150 of us shivering to death on the terraces of the football ground in Pionsat.

Yes, it’s that time of the year again. The footy has restarted.

We had a little competition between a few of the local sides followed by a friendly match between two veterans’ XIs – one of which represented the old team of Pionsat and the other the old team of St Hilaire before the fusion.

And believe me, some of these veterans cut still mutt the custard in the lower leagues of the Puy-de-Dome District Football League.

The final match of the night was the final friendly of the season (if any match with the Miners can be called “a friendly”) between FC Pionsat St Hilaire and Nord-Combraille.

FC Pionsat St Hilaire won that encounter at something of a canter thanks to a blistering 3-minute spell midway through the second half when they stuck three into the Miners’ net.

What was even more interesting was that FC Pionsat St Hilaire had no recognised striker on the field. Cedric wasn’t there, and it appears that Jérome (who is probably the best player I have seen in Division One) and Thomas (who on his day is as good as anyone) have left the club.

But there were two players out there new to the team, one of whom I’ve seen playing at AS Marcillat last season, who took the Miners apart.

There was another guy called Rene, who I saw play once last season and who looked thoroughly unfit back then, who seems to have been working hard in close-season and ran the opposition ragged throughout the game.

What is even more interesting from my point of view is that my signboard is up, as you can see on the perimeter fencing.

I’m something of a sponsor of the club, not in a big way of course, and that gives me the right to have a signboard.

I don’t expect that too much will come of it, but it’s advertising all the same and no advertising is ever wasted.

Furthermore, it shows solidarity with the local community and that is also very important in my opinion. Participating in the community means that you are no longer an outsider and in my opinion, all ex-pats should make some kind of active participation in the community.

As for the weather, I closed all of the windows on Thursday evening which is just as well as the temperature has taken a dramatic plunge. Last night it bottomed out at 5.5°C, a far cry from nights that didn’t drop below 30°C just 12 or so days ago.

What is even harder to believe is that despite it being Saturday, I’ve been working outside – on the lean-to in case you haven’t guessed.

This morning I wrote up the additional notes for the October radio programmes (I intend to be well ahead in the future) and then I went into St Eloy-les-Mines to do the shopping.

I spent absolutely nothing extra although I did go into Cheze, the DiY place, and buy the glass that I needed (€4:80 – made me wonder why I bought that sheet of perspex in the week).

I managed to bring the glass back without breaking it and then trying to find a safe place to put it until Monday, I reckoned in the end after much reflection that the safest place to put it was into the window frame.

And hence the work on a Saturday.

till, it’s in now. One less thing to worry about and one less job to do on Monday and I can have an extra 15 minutes in bed to compensate.

Tomorrow is Sunday, my first Sunday off for ages. And I’m going to have a lie-in and then do nothing all day.

Just you watch someone ring me up at 10:00 and spoil it!

-2

Friday 10th August 2012 – I DIDN’T DO …

… anything like as much as I wanted to do today, which was something of a disappointment.

We started off on the wrong foot when I telephoned Nikon to see how they were progressing with the repairs to the Nikon D5000. Seems that they didn’t receive the authority to do the work, so they say, despite my having posting it off a month ago.

So I now have to do all of that again.

GRRRRRRRRR!

So after a couple of hours on the computer I went outside to start to cut the wood to make the window frames but although I managed to cut all of the pieces, that was about that for the phone rang.

Marianne was in need of a lift to St Hilaire to plan her walk for 10 days time.

St Hilaire is another village a little like Chateau-sur-Cher in that the church is situated on a mound on a promontory with an excellent view of the surrounding area.

And while the history of Chateau-sur-Cher is quite well-known, almost nothing is known of the history of St Hilaire.

Nevertheless, the mound and the strategic position are very suggestive of a Dark-Age fortress of some kind.

It’s a well-known phenomenon in many similar villages that the church on the mound started off as a tiny chapel somewhere within the fortress and the church expanded as the fortress declined.

Marianne didn’t have much information on the village but we went for a good prowl around.

In the end, we had come up with tons of interesting stuff that we had discovered, as well as having a few interesting chats with the locals.

One of the aforementioned was not in the least pleased to see a couple of people wandering around looking at his house, and he freely gave vent to his displeasure.

However, not all of the locals were so ungracious.

At another house we were invited in for a drink and we had a guided tour of the old lady’s biscuit tin with all the photos, press cuttings and the like, including a newspaper from 1921 with the obituary of her grandfather.

He had a considerable claim to fame, being one of just seven survivors of the legendary Charge de Reichshoffen in 1870.

And so going from knowing very little to knowing quite a lot was the work of just an hour and a half.

Our day wasn’t over yet.

Regular readers of this rubbish will recall that I have been talking … "quite considerably" – ed … about the ephemeral Montlucon-Pionsat-Gouttières railway line.

A few weeks ago on one of my ramblings I’d stumbled across the St Fargeol railway station and as Marianne didn’t know where it was, we went the long way round on the way home in order to visit it.

I’m not sure why they called it “St Fargeol” because the station is so far away from the village – a good couple of kilometres if you ask me.

That kind of thing wasn’t important in the 1850s and 1860s because there was no other choice – if you wanted to travel, rail was the only sensible option and so you had no option other than to walk – or catch a hay-ride – to the nearest railway station wherever it might be.

But by the time that this line was opened in the 1930s, road transport was well in the ascendency and the death-knell was already sounding for many rural railway lines.

Not even railway lines and railway stations in built-up urban areas could withstand the pressure from other forms of road-based passenger transport.

These little rural railway lines stood no chance whatever and were soon all swept away. The tacots – the little narrow-gauge railway lines that infested the French rural countryside – disappeared in the blinklng of an eye and the rural branch-lines quickly followed.

All you can see now – if you look long and hard – are the indentations in the soil where the railway used to pass.

So abandoning another good rant … "for the moment " – ed … tomorrow is Saturday and I’ll be off to Commentry shopping, I hope.

But I’m going to have to do better than this for working if I’m going to treat myself to the little autumn break that I promised myself a little later on this year.

-2

Sunday 22nd July 2012 – IT’S NOT EVERY …

… day that I’m up and about at 08:30 and having breakfast.

For it to happen on a Sunday, when I don’t have an alarm clock set, is really quite extraordinary.

Mind you, it’s just as well because between then and 10:00 I had three telephone calls

Radio Tartasse telling me that the Monday morning session is cancelled
Marianne reminding me about our morning at St Hilaire
Rosemary who wanted to talk about cheese

Just imagine me being polite on the telephone early on a Sunday morning! But then they were all important, especially the one about cheese!

Marianne is doing this Sunday “tour of the communes” of the Canton of Pionsat thing this summer, and I’ve been tagging along as technician and general labourer. Marianne isn’t as young as she used to be – which goes for all of us.

Today was the turn of the commune of St Hilaire to be honoured by our presence.

But we weren’t actually “in” the commune (although we were, if you understand what I mean”. We were out in one of the Lieux Dits – the hamlets associated with the Bourg – the Lieu Dits of Baudry

Here at Baudry is the “Domain de Baudry”. It’s a pisciculture or fish farm where they rear trout and carp for sale or for release into the river system.

It’s very popular with fishermen of course, and everyone can try his hand at it, whether you are an experienced fisherman or a rank beginner. Even the equipment is available to hire.

And it’s not as if you are going to have much difficulty in finding a fish, is it?

The place was absolutely heaving today, and I hoped that they had all come for our exposition and not just for the fishing.

There were loads of people whom I knew too, including Anne and Mike and daughter Misha from up the road in St Fargeol. Misha had tried her hand at fishing and I had spent much of the morning watching her on her maiden fishing expedition.

And to everyone’s surprise and delight, she actually caught five fish! Well, well done Misha! I hope that mum prepared the chips for tea.

Musical entertainment was provided by the fanfare de Pionsat – the Pionsat jazz band.

We have encountered them before and I remember saying at the time that they are more noted for their enthusiasm than their technical abiity. And that still holds true today.

However, as I said when watching the rock band at St Gervais d’Auvergne last month, the comments of Samuel Johnson are relevant – “It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all”.

This isn’t a big city where you can choose from 200 musicians. You have to take people as you find them. They do their best, we are all grateful for the effort that they make and we all have fun.

What more can anyone expect?

After dropping off Marianne back at Pionsat I had a couple of hours off in the afternoon (well, it IS Sunday) and then went round to Liz and Terry’s to go over our radio programmes.

Mushroom risotto was on the menu too – a huge improvement on the last mushroom risotto that I had, the famous one at Hardon House in Newport Pagnell, that looked as if someone had eaten it before I had.

Ginger cake for pudding too! That really made for an excellent Sunday.

-6

Thursday 7th June 2012 – YOU MAY REMEMBER …

… that we discussed weedkiller the other day.

Joy suggested a 50-50 mix of vinegar and water and so I tried it. And you can see the result.

A pile of burnt and scorched grass. And so there’s clearly some mileage in that idea,

Thanks, Joy, but I shudder to think about how much vinegar I’m going to need.

This morning it was work as usual on the website but I didn’t get much done due to a couple of lengthy and complicated phone calls that led to a lengthy form-filling session.

All of that made me late for my trip with Marianne and while Liz was wishing me all the best for the afternoon and me saying something like “knowing my luck it will pour down with rain” we suddenly had the most terrific thunderstorm and cloudburst.

Right on cue, you might say.

And so I picked up Marianne and off we went for a good wander around Chateau-sur-Cher.

The village is so named because the remains of a Gallo-Roman fort were discovered on the promontory overlooking the River Cher, on the spot where the church sits today.

It’s certainly an impressive site for a defensive fortification – surrounded on three sides by a very steep climb and I can understand why the Gauls would have chosen it

not only were there some interesting sights to see around the village and around the river, but that we were also directed to an intact chalk-oven and to an outcrop of a coal seam somewhere out off the beaten track on the way back to St Hilaire-près-Pionsat.

The chalk oven took some finding and that’s hardly a surprise. You can see that the chimney is all overgrown with all kinds of everything and you really did have to know where it was before you could see it properly

But it was totally fascinating, as a good exploration confirmed once I’d been able to hack my way through the vegetation into it.

It seems to have been built from a kit or something like that, because the fire bars are noted with Roman numerals – presumably indicating the position and order in which they should be assembled.

I’ve never seen that before.

Apparently the coal seam that we visited 2 years ago and about which I posted on here breaks out in a few other places in the Combrailles.

We had a good scratch around in the vicinity and, sure enough, we found some evidence. Not worth coming here with a mechanical shovel though – the Highways Department’s sign erectors would have been here a long time ago had it been worth the effort.

There are even some mining remains where someone had a go at trying to exploit it, but they are all overgrown apparently (as if the chimney was not) and so we need to wait for winter to hunt for those.

Highlight, for me at least, has to be this beast sitting here abandoned inthe garden of an abandoned cottage in the village.

It’s a Cadillac DeVille, one of the “fourth generation” models from the early 1970s I reckon, and what is significant about it is that according to the maker’s plate under the bonnet it’s actually a “Bienne” – a Swiss model made in that town where general Motors had an assembly plant for 40 years until 1975.

But scrambling over vehicles like this brought back some very happy memories. How poor Nerina must have suffered.

Meanwhile, in other news, I’ve run out of black ink for the printer. I’ll have to see if Terry can order some more for me.

-1

Sunday 10th July 2011 – I’m going to bed in a minute…

… in fact, I’ve already crashed out once this evening . . . and so I won’t have the tine to upload any of the maybe 20 photos that I took today.

This morning I was awake at 10:00 and by 10:10 I was out of the house and away. At 10:15 I was round at Marianne’s in Pionsat and we went off to St Hilaire pres Pionsat for the fete touristique that was being held there.

That was probably the most interesting of the ones that we have done so far. There was a group of local musicians and a team of local folk dancers and they put on quite a show, the dancers dragging people up out of the crowd and teaching them the moves.

After the fete touristique had finished Marianne took me across the village to see where the old chateau used to be.

It was formerly quite big and quite well-known, and its demolition was rather a controversial matter. Marianne, who merely mentioned the fact in her book Le Canton de Pionsat, was the subject of some … errr … criticism and adverse remarks despite the way that she phrased her remarks. Had I written the book I would have expressed things differently.

We went for quite a walk around the village in the lovely weather, and discovered quite a few exciting things about the place.

This looks as if it might be a spring, and it emerges in the side of one of the houses in the village. If it is, I’m not quite sure about what looks as if it might be a waste pipe from a sink draining into it. That doesn’t sound like a good idea.

There were lots of other things to see here too. This looks very much like a millpond to me and as we looked around, we saw what might have been an old mill-race. this leads me to believe that at one time there might have been a mill here in the village – not that that would be anything of a surprise.

I also saw an old Peugeot van – either a D3A or a D4A – in someone’s garden but it was surrounded by all kinds of stuff and I couldn’t have a clear shot at it with the Nikon D5000.

This afternoon I went off to the brocante at Marcillat en Combraille. The Combrailles is the brocante capital of the world and the brocante season is now in full swing. I’ll be going to plenty more of these throughout the summer.

But today was good, and for three reasons too.

I met Karl and Lou from Lapeyrouse. We had a wander around together and then went for a coffee and a good chat. It’s nice to meet good friends.
I met a guy who does roof cleaning and facade cleaning on big buildings. We got talking about his cherry picker and it extends to – would you believe – 100 metres in height. And he hires it out too! Yes, no more clambering up ladders and scaffolding for me if I’m installing a wind turbine on someone else’s property. I’m going to do the job in comfort. In fact, thinking on, a cherry-picker might be a useful addition to the fleet.
I made a few good finds. The 12-volt to 7.5 volt adaptor was fine for 50 cents, but the small tripod for €4:00 was excellent. I have a really decent heavy duty tripod that lives in Caliburn and that comes in extremely useful, but it’s far too big to tote around on my travels. This new one folds up to about half the size and so it will fit comfortably into my suitcase of backpack if I’m going for a wander around.
Star of the show though is a 12-volt motor rated at 50 amps. That’s 600 watts or so and that’s a lot of 12-volt power. I have a bench-saw without a motor and this motor will run that a treat. I can also convert an old washing machine to 12-volt with a motor like this – it will run a twin-tub no problem. And the motor was only €2:00 as well. That was a find!

And so after crashing out I had tea and I’ve been listening to music. I bought a pile of CDs for my birthday – they are all good but some of them are magnificent.
I don’t need to say anything about Liege And Lief by Fairport Convention. It’s the best folk-rock album ever, and I bought it to replace an old worn-out tape recording. That’s another album that has not been off my playlist for 35 years, and the “additional track” of Sandy Denny singing “Sir Patrick Spens” has to be worth the price of the album alone.
Made In Japan by Deep Purple is another outstanding album. It’s one that impressed me back in the mid 70s when it first came out but the thing that got me was why I never ever owned a copy of it. It’s hard to imagine that it’s taken me 35 years to get my hands on a copy of it. That’s a long time.
The third, though, is something else. The subject of the group “Colosseum” came up in a conversation a whle ago and I was obliged to admit that I had never heard anything by them. I’m one of these people who think that there’s no place for saxophones in a rock band, and I never really rated Chris Farlowe’s singing all that much. But there was a copy of Colosseum Live for sale on the internet at a reasonable price and so I took the plunge. And I’m astonished! I can’t believe just how good this album is. It’s a proper jazz/blues album featuring jazz/blues played just how it ought to be played – nice long jamming tracks which – just for a change – are tuneful and meaningful and contribute to the whole. Chris Farlowe’s singing still grates on me but it actually fits in with the music, and his life performance and stage ad-libbing are just superb. “Take me Back to Lost Angeles” has taken my breath away. I can’t believe that I’ve waited so long to get to grips with this group and this album.

In other news, my other friend Marianne from Brussels has had her first novel published. When I get the ISBN I can publish a link to it. What with Rhys’s High-Speed Photography book, Liz about to start work on the Memoirs of Strawberry Moose and the first Marianne’s book on Pionsat as mentioned above, I’m in danger of being left behind by my friends.

I need to get my Trans Labrador Highway book up and running PDQ.

-1

Wednesday 25th August 2010 – Just by way of a change …

… I went to another one of these local history afternoons – this time at St Hilaire. It was more-or-less the same as the one that we went to a few months ago at La Cellette, but there were a few additions.

And just for me they had done some more research into the railway network. Still only the line between Montlucon and Gouttieres, though. No mention of the “Ligne Economique” between Marcillat en Combraille and Commentry. I can see that there is a book waiting to be written about that, and muggins here will have to be the one to write it.

Still, I suppose it could be worse.

But one thing that came out of it is that they are to finally form this Local History Organisation and register it as some kind of charity. The first meeting of the new committee is to take place on Saturday afternoon in Pionsat, and the presenter reckons that it would be a good idea if someone from a foreign background was co-opted onto the committee to liaise with the non-French speakers and to bring a different viewpoint on to the group – someone nevertheless with an interest in local history and history in general. And do you ever get that funny burning sensation when thirty pairs of eyes all turn round and focus on you?

Serve me right too, and I was looking forward to going for a swim on Saturday afternoon too!

This morning I carried on with updating my website and then I did some washing seeing as it was such a nice day. I’ve sorted out everything I need for my water heater and I cut the top off this 30-litre container too. This thing might take shape tomorrow if I am not careful.

-3

EPIC HALL

The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like) – or my relentless struggle against reality