Tag Archives: wood store

Tuesday 21st January 2014 – IF I’M NOT INTERRUPTED …

… tomorrow, I might actually finish these shelves.

I didn’t do anything this morning though because I wasn’t here. I had to go to St Eloy to see Marianne’s son Pascal. He’s giving up his little apartment there soon and moving to Montlucon to be nearer work. He’s not much good with a screwdriver and there are a few tasks that need to be done to put the apartment back how it should be. I said that I’d go for a look around and see what needs doing.

I took advantage of my visit to go to LIDL. Their special offer this week is D-i-Y stuff and I needed some screws so I stocked up with them.

After that I went to Cécile’s and the Post Office at Gouttières to negotiate a little about collecting this letter. After a lengthy period there with the guy who runs it, we agreed that Cécile needs to telephone him, and so I duly passed on the message.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, all of the washing (or, at least, all that I remembered to bring back from Cécile’s) is now hung up outside, so nice was the day, and then I attacked the shelving.

All 6 uproghts are now cut and shaped and because the floor is uneven and so they are all different lebgth, I’ve but a bracing bar across the three at the back to hold it all in position.

5 of the uprights are now screwed into position and the horizontal fitted to two pairs. I was trying to work out how to fit the 6th – it’s a little cramped in there and I need the room to pass the shelves through into position.

But having a stop and a think has made me think of a way to do it and so tomorrow I can press on.

Tonight I just lit a small fire and had a tea of pasta, veg, tomato sauce and veggie-burger. And it was the nicest meal that i’ve ever cooked on my little stove. I must be improving.

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Monday 6th January 2014 – GOD IT WAS HARD THIS MORNING …

… to get out of bed. Even though I had had an early night and was wide awake when the alarm went off, it was still a struggle.

And the first thing that I noticed was that in my haste I had forgotten to do the washing up last night, and there is very little that I hate more than waking up to a pile of dirty washing-up.

First job this morning was to empty the composting toilet. Such lovely jobs that I have to do here of course. And after that I had to sort out some wood. I’m running low on kindling but there’s a big bin of it that was thoroughly soaked in a downpour. I had to drain that out and, seeing as it was (for a change) a fine day, I laid it all out to dry.

To get there though I had to attack my pile of old windows – some that I had picked up from the dechetterie for the glass, the fittings and, of course, the wood to burn. So while I was there, I dismantled a few of those.

This then led to the woodshed. I hadn’t quite finished it off as there was a curtain, made from a tarpaulin, to hang across the front. While I was busy adding wood to the woodshed I took 20 minutes to sort that out, and now that’s finished.

Next job was to start moving the stones. And some of them were flaming heavy too – I’ve no idea how I got them into there in the first place. Most of them I could lift out but a few I had to roll.

This afternoon when the big stones were out of the way I started to tidy up some of the rubbish. And there was a pile of that too, but once that was out of the way I could look at the rest of the rubble.

To move that, I needed to clear the space where I had been tipping the rubble before. A year or two’s worth of weeds, nettles and brambles needed cutting down and removing so that took a while, and before I knew it, we were in the dark.

Still, with all of the donkey work having been done, the rest should be straightforward tomorrow.

No fire up here tonight and it’s 16.8°C up here. This weather is astonishing. I even ended up cooking downstairs tonight – far too warm here for a fire.

But guess who put a tin of lentils instead of a tin of kidney beans into his aubergine and kidney bean casserole?

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Wednesday 11th December 2013 – THIS HEATWAVE …

… is still continuing. It’s been five days since I’ve seen a cloud and for the last 3 days I’ve had almost 100 amps of surplus electrical energy – unheard-of in December, and I’ve about 63°C of hot water in the dump load.

There was 15°C of water in the solar water tank too – imagine that in December too. I was almost ready for a solar shower this afternoon, although 15°C is not really what I would be comfortable with.

Today I did indeed demolish the old wood sheds and now there’s space to move around in front of the house. But where the wood had been piled up against the stone wall, there’s not a trace of weeds or moss and that has got me thinking, which I know is dangerous. I’m not here tomorrow but if the weather holds out for Friday, I might mix up some lime mortar and point the wall. Strike while the iron is hot, as it were.

I didn’t put up the scaffolding though. Instead, I emptied Caliburn and finally put away everything that I had brought back from Marianne’s old apartment in Brussels. Loads of stuff has made it up here, especially the bits that will improve my standard of living up here in the attic.

There was also a big bag of biscuits and so on that Rosemary broght back from the UK in the Spring and which I had put in Caliburn, dropped off in Brussels and then promptly forgot about.

Tomorrow I’m taxiing, which might come as something of a surprise to long-term readers of this rubbish. I’m taking a passenger to Limoges Airport.hea

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Tuesday 10th December 2013 – AFTER THE PREVIOUS NIGHT’S PERAMBULATIONS …

… I didn’t wander very far during the night, which was a shame because it’s far, far better than just sleeping.

But anyway, having left my stinking pit at something like an early hour, and having had breakfast, I set about the woodshed.

woodshed les guis virlet puy de dome franceAnd here’s the definitive version of the woodshed, all completed. You can see that I’ve put all of the siding on now, which is just as well because wil all of the cut wood, it’s looking rather full.

Yes, that’s all the cut wood that’s gone in there, but of course that’s not all of the wood. There’s still tons of the stuff lying around here that needs to be cut up and at least, now I have somewhere to put it all, provided that there’s room for it.

Tomorrow I can dismantle the old woodshed and then think about putting up the scaffolding

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Monday 9th December 2013 – HERE’S SOMETHING THAT I BET THAT YOU DIDN’T

Yes, not many people know this, but it seems that the mother of singer Neil Young lives in Crewe – on the Badger Avenue council estate in fact. There I was, driving around Crewe in my taxi last night and Neil Young hopped in and asked to be taken down there to see his mother, who lives in one of the small two-bedroomed houses in the crummy part of the estate round by Foulkes Avenue.

Mrs Young was quite pleasant and we had a very good chat, and I ended up going back home to pick up my bass for a jam session with Neil.

Yes, I was having so much fun with all of this that I was really sorry to wake up. If only I could live out even half of whatever goes on in my dreams I really would live the most exciting life, that’s for sure.

It was warm here today too when I woke up – 15.9°C. That is something to do with the fact that I had the room stinking hot last night to cook my pizza. I’ve found the secret of getting this oven to cook – I have to start it up and get it really hot as quickly as possible.

Anyway, after breakfast I carried on in the glorious weather loading up the new woodshed, and I was at it until it went dark. it’s almost all done now – to such an extent that I had to stop and hunt down another pile of pallets to build up the rest of the sides. Half of them are on and the other half will be on first thing tomorrow, which means that I can take the final dozen or so barrow-loads over to the new woodshed.

Once that has been done, I can dismantle to woodsheds that are by the house, and then put up the scaffolding at the front of the house to redo the guttering and fix the wiring under the eves.

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Friday 6th December 2013 – I REALLY DIDN’t WANT …

… to leave my bed this morning. We’ve had dry weather for the last couple of days but this morning it was absolutely teeming down, just for a change.

So after breakfast I attacked the upstairs of the “downhill” lean-to, the one on which I fixed the roof two years ago. It was still like a building site up there and so I set about cleaning it out. After all, I have some demi-chevrons now and if things go according to plan I’ll have some shuttering planks tomorrow and they make really good shelves.

But I didn’t stay long up there as I had a phone call. A damsel in distress needed rescuing in Montlucon, and you know how Strawberry Moose is when it comes to damsels in distress.

However, as I said a couple of years ago, being a superhero today isn’t easy. The rise of mobile phones has meant the decline in telephone boxes, so where now does a superhero go when he needs to put his underpants on over the top of his trousers?

That was a few hours lost today anyway, and another 30 minutes soon followed that as Rosemary rang up for a chat. Not that I resent rescuing damsels in distress or talking to my friends, not in the least, but I have so much to do here. Anyway, I didn’t do much more cleaning, even if inbewteen the rainshowers I moved a little bit more wood.

Anyway, let’s see what tomorrow might bring.

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Thursday 5th December 2013 – WHY WOULD ANYONE …

… want to sit down and read all 383 or so pages of my travel website? I know that it’s all good stuff but nevertheless that is rather extreme.

However thank you anyway.

woodshed les guis virlet puy de dome franceApart from that, this morning I found one more pallet and stripped it down, and now it’s screwed to the side of the woodshed. And so that’s finished – at least, all I’m going to do of it.

It’s somewhat Heath – Robinson, but as I said before, everything except the screws and a metal bracket is from salvaged materials. There are even some second-hand nails in there holding a few things together.

This afternoon I started to fill it, and I have to say that I didn’t realise just how much wood I have, because I was at it for a couple of hours and I’ve hardly made any impression at all in there. It’s going to be a much longer job than I anticipated moving the wood about.

This evening, I crashed out at about 23:00. I can’t think why. It’s not as if I’ve been working flat out.

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Wednesday 4th December 2013 – I’VE ALMOST FINISHED …

… this woodshed. In fact I might have actually completed it had it not been for a “supply” issue.

This morning, anyway, I finished putting the roof on – that is, all for a small piece for which I need to find the offcuts from when we roofed the barn in 2011. They are about somewhere but heaven alone knows where right now. The roof is not on as I would like, because I really wanted to pass at least one screw through where all of the four sheets of corrugated iron meet up. However, I broke two metalworking drill bits in quick succession and so I had to give up that idea.

I’ve put some diagonal bracing in the back wall too. I noticed when I was up on the roof that the shed had a tendency to “rack” while I was moving about. The bracing has stiffened that up considerably now.

The shed is to be clad with old pallets, of which I have a large supply. but here’s the rub, they were amongst the first things to go into the barn after I fixed the suspended flooring, and so they have had ever so many years of stuff piled on top of them. It took most of the afternoon to pull out a dozen, and then most of those were not the ones that I wanted.

To cut a long story short, I now have 6 pallets stripped down and fixed to the framework and tomorrow I’ll need to fix another 8 to complete that. Then, there needs to be the pallets that I’ll be using for the shelving. Once all of that is organised, I can start to load it with all of the wood that is in the temporary woodshed.

It goes dark at about 17:30 in the evening and I don’t finish work until 18:00 so I usually look for things to do where there is artificial light. This evening I stripped out the food cupboard and sorted out all of the tins and jars.Before I started, the food was rather overflowing, but now it’s all stacked neatly and there’s room for half as much again.

Anyway, tomorrow hopefully I’ll be able to finish this woodshed. I’ve plenty of other things to be doing.

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Tuesday 3rd December 2013 – THIS WOODSHED …

… is coming along in leaps and bounds, and might even be finished tomorrow.

All of the horizontals had their joints cut and then they were screwed to the uprights. That involved a little bit of acrobatics and also a really good search for the LIDL portable work platform-ladder which was lost in the undergrowth.

And once more, I’m impressed with this Ryobi Plus One Impact Bit driver – almost as much as I am impressed with my galvanised steel dustbin.

This afternoon I found some old bits of floorboard and cut them to a length of 1m40. These were screwed aross the top of the uppermost horizontals, and once they were in the correct position I went in search of four decent sheets of corrugated iron that were formerly on the roof of the lean-to.

So having located them, I managed to screw (using the metal-cutting screws that we had for the barn roof) two of them to the bits of floorboard across the top, and there’s half the roof. And had I not lost the light, the roof would have been on today. That will have to wait for tomorrow morning now.

What’s exciting about this woodshed is that apart from the screws, absolutely everything else is “recup” – he French name for “salvaged materials”. There’s not a piece of wood or metal or plastic that hasn’t been used previously in a construction.

And what a day too. Another alpine arctic day, clear blue skies and not a cloud in the sky until the evening. 61 amp-hours in the electricity dump load and water at 40°C. Temperature outside reached 13.5°C too – the highest for a month.

This can’t last though. We’ll be back in the rain by the weekend, just you wait and see.

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Monday 2nd December 2013 – SO FOLLOWING MY DAY OF REST …

… yesterday, it was on with the motley.

I managed something of an early start too, which took me by surprise, and I’d finished digging the holes for the remaining side of the woodshed before I’d even woken up.

It took ages (so it was just as well that I started early) to position the uprights where I wanted them to be and for them to be perfectly vertical on all four aspects, but now they are in place and properly cemented in. It looks rather weird, my woodshed, but then it’s supposed to practical, not aesthetic.

This afternoon, I cut all of the horizontals. The top two overhang by about 1.250 metres, reaching the wall of the barn. The reason for this is that I need to park the cement mixer somewhere out of the weather as the tarpaulin that is covering it keeps on blowing off. This little overhang will be just perfect for that, and keep the cement mixer out of mischief until the summer.

We had the reappearance of that strange golden object in the sky later in the evening, but that wasn’t the most astonishing part about the weather today. I suspect (and I’ll check later) that records might have tumbled as far as wind energy goes today. It’s gusted quite strongly and the three wind turbines here have been turning around constantly. It was nice to see that, that’s for sure, even if the wind situation here is rather less than I was hoping.

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Saturday 30th November 2013 – IT WAS THE DRIVING RAIN …

… that woke me up early this morning and as I was lying there in my stinking pit I was thinking that if this keeps up for the rest of the day it’s going to be quite amusing in Pionsat this morning for this little open-air celebration.

But never mind. By the time I plucked up the courage to tear myself away from my stinking pit it had stopped raining and there were even a few little streaks of blue in the sky. Only a couple, mind you, and they didn’t last for very long, but they were indeed there for a moment and that was encouraging as I hurtled off to Pionsat.

patrick poivre d'arvor olivier poivre d'arvor pionsat puy de dome franceHere in Pionsat, at the Old People’s Home, we were treated to the spectacle of a couple of ex-celebrities doing the old book-signing bit. Nearest the camera we have a certain Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, a name that might mean nothing to anyone reading this rubbish, that’s for sure, but in fact formerly a well-known French TV presenter and author, one of whose books we found in this house when I bought it.

Standing at the table, further away from the camera, is his brother Olivier who is also a well-known author (however, not well-known to me, I have to admit) and who is also supposed to be signing copies of his books, not that there were so many of his on display.

nouvelle salle de fetes pionsat puy de dome franceThe book-signing isn’t actually the main reason for the presence here in Pionsat of the brothers Poivre d’Arvor – it’s a mere opportunism.

The real reason for their presence is that if you have been following these pages over their many reincarnations, you’ll be aware of the story of the “Maison Ducros Maymat”. A fine Art-Deco house of the late 20s and early 30s left to abandon and bought by the town of Pionsat simply to demolish it and to use its enormous gardens for building housing, a new medical centre and a new salle de fetes

patrick poivre d'arvor olivier poivre d'arvor rue jean d'arvor pionsat puy de dome franceThis necessitates the construction of a new road through the site and it was decided to name the road after the famous early 20th Century French poet Jean Jeuge dit d’Arvor who was born in Pionsat back in 1883.

The town asked Patrick Poivre d’Arvor and his brother if they would perform the opening ceremony and now that Patrick has “retired” from the silver screen he could spare the time to come down to the birthplace of his maternal grandad and do the honours, and at the same time do some rehearsing for the local gurning championships. The brothers were born with the simple surname “Poivre” – meaning “pepper” – but Patrick, at least, added his grandfather’s pseudonym to his own surname upon the death of the latter in 1970.

patrick poivre d'arvor laurent dumas pierrette ray brice hortefeux pionsat puy de dome franceWe were also highly-honoured by the presence of all kinds of dignitaries here at Pionsat for the ceremony.

The well-built man standing to the right of the image is Laurent Dumas, mayor of St Magnier and the representative of the Canton de Pionsat at the Conseil General of the Puy de Dome. To his right, cropped unfortunately from the image, is Pierrette Ray, mayor of Youx and Vice President (yes, they cater for all kinds of things) of the Conseil Regional.

Patrick Poivre d’Arvor is there of course in his raincoat, and to his right (and our left) in the expensive suit in centre-shot is Brice Hortefeux, the area’s Member of the European Parliament and with whom I later had a very friendly chat about Brussels.

foule maison de retraite pionsat patrick poivre d'arvor puy de dome franceThere followed the usual round of speeches and presentations, under cover back at the Old People’s Home. Hardly the many millions of telespectateurs to which Patrick Poivre d’Arvor is accustomed, of course, but a crowd is a crowd is a crowd, as any celebrity will tell you.

The mayor treated us to his vision of the Pionsat of the future, which includes some kind of shopping mall at the Intermarche supermarket. And while I for one applaud his vision – he is quite right in saying that we need to progress in order to survive – but
firstly, I’ve seen the shopping mall at the Intermarche at Commentry, a town 10 times bigger than Pionsat, and that can’t sustain half a dozen independent retain outlets

secondly, there are enough empty shops already in the town, with several businesses having closed down since I’ve been here. If exisiting businesses with exisiting clients can’t sustain, what hope for any new ones? And what hope for the ones that remain when the new shops open? It reminds me of the situation when the main-line standard-gauge railway arrived just up the road in Marcillat in 1932. They had closed the narrow-gauge tacot that had run into the town for years, and built the new line right through all of the old earthworks, totally destroying them. However the new railway never made a bean and closed in 1939, but because the tacot had been destroyed, the town was left without any rail connection at all even though the rest of the tacot system was running quite happily everywhere else. I can see this happening in Pionsat with the shops. And we’ve also seen, for those of you who were with me in Labrador in 2010
 that while the town of L’Anse au Loup may well be growing in importance due to the concentration of coastal Labrador’s services there, that has led to the collapse of the infrastructure of all of the other towns along the Labrador coast. I can see this happening in the Combrailles. Other towns will be forced to compete with Pionsat to keep themselves afloat, we’ll have a spending war, and it will all end in tears.
thirdly Pionsat is one of the communes of France with the largest per-capita indebtedness. So where is all of this money going to come from?

This evening, Pionsat’s match against the Goatslayers was postponed – a waterlogged pitch which is hardly surprising as everywhere is waterlogged around here right now. There was footy at Marcillat though – the 2nd XI taking on Montmarault and so in the freezing cold and frost I went to see the worst football match that I have seen for some time. Marcillat were awful, Montmarault were even worse but were better-organised and from a 3-2 lead, Marcillat suddenly found themselves 3-6 down. They clawed their way back to 6-5 before the final whistle, but I can’t say that they deserved to.

As a matter of interest we had a female referee this evening – that’s quite a rare event here. And I’ve seen worse referees too.

And my chips, beans and burger for tea were absolutely gorgeous. A good investment, this woodstove.

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Wednesday 27th November 2013 – I’VE FINISHED …

… building the framework for the woodshed, and the two sides are assembled. It doesn’t half look serious too, as indeed it should – 2 metres high and 1.5 metres deep and it will be 4 metres wide when it’s properly assembled.

Next stage of course is to dig the holes in order to plant the legs of the sides, but I’m not sure that I’ll be doing that tomorrow. Right now, it’s -7°C outside and dropping rapidly, and with one of the clearest starry skies that I have seen for a while, there’s no limit as to how low it might go.

Mind you, we had a gorgeous day today as well. Hardly a cloud in the sky all day and 78 amp-hours in the electric water-heater. It was quite enjoyable working outside.

And I’ll tell you something else. If you remember back to September, I bought a Ryobi Plus One Impact bit driver, and I used it today. It gets through the batteries but it drove the 6×60 screws right into the wood without very much effort at all, without any pilot holes – and we are talking real wood too, not this resinous pine stuff. I was well-impressed with that.

I finished that about 15 minutes before it went dark so I had a wood-cutting session – some of the rotten beams that I’d pulled out. And then I had to go to Marianne’s – she’s upgraded her computer but half of the programs that she has wouldn’t install. Hardly surprising, as some were for W98, but others just needed a little tweak. And back home, I had Rosemary on the phone for 15 minutes.

Now I have the fire banked up and I’m going nowhere.

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Tuesday 26th November 2013 – I’VE RESTARTED WORK TODAY

First time since last Thursday too. But there were a few housekeeping jobs that needed to be performed first, including emptying the composting toilet – a gruesome job.

Once that was out of the way the next stop was Pionsat where I needed to post an important letter. And then off to the sawmill at St Gervais for my wood. 21 laths and 12 demi-chevrons of 4.5 metres. The laths are for putting the insulation on the walls outside here – a job that I’ve been meaning to do for a while, and the demi-chevrons are for making the shelves that I want. I have 9 or 10 shuttering planks that I bought in Brico Depot the last time that I was there. They will get me going for the actual shelves but I really need a huge pile more. I won’t be getting them this week as I have a “minder” job to do on Saturday which means only local shopping again.

Back home, I made a start on building my woodshed. For that, I’m using the old chevrons off the house and barn roof. I put them aside specifically for work like this, but some of them are in worse condition than I imagined. Not that that is too much of a worry because what won’t be any good for building will be plenty good enough for burning and you can never have too much firewood, especially if you have somewhere to store it.

Anyway, I’ve selected all of the wood that I need and I’ve almost assembled one side. I’ll finish that tomorrow and then make the seond side, after which I’ll need to dig the holes to plant them into the ground and concrete them in place.

If I can do all of that, this will really be progress with a capital P.

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Monday 18th November 2013 – IT’S MONDAY AGAIN …

… and so it was “back to work”. But not straight away as I had a few important things to do first.

It seems that my bank is at it again. The credit card expired at the end of September as you know, and I finally received the replacement. That meant that I had to contact everyone to update the card details. But I’ve now received another one, with a new number, a new expiry date and a new security cide. I’ve now had to ring everyone again to update everything that I updated just a week or 10 days ago.

I finally did manage to go outside today to work, braving the rain that has restarted. I’ve spent all of the time outside clearing the nettles and weeds that have sprung up in front of the barn where I had my very first potager. It’s astonishing how quickly and how thickly it’s overgrown. It wasn’t looking too bad at all in the early Spring and I never expected it to become as bad as it did over a period of just 8 months.

You can see how good the soil is, though. I suppose that that is some consolation.

Anyway, I’ve made some progress, but not enough. There’s tons to do and I need it to be gone so that I can build my woodshed there. Once I’ve done that, I can crack on with other things that are holding me back.

After it went dark, I spent half an hour in the barn carrying on with my project of tidying up, not that I’m making much progess. But I’ve been thinking, which is of course a very dangerous occupation. It’s about high time that I sorted out the electrical system in the barn. I’m moving the batteries and the control panel down to where “bank two” is – at the southern end of the barn next to the walls to which the solar panels are fastened.

And so I ought to make a start on building the control panel and fitting the wiring. Maybe I’ll sit down tomorrow and draw up a few plans.

And pizza tonight followed by left-over apple crumble and custard from yesterday. What a way to end the day.

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Thursday 7th November 2013 – I’VE BEEN A BUSY BOY TODAY

Yes, high time I started work again around here. And even though I had something of a late-ish morning I still managed to do a good session before lunch.

First off, I repaired the woodshed. The corrugated iron sheets blew off while I wasn’t here and all of the wood is soaking wet. But I’ve rescued the sheets, nailed them down this time and used some bracing struts, and then covered it all over with an old tarp that was lying around not doing very much. That might hold it for a while until I can build the new one across the yard.

While I was outside I did some tidying up too and also a pile of weeding outside the house. It now looks as if someone is actually living here.

But that’s not all. The kitchen in the verandah was in a desperate condition and so I’ve tidied up in there and given it something of a superficial clean. At least the sink is empty now and unblocked which is a great improvement. Next task was the chest of drawers up here. There’s a screw retainer missing from one of the sides and so the drawers were dropping out of the runners. I emptied that, turned it upside-down to see what was needed and then fixed that.

After lunch, I emptied a couple of boxes out of Caliburn and dealt with those and seeing as I was in a good mood and having done a good day’s work I treated myself to a film. The Cannonball Run is 90 minutes of mindless mayhem but it’s a film that I can sit and watch time and time again, simply for the fact that it’s clear to see that the actors involved, and good actors too, are thoroughly enjoying themselves making it. As well as that, though, I keep a little database of film quotes and this film has contributed more one-liners to my database than any other film that I’ve ever seen. Who can forget immortal phrases such as “You wouldn’t last five minutes in a New York subway” or “It takes brilliance and years of hard work, and you wouldn’t understand any of that”.

Anyway, it’s beddie byes time now. See you all tomorrow

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