... if you are the kind of person who is always in a hurry or rushing around for appointments and the like then you don't want to be living around here.
Not with leviathans like this roaming around the lanes round here anyway.
I encountered these two beasts on my way back from Commentry. The other side of Ronnet it was, and it wasn't until we reached the Abbey of Bellaigues that they took the high road and I took the low road. About 6 miles of 25kph with nowhere to pass them. Ahhh well!
This morning I was awoken at 06:04 by a storm - howling winds and all that kind of thing. I was half-expecting torrential rain but when I finally crawled out of my stinking pit (09:40 - I was having a lie-in after my efforts on the roof) there wan't a trace of anything.I surely can't have dreamt it all?
So a couple of hours catching up on the computer and then off to Commentry for shopping. And nothing really interesting at all. But even more interesting - I'm trying to set up my water filters and can I elephants find any puzzolane. I asked inter alia at the local builders' merchants and he had to look up in his catalogue before telling me that he didn't have any. In case you are wondering what puzzolane is, it's a certain type of volcanic lava - lightweight, porous and made of carbon and it's a superb natural water filter.
In the Puy de Dome there are over 80 dormant volcanoes all of which have produced puzzolane, and not for nothing is this region littered with commercialised natural springs - Volvic being the prime example but there are many others. All the ground water is filtered through the natural puzzolane layers. So why can't I get hold of any?
Back at Pooh Corner, having unloaded Caliburn, I made a desultory start on tidying up. But the weather clouded over and it looked like rain so grabbing hold of a few offcuts and odds-and-ends I've rigged up a kind of downspout system for one of my spare 203-litre water butts to catch the rain that might fall on the barn roof.
And badger me if, when I came in and read my messages, that Krys hadn't written to me to suggest that I think about a way of collecting the rainwater that falls on the roof. Great Minds or Fools, Ms Stephenson?
And now it's 00:30 - 7 hours after I fixed this downspout - and it's rumbling away with thunder and flashing away with lightning and not a drop of rain has fallen. All my plants and I could do with a heavy downpour, especially through the night. I can't wait to see the water cascade off the barn roof and into the water butt.
And another solar shower this evening. That's 6 consecutive days. I was never this clean when I lived in my apartment in Brussels!
Clean living?
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