The Poisoned Pen (or Poisoned Chalice, more like)

It was cold this morning.

2012-02-12T01:37:00.000+01:00

9.5°C or thereabouts in here at 10:00 am this morning. But that was no surprise really because at that moment outside it was a mere -12°C. This weather certainly is ridiculous. Anyway a blazing wood fire had the temperature up to 18.5°C within an hour and that was the important bit.

I stayed in and cracked on with the presentation, and by 14:30 it was done. At least the text and the graphics are. I just have to make a powerpoint presentation of the photos, and that won't take too long.

From there I nipped into St Eloy and did some shopping. And I excelled myself. Some potatoes, to cook in my oven, and also some more oven chips. Saturday night might be curry night and it has been for as long as I can remember, but not when it's cold enough outside to keep half a packet of frozen oven chips, while I had the other half with a veggie burger and baked beans. But in Carrefour there were some young kids running amok, nominally (but not actually) under the control of a young woman with earrings and piercings through the nose and chin and the like. And when she spoke - yes, it was in English. and we came out here to keep away from people like that, snobs that we are. Jarspur and Hooray Henries one week, chavs the next week.

I found my way to Rosemary's after that, eventually, and we had a good chat for a couple of hours. and so back here where I have a big fire going and I'm not moving.

The word on the streets is that things shall warm up dramatically on Monday night. The bad news is that we shall be covered in snow though. If it's not one thing it's another. and you'll be surprised at just how many other things there are.

This weather is starting to get on my wick a little bit.

2012-02-11T01:27:00.001+01:00

Yes. Deep-frozen veg and deep-frozen chili beans for tea tonight. No big deal, you might think, but these were deep-frozen vegetables and beans from out of tins. And when your tins of food are freezing then you know that you really do have problems.

Not much water today either. It's becoming harder and harder to melt the solid ice that is in the water butts. We are at the stage where I'm beginning to think that the next time we have a really decent day's solar energy, I'll take the halogen heater outside and use that to melt the ice.

So I spent a major part of the day in the lean-to. I've stacked some of the wood so much better, moved some bricks outside, moved some stones upstairs, shovelled some bits and pieces out of the way, made up three large containers of wood for up here, and that's given me plenty of space to move stuff from out of the house. But you'll be amazed just how quickly the space is filled up, and things don't look all that much different in the house either, which is really rather sad. Anyway, there's tons of old waste paper and old waste cardboard so if I have a huge bonfire once the weather improves (whenever that might be) it'll make the place look emptier (I hope).

I've also done a bit more on the ceiling. I was going to have a really good crack at it but Rosemary rang up and we had a big long chat instead. It's her first winter living here, and she needs encouragement. Luckily she decided on moving here more-or-less full-time to sell her old rear-wheel drive saloon and buy a 4x4. She'll certainly benefit from that decision.

Confronted with the deep-frozen tinned food, I'm now moving more and more stuff up here. The washing-up stuff is now in the attic (the sink in the verandah has been frozen up for over a week anyway) and so all of the crockery, cutlery and saucepans will be staying up here. It's pointless taking them all downstairs to wash, leaving them there overnight and then bringing them back up here the following evening. It's the coldest winter for decades, apparently, and no-one expected it to go on for as long as this. Consecutive minuses in double figures for well over a week - something that's unheard-of.

It wasn't quite the stinker that I was expecting.

2012-02-10T02:33:00.000+01:00

Yes, a mere -14.1°C. A bagatelle. But it was cold in here though, 8°C when I woke up. And that's not surprising that the temperature up here is falling slowly. This cold spell has lasted well over a week and shows no sign of letting up.

So after breakfast it was into the firewood and I'm at the stage of looking for larger kindling because that's getting low up here. I've worked my way through a big pile this winter. I've brought up a large IKEA bag full from out of the lean-to, and that's making even more space in there, which is good news. I'm at the stage where I need to think about moving things out of the house to give me space to start working elsewhere. It's beginning to get too crowded.

Most of the rest of the day was spent working on the ceiling again, and I'm making good progress, even though I did manage to fall off the trestle thing that I'm standing on. i'm not quite sure how I managed to do that. But I did find time to rescue the two coffee percolator things and give them a really good clean. I tried the big one on the woodstove and although it took a while it made a decent cup of coffee. It took ages to cook the spaghetti though and I'm going to have to think of a way to do this better.

But I can see why in North America they go for tin-roofed houses. Although it was cold it was bright and sunny. And at a certain moment all of the snow slid off the barn roof and fell with a crash to the floor.

After all that I said yesterday ...

2012-02-09T00:55:00.000+01:00

... about my heat pad melting the water in the deep-frozen water butt, the sum total of water received today was precisely zero. Although we had a really warm night for a change (all of -11.4°C in fact) we had some snow. It was overcast all day with snow flurries and the sun hardly broke through at all, hence the maximun temperature today was a crazy -7.9°C and not even a heat pad can cope with that and do anything worthwhile.

I also had a phone call first thing. François, who I haven't seen for ages. He's having issues with the blog of one of his Associations and now that there's no technical assistance with the reseau since Liesbeth moved away, it looks like I have the short straw. That meant the first part of the morning tidying up. Can't have visitors with the place looking like a tip.I cut up some wood too, to make an impressive woodpile up here.

I had a couple of hours in the bedroom doing the ceiling, and I managed to scrounge enough water to mix some quick-drying filler to do the joints between the plasterboard and the ceiling. and quick-drying it needs to be too - to set and to dry before it freezes. And after that, I attacked the ceiling.

François came round after lunch, and won the prize for being the first private visitor of the year (yes, 6 weeks in as well, it shows just how popular I am). We chatted for quite a while and I sorted out his problems. But once he had gone, I didn't resume work. The temperature is dropping rapidy and so I stayed up here in the warm.

As for tea, I had tinned ratatouille already but what with my late lunch (17:00) I wasn't hungry. I had a coffee, and a kettle with a small amount of water boiled up in no time on the stove.

Anyway, it's bright moonlight outside and not a cloud in the sky. It's going to be another stinker tonight.

I'm more and more impressed with this little fire of mine.

2012-02-08T02:06:00.001+01:00

Last night I cooked myself the rest of the oven chips, some baked beans and a veggie burger in the oven. Tonight, leaving the oven open, I cooked a saucepan of pasta, beans and lentils in a kind-of curry sauce. And it's all working really well.

And I think that I've found the secret of heating the room even quicker. A nail has fallen down the back of the fire and as a result I can't close up the ash tray. It's open about a quarter of an inch. and if I open the air intake just a fraction, it roars away like nobody's business. Secondly, if I prop open the lid about 30° when the fire is roaring, the lid deflects all of the heat right into my upper body. Another thing that helps is having turned the divan round so that it is across the room, it acts as a heat-stop and all of the heat is concentrated between me and the fire.

But this morning it was cold in here - 8.2°C in fact. And it's hardly surprising - last night was -16.3°C, the coldest temperature that I have ever recorded here. It was cruel downstairs. Even the orange juice was frozen solid. I had to go to the mairie as well to check over the projector for this exhibition I'm doing, and Caliburn had a little struggle to start - not that I'm surprised.

Back here I made a heat pad with that heated seat pad and some insulation, and throughout the afternoon it melted about 25 litres of water. I'm now seemingly melting more water than I'm using so that's progress of a sort. I've also made much more prgress doing the ceiling in the bedroom, and the unexpectred good side of this is that in moving a lot of the stuff around, I'm finding loads of things that I have misplaced. Knives, saws, the large mitre clamps, and also the missing 650-watt circular saw that I've been seeking for ages.

So tonight, with having a big fire in here, it's quite warm and so I'm off to bed in a minute. Tomorrow I need to use some of that excess water to make some polyfilla stuff to fill the cracks in the plasterboarding that I did the other day. 15 minutes will see me finish the ceiling as far as I can go and I can't do any more until the joints in the wall are sealed and smoothed down.

Sunday is a day of rest...

2012-02-07T01:18:00.003+01:00

... so I did nothing - not even to write up my blog. I just read the odd book, watched a film and did some more of the presentation. And cooked pizza, garlic bread and rice pudding in the oven. I didn't even manage to watch the superbowl - I was asleep a long time before that.

Mind you, I did do something else. I've changed the furniture round in the room again and I now have the bed-settee going across the room in front of the fire. That's a much more logocal arrangement and it also helps to break up some of the draughts.

Today though, I was back at work. But before that I had breakfasdt of course and as it was so flaming cold in the verandah I ate it up here and I did something that I have been longing to do - namely to run the electric heater simply for some casual heat for 20 minutes or so. We're getting all luxurious around here these days.

And so this morning I had a pile of paperwork to do and one or two phone calls to make, and then some wood to cut up from the dry pile in the lean-to, as I'm close to running out up here. For the rest of the day I was working on the bedroom ceiling.

But with there being plenty of solar energy I had the electric heater running up here, simply for the sake of using the current, and also the electric seat pad working around the water butts. And that seemed to work okay as it produced about 20 litres of water. But if I can find some double-sided tape or something I might make an amendment to that in that I shall set it inside some of that reflective space-blanket insulation stuff, to concentrate the heat against the frozen water.That might work even better.

This ought to silence a few of my critics

2012-02-05T02:10:00.000+01:00

Yes, it's a halogen heater with two bars - that's 800 watts - quite happily burning away this afternoon in my attic.

Considering that it's the middle of winter, receiving more than 200 amp-hours (that's over 2.5 kw) must be something of a record and with the batteries fully-charged by 10:00 I had to do something with the surplus energy. At first I ran it at 400 watts but at the peak time (between 13:00 and 14:00) I ran it at 800 watts and the system took it quite happily. I was quite impressed of course. My next step now is to find a small microwave oven, and to cook my tea in it. That will definitely keep one or two people quiet.

This morning the temperature in here was just 9°C - rather disappointing because last night was quite warm, just a mere -14.1°C. Too cold to go out of course and so I had the halogen heater on and read a book or two. The room slowly warmed up (and I mean slowly) but with halogen heat, it heats a person pretty quickly and I was quite comfortable here with that.

After lunch (durng which I encountered the likes of deep-frozen tomato) I carried on with the ceiling in the bedroom, seeing as there was no shopping to do. That kept me busy for a couple of hours until 18:00 and then I knocked off and lit the fire up here.

Tea at 21:00 was agony. Minus 8 in the verandah and everything was frozen to everything else. Outside we had -13°C and that was at 21:50 - I shudder to think what it might be now.

So how did this 6am start go this morning?

2012-02-04T01:31:00.000+01:00

Surprisingly enough, when the alarm went off at 06:00 I was already wide awake. Well, maybe not bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, but I was there. And what was nice about it was that it was 14.9°C in the room here, and when I riddled the ashes, there was still a glimmer of red heat in there. So when the guy telephoned at 06:30 to say that he was on his way, I strode out of my room personfully and was almost knocked flat on my back. It wasn't the -10°C in the verandah that did it but the -15.8°C outside. The second-lowest temperature ever recorded here.

We inched our way into Montlucon and I went to sit in a cafe until 08:00 when the garage opened and I could reclaim Caliburn, which cost me an arm and a leg to do so but I'll tell you what - for the first time ever, there are some real brakes on Caliburn and he stops just like he ought to do. He also handles so much better as well.

And that was only the beginning of the expenditure. After that, it was off to Lapeyre, from where I bought the house windows. They told me last time I was there that they were discontinuing that product line in February and so if I wanted the matching door I needed to order it then. And so I did - a nice fully-glazed front door, one large panel to match the windows. Cheapest there is, as it happens but why I wanted it is that it lets in the most light.

Back in Pionsat I bought a few bits and pieces off the tool lorry at the market and then went round to Marianne's for a coffee and a chinwag.

After that I came home and did some work. There's a pile more timber gone into the bedroom ceiling and I've also carried on drilling away at the wall in the lean-to. But that's hard work as the drill is really heavy and I'm up against some granite right now. I also experimented with ways of unfreezing the water, something that I'll need to be thinking of soon. One way I'm going to try is to wrap an old Volvo heated seat pad around the tap and connect it to the excess charge circuit - see what that does.

Tonight I had a gorgeous tea - a huge plate of chips and baked beans. It's so cold that I've bought a large bag of oven chips, put it in a plastic container and buried it in a snowdrift. I brought a pile of them up here and cooked them in the oven bit of my stove, and cooked the saucepan in there as well. It took a while but it was well worth waiting for, and i'll be having oven chips again.

But washing up after was something else. Chopping board stuck to the table, tea towel stuck to the oven, everything else stuck to something else. I've got the water and the fruit and veg up here with me. Frozen lettuce goes not taste very nice, especially with frozen cucumber

I have to be up at 06:00 in the morning GRRRRRRR!

2012-02-03T00:34:00.001+01:00

Yes, having left Caliburn in the Ford garage at Montlucon and having arranged to pick it up today, the snow fell really heavily in the night, to such an extent that Liz was snowed in at her home and couldn't get out to go to work, and so couldn't take me to Montlucon to rescue Caliburn and Strawberry Moose. She doesn't go back into work until Tuesday and that's a long time to be without transport - not that there's anywhere you can actually get to right now.

Anyway so ringing up the garage to tell them about the change in plans I ended up talking to a guy who I know who works there and who actually lives in Virlet. He's offered to take me there in the morning which is wonderful - the downside of this being that he opens up the garage in the morning and so leaves home at 06:30. Still, beggars can't be choosers.

So what did I do today then if I didn't go to Montlucon? Not much because when I went down to breakfast at 08:45 (early for once) the temperature in the verandah was -6.3°C and outside, a healthy -8.5°C. Yes, winter is here and you don't feel much like working. Back up here I lit a fire and did some more work on the presentation until the laptop battery went flat, and seeing that it was 13:00 I went to keep warm by cutting up some wood. And I have piles now, but enough about my personal life.

After lunch, which was exciting as the water in the water jug that I was using to fetch water from the container in the barn was freezing over in just the time it took to walk 10 metres, I went into the bedroom and made a good bit of progress on the ceiling. I had a few phone calls, not the least of which was from Dave in Hexham and that's always a pleasant surprise.

Cooking tea was exciting. -7.0°C in the verandah and the food was freezzing rather than cooking, and washing up with snow is exciting too. But I'm not going far - in fact I'm off to bed. I need my beauty sleep. 06:00 in the morning. Hah!

I'm Caliburn-less at trhe moment.

2012-02-02T00:33:00.002+01:00

He's gone to the mender's for his annual check-up and I fear it's going to be another expensive one as apparently he has a warped front disc. And that might explain why the tyres have been wearing unevenly and also why the braking has never been as good as I would have liked ever since he was new.

So we dug ourselves out of a snowdrift this morning and headed off to Montlucon. And I found a car wash that was open (despite the cold) next to the LIDL, so Caliburn could have his annual bath. I was quite tempted myself but mine's not due for another month or so. But Caliburn is clean, anyway and the salt has been washed from out of his wheel arches.

At the Auchan, where I did some desultory shopping, I came across, at long last, a decent camera bag. The right size, with lots of pockets and so on. It was expensive, but then again so is my camera equipment and leaving it rolling around on the floor of Caliburn is not really a solution. I also bought some tins of ratatouille for the storeroom, having noticed the label and thinking "that's the beand for me!". But with lesdyxia luring KO, a closer look at the label revealed that it is in fact branded "Pre-vert", or 'Green Meadow'. Ahh well.

Having left Caliburn at the garage on the edge of town, I had to walk into the centre to meet Liz who had been teaching there today and who had offered to bring me home. And dressed up in layers of coats and jackets with gloves, hat and furry boots to counter the Combrailles weather, while Montlucon was basking in a barmy mere -2°C, it made me feel like Nanook of the North. and I spent a good while looking around, but I couldn't find him anywhere. I did however catch a glimpse of myself in a mirrored door, and I reckoned that I looked just like someone whose trawler had just docked in the harbour. Ahhh, the sartorial elegance of it all.

Back home, we are about to experience something of a crisis - we've run out of Christmas cake! Whatever am I going to do now? But the good news is that I'm sitting here in my little room, basking in a balmy 23°C while outside, it's -6°C. And all done on free fuel as well. What an excellent buy this woodstove was!

I didn't last long ...

2012-02-01T01:47:00.000+01:00

... outside this morning. Just enough to cut up an old rotten chevron and then cold damp hands (I forgot to dry my gloves) drove me inside.

First thing that I did was to clear the bedroom of some of the junk that was in there. A pile of cardboard boxes were flattened down, the old woodstove went outside, and they were followed by the old windows. And as an aside, I now have a woodshed with windows ;-)

Next task was to dig Caliburn out of the snow. And there was plenty to move as well. I eventually put him at the top of the hill and we went for a little drive in the snow - I need to be sure that I can move around tomorrow as he is off to be serviced.

After lunch I made some more space in the bedroom and carried on in there. Now all of the plasterboarding on the outside walls of the bedroom is finished - something about which I am very pleased. I'm glad that I've done that. It looks quite good too. What it needs now is to be all taped down at the edges and then filled. And when that's done, I can carry on with the ceiling.

That's two outside walls that have been plasterboarded. The third wall is the back wall and of course there's a fitted wardrobe built into that. The fourth wall is of course the stud wall and half of that - against the corridor - is done. The half that is against the bathroom I can't do yet until I'm able to sort out the plumbing, and I also need to fit the door. The window opening needs edging too, and then the floor has to be done. But thinking about it, I'll be putting hardboard on the floor and then putting some of that flooring stuff on top. But it's nice to see some light down at the far end of the tunnel and if this cold spell continues, I might see even more.

I'm also at the stage where I'm actively thinking about the bathroom too and how that is going to evolve. I reckon that it won't be long before I have the plasterboard on there as well. But that means replacing the floor first.

But seeing how the weather has suddenly turned nasty, I'm still impressed with that 10 days of warm weather just after New Year when I managed to do that roof. It really was astonishing.

I forgot what I was going to to today.

2012-01-31T01:37:00.000+01:00

It's sad, isn't it, when that happens. But probably the late start might have had something to do with it, and when I noticed that the sun was actually shining, I had a run round and cleared the solar panels of snow, to give them a head start.

So woodcutting came next, and I spent quite some time dealing with two huge tree trunks that filled a good deal of the woodshed and will keep me going for three months, I reckon. And when I talked the other day, about all of the wood that I had on hand on the ground floor of the lean-to, which is almost full of the stuff. That has been in there for years (and I do mean years) so seeing as I'm short of wood in my little room, I cut up a pile of that and brought it up here. It's bone dry of course and so it burns quite well.

But that led me on to sorting out some of the wood in there and I made a little more space. And what with finding the box of hooks, I screwed some of them into the beams and started to hang gardening tools and the like from them. Even the brushcutter has a hook of its own now.

This afternoon I started to move the wood around on the car park by the end of the barn. I'm making more space there now and I reckon I can start to think about how I'm going to build the shed to keep the motorbikes and the cement mixer.

I've also done a little experiment. I bought a handful of 12-volt work lights - the type that look like the halogen security lights that you hang from a building. What I did is to try it with a LED cluster light rather than a 50-watt halogen. And while it's nothing like as bright, of course, it's effective and I shall be using that for working purposes in future.

Finally I carried on with the wiring in the lean-to. I've found the pull light switches so I'll be installing that tomorrow. I've had to cut a hole in the floor to pass a cable through. Off to the barn I went to find a holesaw. I happened to glance at the sky and thought to myself "that looks like it might snow". So I went into the barn, found the 33mm holesaw, and walked out right into a blizzard. Yes, we're back in the snow again. I'll be up to my knees tomorrow morning.

It's been Sunday today ...

2012-01-30T01:36:00.002+01:00

... and so I had a nice drive out in the countryside. In fact as far as Terjat, where the home team was playing Target in the Allier League 3rd Division. It's a beautiful setting up there, and you can see right across the valley to the snow-covered hills in the background, and it's over there somewhere, where I live.

Another thing about Sunday is that there's no alarm clock and so with no-one ringing me up at some stupid time of the day, I can lie in until 10:24 without the least pang of guilt, in clean sheets and bedding the bed in its "double-bed" position, back in its old place by the little window. Luxury!

The temperature in here was 13.2 degrees and that's one thing about this new fire that I've bought - with the old one, there wasn't enough residual heat to keep the room warm once the fire went out and the temperature would often drop into single figures overnight. But this fire keeps warm for ages and it's maintaining a reasonable heat (up to now, anyway). and first thing that I did, even before breakfast, was to light the fire again. And I've been warm all day, which is really impressive and just what the doctor ordered. I'm well on the way towards the end of my presentation - one or two more days and it will be done, I hope.

The football promised to be a real struggle, in tjhe cold (coldest day of the winter so far) and the wind. And with Turgid being 3rd from bottom of the lowest possible league in the Allier, and Target being one place below them, I'm not quite sure what I expected. But it wasn't much.

But having been overly critical of the football in the Allier, I have to say in fairness that this was a good game. Turgid played quite well, helped by the fact that Target, while they weren't "bad", they were rather clueless and ran out of ideas whenever they had the ball. In the Allier, where there is no official referee, it's the away side that provides the referee. And so it was a Target referee in the middle today. And he disallowed no fewer than three Terjat goals (two for offside - on one occasion overruling the *home* linesman) and one for pushing in the box, and to be fair I have to say that I was in no position to make any judgement. But despite the handicap, Turgid scored two more goals that were allowed by the ref, and should have had three or four more. Had those disallowed goals been given and had Turgid won 5-0, it would have been a fair reflection of the match. Third from bottom in the worst league in the area? Not on this showing they aren't. I'll be keeping my eye on the fixture list for whenever Pionsat don't have a Sunday match, and I'll wander along here again.

And this evening, with a rip-roaring fire and 24°C on the thermometer, I carried out what is fast becoming a ritual on Sunday evenings, and cooked pizza and garlic bread and rice pudding in the oven bit of my stove. At €270 or however much it was, it's proving to be something of a bargain.

It just goes to show ...

2012-01-29T00:16:00.000+01:00

... that those people in football clamouring for a winter break mid-season quite simply don't have a clue about whatever it is that they are trying to say. Here we are in the Puy-de-Dôme, having had our 6-week winter break in the mildest winter in the area since records began, and the football season restarts this evening, and today we have had the heaviest snowfall of the winter and so all the matches are postponed.

So much for the winter break.

But not that I am complaining too much. I spent the morning and some of the afternoon working on my presentation of The Trans-Labrador Highway for the local village social evening in a month's time. and I've managed to reach the outskirts of Goose Bay - i.e. well over halfway. So I'm not complaining. It's an ill wind that doesn't blow anyone any good.

But at about 13:30 the snow stopped and we had a little thaw. That was the cue for me to race off to St Eloy and so some shopping. And I was back by 15:00 with the usual stuff, but also two Harry Potter films, the director's cut versions, for €9:99 the pair. I'll have to see what Herry Potter is up to - so far I've managed to avoid those films (except for one that I caught a glimpse of - in French - with Marianne over Christmas).

This afternoon I've turned my room around again. I've done a lot more sorting out, repositioned the furniture and by the time you read this I will have the bed back where it used to be. Only this time, with a proper array of chests of drawers behind it for the clothes. What inspired this was the fact that the new large set that I bought in IKEA in the spring, and the medium sized set that I acquired at a brocante 18 months ago fit together nicely and are exactly the right size to fill one of the alcoves.

But I'm surprised at all of the bedding and stuff that I seem to have acquired since I emptied out Expo. I can see me having a really good sorting out one of these days.

I've left Caliburn on the road at the top of the lane in case the weather continues to turn nasty. From there I can drive him out. Because tomorrow afternoon, Terjat, who I saw last Sunday in a basement Allier 3rd Division clash, are at home again. If I can move around, I'll go for a nosey to see if they really are as bad as they looked last week.

I can always tell ...

2012-01-28T00:57:00.001+01:00

... when I'm enjoying myself when i'm working. It's when I suddenly notice that the light has gone and it's 18:15 and I'm still out there happily working away. And so it was today.

I did the customary pile of woodcutting and now the woodshed is looking quite impressive. There's probably now enough cut to last me for next winter as well and there's still a load to do out by the barn. And then there's all the wood from last winter, that's still down the fields. And then there are all the chevrons off the house roof and the barn roof. Wood isn't something that I'm going to be short of for a while.

Once I had done the wood, I made a start on the wind turbine, and that is now in position. Doesn't it look smart with its nex stylish aerodynamic blades. But I shall have to stop mounting all of these wind turbines. I'll end up being arrested.

It wasn't as easy as you might think, organising this wind turbine. But then again, nothing ever is when I'm involved, is it?

It all started to go wrong when I tried to mount the hub onto the spindle. And immediately the bolts holding the blades to the hub fouled the casing. So I turned the bolts round so that the threads were exposed - hardly aerodynamic but it all fitted. Then, tightening up the hub, the hub ground out against the casing and locked up the blades. That meant using a couple of packing washers underneath the hub. One I had, the correct size of diameter, I had to file out the hole to 19mm. The second one, I had the correct sized hole but the diameter was wrong so I had to grind the excess off with the angle grinder and the bench grinder. So instead of an interference fit, I now have three extra faces and so under a great deal of wind pressure, I can see the faces sliding instead of the blades turning. Won't that be fun?

Much to my surprise, the wiring was pretty straightforward and didn't call for any major revision. But putting it into position was something else. I didn't have a scaffolding pole long enough and so I had to join two together and that's no fun trying to do that on a ladder with that kind of weight at that height pressing down on your shoulders. It's for that reason that, after much cursing, I invented the wind turbine pole lifting handle, and I was astonished at how easy it was once I had a lifting handle in place. I had to lower the anenometer though - the wind turbine was fouling it.

Wind turbines need a load in order to work, and so I've wired it directly to an external weatherproof 12-volt socket, and to the socket I've wired a 12-volt 100-watt halogen light. The faster the wind turbine turns, the brighter the light will become. It reminds me of Doctor RV Jones and his experiments into the cathode ray tube. In his book Most Secret War, one of the best books I have ever read, he describes that they tentatively connected two lorry headlights to the tube, hoping for a faint glimmer of light. Instead, they managed to illuminate the whole building before the headlights blew out with the intensity of current. Wouldn't I like to have something like that with this wind turbine?

I don't seem to have done much today.

2012-01-27T01:04:00.000+01:00

Mind you, that's not very much of a surprise considering that I managed to sleep through all of the alarms in here this morning and was ... errr ... somewhat late in raising myself from the dead. In fact, much of the morning was spent sorting out the wood that is leaning against the end wall of the barn, and then sawing up a dozen or so lengths.

The strange thing is that while the woodpile is slowly increasing, the number of lengths standing up against the wall doesn't seem to have changed. Perhaps I have hit upon the secret of the self-reproducing wood supply - something similar to the Irishman, granted two wishes by his fairy godmother, asked for a bottle of Guinness that refilled itself every tilme you poured some out of it.
"And your second wish?" enquired the fairy godmother.
"I'll have another one of those bottles".

This afternoon I carried on with the wiring in the upstairs of the lean-to. Most of that time was spent looking for equipment of course, but I now have two lights and two pairs of 12-volt power sockets. They are all wired up, but they aren't wired into the circuit of course - I need to drill a 40mm hole right through the stone wall into the house to do that, and that's something that is going to have to wait for a bit. I've a drill that will do it - a 1050-watt SDS drill, but with the current that it draws, you need a briliiantly sunny day. And while a strange golden thing did pop out from behind a cloud for 5 minutes, it's been about 9 days since we have seen the sun. It shows just how lucky I was with that little dry spell that enabled me to do the roof of the lean-to.

Long-term readers of these pages in one of its several predecessor forms will recall that I bought 2 x 400-watt wind turbines from the manufacturers in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 2002. One of them flies proudly above the barn but the other one is in the back of the barn because the blades on these turbines are rather brittle and I've ended up having to make up one set out of the two that I had originally. And the manufacturers never ever replied to any of my mails asking about buying s new set of replacement blades. So a couple of weeks ago I bit the bullet and contacted a company in the USA that makes parts for home-build wind turbines, and I've bought a set of blades from them, complete with hub, to fit on the other wind turbine. In what was left of my working day, I've assembled the blades onto the hub unit and what I intend to do tomorrow is to resurrect the abandoned wind turbine and stick the blade and hub assembly onto it, and then shove it onto a pole somewhere where it will catch the wind. These blades have the lowest drag co-efficient of any after-market wind turbine blades and so I'll be interested to see just how they perform.

Having run out of room ...

2012-01-26T00:27:00.000+01:00

... to store firewood once it's been cut, I've now invented the two-storey woodshed - and I bet there's certainly something narsty in that!

It's become something of a necessity to find a space to store the wood these days - having acquired a cement mixer and needing a place to store it, the logical thing to do is to build a lean-to shed, out of old scrap beams off the house roof and the corrugated iron sheets that I took off the lean-to roof, on the car park up against the end wall of the barn. But for this I need to move all of the wood that is leaning up against that wall, and the easiest way to move it is to cut it up into firewood-sized lengths and stack it somewhere. Hence the two-storey woodshed.

Of course that's not going to be its permanent home, but it will give some kind of shelter to the wood for now.

And so this morning, as well as building the woodshed, I cut up a load of wood as well. Some of it was quite thick and it showed the benefit of buying a decent saw. And it also showed the benefit of buying a wood grenade - something similar to a large chisel but with a point, not a blade, and four serrated sides. Stuck into a log of wood and wallopped with a sledgehammer, it splits the log cleanly and effectively into a more-manageable size.

This afternoon I noticed, to my surprise, that the batteries on bank 2 of the barn were fully-charged. And that was a surprise in this weather, I can say. Miserable, wet and depresssing - but that's enough about me. So with the batteries fully charged, I decided on a change. I disconnected them and connected up a couple of others, to let them charge up for a few days to see what they might do. Following that, I sorted out the extension leads and put them upstairs in the lean-to. I may as well use it now I've built it. And that led on to another idea, and I've started to install lights up there. Not that there's much need because I noticed that at 18:00 when I knocked off work, the evening was still light. Yes, the nights are getting shorter again.

We were recording again this morning.

2012-01-25T00:31:00.000+01:00

This time in Marcillat for Radio Tartasse. We finished the "winter driving" features and started on a new topic, which is the "talking rubbish" bit - may as well try to keep the programmes in sync. But in a startling piece of news, I've been asked by Radio Tartasse if I would present a Sunday-night rock music show. Now, that's something interesting and I'll have a go at working something out for this.

Back here I decided in view of the miserable and depressing weather that I would stay in and make headway on my Trans-Labrador Highway presentation. But first I repaired the doorway into the room. The top hinge has pulled out of the doorframe (which isn't all that surprising because it's only a 10mm piece of hardboard) and the door has been falling off. But while I've been tidying up I found some 400mm strap hinges and so I screwed one of those to the top of the door - having first wedged it into position. Now it opens and closes perfectly. Second task was when I went to clean the glass door to the stove, and noticed that part of the sealing gasket had fallen out. No wonder it's not drawing properly and the room is filling slowly with smoke. Luckily I have some fireproof mastic and so I sealed it with that, and it worked so much better after that.

I didn't get much done at my presentation, as I crashed out for a few hours. I'm getting ovetired again. I did manage to wake up in time to cook tea, and I made myself a spicy aubergine and kidney bean casserole that will keep me going for three days. And it's the best I've ever made, it really is.

But I'm off to have an early night. If anything, crashing out has made me even more tired.

I've been spending money again today.

2012-01-24T00:54:00.002+01:00

Yes, doing my "Imelda babe - going shopping, shopping for shoes" bit (and quite funnily, I was listening to Golden Heart, the album from which the above-names track is taken, on the way to Liz's this morning). The boots that I bought in a Hudson's Bay trading post in Canada 15 months ago died a death over Christmas (the sole split) and the canvas shoesq I use for wandering around here aren't really suitable for much. And a chance glance across a busy road revealed a sale on at a shoe shop on the outskirts of Clermont Ferrand.

So I've acquired a pair of black leather boots, not exactly what I wanted but they look fairly solid and 50% off the retail price of €59 made it look like something respectable, and will keep my feet warm and dry for the foreseeeable future. But that wasn't all. They had some boots that are a kind-of cross between wellingtons and après-ski boots, with thick soles and fur lining and looking pretty solid, and all for €22 as well. Having frozen my feet off at the football over the weekend and being up to my neck in mud around here as well, I decided that a pair of those wouldn't go amiss either - for going to to footy and for working outside in the bad weather.

Two pairs of footwear - you really WILL be calling me "Imelda" now.

So what was I doing in Clermont-Ferrand this afternoon? Well, we'd been to Gerzat this morning to record the radio programmes for Radio Arverne - spending a lot of the time talking rubbish as I predicted. But I'm running low on soya milk and not having been to Montluçon and the Auchan there for a while, we decided to multi-task and visit the Auchan on the outskirts of Clermont-Ferrand, which is only a cockstride away from the road that takes us home. And the rest is history.

Back at Liz and Terry's, I had a really nice surprise. You may remember that when we were doing the house roof back in 2009, we had Terry's little cement mixer running here. It's only small but it runs on just 375 watts and it ticked over all day comfortably on my electrical set-up here. But it's really too small for Terry now he's in business and so he's acquired a big professional mixer that needed repair, and he's now repaired it. The upshot of this is that "would I like a more-or-less permanent loan of the small mixer?" Well, is the Pope a Catholic? A little mixer like that quietly ticking away all day while I do some important building work won't half make my life easier and I have plenty of work for it in the summer, that's for sure. Aren't I grateful?

This evening, I had the fire running hot and garlic bread, pizza and rice pudding for tea were all cooked in the oven.

All around, it's been quite a good day today. Hasn't it just?

A quiet weekend ...

2012-01-23T01:49:00.000+01:00

... and when was the last time I had one of those?

In fact most of Saturday and all of Sunday morning was spent writing the scripts for the next few monthsworth of radio programmes. Liz and I will be spending most of our time talking rubbish. I know that that's what we usually do, but this time we mean it. I was at a loss as to what subject to choose, but then on Tuesday I received my Puy-de-Dôme en Mouvement magazine in which one of the topics was the Departement's plan to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill, and on Thursday I received the magazine from the Bank, in which one of the topics was donating unwanted goods to charities and good homes. A subject therefore immediately suggested itself, and as for my thesis for my Diploma in Pollution Control I wrote about waste and landfills, I'm perfectly qualified to talk rubbish and so that was that.

We had an interruption at midday on Saturday for a shopping expedition to St Eloy where I bought nothing exciting, but that was that.

Saturday night and Sunday afternoon was football. Not at Pionsat as the Puy-de-Dôme football leagues are on a winter break (and doesn't this weather make a mockery of the idea of a winter break? Six weeks with no footy in the Puy-de-Dôme with some of the mildest weather I have ever had in winter, and when the season restarts next weekend - just you watch _ we'll be snowed in for a month!) but Saturday night was at Marcillat across the border in the Allier where their 1st XI took on Chantelle. This was a match that is nominally in a division one step higher than Pionsat's 1st XI but the standard of football in the Allier is total rubbish and it was an appalling match.

Long-term readers of this rubbish will recall that at one time I expressed an interest in watching a 3rd Division match. This is the lowest tier in football in the Allier (the Puy-de-Dôme has four) but having seen matches higher up the pyramid, I wondered how bad an Allier 3rd Division match would be. As luck would have it, this afternoon Terjat (about 8 miles from here) were entertaining (if that is the right word to use) their near-neighbours Ste Thérènce in a cut-throat local derby in the basement of the 3rd Division. Obviously, with nothing better to do (there was no paint drying and no grass growing anywhere in the vicinity) a visit to Terjat was called for.

And I wasn't disappointed. It was predictably awful. There was only one player on the field that looked reasonably competent (I'm excluding the Ste Thérènce goalkeeper - what on earth was someone like him doing playing in a team as awful as his?) and that was the Terjat centre-half. It was clear after the first five minutes that nothing was ever going to get past him, and it didn't either.

The trainer of Ste Thérènce clearly had the same opinion as me, and the talk that he gave to his team at half-time was just so predictable. 30 seconds after the restart, with the Terjat taking off after a loose ball down the right flank, two Ste Thérènce players came after him, put him firmly, fairly and squarely into the advertising hoardings with a thump that was heard all over the Allier, and that was his match over. The result was predictable after that.

Next stop was to Liz and Terry's to rehearse our radio programmes for the next month and Liz very kindly cooked tea and made cake, some of which found its way in a doggy-bag back to my house, for which I am extremely grateful.

So we are recording tomorrow morning, and then I have to crack on with the next outstanding task - my presentation on the Trans-Labrador Highway for the village discussion group. It's all go here.

I can't see a thing ...

2012-01-20T23:58:00.001+01:00

... right now in my room. There's a gusting wind blowing up outside and it's in just the right direction to blow right down my chimney so every couple of minutes a load of smoke is blown back down the fire and out of the air vent into the room. I'm being done up like a kipper just now.

But I was right about the weather - it's rained for most of the day. And it is indeed nice to see the rail pouring off the new roof on the lean-to and everything inside being bone-dry for a change. I can't believe my luck with the weather for that 10-day spell when I decided to go for broke and do the roof. It's not like me at all.

So I did some sawing of the wood this morning, but a downside of this is that I'm now running out of room to store it. I suppose that I shall have to make a larger woodpile, or a taller one or something. I could even dig the trench that I need to dig at the side of the house by the "other" lean-to, drop the drainage pipe in there that needs to go in there and connect it into the drainage system, fill the trench with gravel, cover it over with a weed blanket and then build the real woodshed where it is supposed to go, but that's not the work of half an hour.

After the woodcutting (which I managed to do without any interruption for a change) I did some more tidying up, starting in the lean-to. First job was to rescue the remaining Hawker deep-discharge batteries and charge them up. And here I've hit a problem, in that the battery box I made for the other batteries is too small - the Hawkers are taller. This is a problem. But anyway once they were out of the way I tidied up in the lean-to, collected all of the stray solar panels and stacked them in a corner, and then hung up the smaller gardening tools so that I'm not tripping over them.

Having moved a couple of solar panels out of the barn I could then get in there and make some space to put the old Rutland wind turbine tidily out of the way. This led to the discovery of a circular saw, not the 600-watt one that I can't find at all, but the old 1050-watt one that was all rusted solid having been left in a container that filled with water through a leak in the barn roof when I was ill and which had subsequently been partly-dismantled for spares. Of course, now that I have a 1200-watt inverter all things are possible. I gave the saw a good spray with WD40 and reassembled it with some other bits and pieces and much to my surprise it fired up! Even more surprising was that the inverter didn't even bat an eyelid. The saw needs some "attention to detail" before I can use it to cut wood, but this is definitely progress.

This afternoon, with the weather deteriorating, I restarted work in the bedroom - the first time for God knows how long. I've fitted the false beam at the side wall - the beam that hides all of the electrical cable - and I've also packed out one of the plasterboard panels that didn't quite mate with the others. It was then that I lost the light and so I spent the last hour tidying up in the barn again. And all of this time i've spent tidying up, and I really can't see any difference at all.

This evening by way of an experiment, I brought a kettle of water up here and put it on top of the woodstove. And after about 2.5 hours it was gloriously warm and I had a lovely hot wash and shave in front of the fire. Definitely the highlight of the week, that, and I can't think why I hadn't done that before.

Next step is the coffee pot on the stove, and put the produce in a thermos ready for the following morning. I ought to be much-better organised than I am.

The weather changed throught the night ...

2012-01-20T00:25:00.000+01:00

... and I woke up to a grey and miserable overcast day, and that's how it remained. The third guy came to see me about solar panels at 11:00 and he was gone by 11:05, interrupting my woodcutting. I need to do as much as I can of that because I want the space at the back of the barn, where I'm storing the treetrunks, for other things. Getting it out of the way by cutting it up seems like a good idea to me and I'm planning to do half an hour each day.

Once my hour was up I went to look for something in the barn and I can't remember what it was now, but I didn't find it. I ended up doing some kind of tidying up (after a fashion) and repairing the lights up there so that I can see what I'm doing, and I found the 400-watt halogen heater that I brought back from Brussels. The oil heater isn't heating as much as I had hoped and it's not keeping its heat as long as it ought to either, and so I've decided to go with the halogen one for now. 100 watts less, but of course halogen is much more efficient than most other forms of electric heating and I recall getting quite warm with that. I'll be intrigued to see what it can do in a glorious alpine day. I also found a pair of steel toecapped work shoes that I had forgotten all about. They've been rescued and put to good use. It's nice to have decent footwear.

This afternoon I went about and inspected the trees overhanging the next stage of the garden development - the space to where I'll be moving the compost bins. There were a couple of them that looked rather dodgy and so they came down, and I also cut up the tree that had fallen down in the gale last summer and flattened my spuds and onions, and moved it out of the way. I DO like this new saw.

To finish off, I started to weed one of the vegetable plots andf I'm making a pile of stuff for burning, right where the greenhouse is going to be. For four reasons too. Firstly, it's a clear space there, secondly it'll get rid of all the rubbish that's accumulating, thirdly that it'll burn the weeds that are growing there, and fourthly that it will fertilise the soil.

But I won't be burning anything tomorrow, and I won't be working in the garden either. We're having a torrential rainstorm right now outside and I'll be intrigued to see how the new roof is coping with it all.

Well that got rid of them.

2012-01-19T01:20:00.000+01:00

Yes, I had two visits from solar panel installation sales companies, and neither stayed for very long. And serve them right too. I hate these cold-calling canvassing companies. And there's another one coming tomorrow as well. I can't believe that i'm being snowed under with these blighters.

But this morning started with me being up and about before the alarm, and that doesn't happen very often. And after breakfast I had a mega-woodcutting session, so now the woodpile is looking quite impressive again., as it ought to be.

With the bright sunlight I fired up the huge SDS drill and carried on drilling the core hole through the stone wall into the lean-to, but I wasn't there for long as the sun went in and the clouds came out. That drill is 1200 watts and it needs plenty of sunlight for it to run contunuously.

This afternoon I prepared an order of product to be exported to Canada. When I was there in September, you might recall that I had computer issues, and I met a guy who helped me repair it. He was telling me that he can't easily find 230-volt electrical components in North America, but of course I can over here in Europe and so I've started a new role as supplier of his 230-volt products. That involved, this afternoon, screwing 108 transformers to 2 pieces of plywood (left over from my roof), making a sandwich of the lot and wrapping them in a cardboard box ready for shipping.

Yes, this new little venture can be quite exciting if it comes off.

You may remember the other day ...

2012-01-18T01:38:00.002+01:00

... that I mentioned that there was a new digital 1200-watt inverter in the post on its way here. Well, it turned up a couple of days ago but I never had time to install it. Anyway, that all changed this morning and after cutting another huge pile of wood I set about fitting it in the system.

It's quite a monster and quite heavy too, and the cable is 25mm welding cable. And to fit it on my panel board it involved moving a few things around in order to make the space. But it's certainly impressive and if it works as well as it's supposed to, it will be a big improvement on the current (well, we are talking electricity here) analogue 600-watt inverter, which creaks and groans under the load that it sometimes has to bear but which has kept going for almost three years, day-in and day-out, nevertheless.

That's now been relegated onto the portable panel that I made the other week, and the 150-watt inverter that was on there, that has creaked and groaned day-in and day-out for even longer, has now been relegated into Caliburn where it will just be used for charging up the laptop and the occasional power tool once in a while, replacing the unsatisfactory 150-watt pulse inverter that doesn't seem to want to pulse when it's supposed to.

This afternoon I did something that is so unusual as to merit recording here on the blog. And that is something called "tidying up". That's a phrase that is contained in the vocabulary of many people but is somehow missing from mine. You can't see much of a difference because I seem to be the only person in the world whose tidying up makes more of a mess that it was before I started, but I've recovered 7 square metres of roofing tiles left over from the roofing of the house and the two lean-tos. I'll put them on one side for now and think of a way of using them. I also went into the field next door hunting for the nails that made a bid for freedom. I don't want the farmer's cattle to find them first. I recovered a dozen or so but that's just a tiny fraction of the number that got away. I'll go for another look tomorrow.

But the purpose of tidying up was to clear all of the wood off the floor of the first floor of the lean-to. Where the tarpaulin had been blown away, that area of the floor was soaking wet and the wood that was piled on it, much of it new stuff, was also soaking wet and it was stopping the floor from drying. So all of that wood has been arranged tidily where it will receive a nice current of air, and the floor is clear so that it might dry out. You might remember that it was only 18 months ago that I laid the floor and I don't want it rotting away quite yet.

In other news, I have two companies sending representatives around tomorrow to sell me these roof-top solar panel systems. I hate these cold-calling canvassers who ring up at 19:15 and 19:45 when I'm trying to drink a coffee and watch a film. Worse than spam e-mails they are - at least you can delete those - and so I'm fighting back. I can waste more of their time than they can of mine.

And in other other news, the water in the new immersion heater reached 28.5°C this afternoon. Not a lot you might think, but that was 25°C over the ambient temperature downstairs, and that's well-worth having. Not hot enough to use the washing machine or to have a shower, but it's all in the right direction.

The first thing that I did today ...

2012-01-17T01:51:00.000+01:00

... was to empty the composting toilet. I've been neglecting it for a few days, what with one thing or another. And of course, once you get started you'll be surprised at how many other things there are. But it needed to be emptied, such is the exciting life that I lead these days.

Second job was to cut a mound of wood. I've been running the pile down this last week or two and so I set about sawing up a big load of wood that will keep me going for the next few weeks. All done by hand with this new saw, and I'm as impressed with that as I am with the galvanised steel dustbin, which hasn't featured so much in these pages of late.

Third job was to rescue the old anenometer that I had mounted on the side of the house and which I had taken down when I had put the wind turbine up there. This was in the lean-to but it's now screwed to the fence by the front door. The main reason why I put it back up is that its temperature gauge is much more accurate than the one that I'm currently using to measure the air temperature.

This afternoon, with the sun blazing down and the heater upstairs working flat-out, I reckoned that this is a bit silly as there is so much more that I ought to be doing with the surplus electricity that I have. and so remembering the heady days of spring and summer 2011 I dismantled the old 12-volt immersion heater that I had made out of an old xylophene drum and which corroded through when I was in Canada, checked that the important bits, like the element, were still working (and you would be amazed at how quickly it boils 1.5 litres of water) and then built another heater using a 4-gallon plastic water header tank. I'm not sure how long the plastic will remain viable, but for a while anyway it will hopefully give me hot water and I can do my washing.

But all of this got me thinking. When I was setting out on the road of doing all of this, I remembered mentioning to someone who I thought was a friend of mine my plans for maybe having a microwave oven here. A short while later I stumbled across a thread in a newsgroup somewhere where this "friend" and his mates were openly ridiculing my thoughts about this. Of course, such a friendship had to peter out after that, but I do wonder what this guy and his mates would be saying now when here, in the middle of winter, for the last three days I've been running an electric heater up in the attic.

Serve them right.

If you thought that yesterday ...

2012-01-15T23:37:00.001+01:00

... featured a spectacular change of habits for me, then today was dramatic. Because it's a Sunday, and I have been working. And you can count on the fingers of one hand the times that that has happened.

I was up and about reasonably early for a Sunday and once more I was presented with a glorious blue sky and loads of sunshine. Far too nice to waste, but the benefits of having cracked on yesterday were apparent because there was about a foot of frost everywhere. With doing so much yesterday meant that there were only three rows left to do and I could afford to wait until the frost had melted.

That was about 12:40 and so by 12:45 I was on the roof, and by 15:30 it was all over. The slates are on and hopefully it's all now weatherproof. It certainly looks like it might be, and I am so grateful for the weather having held off while I did it, although why I wasn't struck down by a thunderbolt for working on the Sabbath is something that I don't understand.

Of course, it's all far from finished. I need to cement the join between the roof and the wall, cover one or two exposed nail heads with bitumen, make good the rendering, add a fascia board, paint all the woodwork, cover up the exposed demi-chevrons and fit the guttering, but none of that can be done until the warmer weather of the spring.

A major mistake that I have made though (but it isn't really a mistake) is that I have forgotten to fit the rooflight. I salvaged an old cast-iron-framed rooflight that I was going to fit in the roof here, but I forgot all about it in my haste, and it's too late now to do anything about it. That'll teach me to rush. Ahh well.

After that I relaxed in the warmth, and I mean warmth because we had so much solar energy today that I ran the oil heater for three hours and the temperature rose to as much as 17°C in here. But later I ran the fire and had a gorgeous tea of garlic bread, pizza and rice pudding, all made in the oven of this fire that I bought a short while ago.

So now I'm off to bed, a good half-hour before midnight and that's something else that is astonishing. But I'm exhausted, and I don't mind being exhausted through good honest hard work. Tomorrow I'm not going to be in a rush to start work and I might just have an easy day, having missed my weekend. But I'm not complkaining. I'm just so pleased that for once the weather has been on my side and I've finished slating the roof before the real winter. I certainly didn't expect this.

Saturday is shopping day.

2012-01-15T00:51:00.000+01:00

And so it was today. But in a dramatic change to my usual habits, shopping day was a quick one-hour thrash to St Eloy late in the afternoon just as it was starting to go dark.

Yes, I woke up this morning-ish to a beautiful bright blue clear sky and that meant "sod everything else - up on the roof!" I wasn't intending to miss this unexpected stroke of fortune, even if it was freezing clod and everywhere was covered in ice that started to melt and soaked me to the skin again.

In not all that much time, comparatively speaking, I had another 6 rows of tiles on the roof. They aren't particularly pretty but they are on, and that's the bit that's important. The weather was far too good to miss.

But do you like the IKEA bags? Very useful they are, for all kinds of purposes. And I have one fastened to the top of each ladder and they are used for holding the slates and nails so that I don't have to keep on going down to the scaaffolding. And two ladders? There are two bays and each ladder is tied to the handrail of each bay. The difference with the metal planks that I have compared to the wooden planks of the other scaffolding is that the ladders don't dig in - they slide across the metal. So you need to tie them onto the scaffolding to stop them sliding off and of course if they are tied, then they can't be moved from one bay to the next.

The other ladder hanging off the scaffolding is part of the side of the decorator's platform that I have in the house. That was useful lower down the roof - I could hook it over the uprights and work off the top but now I'm out of reach of it.

On the way to the shops I realised what a good buy this LIDL quilted overall was. I switched the wipers on to clear the screen but they were frozen on to it - it was that cold, and I hadn't noticed once I was curled up inside it. I'm well-impressed with that as well.

But I was absolutely whacked, aching everywhere when I had finished. So much so that on the way back I noticed way across the valley that the fkloodlights were switched on at Marcillat's football ground. There must have been a match there this evening and with nothing on at Pionsat that would have been the cue for me to go for a night out. But I was too whacked to move and I just came in here and crashed. That's a rare event too. But then again, I said that I would pay for the effort that I'm putting in on this roof.
So now there are just three or so rows left to do, and they'll be for the morning of the next working day.

I didn't do so well today.

2012-01-14T00:42:00.001+01:00

But there again, I did mention yesterday that this was likely. Only 5 rows today.

First reason was that we had something of a ... errrr ... late start. Not so much that I didn't wake up, but more of a case that each time I moved my joints and muscles crackled like a pan of chips. I'm not as young as I used to be.

Second reason was the weather. That hanging cloud was there, and it stayed here all day. As well as that we had a frost and as it melted and streamed down the slates that I had already put on, and little by little I was getting soaked to the skin and the more I worked, the colder, wetter and more miserable I became.

It was however very pleasant to see the water draining off the plastic sheet onto the tiles and then off the roof - with this large overhang keeping the water well away from the wall. That's what it's supposed to do, and that's why I've built it like that.

It's also good to be able to walk inside and see everywhere and everything bone-dry inside there - that's something that I've been waiting for years to see. I can't wait to finish it and then start to get everything organised for in there. That'll be a bonus for sure.

Third reason was the fact that I needed to reorganise the scaffolding, fit a new strut and a couple of planks, and then track down a third ladder to help me climb up to where I'm working. And once I finally got into a rhythm I was pushing along quite quickly. Problem there then was the light and with the hanging cloud the light went early. And you'll be able to tell which was the row that I finished off in the dark. Still, it has to be done and I'm lucky to have done this much at this time of the year. I never expected this.

What a gorgeous day ...

2012-01-13T01:58:00.002+01:00

... it was today - until about 16:00 anyway. A heavy frost overnight followed by a glorious alpine blue sky and so much charge in the batteries that I ran the electric heater up here for an hour or so this afternoon. I never managed that last winter.

Up on the roof I managed another 7 rows today - that means that I'm about a third of the way up. But it'll be slow from here onwards. It gets harder the higher up you go, as the actress once famously said to the bishop. Up to now I could manage by leaning on the scaffolding. As of tomorrow I have to do it off a couple of ladders and that's not easy. But nevertheless, it's all looking good on the roof.

And so it was until about 16:00, when the temperature plummeted and we had a hanging cloud. It looks like winter has finally arrived and we shall have to see what the weather holds for us now. The weather is going to be deciding where I'm working and what I'm going.

In other news, the 1200-watt digital inverter that I ordered a few weeks ago - that's finally arrived. I've not had time to play with it but I'm quite looking forward to the possibility. That's something else I'll be doing when the weather changes.

Gosh, it was hard this morning ...

2012-01-11T23:51:00.000+01:00

... just as I predicted, but that's enough about my personal life. Let's talk about me trying to get out of bed. And that was hard too. And I now know what it means when they say that "so-and-so walked gingerly to the door" because that's just how I was moving.

So to change the subject, here's another photo of the lean-to and its roof. What you can't see in this photo are any slates. And that's a shame - I'll have to buy an infra-red lens because by the time that I had knocked off work (18:10 if you are wondering) the first row was already in place. And in the dark too, so I shudder to think what it might look like in the cold light of day, but I was determined to put the first row on, no matter what.

What else you can't see are the three cut pieces of plywood to make the final length, and the screws that are holding down the roof sheets onto the chevrons, because it's all covered by a plastic membrane - the type that stops water passing through but allows water vapour to escape. Yes, it's all looking good on the lean-to roof and it can chuck it down now for all I care because at least it's all weathertight. It'll be even better when all of the slates are on, whenever that might be. I can't count on the weather holding off indefinitely - it did well to hold off for these last three days while I managed to do this much.

I'm impressed by the way with the Ryobi one-plus drill that I've been using to screw the roof sheets on. Twice now it's fallen off the roof all the way to the ground and when I've picked it up each time, it's worked fine and carried on fixing the screws. I reckon that if I had fallen off the roof twice, all the way to the ground, I wouldn't be able to carry on screwing, that's for sure.

I thought I'd start today ...

2012-01-11T02:19:00.001+01:00

.. by sbowing you where I got up to last night. Three sheets of hardboard in position and tacked down ready to be properly fastened.

So first job this morning was to remove the rest of the temporary roofing, put two more chevrons on the roof and fit another sheet of plywood. Then I had to fit two chevrons at the near end either side of the wall, and fill in between them with concrete. "Concrete in early January?" I hear you say. Yes indeed - you can see what the weather was like, and I was sweating.

While the concrete was setting, I cut down the chevrons to 3650mm with my new saw which is ever so impressive. I'm fed up of having nothing but rubbish around here so in the UK the other week I bought an expensive thick-bladed rough-cut saw and it went through those chevrons like a knife through butter and I was ever so impressed.

And why 3650mm? Well, the width of the lean-to on the slant is 3400, the sheets are 2440 by 1220 and so one sheet lengthways and one sheet sideways makes 3660 - enough to cover the lean-to with suffiient overhang without having to cut anything, and sufficient room to put a barge board and to fit some guttering.

Anyway, when the chevrons had been cut I mauled up another sheet (and they aren't half heavy doing it like that) and manoeuvred it into position sideways across the ends of the far two sheets that are on there lengthwise, and then screwed it down.

After lunch I had to move the old scaffolding that was there (I'd found that in a dechetterie in 2000), and seeing as how it had been there since 2001 that wasn't easy either, and it involved cutting down a few trees that had grown into the way (so there's the firewood for next winter and isn't this new saw really good?), clearing the ground away and removing all kinds of bits and pieces, and then erecting the new scaffolding. That took ages, and then I just about had enough time to lift up another sheet of hardboard and screw it across the bottom of the other two sheets.

18:10 when I finished and I was shattered. But it wasn't being shattered that stopped me - it was the light. I'd still be there now if there was light enough to work. But I have a feeling that I'm going to pay for all of this tomorrow. I'm not as young as I was.

And so tomorrow I need to cut three pieces to make the covering for the final part of the roof, climb all over the roof screwing all the sheets down properly, and then cover it with a layer or two that breathable plastic membrane to keep out the damp (a good buy, that industrial hammer-stapler). If I can get that done tomorrow that will be where I want to be. And then I can start nailing down the plastic slates.

There's no point ...

2012-01-10T02:05:00.001+01:00

... in having an early night and going to bed early (well, 12:15 is early for me anyway) if you wake up again at 4:45 and can't go back to sleep. Mind you as day started to dawn and I knew that it was soon time to get up, I managed to fall asleep again, and it was 10:15 when I finally woke up. So much for my good resolutions for New Year.

First thing that I did after breakfast was to sort out a design fault on the electric board. The wires to the inverter were bent at an unnatural angle and the live was touching the earth tag. I had to tape over the ends to insulate them and then drill a hole in the board to run them round to the back so that they are lying straight and parallel.

Once I'd organised that I stripped off some of the temporary roof on the lean-to, put some scaffolding up there and put a ladder uop from there to the top of the wind turbine mast. There I turned round the bracket that we had turned when we raised the mast, and straightened out all of the guys. I drilled into the wall, fitted an anchor bolt with an eye, attached a turnbuckle and then fastened a guy to it all and wound it up to take the tension so that the last is held firm in that direction. That's one out of the for guys sorted out.

After lunch I made a major advance - I started to put the plywood on the roof of the lean-to. It was flaming difficult too - it's not easy pulling those sheets up on my own, but I have three now fastened into position. I'm being careful with the supporting chevrons, having learned my lesson from elsewhere where I've been working. I'm putting the sheets into position and then fitting the chevrons underneath them so that the sheets are supported in the middle and that the edges of each adjacent sheet meet up over a chevron. I recall all kinds of bouncing sheets when I was nailing the tiles on when I did it in other places. I don't want to do that here.

But starting to put the roof on the lean-to. Isn't this progress?

I've been spending my money again.

2012-01-08T01:21:00.001+01:00

Not that I have too much to spend, but there you go. In LIDL I spent €25 or something - with nothing much to show for it except some wire brushes for the angle grinder. In Carrefour I spent €12 or so, much of which went on a jar of coffee. In LIDL I met a couple of people whom I knew - some friends of Bill's whom I had met at one of his soirées, and Jasper and his mum (who have featured previously in these pages) were also there.

But then went to Cheze - the hardware shop. The bread box was trashed in the hurricane so I need to make something new, and Cheze was the likeliest place to find some bits. I didn't find what I wanted but I still spent €52 in there.

Yes, it was sale time there and even more importantly, a clearance sale. There was a big bucket of hardware like door knobs, adjustible feet, special bolts and so on, at 50 centimes a pack. I had tons of stuff out of there. There was also a LED spotlight with a dusk-dawn sensor, powered by a solar panel, reduced to €8:00. That will make a handy work light or torch for when I'm down the garden late at night.

Pride of place though went to a chop saw. I've been after a low-powered one of those for ages and I've hunted high and low but without success. But here at Cheze were three or four end-of-range chop saws, quite small and all rated at 1200 watts, all for the price of €34 each. At that price I just had to have one, especially as there's a 1200-watt inverter winging its way to me in the post even as we speak. After all the time I spend chopping wood by hand, and how easy it was doing the tongue-and-grooving back at Expo when I had the battery-powered one. Yes, I hope it does what it says that it will do.

BUt I didn't stay out long. It's rained non-stop today, all grey and drizzly and depressing. I took advantage of the morning by writing the additional text for the radio programmes we shall be recording at the end of the month, and I've watched the odd film or two. Tomorrow I'm going to start my presentation for the Trans-Labrador Highway. I have to do that on Feb 24th, so no time like the present to get going.

It's been an exciting day today

2012-01-07T03:41:00.001+01:00

Having been pondering over the battery situation here - to whit, the house batteries are losing charge when there's no current and I had ample proof of that yesterday as I watched a little voltmeter go down and down - I decided to have a butchers at the battery bank. I reckoned that there might be one battery that was overheating but I was wrong - there were in fact two of them all swollen up. No wonder the batteries were gently emptying themselves. So I pulled those two out and I'm now down to just 8 batteries.

I've been suspecting that these 90 amp-hour batteries are just too small to handle a surge of about 50 amps on a regular basis and this seems to be confirming things. There's four now that I've had to change, and it's always been the one in the centre of the bank. You may recall that I went to Paris to the supplier just before Christmas and they had some 200-amp-hour batteries on special offer and so I bought 8 of those. That will be a battery bank and a half. Ideally I need even-bigger ones but an issue presents it self with that in that these 200-amp-hour batteries weigh 58kgs and while I can pick them up and walk with them, I can't go far very quickly. Imagine twice the weight.

You might be wondering why I didn't go the whole hog and fit them today. Believe me, it was my intention. But the battery cables that I have - 225mm - aren't long enough. I've had to order some 375mm cables and they won't be here until Thursday next week.

This afternoon, tired of manipulating inverters, timers and the like around, I made myself a plug-in electric board. We start off with a two-pin American plug with 6mm cable wired into it. This goes to a 300-watt inverter screwed to the board. From there it's into an electric meter and from there into one of the hour meters I bought in the UK. Finally it ends up in a 13-amp UK socket. All I need to do now when I'm carrying out some work somewhere around out of range of the main inverters is to take my little board with me and plug it into the 12-volt circuit.

After that I went to the bank to pay in a cheque, reorder my bread and then go for coffee and a chat with Marianne to catch up on the gossip It's her birthday tomorrow, and that set me thinking about all the other people I know whose birthday it is in January. Krys, Marianne, Marianne from Brussels, Mandy. Those names spring straight away to mind and I bet there are loads more as well ( so apologies if I have forgotten you). It really is astonishing.

I thought that you might like to see ...

2012-01-06T01:56:00.001+01:00

... my Christmas present from Liz and Terry, before I started hacking it about.

Yes, it's nice to have good friends, especially when they make you nice things for Christmas, isn't it?

Anyway, today started off with the howling winds and gales and rain - that put the kybosh on any plans I had for working outside. I'm not going up a ladder in this weather. So after a leisurely start and watching a film, I went about tidying up the attic. And what I've done is to change things around a little. The bed is on the other side of the room now by the books and music, which is much more logical. And a wardrobe and a couple of chests of drawers have been moved around. It looks like there's more room up here now although that's an optical illusion.

That took ages to do and so by 18:00 I knocked off and had a coffee - and tucked into slice 1 of the Christmas cake. It was well worth waiting for as well. Absolutely gorgeous. I can see me enjoying that for the next few weeks to come, and quite right too.

Today didn't work out ..

2012-01-05T02:15:00.003+01:00

... like I wanted it to do. Forgetting to switch off one of the alarm clocks didn't help much, for a start. But nevertheless it was about 10:00 whan I finally surfaced.

As part one of the plan, I watched one of the the films that Marianne had bought for me for Christmas. I'm a big fan of Louis de Funes and have a great many of his films, which I can watch time and time again. But I've had loads of difficulty trying to track down one of his films that, to my mind, is by far and away the best film that he has ever made - La Folie Des Grandeurs . It concerns de Funes as a Spanish nobleman who runs foul of the Queen of Spain. Apart from the legendary "towel in the bath" scene, it also contains the immortal lines -
de Funes "tell me some little flatteries"
Valet "senor is the greatest Spaniard who ever lived"
de Funes "that's not flattery - that's the truth. Try again!"
Valet "errr ... senor is very very handsome"
de Funes "that's better!"
Anyway, Marianne tracked down a copy for which I am extremely grateful, and I sat and watched it. and I'll be watching it again.

But at lunchtime, Terry rang up. He and Rob were working somewhere and they had run out of concrete. So that involved digging out the Sankey trailer and setting off for the quarry. He just had the sand/stone mix and so we had to go to St Eloy as well, and that took most of the afternoon. So much for my plans to tidy up and do some paperwork. But the tyres on the Sankey are thoroughly perished and they need to be changed before it goes anywhere else. You can't haul a tonne or two of sand and gravel on tyres like that.

So this evening was quiet - I read a book. And that's really it.

But going back to Marianne's I do remember one evening sitting down to watch La Grande Vadrouille, another de Funes film in which he stars with Terry-Thomas. It's another one of my favourites and Marianne had bought that for me as well. And as I was getting the film ready to watch, Marianne was idly surfing through the channels and what should be on the TV but La Grande Vadrouille? Coincidence or what?

It's been a long time ...

2012-01-04T01:54:00.000+01:00

... since I blogged anything, but I blame pressure of work. It's been quite non-stop. Translating this novel from dawn to dusk with just mealbreaks and a walk in the park for a coffee. I forget how lucky I am not being tied to a set routine in the normal run-of-the-mill existence that I have. I's hard to get used to a 9-6 rhythm again.

And translating this book isn't as easy as you might think either. It contains two poems in French (and several more, I notice, as I glance further ahead)that need to be translated into English (straightforward), then rendered as poems (nothing like as easy) with certain crucial words remaining in the same place (almost impossible). I'm having to spend all my time thinking in rhyme, in order to try to get into the swing of poetry.
But I'm no poet
And don't I know it.

The other difficulty is that there are several phrases that need to be translated -but they are anagrams and when they are translated, they have to remain anagrams as well. So how about this. I'm finding it Snot, Aye.

A break from the routine was on Saturday when I met Mike in Brussels and we went for a really good chat for a couple of hours, raising a glass or two to a couple of absent friends, of which, of course, Liz was one.

Sunday saw me back in church for the New Year service, and then Marie and I went for a meal in an Egyptian restaurant.

Monday was the sales at IKEA - only to find that they don't start until the Tuesday. And on Monday night I set off home.

I was going to have a slow amble back over a few days but what with a howling hurricane and pitch darkness, I took shelter in a concealed fold in the ground in a parking space I know. But the rain and the wind kept up all night and there was no break in the weather. And that was enough for me - I abandoned my plans and came home - to sunshine would you belive. But the rain and wind wasn't far behind.

So I'm crashing out tomorrow - taking it easy.

A very Merry Christmas ...

2011-12-26T01:22:00.000+01:00

... to all my readers.

I didn't get that line from a Christmas Cracker or from an Annual, but from off the back of the door of the Public Lavatory on Crewe Bus Station. That was a good source of reading material for a spotty young teenager and I certainly learned a good deal about anatomy there. In fact, I reckon that it was thanks to there that I passed my Biology 'O' Level with the best result I ever had.

This morning we had a lie-in and so it was about 10:00 when we finally struggled into the kitchen. Breakfast was flapjacks made with flour, soya milk and a little sugar, and then we went to church. I have issues with churches, though. Someone once tried to drown me in a church, and the next time I went there someone stuck this woman in my hand. I swore that they next time anyone of my acquaintance went to a church it would be over my dead body.

I made Christmas dinner as well. We had seitan slices in onions and gravy, boiled and roast potatoes, sprouts and mixed vegetables, followed by Christmas pudding and custard. And even though I say it myself, it all tasted very nice.

This afternoon we listened to our Christmas Radio Programme on Radio Arverne, watched "Doctor No" and that was that really - just chilled out.

But tomorrow we are starting work in earnest. after all, that's why I'm here.

I didn't feel much like getting up this morning.

2011-12-25T01:02:00.000+01:00

I can't sleep in Brussels and it's pretty pointless trying, if you ask me. And so when the alarm went off at 08:30 I was already alive and kicking. Having fallen off the end of the bed three times doesn't help much either and so I turned the bed round in the middle of the night. Now it's my feet that will fall out.

This morning we went shopping at the health food supermarket over the road. After that I made a start on the work that we had to do. Another shopping trip, this time to Waterloo for the stuff we couldn't find at the health food shop was on the cards for later and after a coffee, we went to Chi Chi's, the Tex-Mex restaurant, for a Christmas Eve meal.

Back here, we watched the Chronicles of Narnia II, which isn't a patch on the first one, and that was Christmas Eve. And now I'm off to bed. I have to wait until tomorrow to find out what Santa has bought me.

I hate Brussels

2011-12-23T23:52:00.001+01:00

Espcially when I am trying to sleep and there are trams clanging past, police cars racing by, doors slamming, people shouting. And here is me, having once complained about being awoken by an owl screeching. I can't wait to return home and I promise that I won't ever complain again.

And so this morning I went a-hunting for a pair of boots seeing as the ones that I bought in Canada have split right across the sole. But having seen the prices in Brussels, I'll limp around with soggy feet for the rest of my life. Extortionate isn't the word.

Better news at IKEA though where I bought one of my "planktrolley" specials - a trolley loaded up with odds and ends of doors. This one has a set of bed laths (which was what I wanted), 2 other sets, a baby's cot, a load of wood that will do for shelving, some heat-treated glass shelves, all kinds of useful and exciting things - and all for €10 too. That was money well-spent as well. The interesting bit was trying to personoeuvre the trolley around the other piles of trolleys in the way while several members of staff stood and watched, the idle ghits, and personoeuvring Caliburn into the loading bay (waiting for 5 minutes only) between the van containing the guy surfing the internet on his laptop and the other van with the guy eating his sandwiches. Yes, waiting only for 5 minutes, while the staff stood and watched. I hate Belgian shop assistants. Totally unhelpful and thick as slurry.

This evening we went to see "The Untouchables" - I've seen worse films than this to be sure but to be honest it's nothing more than "The Fabulous Destiny of Amelie Poulain", but with Attitude.

Anyway tomorrow promises to be a little more exciting, and so I'm off to bed. Although whether or not I'll have sweet dreams is another thing entirely.

I didn't get my rice pudding last night.

2011-12-22T23:38:00.000+01:00

I was far too busy. We had 25.5mm of rain yesterday and during that time I was refitting the temporary roof back on the lean-to. I had intended to start to fit the new one but with no let-up in the rain, it was a case of doing what I could before I was soaked to the skin.

That took until about 14:00 when the waterproof overall became waterlooged and that was it - I called it a day. There's only so much you can do in weather like that.

Caliburn was emptied and then loaded up with the stuff I was taking to Brussels, and then I warmed up in front of the fire until it was time to go.

The rain streamed down all the way to Varzy where I stopped for a very uncomfortable night. And then it was on to Brussels. And something happened on the way that was so astonishing that it deserves to be reported. A French lorry, in the steep winding hills around Clamecy, actually pulled over into a layby to let me roar past. That has never happened before and it won't ever happen again.

And now I'm in Brussels with a hiccupy Caliburn because I put a few litres of petrol in by mistake before I realised - it's the ethanol-based fuel that has the yellow handle, not the diesel in Belgium. I hope he won't have too many ill effects.

I had another lovely tea tonight.

2011-12-21T01:15:00.003+01:00

Jacket potatoes and tortilla wraps with spicy beans. And once again it was cooked in the oven on the new fire, and once again it did an excellent job. So much so that tomorrow night I'm going to go for a rice puidding and see what happens about that.

This morning I awoke well on time thanks to this new alarm clock that I have. It has a projector light that flashes the time across the room and makes enough noise to awaken the dead. But printing off the paperwork for the radio station didn't work - the new computer doesn't recognise the printer and I can't upload the drivers. I'll have to see if I can do that by downloading them (which I can't because all of Epson's European sites don't work).

So Radio Tartasse was done and then we set off through the driving rain to Gerzat. And as we drove over the Combrailles I joked to Liz that everyone in Riom would be basking in the sun in shirt sleeves. They weren't, as it happens, but the sun was there, and some blue sky too.

At Radio Arverne I had a premonition about the music we were to play and sure enough, in what could only be a gazillion-to-one chance, we had both picked a track with the same title. How bizarre!

We did the programmes for January and then recorded our Christmas special. That was a bundle of laughs, and what we did for the carols - well, you'll find out on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Home into the hills and into the driving rain again. I lit the fire in here and that was that. I had no intentions of moving and so I didn't.

But tea was nice ;-)

I had a lovely tea tonight.

2011-12-20T01:04:00.002+01:00

I made myself a pizza. And what was so exciting about that was the fact that I cooked it in the little oven on the top of my new fire. With me having been in the house almost all of the day I've had the fire on all day. And I've only used three logs as well but the temperature reached 26°C, and that was what made me try out the oven seeing as how it was so hot.

It took an age to cook but nevertheless it all worked and I ws impressed with that.

So this morning I was awake at 04:30 and reading a book. But eventually I was back under the quilt where I stayed until about 10:30 - I had no plans whatsoever to get up and fight the snow which was falling quite heavily. But anyway now I have my new analogue electricity meter installed, as well as my hour meter to see how long the inverter has been running.

This afternoon I finished off the radio programme - just as well seeing as how we are recording it tomorrow, read a couple of books and that was that. And not to mlention being rung up God Knows how many times on the phone.

But I am quite impressed with this oven. I shall have to try somle further erxperiments.

I've been changing the habits of a lifetime.

2011-12-18T23:53:00.001+01:00

It all started this morning when I was up and about at 08:15 and that was without an alarm clock or a phone call as well.

And so having lit a fire I spent the morning writing the additional notes for the radio programme on Tuesday.

Later on, I was out working, and that's a rare event too. I started to unload Caliburn but that really didn't make much headway as there are space issues. But all of the scaffolding is off and stacked and much of the heavy stuff has been removed.

The weather clouded over too, and so I took advantage of what light there was to change Caliburn's front tyres and now he has his winter boots on. And I'm glad I did too as the ones that were on there were rather thin to say the least. Off to Terry and Liz's to drop off a load of stuff and you have no idea how much better Caliburn was handling.

And I'm glad that I fitted his wonter tyres as I said, because once I got to about Gouttieres it started to snow and it was snowing heavily by the time that I was back home.

Now I'm going to bed as I have a streaming head cold and an early night cuddled up in this warm room (and aren't I impressed with my new fire?) under the quilt will do me the world of good.

Julie's mum said to me ....

2011-12-18T00:26:00.003+01:00

... that I could fit a few extra things in Caliburn as her son in law had told her that it would be quite empty coming back.

Well, absolutely.

And so seeing as I'm now back home, let me tell you what's in there. So there's a huge order from Radio Spares, a huge order or two from Screwfix, a pile of IKEA stuff, an order from Vehicle Wiring Products, a few boxes of stuff from Tesco, Asda and Morrisons, 2 spare Transit wheels and tyres, 7 rolls of roof insulation, 35 square metres of scaffolding, a 98- litre immersion heater, a pile of alumlinium from Switchblade, tubes, pipes and clamps from Benchdollar and all of the stuff out of my storage box.

I had quite a run round collecting it all but I'm sad to say that I wimped out of sleeping in the van. One night of freezing cold weather on Monday night, with the rain drumming down on the roof non-stop was enough, and a good deal or two at a local Travelodge was enough to convince me.

So Wednesday night I went to see Macclesfield play Chelmsford City in the FA Cup. What a dreadful match that was. Macc could have played with Stevie Wonder in goal and it would have made no difference.

Thursday I rescued Percy Penguin from work as she was working an extra shift and couldn't get home.

And now I'm back - I beat the snow here (but only just - a huge pile of oit followed me here) and the place was freezing as well as having been ravaged by 75 kph winds. But less than 8 hours from Le Havre to here on some pretty good roads. I'll be doing this crossing again, but the return journey needs a couchette, which costs just £20 if booked in advance.

And talking of Percy Penguin, we went out for a meal. I asked her if she fancied coq au vin and she got into the back of Caliburn.

I'm currently at Tibshelf Services.

2011-12-12T20:24:00.000+01:00

After a quiet day on Saturday packing, I set off on probably the most ill-prepared voyage I have ever made. And I have made a few of those in my life as well as you can probably imagine.

It was about 00:30 on Sunday morning when I finally got under way and the road to Le Havre took me via Bourges, Orleans and Chartres. Parts of the road were really quick and I made quite good time, whereas others were ... err ... not so quick. Especially navigating my way through the cities with the endless strings of traffic lights. Finally I found a service area about 20 or so miles beyond Chartres and that's where I spent the night.

And it was freezing as well - frost and ice everywhere - but a few years ago I stripped an old Volvo saloon and that had heated seat pads in it. And so I wired one up to one of these powerpacks, and you'ver no idea how warm my feet were in bed (until the battery went flat of course).

So next morning I set off again and made good time - so much so that I took a little diversion to visit St Valery-en-Caux.

St Valery had an ominous, if not sinister role in World War II. As the front against the Germans collapsed in June 1940 the British sent the 51st (Highland) Division to shore up the front line. The Division landed at St Valery but unfortunately the Germans arrived there first and the Division landed right into their arms and were immediately marched off into captivity. There is a monument to them in the town - it's the thing pointing up on the skyline over there.

The sinister bit though is that it was never very clear just WHY the Division was packed off to here when the rest of the British Army was being evacuated at Dunkerque, and what it was thatwas the reason that they landed even though it was extremely likely that the town had already fallen - or at least - was likely to - and what 15,000 soldiers could do that 300,000 could not.

Anyway, the town was so interesting that I lost all track of time and had to go like hell to get the ferry. And 5:30 of comfort in the passenger lounge on the ferry brought me to Pompey.

A huge plate of chips was supper and then up to Towcester and another good spec in a layby for the night. And Brain of Britain forgot to heat his bed.

Today I've been to Radiospares, Vehicle Wiring Products and IKEA at Ilkeston. And tomorrow I'm going to blitz Stoke on Trent.

I won't be here tomorrow night either.

2011-12-10T02:47:00.001+01:00

I'm going to the UK next week as you know, and I've been checking ferries. And to my surprise, the ferry from Le Havre (2 hours closer to here than Calais) to Portsmouth (nearer to the Midlands than Dover) and return for Caliburn and Yours Truly is a mere €129. Only problem is that the sailing is at 17:00 which means an early start and as I don't do early, it means leaving here the night before and getting a couple of hours on the clock.

Anyway, this morning was rather ... errr ... late and had I not had a spam phone call I would probably still be asleep. And then I had another call - someone wanting to visit. That meant no work of course, and tidying up in here instead, tip that it is. That took me quite a while.

So Nan came around and we discussed the initiative that she is doing for some organisation or other about co-projects (car-sharing and that kind of thing) in the area. Thats the problem with being a minor celebrity ... "chortle chortle" - ed ... people are always sounding you out for things like this. Not that I mind, of course. It's nice to have visitors.

This evening I've been buying stuff on eBay. And getting it shipped to my mailbox in the UK. You've no idea how much money I'm saving by doing that. It's the best £25 a month I've ever spent.

And he didn't blog last night either!

2011-12-09T01:46:00.001+01:00

No - that's because after tea last night I wasn't here. I went to Paris.

I'd ordered some stuff and the delivery charge was astonishing seeing how heavy everything was and so it was cheaper for me to go and fetch it. And I had a good drive there too. The Transport Cafe at Gien was open and so I even managed a shower, so I'm nice and clean for a change just recently. But parts of the drive were exciting. There's a small town where there are five or six traffic lights and they are always against you. And when I stopped at the first one the car behgind me overtook me and drove slowly through the lights. And did that all the way up to light number 5. At number 6 you do have to stop as it's a major road and I caught up with him there just as that turned to green - so I was past him again and back in front.

I stopped at a Motorway Service Area for a few hours to kip and then the final 40kms took me 2 hours. Heavy traffic was one reason, but the other reason was that I had to drive down a long tunnel and the satnav lost its bearings.

On the way back it took ages. Firstly the Satnav tried to send me down a peage with a height limit of 2 metres and so that was out. And it kept on finding me impossible routes. Eventually I followed my nose out west along the Seine until I hit the Francilienne and then south until I hit the N7 to Fontainebleu - a long way round but it brought me home. And during all of this of course we had the traffic.

The road goes through the Forest of Fontainebleu and it's quite a busy road used by any amount of truckers. And in each entry to each glade along the route there were ... errrr ... filles de joie in place waiting. I've not noticed that before.

But now I'm home and exhausted. I'm off to a nice clean bed and tomorrow I'll unload Caliburn.

I bet you have been wondering ...

2011-12-07T00:15:00.001+01:00

... where I've been for the last few days. The fact is that on Sunday morning when the battery went flat on the laptop I plugged it in to charge up, and after aa couple of hours, nothing had happened. So after much messing around with AVO meters and the like I worked out that power is getting to the power pack and beyond, But it isn't getting to the battery to charge it up and nothing would seem to make it.

Mind you it was on its last legs since it fell off the roof of the car in Canada, and it was only a question of time. And as it happened when I was in Montlucon at the Auchan I had seen a laptop for sale at €449 that had 1TB of hard drive and 6gb of RAM. Consequently on Monday I hit the road.

Mind you, at the Auchan I had another think. I remember that it had always been my plan to buy a small notebook computer for journeys, and use an external screen, DVD recorder and keyboard for when I'm at home. Had I not had the emergency in the UK last time, that would have been what I would have done as well. Anyway I had a look around at the huge selection of notebooks, and there I turned up an Acer Aspire 1 - 500GB of hard drive and 4gb of RAM, on offer at €299. Further enquiries revealed that they were sold out and there was only the display model left. And for that they would do me 10% off

So now I'm the owner of a new lightweight notebook and a new keyboard. There's a DVD reader somewhere around here, and there's also a flatscreen that works off 12-volt over there on the bench and I'll be looking into that as well.

I had to wait until this afternoon to get the internet connection, and now I'm up and running. And I can't get used to this "85% - 10 hours 25 minutes - left" on the battery indicator.

I've also had my stitches out too. And so tonight I'm hoping for a decent sleep at last.

I haven't done anything at all today.

2011-12-04T02:21:00.001+01:00

A miserable wet windy Saturday was enough to keep me up here. All I've done is to tidy up (just a little), do a little work on the radio programme, and read a book on Canadian railways. It's a long time since I've had a lazy day like that.

This evening I went to the football with the new lens. I'll post a pic up here so that you can see what it looks like, but action night shots at 1/640 on ISO1600, and sufficient light to do it as well is amazing. And with being manual focus, the reaction time is instant. However one slight drawback is that the focus doesn't stay locked and I didn't realise that. It floated off from infinity and I didn't notice, and one or two pf the photos at least are not much good.

I'm curious to see what the rest are like, but I'm going to do that tomorrow. I'm pretty tired again right now. All of this lazing around is no good for me.

It's Friday...

2011-12-03T02:16:00.001+01:00

... and this is the last Friday that I'll be spending here for a week or two as I'm hoping to go to the UK at the end of next week.

And despite having gone to bed quite late I was still awake at about 07:00. This sleep thing is becoming ridiculous.

We arrived at the radio station at about 10:40 for our 11:00 appointment and eventually it was about 11:47 before we started recording. We did the four programmes for December and then I was asked if I could write another Christmas Special to be broadcast in ... errrr .... 2 weeks time. I shall have to get my finger out, won't I?

We got back to Liz's 20 minutes late after all of that and I shot off to Montel to pick up a load of timber. I had to wait around there for ages as well as they didn't (despite what they said on the 'phone) have any treated wood so they treated it while I waited, and that took ages too. And while I was there I was chatting with the staff and it turns out that the office girl is the wife of the Montel goalkeeper whose photo that I took was published in the paper the other week, and the office manager plays for Pontaumur and one of my photos of him scoring against Pionsat was published a few weeks ago.

There were two clients there from Pionsat too. One of them had an old Transit pick-up that was clearly custom-made. A PTAC of 3.3 tons for a start - that's impressive. And he had so much wood dropped in it that it was sagging right down and he crawled all the way back to Pionsat at 40kph.

And when I returned home and unloaded my wood I realised that I had forgotten the demi-chevrons to finish off the greenhouse. D'ohhhh. And so I went upstairs and crashed out for a while.

Going to bed early ...

2011-12-02T01:12:00.001+01:00

... is still no good if you rollover onto your staples at 04:00. It's flaming painful and you can't go back to sleep again.

And so I was up early again and breakfasted, and then I went out to cut more wood. Thats a couple more of the old chevrons and the tree trunks from 2 years ago all ready to burn. But then I had another idea and I cleared a space near the front gate and laid out a couple of pallets. And then I moved one of the wood piles - the one that was at the side of the lean-to. That's now at the front of the house and will be easy to get to in the winter, whenever that might be.

Where that pile of wood was is at the side of the lean-to on a concrete pad that was formerly the base of a chicken coop. It's now covered with plastic roof tiles - I did a safari around the garden and hunted down all that I can find ready for doing that roof, whenever that might be. I also took out the hardboard from the back of Caliburn and I've stood that upon the concrete pad. Even though it's for exterior use, I've covered it up with a tarpaulin to protect it for a while.

All that's left in Caliburn is the window and that's rather heavy. But I have a cunning plan for that.

When it went dark I fetched a shelving unit that I had forgotten and I have put it in the bathroom. I've started making a tour of the upper floors rescuing tools and so on, so that I know where everything might be. But that's not so easy as there's just so much stuff. I really ought to have a good tidy up sometime.

Father Christmas came early ...

2011-12-01T00:23:00.001+01:00

... as in "this morning". Or rather, it was the mand from DHL who came bearing gifts. And I now have a 50mm f1.4 lens, and a zoom lens of 70-300mm for the Nikon. The zoom lens was something bought on a whim as it was second-hand and quite cheap as well, and it's something that I've always promised myself if ever I saw one around.

The other lens cost a great deal of money and it has a specific purpose in that my footy photographs at night are nothing like as good as they ought to be and it's high time that I did something about it. I either have not enough light on the subject or else they are taken too slow and hence they are blurred. The 17-105mm lens that I have currently on the camera doesn't stop down anything like far enough - about f4 is its limit. But then again zoom lenses are never any good in poor light conditions.

They came from the USA and the taxes and fees cost half the purchase price of the articles. That's a huge disappointment and is threatening international commerce.

Apart from that, this morning I chopped up another pile of firewood. This fire is impressive - while I was having my evening meallast night it warmed up the place from15.4°C to 22.5°C with just one log of wood, and the insulation kept the place as high as 16.5°C this morning.

And this afternoon Ibuildahuge wooden box out of scraps of wood that I had lying arouns. The mice are getting everywhere and there's nowhere to leave any fruit or veg where it will be safe. I tried a plastic container but the stuff just sweated. Wood is the answer as the wood will absorb the sweat but you can't buy wood boxes like you used to be able to do - hence the home-made variety.

And with a really late night last night and a 7:30 awakening, I'm whacked so I'm going to bed early. Well, early for me anyway.

And I forgot to add that it rained yesterday - 4.5mm. The first rain that we have had since 7th November.

I've been spending my money again.

2011-11-30T03:01:00.001+01:00

And if I keep on spending it like this I won't have any left.

First thing was to go to Marcillat in order to record the radio programmes. And from there it was to Montlucon. At LIDL I bought nothing out of the ordinary but at Auchan I bought as well as the usual stuff a little present for Rob and Nicolette for having looked after me, and also a battery pack seeing as all mine are duff. There it was on sale and I said that at €29 it would be a good deal. But with an air compressor included and selling at €22.95 it had to be a good buy.

At Brico Dept they had the hardboard I wanted. And 2mm thicker, it cost €9 less than at the other place.And so I now have all that I need. I'm not sure why though because I don't have the scaffolding to fit it now.

What I can be doing is building the greenhouse but would you believe I forgot to buy the perspex for the roof. Do'oooh! That was no good.

There's an issue over my tubing as well. I can buy it from Montlucon but would you believe that a huge place like that (so huge it has its own railway locomotive) they don't have a bender.They've given me an idea where to go and so I'll follow that up.

And I have my window hooray!!!! That's safely in the van. But as for a front door I can't use the one I bought recently as it opens the wrong way would you believe. But Lapeyre is finishing the exotic wood selection in February and so their doors are on sale. And the one that I want, that looks just like the window with double glazing all the way down the front, is just €374. I shall have to get working.

At Rob and Nicolette's I gave them their prezzy and thanked them for their help the other day. I was grateful for the effort that they took.

But with me forgetting all sorts of things today, this bang on the head doesn't seem to have helpedme any.

I had visitors today.

2011-11-29T00:01:00.001+01:00

Here I was - up early and breakfasted, and tidying up (for a change) in my little room when the 'phone rang. "If we come and raise up the wind turbine can we take the rest of the scaffolding?"

And so that put an end to the tidying up (which was a shame as it's not often that I'm in the mood for tidying up) and I went up and prepared everything. The wind turbine is now properly in position and the scaffolding is gone, and there's even a roof of sorts on the lean-to (a few sheets of corrugated iron and a tarpaulin) although I don't know why. We've not had any rain here since 7th November.

It was then that I noticed that the wind turbine pole must have been rotated while we were raising it, as the bracket that holdsthe wire guy ropes is now the wrong way round. And I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that.

Caliburn is now emptied ready for a shopping trip to Montlucon tomorrow, and I've also done some more work cutting down the fir trees to a reasonable height. This time I've managed to afford falling trees and the like. But anyway I've managed a good day's work.

Up here this evening I've had the new fire working. It's difficult to get it to workproperly but that's the kind of thing that will come with practice. But one thing and another - a bunch of herring hanging up in this room would have benefited from my efforts.

But I gave someone quite a hard time today. I'm getting all bad-tempered and tetchy in my old age. And then I remembered that yesterday I gave the President of the football club a real hard time. That's not like me at all these days. And then I had a flashback - back to 1987 and my car accident when I suffered a fractured skull and how that was the beginning of the end and how bad-tempered and miserable I became after that. I've just fallen off a ladder and landed on my head as you know. Don't tell me that I'm going to be going through all of this again. It was bad enough back then! As Terry Venables once famously said - "if history repeats itself then we can expect the same thing again". That's rather a depressing thought.

I was a bit put out today.

2011-11-28T02:20:00.001+01:00

But first the good news. Although it was late when I went to bed, I managed to sleep for 6 hours or so. And after breakfast, I finished off the scripts for the radio programmes that we will be recording this week for Radio Anglais.

I had to rush though as the 3rd XI were playing away at Combronde at 13:00 but Percy Penguin chose that moment to ring me.
"You fell on your head? It might knock some sense into you".
It's nice to have friends, isn't it?

And so at Combronde, 5 minutes late and the place all deserted. No-one around at all. So what's going on here?

Anyway, that was an hour and a half and 75 kilometres wasted. I fuelled up an went off to Ceyssat for the 1st XI match. That long drive took me round by the Puy de Dome - right past the foot of it, and it was remarkable to notice the change in the weather. From here to round about St Bonnet it was grey miserable and overcast. But south of there we had glorious sunshine. The Puy de Dome (and you pass within about 200 metres of it) was especially nice. But once over the Col de Ceyssat I drove straight into a fog and that was that.

I met Bernard the club president. he said that the 3rd XI match was cancelled, and so I berated him for not sending me a text - I told him last night that I would be going. It's a couple of times that they have done this on me.

But the match cheered meupconsiderably. Olby-Ceyssay were a pretty poor side and Pionsat had no trouble whatever in demolishing them 4-0, hardly breaking sweat in doing so. it's a shame that they can't play like that every week.

At Terry and Liz's, we rehearsed our radio programmes - we're recording next week. Liz had baked potato pie and rice pudding for afters, even giving me a doggy bag and a lump of fruitcake. It's that kind of thing that makes it wothwhile having good friends, and helps me to forget all of the worries and disagreements.

Ouch!

2011-11-27T03:40:00.001+01:00

It's really difficult to sleep when you can only sleep in one position. Each time I rolled over into another position something else hurt. And coupled with that,I suffer from bad attacks of cramp every now and again and last night I had not one but two attacks. And that was probably the worst bit.

it was dawn when I finally managed to go to sleep and ...gulp ... 12:34 when I awoke.

So waht did today was to work on the notes for the radio programme. For the next few weeks we'll be discussing winter driving techniques, as well as all of the usual stuff.

Tonight at Pionsat the 2nd XI were playing against Clermont franco-Algerians and were totally played off the park. Even when the opponents had a man sent off (two yellow cards for insulting the referee - how silly can you get?) they still had enough in the tank to demolish a weak Pionsat side than managed only two shots on target (and scored two goals as well) during the whole match.

The number of times Clermont broke through the weakest Pionsat defence that I have ever seen (and I've seen some weak ones just recently) and blazed over the bar from five yards out - never mind only scoring 4, 14 would have been more like it.

By the way, excuse the poor quality of the photo. Not only did we have the usual problems to contend with, the match was played in a very thick fog and there were moments when I thought that the match would never be finished.

I'm starting to get worried. If Pionsat's 2nd XI are relegated to the 4th Division the 3rd XI will have to go into hibernation. And that won't be at all popular.

You would have been in stitches ...

2011-11-26T00:54:00.001+01:00

... watching me cut down the conifers at the front of the barn this afternoon. I'm not in stitches - I'm in staoles. 6 of them! All across the top of my head.

I did something today that I vowed that I would never do - and that is to use a power tool to cut down a tree. When you are sawing away by hand, you can feel the tree start to give and you have plenty of time to move out of the way as it slowly keels over. But with a power tool you can't hear it and it takes you by surprise. And that's not good if you are 3 metres up a ladder. So it caught me under the chin, lifted me off the ladder and dropped me on the floor where my head struck the trailer with a glancing blow.

But I'm inpressed with that Ryobi 18-volt saw that I bought in the USA last year. It didn't take long at all to go through this tree. Look on the positive side.

I was bleeding everywhere and so I went to Rob and Nicolette's to get Nicolette to look at it as I couldn't see anything of course. One look from her and Rob was detailed to drive me to Montlucon. We waited for a couple of hours there (and I chatted to the father of one of the Pionsat footballers who had been admitted following a car accident) and then I was examined and stapled up. What a waste of time. I have a stapler at home and Rob could have done that without having to waste 4 hours of his time. But I was grateful for his help - it's nice to have good neighbours.

Of course we had all of the old jokes - "the Doctor examined your head but found nothing" and all that kind of thing. But one piece of optimism is that many things work better if you give them a kick or if you bang them. I wonder if that will work for me now.

But I was only cutting down the trees for something to do while I was waiting for some paint to dry. It was so nice again today that I gathered up all of the pieces of wood from the greenhouse and I've painted them with a couple of coats of wood treatment and the first coat of the wood staining. I was going to give it the second coat this evening and then start to assemble it tomorrow but badger that. I'm going to have a day off tomorrow.

I've not done a great deal today.

2011-11-24T23:27:00.001+01:00

I started off by sweeping out the front of the lean-to where I'd been working these last few days. Once that was clean I started to cut up some of the tree trunks from the trees that I had cut down a few years ago. Winter is onlyjust around the corner and there's no point in having a decent fire if I don't have any decent wood to put in it. But the saw that I'm using isn'tup to much and I need to get a really expensive one.

But it was round about then that the fun started. I had someone from Canada ringing me up about supplying him with product and so I had to sort that out. And that got me sorting out another pile of orders too for other things and I ended up spending about 2 hours on the phone.

Not that I'm complaining though. With a trade card and a SIREN (a French trade registration) I'm getting some astonishing deals all along the line and it's about time I started to make a bit of money. So more power to my elbow, say I.

In between the rest of the phone calls (yes, we were having another one of those days) I managed to put a few lengths of tongue-and-groove on the stud wall just so that it looks like there's something positive coming out of today. It's a shame that the light goes so early otherwise I'd be still out there. It's not like me to be so enthusiastic as this.

I could of course put light into the lean-to but there's an issue with that. I can't find my metre-long SDS bit that I need to make a pilot hole in the right place. And this is what I bought it for, would you believe? Mind you finding anything at all around my place is next to impossible as I'm sure you all know already.

I've finished ...

2011-11-24T00:26:00.001+01:00

... building the staircase to the first floor in the lean-to, and so you can really say that it's upstairs now.

The staircase is more like a ladder in a sense, because it has rungs rather than stairs, but then again there's only a confined space to work in so it can't be helped.

And you can see the studding that's in front of the stairs. That's going to be covered in tongue and grooving in very early course. The washroom, when it'sfinished, will be a sort-of U-shape, from the back studding, down the side wall and then down to front wall to where the camera was when I took this shot.

It doesn't quite look like that now though. There's a diagonal bracing across it now - to stiffen it all up and it's all quite solid now. It'll be even better when it's cladded.

You can just about make out the gap in the rear studding where the gas bottle will be coming and going through. And I'll be covering that wall as well,once I've cut up all the wood in the rear section and moved it out for burning. As you can see, this is something of a long-term project.

And in other news, my window for the living room is ready. I'll have to go to pick that up this weekend.

And in other other news, I seem to have become something of an unofficial sports reporter for the local newspaper. Following Marianne's suggestion, I've been sending some of the photos of Pionsat's opponents to the reporter covering the town where they come from. And now twice - two weeks in succession, the reporter has asked me to send in a match report.

You can see ...

2011-11-22T23:46:00.001+01:00

... what I've been doing this morning, seeing as I can't move the scaffolding until the wind turbine is raised up.

I've been working inside the lean-to and I now have the five verticals in place for the stud walls with the staircase in between.

The gas bottle is in its home where it will be living. The kitchen will be in the house right behind there, so I'm going to have to run a gas pipe through the wall eventually.

The way that the gas bottle will be moved when it needs replacing is between the two uprights to the left in the rear wall. It'll just about pass through there and then I'll have to bring it around to the front and then out.

The stud wall nearest the doorway will be covered with tongue-and grooving and heavily varnished. There will be a cupboard there and a worktop, with a small water heater over the top, running off the surplus electrical energy. The washing machine will be in that little corner and there will also be a sink. Now I have my diamond core drills for going through the stonework, the world's my lobster.

And you did hear me correctly. "Morning". Despite having had a bad night's sleep I was up with the lark this morning and outside fairly early, just for a change. That enabled me to get cracking.

And not "this afternoon" either. One of the projects that we have on the go for Radio Anglais is to do a programme about researching the history of your house. And Marianne rang me to say that she had such a project to do this afternoon and would I like to go with her to the Mairie and look through the records. Do bears go to the bathroom in the woods?

It was extremely interesting there and I learnt an awful lot. But then again that is the point of going. Records in France in the local mairies go back as far as 1833 and it's fascinating to see the evolution of a property. What is even more exciting is to see o the local tax rolls the reason for tax reductions. Just taking one example, a whole list of rate reductions on certain plots of land in 1884 clearly show exactly where and how the "new road" to St Eloy was built.

The problem is though that searching through records can show up many surprises, some of which can be extremely unpleasant. And such was the case today. There's a kind-of diary circulating around Pionsat, in which the author recounts quite freely a host of detail about his private life, including his birth almost 70 years ago. But quite interestingly the Deed of Gift of this property back in the 1950s shows that the civil status of his mother was "divorced in 1936 and never remarried". So who was the fellow she brought back with her from Paris when she came to resettle in the village in the late 1930s?

The plot sickens.

But at least I've had my snow tyre fitted on my new wheel so I'm ready for winter. I'm also ready for bed. Last night's late finish and this early start this morning had finished me off.

Well, I'm stumped.

2011-11-22T02:47:00.001+01:00

"Howzat?" I hear you ask. And I'm going to tell you.

When Terry and I were doing the preparations for the new roof, we put a conduit through the wall and into this conduit we put 3 pairs of 6mm wire. 1 pair was for bank 1 of the solar panels, 1 pair was for bank 2, and the third pair was for the wind turbine. The two banks of solar panels are wired in and doing what they are supposed to be doing when and where they are supposed to do it, but putting an ohm-meter onto the third pair for the wind turbine, there is no circuit in EITHER of the two wires. I just don't understand this at all. I can't think why this should be.

And so anyway I connected up two wires in a kind-of ad-hoc connection and they are working fine and are now connected into the circuit. And the surprising thing about this (although not surprising if you know anything about me) is that despite the last few days having tons and tons of powerful wind, the wind dramatically dropped the moment I connected up the wires. You could not have timed it better.

What I've also done is to make up the four guy ropes that will hold the wind turbine mast in position. I need some special wall anchor mountings for this and I can only get them in the UK at Screwfix. Unfortunately my last order didn't go through in time and so I can't get this part done until I go to the UK and come back. I don't have my contacts to post me stuff these days.

Terry said that he'll come round some time and help me push the pole up another metre or so - height is definitely might in these circumstances. I've dismantled part of the scaffolding already and the rest can go as soon as the turbine is in its final position. Once that's out of the way I can make a start on the roof and I'm eager to get going with that.

"Not a lot of work today" I hear you say. But this does not include the relentless string of telephone calls,and also of visits that I had today. For once I seem to be popular. I wonder what's up.

We had a footfest today.

2011-11-21T00:07:00.001+01:00

We were down at Montel de Gelat for the whole afternoon watching the 3rd XI take on the 2nd XI of Montel-Villosanges, followed by the 1st XI taking on the 1st XI of the Chimps.

The 3rd XI were a man short and with no goalkeeper either (chapeau to Xavier to donning the gloves) once again, and lost 1-0 to a disputed penalty. For much of the game they were playing as if it were they who had the extra men and they never looked in any danger against one of the worst teams I have ever seen. With a couple of extra players to make up a decent pool of players, and with a proper goalkeeper, they could - and should - have demolished this side. The Pionsat administration needs to be asking itself a few serious questions about how seriously they are taking the 3rd XI, as I have said before.

As for the 1st XI they conceded two soft goals - one being an unchallenged header from a free kick and the second when a defender pulled up with a hamstring chasing a loose ball, allowing an attacker a free shot at goal.

But all that Matthieu had to do in the game was to pick the ball out of the net on those two occasions. For the rest of the match he was pretty much a spectator, not like his opposite number who was in the thick of the action for most of the game.

How the Pionsat side only managed to score 2 is one of those things that people will be asking for years to come because the 1st XI weren't any better at football than their reserves. They were however much better at punching and kicking their opponents, and collapsing like a sack of potatoes any time a Pionsat player got within 10 yards of them. And we had a mass brawl in the closing stages of the game, with even the Chimps trainer becoming involved in the action.

With a few other incidents that were just as unsavoury, I wasn't sorry when the final whistle was blown.

Well, I'm a bit disappointed today.

2011-11-20T03:27:00.001+01:00

In the last 24 hours we've had 21 hours of recordable wind and the turbine has been going round like the clappers. And do you know what? There's not even one watt recorded on the dial.

A quick check revealed that there's no current reaching the battery bank. That's sad. I checked the two joints to the wind turbine and they seem to be working fine - a little piazo buzzer was ringing like Big Ben - and so it's either going to be the final joint o else there's a break in the cable somewhere. That's going to be a job for the multimeter on Monday morning.

But it was certainly encouraging to see how the thing was going around today. And of course, all the time that it was going round, the big one didn't move a muscle. It proves my point that a small turbine can quite often produce more energy than a large one.

This afternoon I went to St Eloy where I spent next-to-nothing again but I did do a mega-wash at the launderette. That's cheered me up. All clean clothes again. All I need to do is to find a way of getting me nice and clean as well, and then I can have nice new bedding.

It was the Annual General Meeting of Pionsat Patrimoine this afternoon and interesting as it might be, I still can't deal with the egoes and the people who take 100 words to say either yes or no - and then say it 10 times over.

No footy tonight - Gerzat couldn't raise a team to play the 2nd XI. But there was a game on at Marcillat, and that provided me with the biggest laugh that I have had for quite a while.

A goalkeeper and a forward went for a 50-50 ball and the keeper came off worse. It was a foul but a genuine attempt to play a loose ball with no malice whatsoever. The ref,in his wisdom, shows the Gannat forward a yellow card.

Outrage from the Gannat bench - and quite rightly so if you ask me. "We have to protect the goalkeepers" shouted the ref. 30 seconds later we have an almost-identical situation and this time it's the forward who comes off worse And no yellow card. And in the silence of the still night up on the plateau where Marcillat play, the Gannat trainer bellows out (and I mean Bellows Out- he could be heard back in Gannat I reckon) "and you have to protect the forwards too!"

The whole ground collapses in laughter,except for the ref who clearly has no sense of humour whatever and goes over to talk to the trainer.

Well, I wasn't the only one who thought it funny. And that makes a change.

When I tell you that ...

2011-11-18T23:37:00.001+01:00

... I knocked off at 17:27 today, you will probably think something like "idle burger" or something like that. But not a bit of it. In fact, that was when I stopped for lunch.

Putting this wind turbine was not as easy as you might think. First thing was to solder two longer wires to the couple of inches that come out of the wind turbine. My soldering is total rubbish, and what didn't help was that the heavy-duty soldering iron I bought from LIDL ages ago didn't want to work properly.

After trying a couple of others, it was the ancient soldering iron that I had bought from Tandy (and that tells you how old it is) that did some kind of a job on the wiring.

Collecting all the tools, I then went off up the ladder to the top of the scaffolding (and you can see how high I was as well - right at the top and that was nerve-wracking) and that wasn't easy either. One of the more difficult issues was fitting the wind turbine through the hatch in the lean-to floor. I had to dismantle the blasted thing, carry it through and up the ladder and then reassemble it on top.

Passing the wire down the tube was something else as well. For some reason it didn't want to go down and I had to spend an age persuading it.

Fitting the wind turbine on the pole was exciting as well and it was quite a feat of balance to do that on a scaffolding like that. I then had to fix the rudder back on the wind turbine but that was something of an issue as it seemed that the captive nut that holds the rudder on had sheared off. And so that meant climbing right up there, undoing the side of the turbine, and putting a nut and bolt in place.

It was at that moment that the wind sprang up, and if it wasn't easy before, then trying to do this right up there with the thing swinging around and the blades going round like the clappers - that just made it worse.

But anyway it's up there, and it's all wired in as well. But I couldn't solder up the wires which was annoying - not even the Tandy soldering iron would do that - and so I've had to use chocolate blocks for that and the sheath that I put over the conduit now won't cover up the joints.

As you can tell, it wasn't easy and it was no wonder that,having decided to work right through until I finished, it was so late when I came to a stop. And I wasn't feeling like carrying on.

But anyway, I know it works. It will be interesting to see what power it gives out.

Have a close look at this photo ...

2011-11-17T22:59:00.001+01:00

... and see if you can spot where the Gorge de la Sioule might be.

It's one thing I like about going out to Liz and Terry's early in the morning - the fact that they live right on the edge of the gorge. And because the gorge is so deep and so steep the sun can't shine into it until it has well-risen. That means that the surrounding ground is quite warm whereas at the bottom of the gorge the air is quite cold and damp. And when the sun is high enough to enter the gorge it dramatically heats the cold damp air and you have clouds of condensation rising up from the gorge quite spectacularly.

Liz had to do some kind of newspaper interview the other week, in which she described the Combrailles as "The Land That Time Forgot", and you can see clearly exactly what she means by that.

And so today Terry and I bricked up one of the doorways (their house is two small cottages knocked into one) and fitted the window in the upper half, and then fitted the new door in the other doorway. And it wasn't as straight-forward as you might think either. The old doors had been made-to-measure for the doorways and of course, as we discovered as we were trying to fit everything, the door openings were not built straight. That was a complication we didn't need.

Fitting the door was exciting though. We spent 10 minutes trying to make it seat on the hinge pins,and you've no ideahow easily it fitted when we took out the wedge that was trapped underneath it. And we also spent half an hour trying everything that we could to make the door close and you've no idea how well it closed when we took the packing strip out of the aluminium closing tray.

Ahhh well.

Anyway,tomorrow I'll be fitting the wind turbine if the weather holds, and now that I have my diamond core drills, I'll be drilling from the house through into the leanto and running cables there. If I'm not careful,I might even have light and power in there tomorrow night.

I've made great progress ...

2011-11-17T00:38:00.001+01:00

... today with the mount for the wind turbine. You can't see it easily on the pic - you need to look carefully and you will see above and below the window the horizontal beams that will stand the vertical pole the required distance off the wall.

And if you look behind the ladder you can see the vertical upright - to the left of the yellow scaffolding pole.

It's about 1 metre above the roof line and so what I've done is to cut a 1-metre length of pipe and I'll be fastening the wind turbine to that. I have a special jointing piece for scaffolding pipe and so I can fit the two pipes together. That will give me a 2-metre height and I'll see if I can slide the whole lot even higher.

The pole slides down easily enough - I have the squidged right hand to prove that - and so it should move up easily, or at least comparatively easily if I can manage the weight because it's going to be quite something, the weight of it all, and I need all of the height that I can get.

My revised arrangements for mounting it all worked a treat and to fasten the wall anchors into the wall securely I've been driving them into the wall using a little something that I invented, based on a heavy washer, a couple of 17mm nuts, a deep 17mm socket and a lump hammer and that works a treat. MInd you, it was all awkward to manipulate because it was so heavy and I had to manoeuvre in in three planes. And I'm disappointed with this so-called super cement stuff.

Another thing that I found out today was that standard sizes in French pipe are different from standard UK sizes. And that's awkward because French sizes are larger than UK sizes and I have all UK fittings. I'll have to sort out some more pipe next time I go back the the UK.

Tomorrow I'm not going to be here. I'm round at Terry's helping him fit his new door and window.

It's not as easy as you think ...

2011-11-15T23:59:00.001+01:00

... putting up this wind turbine and despite a good day's work I've hardly scratched the surface of it.

First job was to reposition all of the planks on the scaffolding so that they are where I want them to be, and then to put the ladder where it should be as well. And that wasn't the work of five minutes either.

After that it was to cut up a scaffolding pole to make the horizontal battens on the wall. There's an overhang on the roof of about 70mms and so I'm having to invent something to stand the upright pole 70mms out of the wall and that's not easy.

Next task was to drill the holes for the mounting brackets to take the horizontal battens. And with the hard stone that we have around here this was playing havoc with the batteries on the Hitachi battery-powered SDS drill.

And then I had an idea.

I have a mains SDS drill - about 750 watts-worth but it's pretty lightweight and not any better than the Hitachi. That's always been down here but back in Brussels a few years ago I recalled buying a really heavy-duty 1050 watt SDS drill - with rotostop and everything. And that would make short work of drilling the holes.

And so I had to hunt that down somewhere around the house or the barn and eventually, much to my surprise, I uncovered it.. And then it was to wire in the 1500-watt mega-inverter that I bought for the barn. And then it was to trail an electrical cable all around the farm. And then look for an adapter because the drill is still wired to a European plug.

But now you see why it's taking me so long.

But once I was up and running, that drill went through the stone like a hot knife through butter.

After much manipulation I have one of the horizontal battens on now, and that cement mastic stuff is excellent. But I'm going to have to take it off because I've thought of an improvement and I shall be doing that tomorrow. What with having to manipulate the heavy upright pole (and that wasn't easy either) I was exhausted and in any case heaving heavy pipes around 10 metres up in the air by the light of a torch is not recommended.

We talked the other day about the film Tony Rome. Now that film is from the mid-60s and one of the things that was going through my mind was "is this the earliest 'mainstream' film to have a reasonably-explicit lesbian love scene in it?" I spent all afternoon trying to think if there was one any earlier than this but nothing came to mind.

Secondly, I was watching an episode of The Prisoner this morning at breakfast - "It's Your Funeral" - and one of the actresses in it caught my ear. And I mean that too because while I didn't recognise the face, the voice was ringing in my ears telling me something.

And it wasn't until much later that the penny dropped. It was no one other than Annette Andre, which might mean nothing to you but her most famous role was as Philia, Michael Crawford's sidekick in the film version of A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum a film which, although excellent in its own right, was notorious for dropping Frankie Howerd from the lead role in favour of the dreadful Zero Mostel and featuring a cameo of Buster Keaton, two things done simply so that the film would have a wider audience in the USA.

Well, that's that!

2011-11-15T01:39:00.001+01:00

Yes, I've finished the wall today. And about time too. Mind you it's just as well because the weather is going to change on Wednesday so we are told, and we can expect rain. So at least that's 36 hours or so for the chalk to set and to harden before the rain gets to it. Of course with the rain it means that it isn't going to freeze any time soon, and that's good news too as it gives even more time to cure before anything serious can attack it. It seems that I've finished just in time

Mind you, it was awkward up the ladder doing this last bit and it's made me realise just what a good idea it was to buy this scaffolding. A very good move, that.

There was some mortar left over too and so for that I did some work on the inside of the rear wall. And that was interesting too because I was still out there at 18:30 with a torch working on that - not like me, considering that we are on winter hours.

It was pretty tiring up there too and I didn't really feel like going to the Anglo-French Group meeting but I managed to tear myself off the sofa and go down to St Gervais.

Tomorrow I'll be putting up the wind turbine - not something that I'm looking forward to doing on my own but it won't get done on its own no matter how long I stare at it. And when it's done, I can move the scaffolding out of the lean-to and put it at the side, ready to start on the roofing of it.

Isn't this all progress?

I don't think that I will be seeing the wild boar again.

2011-11-14T00:44:00.001+01:00

The farmer came down this morning to bring his cows to the field behind the house. He went for a walk around and he must have seen the wild boar tracks because half an hour later the hunters arrived.

I was once at a meeting where I heard a hunter describe hunting as "a noble sport". I've no idea what is noble or sporting about 20 armed men ringing a thicket, sending a bunch of dogs in to flush out everything that is in there and then blasting it into oblivion as it comes fleeing out.It's all really sad and pathetic if you ask me.

This afternoon I went to Loubeyrat to watch the 2nd XI and although they lost 3-0 they were desperately unlucky here. Two free kicks and a defensive howler were responsible for the goals but apart from that they did really well and this was probably the best I've seen them play. They even managed to have a good shape that they kept throughout the match. It's a shame that they can't play like that every week.

Back here this evening I watched one of the videos that I had bought in Montlucon for a couple of Euros the other day. This was a Frank Sinatra film called Tony Rome and not only does Sinatra not sing in it (for which I am extremely grateful) he acts spectacularly well in his role as a private detective in Miami. If you know any of the Philip Marlowe films, then think of Humphrey Go-kart in The Big Sleep, bring it up to date by 20 years, film it in technicolour with good outdoor scenery and give it some meaningful and convincing co-stars and there you are.

It's easily the best film that I have bought for quite a while and it will be one that will feature on my regular playlist. There was a follow-up of it called The Lady In Cement and while it is very very rare for a follow-up to be anything like as good as the original, I shall be trying to track down a copy of that. But it really was a good film.

I'm going to bed in a second.

2011-11-13T00:49:00.001+01:00

Yes, I'm thoroughly exhausted and I don't know why. Probably the early start this morning had something to do with it. Up with the alarm waiting for a phone call for this photo safari thing, and it turns out that I had not been patched in to an earlier e-mail circular and so I'd missed the point of this trip out. But anyway it didn't take us long to do what it was that we had to do.

This afternoon, seeing as how the weather was so beautiful I went to Commentry to do my shopping there. I was buzzed by one of these motorised hang-glider things, and I noticed another example of poorly-sighted solar panels. These "become a producer of solar energy and sell to the electricity board" high-pressure salesmen have struck again. It's hardly surprising that the industry has such a bad name.

I did make a couple of interesting discoveries though. And they were both at Bricomarche. Firstly they have a huge pile of water-resistant 8mm plywood at €39 a sheet of 2.5x1.25 metres. It's expensive all right but it's what I need for the roof of the lean-to and they do have it in stock.

Secondly, they also have the stove that I want for downstairs. A woodstove with an oven and with a central heating boiler built in - for €1499 too. That's exactly what I want for the sun will heat the water in the summer and I need something for heating it in the winter. If this does everything that will be perfect. I can even do cooking with it as well.

But the real reason for going to Commentry was with the waether so nice I went off to Neris for a swim. It was glorious in there - the water just right and the pool quite warm as well. Shame it can't be like that all the time.

At the footy tonight the 3rd XI match was cancelled as the opposition couldn't raise a team, and the first XI went down 2-1 to a team that they had played off the park.

But enough of this for now. I've fallen asleep twice already while typing this, and if I don't get a move on I'll be ........

.......ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

I completely forgot ...

2011-11-12T00:57:00.001+01:00

... about a sack of sand that I had in the barn. I'd bought it to use for storing the carrots and so I had put it on one side. But the carrots aren't up yet and I can always buy another sack of sand another time.

I hadn't forgotten that it was a bank holiday today, but when I finally crawled out from underneath the quilt and saw what a gorgeous day it was (23°C in November?) then I changed the habits of a lifetime and decided to put in a day's work on the wall. This was too good to miss, especially as I had remembered about the sack of sand.

And I'm glad I did as well because even though I was still working outside when the light went, I managed to finish the wall as far as I could reach and I'm ever so impressed by that. All that remains of the wall is the bit that I can't reach from the scaffolding, and for that I can put a ladder up on Monday and quickly do that if I get a move on, and then that will be that.

Just the wind turbine to mount, and to anchor it to the wall, and then I can get on with putting the roof on the lean-to and I'll be really pleased if I can get that far this year.

I took the camera up the scaffolding just in case we had Part Two of Wild Boar Wars but of course, with the camera on hand, they were conspicuous by their absence. No surprise there, then.

Tomorrow I'm off on a photo safari around the local area, and then shopping in St Eloy. Tomorrow night it's Pionsat's 1st XI against Methanol and the 3rd XI against Blot l'Eglise. Ohh the joys of footy!

Talking of which, you can see last week's matches which I have now put on line.

I didn't get so much done today.

2011-11-11T00:59:00.001+01:00

And that's despite having an early start as well.

But in the night when I had to get up to go for a gypsy's, I saw a mouse appearing from a hole in the insulation in the ceiling. It saw me and darted back inside, and I heard the tell-tale scamper of tiny feet up into the roof.

And so this morning I spent an hour or so cutting up the offcuts of tongue and grooving and making a wall across the insulation and shoring it up. And so far, it's been All Quiet on the Western Front. We shall see. But mice are persistent creatures and if there's a way in they will find it.

And it wasn't Quiet on the Eastern Front either.I didn't getmuch done on the wall because I spent much of the afternoon watching two herds of wild boar battle for possession of Lieneke's field. The noise was spectacular to say the least. "Deafening" is another good word to describe it.

I didn't have my camera with me up on the scaffolding (I'd probably get a pile of dust in it or drop it or something) and although I was tempted to go down and fetch it, discretion was the better part of valour. All of that agression about 20 yards from me and if I had been observed I might possiblyhave become involved in it, and I'm not half as well-armed or well-equipped as a wild boar. And they are quite noisy bar stewards as well.

Tomorrow I'm going to be pointing for as long as the sand holds out, and then I'll make a start on the wind turbine.

I bet that you are fed up ...

2011-11-10T01:43:00.000+01:00

... of hearing me talking about this wall. But not long now. I'm sitting on the scaffolding planks doing the last row that I can, and there's just about 90cms underneath that that I will have to do from a ladder. But that can't be done until I've moved the scaffolding,and that can't be done until I've mounted the wind turbine (I don't half do some weird things around here) and then there's a strip that I can't reach from the scaffolding - that's going to be a ladder job too.

I'm likely to run out of sand tomorrow and so rather than get out the Sankey, what I'll do is simply to go to the quarry with a dozen or so sacks and bag it up myself there. That's much more sensible, I reckon. But I can't believe that I've used so much sand. There was more than a trailer-load here before I started.

At about 17:40 it became too dark to work and so,by the light of the solar lamps around here I started to tidy up at the front of the house. I've been pulling up weeds and putting them in the brazier that I bought the other week. When they have dried out I can have a bonfire. There's piles of other stuff that can go on the fire as well. High time I had a tidy up.

But it's all getting to be quite exciting around here just now.There might even be a roof on the lean-to before long and won't that be progress?

And remember the thumb that has a lime burn on it? I've hit it with a hammer today. It's not having much luck, is it?

I've not been feeling myself today.

2011-11-09T00:53:00.000+01:00

"And quite right, too" I hear you say. And I think that some of it has to do with shock. Shock of being wide awake and compos mentis, or rather, as compos mentis as I can be, long before the alarm went off. And that's not something that happens every day either.

And breakfast was interrupted by a phone call - seems that there's a panic down at the footy club and so I had to sort that out as well.

When I finally made it outside, I had to reposition all of the planks on the scaffolding to get to where I need them for the next round of pointing and once I had done that, I could carry on. For some reason, this has taken longer than I expected and I don't know why. I'm also on my last bag of sand and so I'll have to go down to the quarry this week and get some more. That means pulling the Sankey trailer out of the undergrowth,which should be exciting.

But where I am now is the last bit of the pointing that I can do on the scaffolding. The rest will have to be done off a ladder. And so before I take down the scaffolding, I'll have to put up the wind turbine on the side of the house. That's going to be exciting, trying to get that up on my own. And it's complicated too as because of the roof overhang, I need to do some engineering to get it to work.

And when that's done, and the scaffolding is down, I can fit the roof on the lean-to. If I can get that far before the end of the year I shall be well-impressed. I've come a long way this autumm.

What a depressing miserable day.

2011-11-08T00:53:00.000+01:00

I woke up to a hanging cloud stuck on the mountain this morning. It was enough to make me turn over and go back to sleep.

And when I did finally heave myself out of the stinking pit it was still there. And it's been there all day and not moved an inch. And it's still there even now. There's been nosolar energy in the barn, and about 4 amp-hours here in the house. Winter is definitely here.

The batteries have gone flat on the anenometer on the house, and so that was the cue for me to get up on the roof and take it down. I then made a framework bracket out of aluminium and put the new one up on the side of the house. Not that I needed to bother because the wind that we have received here today can be measured in minutes. A far cry from the 20 hours of wind the other day.

After lunch, despite the grey damp conditions I carried on pointing the side of the house. It'll take ages to dry of course in this weather but at least it won't be freezing and so it will have the time to dry out. It's important that it's properly dry before the frost gets to it. I did quite a lot, looking at it when I finished, and another two good days might see it finished if I am lucky and the weather holds out.

At the Anglo-French group tonight, I had a good chat to Bill. It seems that this house repair stuff is getting to be contagious as this week he's restarted work on his house. Good for him!

We had more football today of course.

2011-11-07T01:13:00.002+01:00

Mind you, we nearly didn't. If Percy Penguin hadn't sent me a text I probably would be still in bed asleep right now.

After a hurried breakfast I shot off to St Maurice to watch the fist half of the 3rd XI's match. It was 1-0 when I left, due to another screamer from Xavier, 20 yards out.

He's big and rather ponderous but sometimes he pulls something out that is so unexpected. And he can be like that too when he's playing football.

He has probably the most powerful shot of any footballer I have ever seen, and like this one today, many a goalkeeper has put both hands on the ball but it hasn't done the slightest bit of good.

If there hadn't been a net in that goal, the ball would have probably made it all the way to the Atlantic without bouncing.

It turns out that they lost 2-1 in the match and that makes me wonder what happened in the match because they were well ahead in the game from what I saw. But then it's always going to be difficult for the 3rd XI without a recognised goalkeeper and Iwish that the club would make more effort to find one for them.

From there I had to drive like hell to the suburbs of Riom to watch the 1st XI in the match against Malauzat. And that was a hard-fought game that turned out to be very bad-tempered, and what made me happy in one sense was that most of the physical stuff was beingdished out by Pionsat.

I've criticised them before for being something of a lightweight side, easily hustled off the ball, but nothing like that today. The opposing players were becoming all wound up, the opposing specators were baying at the ref, and it all made absolutely no difference as Pionsat won 2-1, with two of the best goals that I have ever seen at this level of football. The one scored by Jerome was particularly outstanding.

And so back home in the miserable depressing rain to find out that it has been miserable and depressing here all day and there's been almost no solar energy today.

It's still raining now - misty and foggy outside andit's probably going to stay like this until next summer. But it's not important because if it is raining tomorrow I can finish off the steps and I've also bought the boards to make the worktops in the washroom bit. I also need to work out where I'm going to put the front door. That has come with its frame and so I reckon that it will be easier to fit it before it's glazed as the door will be lighter and so easy to manipulate. I can then take the door out of the frame and have it glazed

One thing that I will never ever understand ...

2011-11-06T00:55:00.001+01:00

... is how Pionsat's 2nd XI, with a full complement of players, a decent goalkeeper and several players back in the side who have been missing for ages, can totally outplay an opposition so convincingly and STILL lose 4-3. It simply beggars belief and those who were watching it will still be pinching themselves tomorrow about this.

Mind you, what also had many spectators scratching their heads was why one of the left-backs and who had played sweeper so successfully for the 2nd XI the last time he played, was playing as an attacking midfielder. And why a guy who had played in central defence for the 1st XI so successfully (to such an extent that he won my "man of the match" awards the other week) was playing in midfield, and why one of the usual centre-forwards was playing at centre-half. And why this formation was persisted with after the guy who was playing centre-forward this week (and who was quite effective too) was carried off injured after 30 minutes.

It was all totally mystifying.

So this morning I was up early and into Montlucon. I picked up the new wheel for Caliburn and I also bought some stuff in Brico Depot, including some cheap kitchen worktops that I'll use in my laundry room.

But pride of place, and the reason why I went to Montlucon today, was for ordering the window for the downstairs here. And Terry was perfectly right, as he usually is. A made-to-measure window for the bedroom cost me €650 back in the early part of the year. The window in the living room is larger but rather than go for a made-to-measure window, there's a standard-size window that's 1cm narrower and 2cms shorter than the opening. If I don't mind filling in around the window opening, then that window will cost me all of €342. Do bears dispose of their bodily waste matter in the woods?

And it will be ready on 25th November as well. That means that it will be installed before the severe winter sets in. So what I'll do on the next rainy day or two is to plan the fitting of the front door. It probably won't be glazed, but I'll screw a board and some insulated plasterboard over it and that should stop the draughts. And with the new fire, I might even be warm here this winter at this rate.

There won't be a photo today

2011-11-05T02:33:00.000+01:00

That's because I did nothing of any importance -well, as far as visually goes.

This morning was a computer morning, even though I'm on winter hours. Someone has asked for a quote for a solar panel installation and I needed to track down some product. One thing led to another and I was all morning doing things like this.

Later on I managed to make my way outside. First job was to reposition the planks to the correct working position. And then I spent a delightful few hours chiselling out the old mortar.

It was only after that that I could start on the pointing. And Ididn't getmuch of it done. Each time I was up the scaffolding with a bucket of mix the heavens opened. And by the time I was back down soaked to the skin and with an empty bucket and covered up the lean-to, the rain would stop. And so I would start again and then so would the weather. This kept on until about 16:00 when the heavens truly opened. By 22:00 we had had 25.5mm and it was still coming.

But the advantage of having plenty to do is that I could go and work indoors. I've now measured in the beam in the lean-to where I want the studding to go for the stair rails for the inside and I've cut the lets. And so on Monday when I start back I can either start on the wind turbine, carry on with the pointing or finish off the stud walls and stair rails in the lean-to.

That wasn't everything either. I'll have to go to the UK soon as a client wants a huge load of electronic items that are only available from Radio Spares.

God, it was hard this morning ...

2011-11-04T00:02:00.000+01:00

... to get out of bed. I was aching in places I didn't even realise I had places after the exertions of yesterday. The sections of scaffolding are quite heavy and carrying them up ladders and manhandling scaffolding planks into position is strenuous work, especially at my age. Still, if it's hurting then it must be doing some good.

Once everything was sorted out around here I had a set-to with the pointing on the side wall. And isn't it easier doing it from a scaffolding than from a ladder? If I had had a scaffolding up here from the start I would have finished it long ago.

And you are probably wondering why it is that the pointing that I did today hasn't joined up with the pointing from before. That's easy to explain. When you assemble the scaffolding you need to have the planks set at 2-metre heights so that you can have something solid to stand on while you fit the one above,and then climb up to that one to do the next one above, and so on. And then when you have assembled your scaffolding you can reposition the planks at the height that you want for working.

That was in fact going to be the first job this morning, but with winds gusting up to 40kph throughout the day and the wind turbines going round like there was no tomorrow, this was not the time to be manipulating heavy scaffolding planks while standing on a ladder 8 metres up. That can wait until the wind drops. There's plenty of wall to go at and so I can pick a part at a safe working height from an existing plank and point that bit.

And so it's definitely easier working from a scaffolding, especially in a gale-force wind. And the wind was so strong that it's blown down my wooden fence. That gives you an idea as to what we were going through. But I was enjoying myself on the scaffolding and I was surprised when it suddenly went dark. "A rainstorm approaching" I thought, but in actual fact it was knocking-off time. The day passed really quickly.

We did have the rainstorm as well. 19mm in two hours and it's still raining now. I hope it dries up for tomorrow as I'm itching to get back to work. I want to have this wall finished.

Never mind the Towering Inferno ...

2011-11-02T23:38:00.001+01:00

... and never mind the legendary Tower of Power either. This is what I've been doing today.

Well, not all today. The first thing was to give the downstairs part of the lean-to a good clean-out so that I could fetch the scaffolding inside, and then I had to sweep up the floor of the first floor so that I could erect the scaffolding.

It was half-way through that part of the exercise that I realised that maybe it was not such a good idea to put the framework of the washroom in position yesterday. It's bad enough trying to negotiate the small hatch in the floor without having to negotiate a gratuitous upright as well. But I tell you what - you know these tournaments where the military have to dismantle a field gun, pass it over a wall and through a hoop and then re-assemble it? I'm entering for that next year. Putting this scaffolding up onto the first floor of the lean-to is good training for that.

And so the scaffolding was erected and that took quite a while to do - mainly because it's the first time I've put the scaffolding up on my own,and I'm not as young as I used to be. But there it is - all in place and 8 metres high. In fact it's so high that my ladder won't reach the top. I've had to put that on planks 1 metre off the ground and shin up there like a monkey.

What has impressed me is that the floor of the first floor, that I fitted last summer, is perfectly level. I provedthat by setting the adjustible feet of the scaffolding to the same height before I began the assembly,and when I checked the first row of scaffolding with a spirit level, it was absolutely level.

The floor is also extremely strong as well. Not only does it take the weight of the scaffolding, it can withstand the shock of a scaffolding plank (and these are heavy) being dropped onto it from 8 metres up. That is definitely impressive.

Mind you, never mind the answer blowing in the wind, my friend, the scaffolding at 8 metres high is swaying about too and not surprising - we've had gusts today of over 25mph.

You might be thinking to yourself that tomorrow I'll be attacking the wind turbine, but not a bit of it, and that's all Terry's fault. Normally I'd fasten the wind turbine pole with anchor bolts drilled into the wall but the problem with them is that they are never a very good fit in stone and work loose after a while - you need to be constantly tightening them up. But when we were doing the windows Terry showed me a kind of mastic that you squirt into holes and which sets like concrete. And that gave me an idea. Drill the holes about 1cm deeper than necessary, squirt a pile of stuff into the hole, ram the anchor into the hole, fit the mounting bracket and tighten up. The force and pressure will force the mastic everywhere into the hole, the crevices, the screw threads and so on, and then set like concrete and (hopefully) you won't ever be able to move it. I need to wait until Saturday and shopping so that I can get a tube or two of it. It's expensive but if it does the job it will be well worth it.

And so until the weekend I'll be pointing the wall, and in the comparative luxury of a scaffolding too. It makes a change from shinning up ladders with a bucket of stones, a bucket of water and paintbrush, a loose-handled brush, a hammer and chisel, some mortar and a trowel.

The one thing that I like ...

2011-11-02T01:46:00.002+01:00

... about having made some space inside the house is that when it rains I can work indoors. And the one thing I like about it raining is that I have plenty of work to do that can be done indoors as well.

And so with the pouring rain this morning I brought inside the struts for the stud wall-cum-ladder that I'll be fitting inside the lean-to and I spent much of today working on them. And to such an extent that I have two of them - the front two - now fitted and screwed into position. Mind you,that involved working in the dark with a torch because we are now on winter hours of course and it goes dark at 17:45.

That's really all the excitement for today - I haven't done very much else, although I made myself a really wicked aubergine and bean casserole kind of thing, with enough left over for two more days as well. I suppose that's fairly exciting.

Tomorrow if the weather is good I'll put up the scaffolding on the lean-to and plan the erection of the wind turbine. And if it rains I'll carry on with the stud walls in the lean-to. That's what I like about having choices.

But I forgot something.

f you have been following my website you will recall that I've been talking about the Nova Scotia Museum of Industry, and in particular the restored Mobile Technical College, "Shopmobile 5". Anyway I've had an e-mail today from the person who was in charge of the restoration project and he's sent me a pile of photos, together with a promise to sort out a pile more stuff for me if I want it. Do bears excrete their waste matter in the woods?

I suppose that that's exciting, isn't it?

Long-time followers of this rubbish will recall ...

2011-11-01T00:12:00.000+01:00

... that the front of the house looksjust as it does in this photo. But not any more.

In fact this evening it looks like it does in the photo just here. And if you look very carefully and compare the two images, you might notice that the windows are different.

In fact, this morning Terry and I fitted the new windows that I bought in the spring.

It all stemmed from Terry saying the other day that he is going to change a door and a window in his house in a couple of weeks time and how it needs two people to do it, but Liz is a busy woman these days (I don't think that I mentioned that Liz has passed a Diploma or something in teaching English as a Second Language and is now gone back to teaching but in the French educational system) and so he will be stuck for a hand.

Cue the "well, I'll give you a hand willingly and you can help me with my windows some time" which brought the reply "we can do your windows on Monday". And here we are.

The old windows came out bit by bit as you might expect, and once we had cemented in where the frames had been,the new windows went in pretty straightforwardly, and that was impressive.

I have to go into Montlucon on Wednesday and what I'll do is to order the one for the ground floor. And if Julie can cut the shaped glass for the front door, I can fit that as well and that will be a vast improvement if I can fit those before it all goes cold around here. The weather is still holding up by the way - a beautiful day in fact.

After lunch we struggled into the attic with the new woodstove and that's now fitted in place of the old pot-bellied stove.

This is big and heavy for its size - it's clearly solidly built and Terry reckons that it will burn me out of here if I load it right up.

You can see the oven bit too - the lift-up lid and the bit that goes down to the crease just above the window. That will be plenty big enough for pizza,rice pudding, baked potato and the like. I hope that it works as well as it looks.

Terry also helped me get the hydro plasterboard upstairs to the first floor as well. It's of heavy fabrication and it's also 13mm instead of the standard 10mm that I use. I can manhandle 10mm plasterboard upstairs on my own just about but there was no way I could have done it with this stuff.

Terry also brought some of the scaffolding around and left it here for me. I'll put that up tomorrow in the lean-to and once it's up it will speed up the work pointing the wall. It's much easier doing that from a decent and comfortable position.

We shall see.

The clocks went back today ...

2011-10-31T00:10:00.001+01:00

...and so I was looking for a good long lie in. But the best-made plans of mice and men and all of that, for the mouse who lives in the roof started doing his clog dance at 07:00 and that was that.

Mind you I had a good morning on the computer. I've uploaded the match report for the football last night, and I've also brought the Radio Anglais website up-to-date, and I'm pleased with that.

This afternoon I went to the brocante at St Gervais but I won't be going there again. Mostly rubbish, and way over-priced as well. I shan't waste my time again.

Afterwards I went round to Liz and Terry's to help Terry load his van, and Liz had made tea again. I'm really getting spoilt these days.

It took just 30 seconds of madness ...

2011-10-30T00:35:00.002+02:00

... for Pionsat to throw away a football match this evening. 4-3 up and in the dying minutes of the game against a team 2 Divisions higher up, one of the attackers elects to take the ball down to the corner flag and sit there to waste a minute or two.

But he loses the ball, it's played hurriedly upfield into space deep into the Pionsat half. There's a race on for the loose ball, which is won by a Pionsat defender and, under pressure from two attackers, and after all that I have said and after all that I have written and after all the time that I have been saying and writing, he goes to whack it upfield instead of playing it out into touch to give his fellow defenders time to come back.

His kick is poor as you might expect, and it cannons into the midriff of one of the attackers, and then out into the path of the other who has only Matthieu in goal and that is that. 4-4

From the kick-off, Pionsat lose possession and Clermont go on the attack. The forward is brought down and a quickly-taken free kick is fired into the penalty area and headed home while the Pionsat defence is still trying to organise itself. And Pionsat are out of the cup and thats a shame because this was an excellent match played at high speed and in a good temper - one of the best matches I've seen played here since I've been following the team.

Today was shopping in Clermont and I was off on the wrong foot again as I slept through the alarm and so was 2 hours late going.

And I spent a fortune too. I've all the hydrofuge plasterboarding for the shower room seeing as how it was on offer, and I've bought a wheel for Caliburn. I have two snow tyres that I fit in winter and one of them is on the spare wheel but the other is not on a wheel at all and I have to keep getting it swapped over with one of the summer tyres and that costs me €15 a time. It makes much more sense to pay €65 for a wheel and keep the tyre on it around here like that, and then I can swap the wheels over whenever it suits me to do so.

But I have also spent €279 on a new woodstove for in here. You may recall that I bought a cheap pot-bellied stove for up here and though while it does what it's supposed to do it has a very small capacity and it needs to be filled every 15-20 minutes. What I saw in Mr Bricolage was a more conventional woodstove with a glass front. It's larger and it takes logs of 33cms. and as it burns horizontally and not vertically, then I can stack it up and it should last for quite a long time without reloading.

But that's not the exciting bit. This woodstove has a rear exit for the smoke and the top of it has a lift-up lid, under which is, I suppose, a small top-loading oven about 6 inches or so deep. I'm immediately thinking "pizza", "shepherd's pie", "oven chips with spicy been taco rolls", "baked potatoes and baked beans", "rice pudding" and loads of other things besides.

Yes, when winter bites and I feel the need for hot food and it's too cold to go downstairs and cook in the verandah at -10°C, and when I want to boil some coffee last thing at night and put it in a flask so I have hot coffee in my room first thing in the morning, I can see a lot of benefit in this new stove and its oven. I'm hoping to have my money's worth out of it.

The pot-bellied stove isn't going to be lost, though. I have a cunning plan for that, more of which anon.

I also managed to fit a swim in this afternoon. And it was perishing freezing in there again. Even the Polar Bears were complaining. I'm going to have to give the piscine at Neris a missof it carries on like this.

How long is it

2011-10-29T01:17:00.003+02:00

since I took a pic from the birdwatching platform near where Liz and Terry live?

I was out there early (well, early for me anyway) this morning and in the damp and warm (well, warm for this time of year) the mist was rising out of all the hollows and it didn't half look impressive.

Anyway, I picked Liz up and we went to Gerzat for the Radio Arverne sessions. We were there for just after 10:00 and so we went for a walk around the town for 20 minutes before Bernard turned up.

It took just over an hour to record the four sessions today - even though Bernard was rather ... errr ... confused and disorientated. He just now has rather a lot of editing to do.

Back at Liz and Terry's, Terry and I had quite a long chat about things and then I came back here.

It was raining of course after lunch and so in a change of plan I've done a huge amount of tidying up on the ground floor and the first floor and it actually looks like something now to a certain degree. I've also done some tidying up outside and that has helped, especially as the vegetation is now dying down for winter and some lost articles are now coming into view.

And tidying up as well. How about that? And to tell you the truth I would have been tidying up this afternoon even if the weather had been absolutely gorgeous because there is a cunning plan looming in the background.

The weather changed today ...

2011-10-28T02:03:00.000+02:00

...and what was annoying was that it happened while I was up a ladder pointing the stone work. I'd done quite a bit too and I was making good progress when the heavens opened on me. There was nothing for it but to put everything away and put the tarps back over. And by the time I had done that the rain had eased off.

I wasn't going to undo everything and go back up the wall as it was getting late and the light was starting to go, and so I did some more on the struts that I'll be using to make the stairs in the lean to. I'm well advanced into those and a day with rain might see them installed, although I'm not actually wishing for rain, of course. I have far too much work to do outside.

This morning I carried on with the website. I've left Cap-de-la-Madeleine and now I'm along Highway 138 heading for Quebec City. There's no doubt that Highway 138, the chemin du roy, is the most beautiful road in Canada.

And that's really all I've done today. Not very exciting is it? But if I remember to wake up tomorrow we are recording Radio Arverne. That's exciting
.

Just for a change ...

2011-10-27T02:49:00.000+02:00

... I was up early this morning and I managed to have a really good go at the website this morning. I've left Trois Rivieres and arrived at Cap-de-la-Madeleine where I'm having a good wander around the pilgrimage site. Absolutely fascinating and full of the most unexpected irony.

So this afternoon I was up the ladder, in the wind, chiselling out the old sand-and-clay mortar from the top of the wall and there was so much that came out that I had to do two large mixes of mortar and that still wasn't enough to do that bit.

And it was exciting up there for several reasons.
Firstly, I was carried away with what I was doing and it was 19:05 and dark when I knocked off this evening.
Secondly there was all kinds of noise going on in the brush in the field next door and all of a sudden two wild boar shot out and ran across the field. The first wild boar that I have seen properly here aswell. They are bigger and heavier than I expected and the earth moves when they run. They have a hell of a speed as well. And the racket that they make is astonishing. I was really surprised.

I'd have taken a pic of them but I was up the top of the ladder and the camera was down below. After all, it's difficult enough trying to manipulate a bucket of water and a paintbrush, a hand brush, a bucket full of stones, a trowel and a hawk full of lime mortar when you are up the top of a ladder. You don't need a camera as well.

Tonight I made a curry and seeing as I have no courgette left I used tinned mushroom and tinned chick peas. And it didn't half come out well too. And there's enough for another two days as well.

So tomorrow I'll be back up the wall. And quite right too.

After last night's early retirement ...

2011-10-26T01:21:00.001+02:00

... I was up with the cock this morning.

But that's enough about my personal life. I was up quite early and when Liz phoned me to make sure that I was awake, I was already tucking into breakfast.

At Radio Tartasse we did our programmes for the month of November and after a coffee together I came back home.

Working on the website again followed by lunch, and then I took some more roofing sheets off the lean-to and replaced them with a tarp. I also put something underneath the floor of the upper part of the leanto to stop any water falling on the washing machine underneath.

After all of that I put up the ladder and started on chiselling out the old mortar at the top of the house wall, but I wasn't up there for too long. The wind sprang up again quite violently and then we had a huge black weather front that dumped 5 mms of rain everywhere. That wasn't very good, and I left the wall to itself with all of that. What I did was to point some more of the inside wall of the lean-to. It needs to be done some time or other and there's no time like the present.

If you've looked at some of the earlier photos you'll see the difference in this pic, on the left side of the wall. You might have also noticed a hole in the wall as well in the left side of the back wall. That's gone too now,all filled up with stones and properly cemented in. And that was something that I was keen to do, especially with winter on the way.

Tonight I finished off Liz's vegan casserole and had some of her vegan chocolate cake. Isn't it nice to have good friends?

And just what on earth is happening here?

2011-10-24T23:50:00.000+02:00

Yes, it's absolutely ages before midnight and here I am blogging already. What on earth is going on? The fact is that I'm absolutely whacked. Three nights without much sleep have finished me off and I shall be in the arms of Morpheus before much longer. But I dunno why I'm having these sleep issues. I know that I habitually keep late hours but what has been going on just recently is absurd.

This afternoon I carried on with moving the cattle trough in the lean-to. Here is a photo of how it looked after I'd been bashing away at it for an hour or two the other week. What it looks like now is something else completely thanks to Terry lending me a concrete cutting disk and a huge sledgehammer. It's made quite short work of the bit that I can get to, and the rest of it will have to be done when Ican get to it.

I did say that once I'd done that I would be starting on the pointing of the wall,but I'm afraid that that didn't happen. We've had a howling gale here today with winds gusting up to 20mph. I know that that isn't particularly fast but it's not the kind of weather for standing on top of a ladder 10 metres or so above ground. According to one of the litttle-used functions on the anenometer, we had 20:42 hours of wind in the last 24 hours and that is quite phenomenal. The wind turbines have been earning their keep today.

What I did do was to make a start on the framework that I'll be using to make the dividing wall in there. That involved cutting up a few chevrons and shaping them,and cutting lets into the rafters of the ceiling in the lean-to. And while I was doing that, the wind dramatically dropped. Not for me to go and get the ladder out though, because we had a torrential downpour and it's still raining now. I did some tidying up and sorting out until knocking off time at 19:00 (I'm still on summer hours).

Seeing as I'm still on summer hours, this morning I was working on the website and I've put on line the reports for the 1st XI and 2nd XI matches from this weekend. But Saturday night's photos haven't worked at all and I'm going to have to spend money on a decent lens totake better photos in the dark..

Tomorrow Liz and I are radioing, at Radio Tartasse. I wonder if I will have woken up by then.

Good night, everybody.

Today I have seen ....

2011-10-24T03:14:00.002+02:00

... the worst game of football that I have ever seen in my life. US Menetrol were such a poor side that they could only manage to score four goals against the disorganised rabble that was supposed to be the Pionsat 2nd XI.

There were three types of player on the field for Pionsat this afternoon - those with skill but no inclination, those with inclination and no skill, and those with neither. If I had been in charge of the team, I would have gone home with the bus and left them to walk home. And that was the problem - there was no-one in charge. And whoever it was who was supposed to be giving the orders was giving some pretty strange ones, that's for sure. It really was an absolute shambles. I shan't say any more about it as it will be just gratuitous.

On the way down to Methanol, I had the misfortune to be behind heaps of those kinds of drivers who think that 90kph is 70, 70 kph is 50, and 50 kph means that you get out and push. That started me off on the wrong foot anyway.

Afterwards, I went round to Liz and Terry's to discuss the radio programmes, but we seemed to have spent most of the time dealing with lost hunting dogs. Terry has very kindly lent me a concrete-cutting disc and a huge sledgehammer to remove this cattle trough, and Liz, apart from cooking a gorgeous tea, has made me up a food parcel. That is really lovely.

So tomorrow, I shall be removing cattle troughs and then carrying on with the pointing of the house wall. We are told that the fine weather will last until Wednesday.

And this must be a new record.

2011-10-23T04:01:00.000+02:00

I went to St Eloy this afternoon, rather late as it happened, and put my washing in the launderette seeing as there was quite a pile that had built up. Anyway,once the machine had set off, it announced that the cycle would take 40 minutes to do.

And by the time the 40 minutes was up, I'd been to LIDL and Carrefour and I was back in the launderette. And for what I had spent on the week's shopping, I had change back from €9:00 as well. Now, as I say, this must be a new record.

But my new plan is that seeing as I have quite a lot of work to do these days, I'm going to be doing the radio programmes on Saturday morning and then shopping in St Eloy when I've finished. And that seems to be working anyway because in 3 hours of work I'd done all four programmes. Yes,I reckon that if I don't go shopping until I've finished, it's a good spur.

This evening the 3rdXI match at Pionsat was cancelled as the opposition couldn't raise a team. Instead,I went and watched the 1st half of the match at Marcillat. Although the Marcillat team play at nominally1 level higher in the pyramid (they are in a different region) Pionsat's ist XI wouldn't have too much trouble in despatching them on a good day.

And talking of good days, Pionsat's 1st XI played one of the numerous teams from Clermont this evening. They weren't under too much pressure except down the left side of defence as usual and that was where they conceded a goal. But a substitution in the second half with a new player in the team shored that side up. The central defence played splendidly with Alex and Julien in there - and Julien has improved immeasurably this season, but with Cedric scoring early in the game and this new left-sided player scoring a second, following up a loose ball (and if he can play like this every week he'll prove to be an excellent signing), as well as two or three goals disallowed, Pionsat were never really in difficulty andwon with something to spare.

But the end of the game was rather ugly as the opposition lost their cool and we had a brawl near the end and another one after the final whistle and it was all unnecessary.

And then afterwards we had the draw for the league cup quarter-final. And Pionsat drew .... the team that had just played this evening. This should be quite some match.

Today was a quiet day ....

2011-10-22T01:07:00.002+02:00

... or at least it should have been. But Terry and Rob came round to fix Lieneke's barn and no-one can sleep through that kind of noise.

But what about last night,hey? Temperature plummeted to -1.9°C. A minus temperature - winter is flaming well here, right enough. I'm even contemplating lighting a fire shortlty

However, never mind that for a moment - three hours and more on the computer and my visit to Trois Rivieres is well-advanced. Trois-Rivieres is on the north bank of the St Lawrence between Montreal and Quebec. It's the oldest industrial site in North America and the newsprint capital of the world and all of my visits to the area have been overwhelmed by the smell of wet paper from the pulp mills so I've always kept well clear.

This year though I found myself in the town and my opinions of the place rapidly changed. The town seeps history from almost every pore and I've completely changed my opinion about the place.

This afternoon I had to wait for Terry to move his van before I could get out to the post office and post that parcel. And I fell through the floor when I found out the price. I bet that it's cheaper to fly to Canada and deliver it by hand. It makes excess baggage charges look a bargain.

To the bank after that to sort out a few financial details, and then to Bill's to fix his computer again.

This evening it's POETS day of course and so I finished early - spending half an hour or so sorting some papers that date back to 2004. And there's so many of them that it's going to take a while.

Tomorrow it's shopping and as I have so much to do it's going to be a St Eloy quick half hour-type of shopping. But the washing is building up here and so I might visit the local launderette and sort it out.

But I'm notreally looking forward to tomorrow. I've finished all of my stock of Canadian vegan cheese slices and that is a catastrophe.

I thought that you might ...

2011-10-21T14:04:00.003+02:00

... like to see a photo of inside the lean-to now that the wall is finished for now. As I have said before,I'm quite impressed with it. The part that I have built up is the part that has been pointed. The unpointed part is what remained after it fell down, and that will be pointed in early course. It depends how the weather holds out after I finish the house wall (yes, that's the next task).

In fact,it occurs to me that the best way to judge how much work that I've done on the wall is to look at this photo to see what it looked like last year before I started in earnest.

So this morning I started on the web site again but not for long as Terry came round. He'd been working at Lieneke's. It's nice to see good friends and have a good chat about this and that, for a change.

This afternoon, I packed up an export order of bits and pieces - yes folks, my first export order. How about that? We are making progress all the time, which is very nice to see, and very welcome too. and once that was dealt with, seeing as how the weather wasn't so good, I've started breaking the concrete food trough in the ground floor of the lean-to, as that's where the wall that will support the steps will be. Mind you, the steps won't be there for long as I have a cunning plan about that. But the concrete is tough there - it's reinforced and armour-plated by the looks of things. I've broken the shafts on two sledgehammers, flattened two batteries on the SDS drill, and chipped about a hatful off with the pick-axe. I'm on the lookout for some dynamite now.

As for the frog that I told you about the other night, well thanks to Krys (and how nice it is to see you again), the frog now has steps in and out of the plant trough. He'll probably fall in somewhere else now. 1

And the temperature? 1.8°C at the moment. Winter is acumen in. Lhude sing Rudolph

There's something really so satisfying ...

2011-10-20T01:42:00.000+02:00

... about finishing a job that you started. And seeing as I started on this back in 2002 (well, sort-of, although I didn't really get going until last summer), it's high time as well.

Yes, I've finally topped out the wall at the end of the lean-to, as you can see in the pic. It took about three buckets full of stones,2 buckets full of gravel and about 4 buckets full of lime mortar, as well as about 3 hours of work. Mind you, I've picked up an enormous lime burn on my left thumb and it isn't half painful. I've tried soaking it in water but it still hurts.

So when I finished the cementing I tidied up in there and that's a first isn't it? And then I went down the garden and found one of the sheets of corrugated iron and put that on over where I've been working, to keep the rain off because we've had 15.5mm of that today. And I have to say it - I spent 10 minutes just looking at the wall. I'm really impressed with how it came out and, of course, we'll have an earthquake tomorrow - wait and see.

As for the weather, well it's rained on and off for most of the day and the temperature has plummeted. It's just 3.7 °C outside right now. Apparently it's snowing in Germany and snow has also been seen in Scotland and on high ground in the North of England. This is early and I don't quite like the sound of it.

It's been progress on all fronts today.

2011-10-19T01:22:00.000+02:00

This morning I had a good go on the website. For the last couple of days I've been making a start on the pages for the month I've just spent in Canada, and I'm actually on Day 4. You might be thinking that in another 10 days or so at this rate I'll be finished, but I bet it will be nothing like. The first three days were pretty uneventful - it was on the fourth day that everything started to happen. I can see this being more like 10 months before it's done.

This afternoon I've been on the wall again. Not as much progress as I would have liked, but the chevrons at each side of the wall that I have been doing - they are now nailed down to the beam and the outer and inner faces to the wall are now completed. I've been infilling with crushed breeze block and a weak concrete mix and I'm about halfway up the centre of the final part of the wall. It won't be long now until it's done.

It's a shame that I couldn't finish it this evening although I was doing my best. I was beaten by the dark (and I mean dark) and it was 19:25 when I finally knocked off.

We also had some excitement elsewhere around the premises. I have a pile of dustbins, buckets and so on all around here in crucial places catching the rainwater to be used in the garden or in concreting and the like. A few days ago, the friendly frog who lives around here hopped into one and couldn't get out. Luckily I noticed him and was able to liberate him. This afternoon he had managed to do exactly the same thing. I saw him there when I went to wash my hands, and so I fished him out. But badger me if, this evening when I went to fetch some water for washing up, he hadn't gone and done exactly the same thing again. That's three times I've rescued him - if he ends up in there again tonight, well I'm afraid he's on his own.

And we had some wind today - and serious wind as well, gusting up to 26kph which is not far short of a record for here since I've had the anenometer installed. All I need now is to fit the wind turbine up there and I'll be happy. It's high time it was in the place where it ought to be and doing the business

There's a lot to be said ...

2011-10-18T03:42:00.001+02:00

... for being up at 08:00 in the morning at the first tinkling of the alarm clock. It means that by the time you have breakfasted and done your 3 hours on the laptop, there's still two hours before lunch.

And it's just as well because it took me a while to empty Caliburn ready for this furniture removal, and then there was still some time to do another little job that I'm thinking of.

You might recall that the 12-volt immersion heater has stopped working and had something of a meltdown. I had a good look at it and what has happened was that the heater element has folded downwards and shorted out against the metal sides. This has firstly produced a short-circuit that has melted all of the plastic causing the wires to short out (and why the fuse didn't blow is a mystery to me) and secondly the arc that was created has burnt a hole in the bottom of the drum.

Despite the catastrophe (and it could have been 10 times worse if the insulation had caught fire) I was still impressed with the heat that must have been generated from just 500 watts and my surplus energy. But now I know why the heater elements are fitted vertically and not horizontally. The issue with that though is that you need running water into the tank to make sure that when you drain the tank it refills so that the element is never exposed to the air. That won't work for me because of course I don't have running water. My solution would be to go for a non-conductive material like plastic, it I would find a plastic tank that would take water up to 70°C.

Anyway, the result of this is that I have no dump load for my surplus energy and so I had a cunning plan. When I was in Canada last year I found some black sockets formy 12-volt circuit and I bought a dozen with the idea that they would be so different in appearance to the usual white ones that it would evidently have some significance. I cut out the wire from the dump load controller and put the black socket into the line.

Of course as winter approaches and the solar energy begins to die down, I've unplugged the fridge as I don't have the charge to run it 24 hours now. What I've done is to move the fridge into where the water heater was and plugged it into the black socket. That way, from now on it will only switch on when there is surplus energy which isn't too bad in winter. It's only 75 watts instead of 500 that the water heater gave out but nevertheless it's something useful.

What I also intend to do in the long run for winter is when I wire in the big Studer inverter that I have, I'll use the 600-watt one wired into the dump load circuit and couple up a small 400-watt oil heater that I have. I'll put that in my room up here and it'll take the chill off the place in the winter whenever we have plenty of sun.

This furniture removal this afternoon - well, I won't say too much about it except that I was there at 14:00 as planned and Caliburn was all loaded before 14:30. For the 90km drive, we finally arrived at the house at ... errr ... 17:40 and it wasn't until 18:10 that we got back under way.

Never mind the plans that I had about doing the washing and so on - we were lucky to make the Anglo-French meeting tonight in time. Still, what can you do in circumstances like this?

And so tomorrow I'm hoping to be back on my wall again. It might be finished this week - you never know.

It's a mystery to me ...

2011-10-16T23:45:00.000+02:00

... how it is that Pionsat can play so dismally against mid-table opposition in their own division in the league and yet totally demolish a team two divisions higher up when they play in the cup.

Today it was the turn of Nord Combraille to come to Pionsat for a cup match and with the Miners being two divisions higher up, we were expecting something of a struggle. But not so. Pionsat were all over a poor Nord Combraille side and demolished them completely, winning 3-1 at something of a canter. You can read the match report here if you like.

The thing that is probably even more bizarre is that once again in a cup match, Thomas takes the opposition by the scruff of the neck and while his display isn't quite as scintillating as two weeks ago (but then not by all that much either), it was streets ahead of his performance for the 2nd XI (4 divisions below Nord Combraille) last week when it took me almost an hour to realise that he was on the pitch.

And we had a gorgeous day for it as well. Here I was complaining the other day about the weather and yet for the last two days we've had proper summer days, the kind that you would be pleased to see in August. This weather is certainly bizarre.

Tomorrow I'm furniture removing and then going to the Anglo-French group. But I can't wait to carry on with the house here. I'm getting all keen and enthusiastic and it's not like me these days.

We saw the geese yesterday ...

2011-10-16T01:39:00.001+02:00

... but this morning there was a horde of other kinds of bird assembling ready to fly off for the winter,and this is sad. In fact it's more than sad - it's depressing. Autumn is coming to a close already.

And so this morning after my 4 hours sleep (I was still up at 05:39) I was up and breakfasted and then I attacked Canada 2011.

But not before I had taken a shot of the work that I've been doing. You'll see how much I've built up, and you'll also notice that the beam is in position where it should be. It's all good stuff, make no mistake about this, and it's coming along nicely.

In St Eloy I bumped into Bill and we went for a coffee and a chat to put the world to rights. But in LIDL I also encountered a woman who was discussing things with her 4 year-old son "Do try to contril yourself, Jasper"

Help! We are being invaded by Hooray Henries.

Back here my return was serendaded by the sounds of flute being played in welcome. Yes, it IS that time of the year and Lieneke and the others have turned up. And how well Lieneke looks. She's dropped about 20 kilos over the last year and it really suits her. She's probably losing years as the rest of us are adding them on.

And no footy again tonight either. whatever am I going to do until tomorrow?

Winter is on its way

2011-10-15T03:47:00.001+02:00

This is just a small part of the huge flock of geese that assembled over my place this afternoon. They had been honking for about an hour and eventually they all put in an appearance right over me, coming in from every direction possible.

They circled around for a while, formed up in a huge echelon, and then departed hence. It wasn't half impressive watching them do all of this and the noise was astonishing. But it is a fact that when they leave they take the sun with them.

And that reminds me - on the TV Monday night we saw the weather and it promised us sun from Wednesday until next Monday. So I don't know where it's all gone too because we haven't had it yet and the temperature has plummeted.

Today was a momentous occasion outside on the wall of the lean-to because the beam is now in place where it ought to be. But it's a bit of a disappointment because it's about 0.5 inch too high in the vertical plane but about 0.5 inch too low under the chevrons. That means that the central beam is about 0.75 inch too high and the end where I'm working. Ahh well.

Still, it's progress I suppose. and from here on, the back-filling is pretty straightforward. It's not going to take too long to finish off now and then I can plan my next step.

But one thing is for sure - it won't happen on Monday as I have a furniture removal to do - to Issoire.