XMAS Broadcast to the Nation

There has been a break in our irregular updates to the blog, due to the commitments of our whirlwind UK tour, taking in Salisbury, London, Southampton, Exeter, Andover, Birmingham, Leicester and Southampton again.

It was great to see everyone again, sorry if we missed you, but our schedule was quite hectic. There were plenty of pubs and restaurants, 3 Saints games ( 7 points) and a five-a-side comeback appearance ( I seem to have turned into a later day Ted MacDougall, a poachers hat-trick but can't run back for toffee!). My old office at le banque de chaval nior has turned into a new Theme Park, "Secret Squirrel Land". It must have some scary rides, as you can't take your mobile phone in there.

After all that excitement, it was time to get back home to France for a well earned rest, and return to work.

The ceiling has finally been finished, although I do have to keep filling the odd hairline crack on some of the joints. It will probably get worse once we put the fire on, and things start to expand, but I've got lots of caulk in reserve.

Mr H has plastered the chimney breast, and Tina has been hard at it, painting all of the walls.

I 've fitted all of the new lights, and have finally got round to connecting the new circuits to the mains. It took a lot of work, dragging the heavy cable through the loft, and it was a bit scary, working on the meter and being so close to the live cables, but it all worked first time. I was so drained by the whole experience, putting all that theory into practice, that I gave myself the afternoon of to calm down.

Anyhow, enough of my ramblings. Here is what it looks like now.

Window dressing

I've just realised that we are coming back to the UK next week, and I haven't updated the blog for a while.

We are mostly working on the ceiling still, and are now about 9/10ths of the way through it at the moment, but there are other bits and pieces we have finished.

Tina has pointed all of the stonework around the windows and doors in the barn, and I have built up the stonework under one window, and made some mantle shelves from old bits of wood.

Before

After

As you can see, it is a bit of a transformation. It also cuts out all the draughts, so you don't have to worry so much about brain freeze any more.

I've also managed to finish connecting up the lighting circuit in the barn and test it fully. It took a while, as the two double switches needed nine different connections in a big junction box, which took some working out.

The testing took forever. There were a couple of loose connections at first, but after they were sorted out, I still couldn't get a reading through the double switches. I tried various combinations, to no avail. In the end, after two hours or so, I decided that it must be the switches, so I tried the circuits with single switches instead and it worked.

I don't now what is wrong with the double switches. I fitted some new ones and the worked straight away. I think it might be that they got filled up with plaster dust or something like that. The morale of the story being, don't fit delicate equipment before you finish sanding, and always test things straight after you fit them, so you can take 'em back if they're broke.

We haven't put a live supply in the barn yet, but we still managed to test them out with an extension lead.

The limestone for the floor has now been delivered , so Tina and I spent a fun afternoon shifting it from the garden into the barn, all 3 tonnes of it!

Hopefully, when we get back from Blighty, we can finish the ceiling, paint the walls and finally start the mammoth task of laying it all out.

HIDE THE BREEZEBLOCK !

I know what you may be thinking, but I am not referring to some bizarre sexual practice but am, in fact, talking about a new building technique that we have mastered.

When Mr H the builder replaced the barn roof, he had to put in lots of new timbers, and in places he had to build block work and fit wooden wedges to straighten out the roof. Some of the block work is now covered up with plasterboard, but this left us with some breeze blocks showing at the top of the pointed wall.

In the picture above you can just see some block work near the chimney. There were also lots of gaps between the beam at the top of the wall and the ceiling, which needed to be closed to seal the room.

I asked Mr H about the best way to disguise the block work and he suggested covering them with thin slices of stone, glued on with tile adhesive. We also decided to use some old planks that had formed the old hay store to fill in the gaps at the top of the wall.

Gluing on the stone was fairly easy, as the tile adhesive worked a treat, but chipping layers off of some of the large stones from our rubble heap proved a bit tricky. I took a while, but I managed to get enough stone without smashing my thumbs too much with the hammer. There was also a gap under part of the beam at the top of the wall which we filled with more stonework and the next day we were able to point them up

The woodwork proved a bit more time consuming, as we had to scribe round each joist, as well as trying to meet the pitch of the roof. This involved a lot of measuring, cutting, taking the wood up and down the scaffold, remeasuring, re-cutting and planing the wood to get it right.

It was a lot of work, as a lot of finishing tasks are, but we think it has been well worth it.

Even after all the measuring, there were still the odd small gap, but these have all been filled now with either strips of wood, decorators caulk and rock wool.

Hopefully, the room is now sealed up ready for the winter, and we should have less of a problem with brain freeze this winter.

It's Been a While Since the Last Update

Sorry, but it has been a while since the last update. We've been quite busy, and have had a lot of visitors, which doesn't always give much time for blogging.

In the last month or so, we have had Tina's Mum, my Mum and Dad, Tina's sister Helen and my brother Terry, which is a lot of people for country folk like us.

We took Tina's mum to La Rochelle for the day, which was even nicer than we remembered it. We hadn't been to La Rochelle since the World Cup ( the proper one, not the egg chasing) and they seem to have developed the harbour area , with even more bars and restaurants.

We found a nice Spanish restaurant on the harbour side, makes a change from all that French stuff, and had some good tapas and fish dishes. It was also great value, considering what a tourist trap La Rochelle can be.

Mum and Dad were happy just to potter around, so we got a lot of work done in the garden, and got a bit done in the barn as well.

We took Helen to Limoges for her birthday lunch, and we also took her to Oradour-sur-Glane, the World War 2 martyrs village. It's not the cheeriest of places, but it is an important monument. The whole village was wiped out by the SS as a random revenge for a resistance attack and it has all been preserved ever since. You can still see the tram lines that used to run all the way to Limoges.

My brother Terry popped over for the a busy weekend during the international football break ( no Saints fixture). We started of with a round of golf at St Junien, where my handicap refuses to come down below 80. I did manage a couple of bogie's, and one 200 yard drive, but there were a lot of horrors as well. Yet again, neither of us could get across the lake at the 14th. There's always next time.

Check the course out yourselves .

http://www.golfdesaintjunien.com/

On the Saturday, we watched the England Estonia game, which was so dull in the second half that we turned over to watch the Jocks instead. James McFadden seems to be the Scottish Matt Le Tissier. Luckily for Scotland, he isn't being kept out of the team by a Scottish Teddy Sherringham.

That night, it was the village football club Moules et Frites night, which clashed with the England France Rugby. They put some TVs in the salles de fete, so people could watch, and fortunately for us the French are much better at coping with defeat than people in the UK ( cue lots of Jim Davidson jokes about French war heroes, etc). There was no trouble, apart from one drunken Frenchman banging the table so hard that our friend Peter's glass of wine flew off the table, onto Peter's shirt. Other than that, there was a bit of Gallic handbags outside, between two footballers who didn't get on, but there was no ceremonial wrecking of any cars with GB stickers, as there is in England whenever we lose a big game.

The food was very good, as last year, and the service was a bit faster, so we managed to be home and in bed before 4 am.

Terry and I were invited to watch the team play a home game the next day, by the club president, so we took in some air, to shrug in the excesses of the next day.

We caught the end of the reserve game, which Suris lost. It was a fairly gentle game, with lots of space which Terry said that he thought I could play in comfortably, a shocking statement from him as he would normally leave me as the last kid picked for a playground match.

We asked the president and the mayor what they thought the first teams changes where, but they weren't sure, due to the beer consumption the night before.

The first team where quite good. The centre forward was very much in the James Beattie mode, with an ego to match ( he was the one that tried to pick a fight with me at last years do). He won and missed a penalty, scored a good goal, missed some sitters and walked off in a strop after getting booked for diving.

They seem to have a strange rule in France that you can have rolling substitutes, so as a manager, you can take of your centre forward and if the sub doesn't work out, you can bring the centre forward back on again.

The opposition keeper got injured early on in the game, making a save at his near post. We couldn't work out what happened, but he couldn't get up, so there was a half hour delay in the game while we waited for the pompiers to come and get him. The pompiers only came from 5 kms away, but it seems that sporting injuries are low priority in the France as well as the UK.

After that, every time someone went down injured, one of the local wags shouted 'pompiers'.

Suris won 3 nil in the end, with two goals from the no 11, who was more in the Anelka style. They also had a very good midfield player, who looked and played like Alan Giresse.

They even had a bar up there, and unlike St Mary', you can drink while you watch. It was very entertaining, although €3 entree fee is a bit steep perhaps, as it's only €15 to watch Bordeaux.

We were quizzed by the club president about what we thought of the whole set up, and we told him that it was much better than our old pitch in England, where you had to clear up the dog shit before you could kick-off!

One Year on

We've been over here for more than a year now, so it seems like a good time to review how things have gone so far.

At le banque de cheval noir we used to have something called Balanced Score Cards, where you had to come up with objectives and targets to work towards and then, at the end of every year, the bank would move the goal posts, so that you couldn't get a pay rise, or get stitched up even worse than that. This was such a good motivational tool that I left.

However, as this is the only sort of review that I know, I am going to use it here.

Financial planning

So far we haven't done a Viv Nicholson and blown all of our cash at once. We may have overspent a bit on the pool, and I didn't allow for all the tools that I would have to buy. It would have been a bit different if Saints could take penalties, as I would have easily spent a grand going to the play-off final.

Next year, we might even raise our wine limit to €3.50 a bottle!

Verdict : Met Expectations

Entertainment

We hoped to see at least one band this year and we've ended up seeing about 20! Not only that, but we saw one of the best live bands of the year, Arcade Fire, some old favorites like Queens of the Stone Age and Hives, Editors and Maximo Park as well as loads of new bands, Art Brut, LCD Sound System, TV on the Radio and Cold War Kids.

The highlight though had to be not only seeing the Mercury Prize winners (Klaxons) twice, but also seeing the bass player shatter his ankle stage diving! That being said, it would be even better to see Mobo winner Amy Whinehouse being thrown off stage/ into rehab again ...

Vedict: Exceeded Expectations

Garden

It has been a bad year everywhere for tomatoes and spuds, and our tiny veg plot has been no different. I didn't know what the difference was between seed potatoes and ordinary spuds, so I planted three that had started sprouting, and duly got back about five spuds 3 months later!

We have had more success with our courgettes and our pumpkin plant is taking over the world.

We have also had more success landscaping the garden, with two new rockeries both surviving ( the nurseries over here must be good, as we normally kill everything. The grass is growing back by the pool, thanks to hard work by Tina and my Mum and Dad, and Tina is also winning her battle with the hedges.

Verdict: Met Expectations

New Skills

We are learning more and more each week.

Horticulture, where not to plant tomatoes, how much room courgette plants need, how to move tomato plants away from the courgette plants.

Tina is a master at pointing now, so much so that she has even been asked to do some repointing at a friends house.

am now qualified as an electrician, and have installed a working consumer unit and supply for the pool, as well as building all of the circuits in the barn.

We've also tried our hand at dry lining, hanging wooden joists, fitting false ceilings and stone masonry.

Next up is carpentry. We've already fitted some new window ledges and trims and we're now thinking of building our own furniture !

Building

We had hoped to have finished the new lounge by now, but it is a bit behind schedule, what with time out for visitors, Rock Festivals, gardening and building the pool patio.

That said, it is really taking shape. This is what it looked like before we started.

And this is what it looked like in September

Verdict : Behind schedule, but we don't have to keep to other people stupid deadlines any more, so we say Exceeded Expectations.

More Days Out

It's not all work and no play. We have managed to get the odd day out, aided and abetted by our friends John and Sue who were over on holiday with their girls, Alice and Lizzie.



We always used to go to Salisbury Races together, so we looked out for a race meeting over here and found one at Pompadour, an hour south of John and Sue's house. It was a bit bigger than Limoges, with a main stand with a restaurant on the top floor, and a stewards box at the finish line, unlike the cherry picker they use at Limoges. This meeting was also a mixture of flat racing and point to point, which is like National Hunt in England, but without rails in places.



We managed to find seats next right by the winning post, and had great views as they went over the jumps, and one fall ( no-one hurt, animal lovers). I'd only ever been to one NH meeting before, at Wincanton, where you were in a box stand a bit far away from the action.






Pompadour is one of the homes of the French national stud, and also to a magnificent chateau, which is almost as big as the rest of the town put together.

The betting on the course was PMU, the French version of the tote, so we were all doing the minimum €2 bet. On the first race, I couldn't decide between two horses, so I did a forecast which came in. Being the Tote, I had no idea how much I had one, so I queued up for ten minutes to receive €2.60 back. Well worth it. All of us picked at least one winner, and I managed 4, so I ended up 3 Euros up on the day. Hurrah, no need to go back to work next week!

Sue picked the best priced horse of the day(7/1) , but we didn't have time to put a bet on that race. Still, it was a good day out, and we managed to avoid most of the showers by hiding in the stand.

While they were all over here it was Lizzie's birthday, so we all did a trip on the velo-rail as one of her birthday wishes. The velo-rail, is a big 5 seater, 4 wheel push bike that goes along the, disused, railway lines. The carriages are quite heavy and it's about 8km each way from Roumazieres to Manot and back. Also railway lines are a lot more up and down hill than you would think, so it is hard work.

We shared the work between three of us in each carriage, but on the way back I started to go purple trying to get us up a hill, while Lizzie's legs were going round like Roadrunner at full pelt. It turned out that the chain had come of on Lizzie's side, so we had to stop to do some running repairs. Another new skill on my CV. After that it was plain sailing, and we even got the girls home in time to watch Neighbours.

We've been back to Bordeaux again, to watch Die Hard 4, which was great, although one quick reading Frenchman was getting to the gags before Bruce Willis could deliver his lines, getting his laugh in early. Also, the translation of the Yippe-kay- aye M.... F.. line was a bit different on translation ( .. connard ) . While we where there we took the opportunity to go back to La Tupina for lunch. This time it was the €32 menu for 3 courses and a bottle 3 glasses of wine each. Well worth it.

We've also been out and about locally, to a local night market at Montrbron. The market was a bit arts and crafts but it was a great atmosphere. The whole town centre was blocked off, with bars and restaurants spilling out onto every available bit of pavement. Very good, apart from the fact that it was my turn to drive.

HARD SLABBING

You may well think that we have been spending all our time lately lazing round the pool but you would be wrong.

Getting the pool in was only part of the story, as the finished pool was surrounded by a sea of mud. So we started work straight away, building a patio around the steps.

The digger man had scrapped away the top layer of soil, down to a firm base, so the first thing we had to do was to build it all up again with hardcore.

To make sure that I had the levels right, I staked out the beds to the correct height ( 8 cm). I re-cycled the wood from the pallets that the pool came on ( green/tight) as they were the right width for the concrete layer, and then we filled all the bays in with hardcore, rubble and gravel, up to the bottom of the wood.



We compressed it all down using a home made stave, and then started filling it up with concrete. It took a lot more concrete than we thought, half a tonne for each bay, about 40 wheelbarrow loads. It all proved too much for the patched up tyre, so I had to nip out and buy a new one, and take the wheelbarrow into the pits lane for a quick change.

Each bay took a day to fill, so it took a week for the concrete to be ready for the next stage

We carefully laid out the slabs to make sure it all lined up OK, and then had to make a few adjustments round the edges, adding a few Cm's of concrete here and there, where the concrete pad wasn't 100% square.

Finally we were ready to start laying the slabs. This involved Tina doing more mixing, as it needed a 3cm mortar base for the slabs.



The first few rows were fairly easy, although it took time to check that each slab was sloping in the right way (1/100) away from the pool in both directions. Then we got to the steps, and it got a bit tricky.



It took a lot of patience to cut each slab to the shape of the steps. The edging slabs on the pool overhung by a few Cm's but it still required cutting, fitting a recutting a few times to get it right. I tried making a template for the first slab out of cardboard, but found it easier in the end to scribe each slab using a block of wood, as I'd watch the carpenter do to fit the doors.

One week on, and it was all finished, including the grouting in, which only took us a few hours, using the secret mortar formula left for us by Michel the pool man.



We can't do the other sides of the pool until next year, to allow the earth to settle, which is handy in a way as we were both knackered by the time we'd finished the top end.

My levels have checked out quite well, as it rained for most of last week and there were no big puddles anywhere, unlike my first attempt at our old house.

Tour De France

This year the tour came quite close to our house, about 40 minutes drive south, so we thought that we would take in this legendary sporting event for the first time. A lot of our friends had the same idea as well. My brother and his family came to stay with us, Andy and Anna had a house full of there family and Pete Rat was down with some of his kids in his camper van.

All in all, there were 12 adults and 7 kids rendezvoused at a junction south of Dignac, where Pete had parked his van.

With only 3 and a half hours to go until the race arrived, it was time to get out the picnic's and then wait, and wait and wait some more.

As you can see, we marked out our territory, on the side of the road, just in case there were any Portsmouth types ( les skates as they are known in France). unlikely, but you never know, as there were a lot of caravans around.

Several hours, and several beers later, the tour caravan started to pass us, with all sorts of freebies and samples being thrown out by the tour sponsors. All I managed to pick up where two pens, but the kids did alright, even getting a Marge Simpson mask from the float advertising the Simpsons movie. Not very French, but that's the global village for you.

Things calmed down again for another hour or so, while Pete scoured the skies for the tell-tale signs of the TV helicopters filming the race. Then they were upon us.

There was a break away group of 4 , who came through at the sort of speed I could only manage down a steep hill, and about ten minutes later the pelethon arrived en masse. How the hell they don't crash into each other more often, God only knows.

As national obsessions go, there is more waiting round than at a test match, and a lot more drugs.

And that was that. We packed up and all headed back to our house for a barbecue. It seemed like a good idea, but it was hard work cooking for 17 people at once, but we coped, so much so that we could always come back to work in the Charcoal Grill in Andover, if we need some cash.

The pool was a big hit with everyone, as it was a rare hot weekend for this summer.

Pete stopped over with the kids for the weekend, and I even managed to fix an electrical fault on his camper van. My first job, but I didn't charge him a call out fee, as he was parked up in our garden.

Garden Nef Party

What the hell is the Garden Nef Party, I hear you ask.

It's another rock festival, a bit nearer to home, in Angouleme. It's a new festival, only it's second year, and it is on for two nights. We had been uhming and ahing about whether we were up to 2 nights rocking, but decided against the Friday night, as the only band we really wanted to see were Muse, and it was the day that the pool was due to be finished.

So we decided to go to the Saturday as we wanted to see Arcade Fire and Klaxons again, and there were so other interesting bands as well.

The festival site was in a park on a hillside, a few minutes walk from the town centre. It was a bit spooky when we got there, as you got to the festival by walking up the middle of the bye-pass which was closed down for the duration. It was so quiet that it felt like the start of a zombie movie or something. It took a while to get in, as the security was a bit tight and we had to check in our camera, so no pictures this time.

The first band up were Art Brut, and English band who are a bit like the Fall but with Hugh Grant instead of Mark E Smith. They were brilliant, and very funny, I would recommend anyone to go see them as they are so entertaining.

Next up were Klaxons, who were great as usual. Unfortunately, during their last song, the bass player decided to jump into the pit at the front of the stage, to get a bit closer to the audience. He jumped down, in rock and roll style, but never re-appeared, and the lyrics of the song changed to, "I think I might need some help guys, I've done something to my ankle".

The rest of the band carried on like true professionals, finished the song, waved to the crowd and walked off stage, without so much as a glance into the pit.

We kept seeing Klaxons wandering around the festival, enjoying the beer and the music but with no sign of the bass player. The rest of the band looked like they were about 16 years old, and were much smaller than they looked on stage. We must be getting old!

Hours later, and we were enjoying the LCD Soundsystem, when the lead singer looked down into the pit and said "Jamie from Klaxons went down there, and now he's in hospital".

We had a couple of American bands next, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, who were OK and Coco Rosie who seemed to be a bit of a US/Red Indian Bjork wannabe. It was a bit like an opera recital, so we watched from a distance, as we had found some chairs and a table, so we watched from a distance. The catering wasn't as interesting as the other festival, but the wine was good and cheap, (not for me though as I was driving) but it was all very civilized.

Arcade Fire were superb again, and had changed their set a bit from last time. The only problem with Arcade Fire, is that there are so many of them in the band , with so many instruments that it took an hour to clear the stage ready for the last band, LCD Soundsystem, so they didn't get on until 1:30 , well past our bedtime!

They were worth waiting for, and the lead singer is more our age, and looks like he enjoys a beer and a pie, so he made us feel more normal.

We left the festival at about 2:30, and got home just before 4 in the morning. I thought we would have had the roads to ourselves on the way back, but far from it. It was a as busy as the middle of the afternoon. Makes you wonder what the French get up to in the middle of the night when we are all tucked up in beddy byes.

All in all though, it was a great night, and we will try to go again next year, as it is well worth supporting.

Pool pictures

As a picture is supposed to paint a thousand words, have a look at how our pool was built.

Day 1

Take that moley !

Anything he can do, a JCB can do better. As you can see, it is a bit wet, but not ready to swim in.

Day 5

The steel sides give the pool it's shape.

Day 6

And now the steps are added.


Day 7

The bottom of the pool is formed with a concrete base.

Day 8

The concrete base is now finished, despite the fact that it kept raining.

Day 9

With the liner in, it looks a lot more like a swimming pool. That lump the other end is a giant hoover, sucking the air out from under the liner.

Day 10

The pool is very nearly full now, and the liner has been cut round the steps. It took over a day to fill up. As we are on a meter, I think it took about 100 Euros worth of water to fill it, I just hope I got the decimal point in the right place.

Day12

The digger man came back to landscape the garden, and back-fill the pool. The bloke in the hat is Michel, who built the pool single handed, apart from a little bit of help unloading trucks, and fitting the filter.

Those of you who think that this blog entry is a bit late as we have been lazing round the pool, wrong. We are both busy laying the patio around it!

Festival Time

We've just come back from our holiday's in the France-Comte ( what do you mean, our life is one big holiday? ). There is a rock festival in Belfort every year and as they had a lot of bands on that we both like, we decided to give it a go.

The Comte region is over by the Swiss border, a good 6 or 7 hours drive from us, so we decided to take some extra time, and take in some of the scenery, as well. There were lakes, hills, mountain gorges and waterfalls everywhere, including this one at Herrison, which has about 30 falls, including the largest two in these pictures, both of which are 60m plus.



That's me in the picture, trying to walk behind one of the waterfalls, but it was too wet and slippy for me. Luckily for me, Tina kept losing her grip on the camera in all the spray, so I had to stand there for ages to get this picture, and looked like I had had an embarrassing accident in the trouser department for the next hour or so.

From here it was on to Belfort for the festival. We gave the Friday session of the festival a miss, as the leads were Maralyn Manson, and Ami Winehouse, as I was worried that we'd be pestered by Ami Winehouses relatives trying to sell us clothes pegs and lucky heather. Friday night and Saturday morning we explored the town, including a long walk on Saturday morning round the forts that give the town it's name.

After lunch, and a short nap at our hotel, it was time to rock! The festival is on a peninsula on a lake, a few miles out of town, so the local authorities lay on a free shuttle train to take you out there, and it was straight forward enough getting in, without the traditional British queues.

On the site itself, there were four stages, and on dance stage, and the acts were staggered so that only two stages were on at once, which meant that we didn't have to many conflicts on what band to see, and we got plenty of exercise walking from band to band.

There were plenty of bars, and the queues were nothing like what we had seen at UK festivals, partly because of the beer token system, which avoids giving change all the time. Also, a lot of French kids brought in thinly disguised bottles of vodka and orange, Pernod etc etc. The choice of drinks was much better than in the UK, where it is Carling or Carling. Here it was ordinary Kronenbourg, 1664 and Blanc, as well as another white beer that I didn't get round to, white, red and rose wine and even champagne ( two beer tokens = 4.3 Euros a glass) ! The food was great too. There were lots of local specialties like tartuflie ( cheese ham and potatoes), snails, crepes as well as Mexican, kebabs, burgers ( including horse burgers!) and even one stall griddling foie gras and serving it in a bun. We settled for tartuflie, Mexican, kebabs and grilled duck with chips ( not all at once) .

Now onto the music. On Saturday we had Cold War Kids, Editors, Maximo Park, Queens of the Stone Age and the Hives who were all great. We also checked out Scanners and the slightly strange Deerhoof, as well as some French bands. Joey Star was French hip-hop, but in the Beastie Boys mould, so the rocking backing track made up for us not knowing what he was rapping about, and Art Malik was more jazzy. We didn't get any pics on Saturday, as cameras were supposed to be forbidden, but we seemed to be the only people who took any notice.

Being old and sensible, we missed the end of the Hives to avoid the queues for the train back into town, but you could hear it all as we walked to the station. Also it was gone 2 am so it was well past our bedtime, and it was 3 am when we got back to the hotel.

Sunday morning saw us wake up just before the end of breakfast, which we followed up with a stroll round the town's Sunday flea market, lunch, and another nap.

We made our way back to the festival at about 4 o' clock, getting there just too late for a meet the band session with the Klaxons, a bit of a disappointment for Tina, who likes the look of the keyboard player, and a bit of disappointment for the Klaxons, as I was going to give them 2 Euros for royalties on their CD, as someone skimmed it of the Internet for me.

The music started with Hatebreed, very loud and angry Americans. They were so load that the bar staff had to take ear plugs out to take your order. I did say afterwards that it might have been good if there had been a mix-up at the Diana concert, and they got Hatebreed instead of Duran Duran.

Next up was TV on the Radio, US indie/R&B and all sorts, with a guitarist who could win a beard growing contest with Mr E from Eels.





Back to the main stage for 'The Good the Bad and the Queen'. A bit sedate for the main stage, but we enjoyed it. Damien is getting as bit older, and starting to look a bit like Duncan Ferguson.





It was good to see Paul Simeon strutting his stuff, roaming the stage with his strapless bass, and looking just as menacing as he did with the Clash.







Next up were Klaxons, who were brilliant. The stage was in a huge open sided tent, and Klaxons got the crowd going wilder than at any other band on the weekend. There was no mosh pit, but so much crowd surfing that there were collisions, followed by a collapse to the ground, as the people below tried to take the weight of two surfers at once.


We had a bit of a lull next, with no-one we particularly wanted to see, so we drifted and caught a bit of Tryo, a french middle of the road reggae band, who seemed to have been going as long as the Bee-Gees. Very popular with the French, but not our bag man.

At about 11, it started to rain, so we headed of to watch Air, the only French band that we had heard of. The tent wasn't as busy as we had thought, perhaps Air aren't as big as Tryo in their own country. They were good, but a bit too mellow for this time of night, so we left early, to get a good spot for Arcade Fire.



It chucked it down when they were on, but it didn't spoil it, as us sensible older rockers had packed our kagools, and also Arcade Fire have so much energy and enthusiasm that you just get swept with it.

We dipped out on their encore, as we were shattered by then, and wanted to make sure we beat the rush for the train. This time we were back at a more sensible 2 am.

When we got home on Monday night, we were shattered, and in true rock and roll style, we went to bed at half past nine.

There are some great videos from the weekend on the link below. Kalxons, Editors,Cold War Kids, Hives, QOTSA and Arcade Fire videos are all worth a look. We are in the left hand corner at the start of Arcade Fire, honest!

http://www.eurockeennes.fr/dn_videos_direct/#

We're not up to this festival lark, but hang on .... Muse and Arcade Fire are in Angloueme in a couple of weeks .....

Working Hard - Honest

The past couple of weeks have seen us working hard on the barn, and making a fair bit of progress. Tina has now gone the length of the room with her pointing, up to ladder height while I have more or less finished the jointing on the walls up to ladder height as well, so we are both queueing up to use the scaffold.






The inside of the fireplace shows of the pointing quite well, even allowing for my slanting photo.

I'm not sure how well my jointing of the plasterboard on the walls is going. It looks OK at the moment, and I have been checking them all with a flat edge, but the moment of truth will be when we paint the walls, when I have a nasty feeling that you will be able to see every single joint that I have slaved over. Still, if the worst comes to the worst, we can skim all the walls and repaint it!

Mr Chatillon has now finished all of his work, including fitting the internal doors. I ended up working as a carpenters mate to help him finish, working until 7pm on Friday night. Outrageous!I hardly ever worked that late at the Banque de Cheval Nior, only if we were doing and installation, or if I was being threatened by fat Welshmen and coke head contractors (allegedly) .

We are not quite sure what Mr Chatillon made of our music. We like to listen to BBC 6 Music while we are working, and we're not sure that he was ready for indie guitar bands, and we could have turned him into a 60 year old goth after hearing the new Queens of the Stone Age single.( Je suis le seul goth dans le village ... as he goes to the news agents for his copy of Kerrang).

The doors look even better than we had hoped, and start to make it look like a proper room. Tina quickly varnished them, to try and stop me from dripping plaster all over them, as if that will stop me.












Away from the building work, we temporarily acquired some livestock last weekend. On Saturday night, at about 10 o'clock Tina looked up and saw a sheep at the top of our drive. We rushed out and tried to herd it up the road to the gate so we could put it back in one of Thiery's fields, but it was having none of it. We tried using French commands, venez, allez, allons y, but to no avail. And cats are no substitute for a collie at times like this.

Next, I ran over to Thiery's house to get some help, but there was no-one home. So I ran back home, got my bike out and cycled down the hill to get Thiery's dad. Five minutes later we were back, after me pushing my bike half way up the hill, but the sheep was nowhere to be found. Tina had gone back in the house for a minute, as she was worried that the sheep was getting a bit panicky, and when she came back out, it had gone.

I searched along the road, but there was no sign of it.

So the next day I went to tell Thiery what had happened, but I needn't have worried, the sheep was waiting for them when they got home on Saturday night. It turns out that the sheep had just been separated from it's lambs for the first time, so it had escaped and gone looking for them.

I also found out that it was an English sheep, so if we had tried herding it in English, it might have understood us!